Wrestling - Cassidy - Unfolding the Soul (MCaVFrJcHsI)

https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=MCaVFrJcHsI

Hello everybody. Welcome to another episode of Unfolding the Soul. Today my guest is Cassidy and she chose a really, really interesting subject and it’s wrestling. So yeah, we’re going to wrestle with that. Yeah. It’ll be an MMA match. Not really. I’m pumped. I’m ready to do it. Yeah, let’s start off with a definition. Okay. So I guess for me, and I told you before we started recording, but I always sort of find definitions very tricky because as much as I think language does have definitions, we also give words meaning. And so a lot of the definitions sort of depend on, you know, situation and scenario and time and place. But I guess for me, the sort of understanding of wrestling and the way that I see it is often sort of like this struggle between two forces and trying to understand power dynamics within those forces. And I mean, I think sometimes it manifests itself in a way where we’re trying to gain the upper hand in the power, but I think getting too specific in that probably doesn’t give space for the broadness of what wrestling can really be. So sort of that struggle between forces is probably the broadest definition that I can give, at least how I sort of see it. So I sense that you’re making a distinction between the activity and what we’re trying to get out of it. So maybe you want to differentiate a little bit between those two. Yeah, because I think intention really matters in any action you do. And we can see this in different ways, right? Like we can wrestle with our brother or sister when we’re young. And sometimes it starts off fun and playful and then, you know, someone hits you in the eye and all of a sudden the intention switches. Your intention of what that wrestling is is now totally shifted. But even in sort of more structured places, wrestling in an arena versus a private gym versus a public space does all have different intentions and connotations and change the way we understand the place and the appropriateness of wrestling. So I do think there probably should be a distinction made between the action itself and how we participate in our intentions of those things. And what are the things that we can get out of wrestling? Like what’s the functionality? Well, lots of things. And it really depends on kind of what wrestling you do. Now, I am not a wrestler in a physical sense. But I do think that through life, I’ve tended to have a lot of like spiritual, emotional wrestling with ideas and cultures and people and places and humanity and how those things are ordered. And so in some ways, those things can, a participation in that and allowing yourself to wrestle can give you strength, teach you something about the world, show you your weaknesses and find ways to counter those or understand the place for those. Yet sometimes wrestling can be very destructive or feel destructive where it all of a sudden, you know, it becomes a place where you try to gain control in your life where maybe you shouldn’t or create a power dynamic to dominate and see the person that you’re wrestling with as lesser, which I don’t think is probably the highest calling of wrestling or the best application and intention of it. And so they all have these funky ways of how they shape us and who we become as people. So I heard two things, essentially, it’s making you anti-fragile, right? Providing the strength. And the other thing is it teaches you humility, right? Like it shows you your weakness. It shows you your place effectively, right? Yeah. Well, I guess that’s the hope at its best, right? It can strengthen us and humble us at the same time. But I think sometimes, you know, take anything to its extreme, it becomes the weakness and it becomes the antithesis of those things where we wrestle to make ourselves feel more right or, you know, protect our pride or, you know, we’re so scared in a situation that we think all we can do is wrestle and it ends up being to our detriment. Okay. So let’s connect this to you. So, yeah, like what does it mean to you to wrestle? Yeah, I mean, I think for me, it’s sort of… How do I say it? It’s been a large part of my journey at least for the last 10 years, right? So I… And it all kind of started when I started traveling and getting outside of myself and outside of the things that I was comfortable with. So I moved from Phoenix, Arizona, sort of… It’s a bigger city, but it doesn’t feel quite like a big city like New York or, you know, where you have skyscrapers and the hustle and bustle of walking and public transit. It’s more in sort of little pockets and suburbs. And so you get a sense of bigness, but it was sort of safe and, you know, very, you know, conservative evangelical Christian bubble. And then going from there and going to college and moving to San Francisco or, well, Oakland, but San Francisco area, going to San Francisco State University, all of a sudden you’re presented with this whole different culture, not only in sort of ideas and beliefs and attitudes, but just the way things are built. Everything in Arizona is new and spread out and everything in San Francisco is older and more put together, closer together and sort of packed in on each other. And so even those sort of physical changes affect the way that you see the world and you kind of have to wrestle with the differences of what it is to sort of transplant into this new place and be shaped by that thing. And, you know, along the way you’re through these travelings, you’re opening up your mind to different ideas and different people and their understandings of the world. And a lot of that opened me up to really ask the questions about religion and politics and faith and what all of those things mean and what is the role of wrestling within that space. And, you know, being a Christian, we have the Old Testament and the New Testament, so you have a lot of these old stories and you look at someone like Israel, the name Israel literally means to wrestle. And so for me, that’s where I think wrestling has been the biggest part in my life of this wrestling with religion and faith and what that truly means in the face of this very diverse reality that we find ourselves in. And yeah, how do I orient myself in that the best that I can in finding proper ways to wrestle with the things that just naturally come up when you put yourself in cultures and situations that are very foreign to you and far different to what you have a natural inclination for? So, like you said that it’s like a means to be shaped, right, or to be informed. So is that the only means or is that just the means that you found on your path? No, I don’t think it’s the only means. I think it’s more of a product of what happens when you wrestle because I think there’s a lot of reasons why we wrestle with things. Sometimes it’s a necessity. And there’s definitely points in my life where it was where if I didn’t wrestle with these questions, I don’t know what it would have done for my health, my stability, my ability to act out in the world. Yet there are other times when we use it as a form of play and there’s a joy and there’s a fun to it and each have their place and their time. But I think there are all of these different functions. And there’s something interesting about this idea of wrestling in sort of a biblical framework. I think sometimes, especially in traditions like the ones that I grew up in, the idea of wrestling with questions of faith can be sort of discouraged. Sort of like, well, just have faith, believe, put your trust in the thing. Yet there’s something very built into the idea of this wrestling with God and the understanding of potentially a helpfulness in that process. But it’s not always so clear and cut what that means and what it means to have good participation in that wrestling and proper orientation where it isn’t sort of a power dynamic where you’re trying to overcome some divine thing, but learn it as a participation of what it is to be more human and find your right orientation in the world as it’s supposed to be ordered, I suppose. Does that make sense? No, no, it makes sense. I’m trying to get into this frame because I get the sense from you that you found this tool, right, like this wrestling as a consequence of being put in a situation and that’s your hammer, right? And now everything kind of looks like a nail and in some sense you’re now like, okay, there’s a right way to do it, the wrong way, and you’re discovering that and you’re finding other ways along the road. Is that a good point? I think for a while that definitely used to be me, where it was that hammer that solved all the problems. All I had to do was wrestle with all the questions and get it in my head, get it straight, and things will flow and you just have to throw yourself into the wrestling no matter how difficult it is. But I think over time I’ve realized, well, I’m certainly glad I wrestled with what I did and I don’t know if I could have done otherwise. But I think now, especially coming to orthodoxy, there’s a little bit more of an appreciation of the mystery and the recognition that maybe sometimes I just accept the mystery and choose not to wrestle and save my hip from a break. Sometimes the opponent in the ring is a little big. Well, I mean, I do think too it’s all about intention. I think when I first started wrestling with ideas in a very serious way, it was driven by fear. Fear of being wrong, fear of committing my life to something that was false and the opposite of what was actually good or ordered. Fear that not taking that wrestling seriously could lead to further deterioration and kind of not having that foundation to hold when storms came. And fear is a very human emotion, so it’s hard to say that’s necessarily a wrong thing to have moved into that wrestling space because of it. But it certainly took times where it overwhelmed it and it made the wrestling less profitable than when I took the time to get in the spaces where it wasn’t driven by fear, but more by curiosity and playfulness and this idea of trying to really understand the world in a deep sense and connect it to the other people that I saw around me. So there was a deep sense of will to power at the start. If I wrestle, then I can be responsible, I can avoid mistakes, I can pursue the values that are good for me because I can choose those, right? Yeah, I guess power is probably what I was seeking, although I don’t know if I would have said it in those terms. But yeah, it was sort of that control and stability. I wanted to build the foundation or at least take the time to try and think through the best way to build the foundation and have something solid before I jumped in, committed and put my whole life on some sort of rock. And there were parts of that were good and healthy, but like anything, there was also parts of me that were deeply flawed in it. I couldn’t see it when I’m in it. And I’m sure I still have that now where I act in ways and move in ways where my humanity is stopping me from seeing the fullness and the proper participation in it. But yeah, I mean, there probably was sort of this power dynamic that I was trying to wrestle and control. And through that wrestling, slowly realized, oh, well, maybe being the most powerful in the ring is not actually the best thing for me and the proper orientation of what life looks like as a whole. Because I think if you spend your whole life wrestling, it loses some of the joy because there is so much strain and frustration that comes with that. And it can easily get you to the place where all you see is the thing that you are against versus what it can teach you about maybe what you should be for or what you see as good in the world. Hey, I like this. You lose your joy if you spend your life wrestling. I think that’s actually a really important message to give to people. Like, yes, it’s giving you something, but what are you giving up? Right, because every action is a tradeoff, right? By taking that point and stepping into a ring, no matter what intention your opponent has, you’re always putting yourself in a little bit of danger, so you’re risking something. And yeah, there’s reasons why when you train, and I’ll take it sort of the physical level, like if you’re a boxer, there’s reasons why you train in intervals and you don’t spend eight hours a day training and then two months not. It’s a continual practice of training and resting, training and resting. And so yeah, there’s these places where in our minds, I think humans, we sometimes tend to lean into the extremes. There’s something sort of wired on us to think, oh, that will help. But I think sometimes the best thing we can do is if we find the positivity in resting, we have to be discerning enough to ask ourselves that question of, am I giving myself enough rest to make this wrestling profitable? Or am I just wearing myself down or confusing myself more than if I would have just taken time and taken things slower and learned to dance instead of wrestle? Yeah, exactly. Because you mentioned the orientation in life, right? And wrestling is specifically narrowing. It’s like focusing on what’s in front of you. And if you get stuck in that dynamic, you lose sight of the bigger picture, right? So there’s a real danger in there. So if we’re talking about wrestling, what was the first thing that you wrestled with in your life that you remember? Oh, yeah, let me think about that. I mean, I think even before I started really diving into this idea of wrestling, I probably wrestled with the idea of how do you live with joy and not apathy? How do you cultivate a genuine interest in life? And how do you manage that? But I didn’t know I was wrestling with it until you look backwards and go, oh, wow, yeah, there was that real battle happening. But that sort of wrestling kind of got resolved naturally by being faced with trials and lived experiences. But when it came to sort of conscious wrestling, it’s like, OK, I’m getting into the ring and I’m going to do this thing. It had a lot to do with the question of God and religion and how we see it and the different narratives that we each have as we are on this sort of journey to understand what’s on the top of the proverbial mountain or if there is anything and what path we take to go there. So let’s go back because I find this joy apathy interest question like why were you asking that question? Well, I started asking that question when I realized that I was so apathetic and miserable. That’s just an observation around yourself. Yeah, I just realized for years I had sort of lived in this apathy where I was escaping into TV and media and YouTube and these things that they gave me a bit of joy, but they also sort of numbed me and realizing that I was having that mindset of trying to find ways to fix all of the things that were sort of numbing me myself. And if I could just whip my head around it long enough, that’s what was going to change. Can you give me an example of what would be a thing that would numb you and what the means of fixing that would be? Yeah, I mean I always felt sort of lost and unsure and I didn’t feel like I was living up to the best of what I could. But I also didn’t feel like I had the strength to do it. So instead of doing my homework and putting my effort into the thing that was asked of me, I went to YouTube and I would watch people in their rooms talk about their lives. Or I would go to Netflix and I would watch shows. People keep watching please. Like the vlogs, the early vlogs on YouTube because this was probably when I was 12 to 18. There was this sort of period in my life where you just do this escapism where you try to live through other people’s stories. And I found personal stories very interesting, but I also found film very interesting and one of the reasons why I became a filmmaker, honestly. So it planted a seed of something to move me to action and find joy in the idea of creating. But I was more of a consumer than a real participator in life in a way that was healthy. I was just always trying to hide and avoid any sort of struggle or responsibility. So I’ve been seeing this pattern lately a lot where people, they jump to the end. So when you say, I can’t do this, you’re looking at an end state. You’re not looking at the path that’s going to get you there because you’re not going to be the same person when you finish your path as when you started. I guess I’m interested in the capacity to see that, to see that while to start on a journey or a path or a wrestling match will change you. Did you gain an insight that that would happen? Yeah, I mean, it wasn’t by my own doing. I think by the grace of God, he put enough suffering in my life to wake me up and go, what am I doing? I say I believe this thing and want to live this thing, but I never acted out as if that’s true. And so, you know, having to, you know, take that moment and inspire that to change my intention and move towards something. And at that point, I didn’t see it as a wrestling match or just thought, I’m going to get off the couch. I’m going to take a walk, just stroll through the park. But in some ways, there was a deep battle going on. And all of a sudden, those small intentions that trust in something bigger than myself and that belief that I was asked of something more than what I was giving and that there was a good in participating in that exploration and having integrity in that path, opened me up to this place where I did have this natural joy for life. And all of a sudden, things became interesting. And there’s probably a lot of things to like the time period that switch went from sort of this high school period to college. And the structure of college classes are very different than high school. And I think they were much more akin to the way that I learned. And it opened up that door for it to be more interesting. So there’s there’s sort of them different structural things that changed as well that I think helped on that progress. But if I didn’t have that moment and that that change within myself to see something different and like this call to act differently in life, would it would it have changed me the way it did? I don’t think so. So this vicarious living that you were talking about through media effectively, that sounds like a problem that we live with in modern times. Yes. I guess, can you highlight a way in which you’re still doing this, for example, right? So like it still has has a place somewhere in your life. But like, how did you change your relationship to that? Well, I think one thing helped that I started trying to create myself. So instead of just sitting on the sidelines watching everybody else do it, I put some skin in the game and I tried to create. And many of the things I created back then are not not the things I’m the most proud of. But there are certainly ways where I can understand how, like you said, it led me to where I am now, which is definitely not the end of my journey by any means, God willing. But, you know, there’s that there’s that sort of joy in that the recognition of like even when I was doing something poorly and I look at it and I’m sort of embarrassed about it now, it sparked that thing where it wasn’t just sitting around consuming. It got me to live a better story. And then sort of through that, eventually the creation stopped in sort of a calculated way where I’m going and I’m shooting and I’m trying to create stories that are going to get me some sort of like attention or part of this game. And it just became creating because I saw something beautiful in the world. And I wanted to find a way to capture that. And because I had spent so much time of my life consuming films and sort of being inspired and escaping into them all of a sudden that frame. I don’t know. It sparked something in me to create in that way that I don’t know if I would say turn things on its head, but but use that medium to express the beauty that I saw in the world in ways that I couldn’t fully. By just living. But that just living part to you, I think, is something that made it easier to create because all of a sudden you’re you’re you’re being more vulnerable, you’re sharing yourself in real ways you’re not trying to hide and be something you’re not. And that creates real genuine relationships and offers you a space to get advice and counter the things that you feel strongly about. And yeah, there’s something there’s something kind of beautiful in that like it became sort of a act of creation as well, even though it is not so stereotypically seen as creation. But like you’re creating life in a community and you’re creating. I like to use the word manifest. I’m not a fan of the word creation because that puts the power back in you. Right. Well, manifest is something that you do with something else. Yeah. Well, I don’t know. It’s interesting. I mean, from my frame, like I look at sort of the biblical stories and you look at Genesis one, two and three. And to me, it seems like the path that was laid out in those chapters of what this idea of heaven and earth coming together, it’s sort of partnering with God in his creation to bring life into the world. And so I guess that’s why I like to look at creation, because I do think in some ways, God invites us into that part of it. But I definitely see where that word can be flipped on its head and all of a sudden become that power dynamic where I become God of my own little world. Take like, yeah, you need you need to see God as the source because if you don’t have God as the source, like the source of creation is going to be something else. Right. And like, yeah, we have to end up being you because like if you’re not doing it in service to the outside, then you’re going to do it in service to the inside. Yeah. Yeah, like there was there was another thing where I was like with you and like I’m like, oh, no, this word is coming and you said capturing beauty. And I was going to say serve, right? Like I was typing, I was going to write the word serving. And I’m like, oh, no, I need to write this other word. So there’s still this this right like capturing also is again highlighting your your role instead of having the beauty be the agents. Yeah. Well, yeah. And maybe there’s that interesting relationship where we think that we’re capturing it, but maybe the better term is we’re reflecting it or or repurposing it. But potentially, yeah, I’d have to think more exactly. We’re the vessel, right? Yeah. We’re bringing the spirit in. We’re channeling the spirit through us. Yeah. Into the world because we can’t hold the spirit, right? Like, then we get we get we get stuck in that. Like, we really frustrated. Yeah. Well, I’m like, I think, yeah, you get too too caught up in this idea of capturing while you’ve got your hands so tight on something where, you know, it just slips through your fingers or you don’t you don’t open your hand enough to see the other things that could add to it. So, yeah, when you’re using a camera, for example, right, like the camera captures, right. But the camera also kills, right, like it makes it dead because like now it’s frozen. It’s stuck. Yeah, there’s there’s an interesting yeah there’s an interesting pattern that because in some ways, yeah, you’re capturing it. And then all of a sudden that thing that you have is dead. Yet what we can do through repurposing that and in finding ways to I don’t know if manipulate is the right word, but like play with these things. All of a sudden, we can we can also produce life through it as well. You know, in the best way it can find life in us. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. Potentially, we can we can facilitate that by giving proper affordances in in the media. Yeah. Well, and that’s why I think is artists or creators in any way, even sort of in like this YouTube space where we’re doing podcasts or things like the intention of what we do and what we create should be like a conversation. We’re constantly having wrestling with ourselves because yeah, you’re you’re you’re participating in this pattern of life and death in a way that affects so many things. And so how do we do that? Well, how do we do that with integrity and intention? And how do we do that while also allowing ourselves to make mistakes within it? Because the only way to ever get, you know, truly, truly good at something you have to be willing to fail and fail again and again and again. And yeah. So how do we how do we kind of balance those things and wrestle with those things in ourselves? Because I think as artists, you’re often your biggest critic or creator or whatever. You’re always sort of constantly trying to. I’m not. No, I’m actually not doing that at all. Well, there’s probably a grace in that. I think for me, I sometimes do become too self-conscious in the way that I create because just going through life and consuming so much and then and moving into that space of creation, you recognize the power that it has. And so there’s always that. Yeah. There’s two ways of going about it, right? Right. Like one is you look back, right? You try and stand on the past. And the other one is you look forward with hope and faith. Yeah. Well, I’m probably a mix of a mix of both is generally what we all do as humans. But some lie on different sides of the spectrum than others. And I think I go through phases. There are times where I just create and that inner critic in my head just it goes away because you just get into this flow state and all of a sudden you’re you’re creating something that just feels so it feels like you couldn’t do otherwise. Yet there’s this other time where you recognize the it’s when you when you when you put to rest the thing that you’ve created kind of die to it and say, you know, abandon it. Say this is what it’ll be. That’s when that inner credit can come again and recognize, OK, well, how can I how can I be better? What did I what did I do? Well, you know, where did I fall and how can I take that and look back and use that to move me forward? Yeah, like the way I do that, what you’re saying is I just let it come at me. So one of the things is just your environment gives you feedback. Yes. It’s like, oh, now I have to deal with this, right, because it’s important in some way. Right. Sometimes your mind gives you feedback. But but going intentionally through that process while not directly serving something new. I try to avoid this. I think I think that’s sometimes being stuck, being captured by the past, because like you’re never going to do the same again. Right. And yeah, like the opportunity for redemption is is in engaging with what is not yet. Right. Not in dealing with what already is or has. I think I think there’s a lot of health in the hybrid path, right, of like just because you’re looking back and wanting to do better doesn’t mean you shouldn’t stop creating also. I mean, maybe maybe what you create doesn’t see the light of day and that’s OK. Not everything has to be your, you know, or dark room for five years. Yeah, sure. And then all of a sudden. But yeah, I think there’s that that hybrid path of like finding that place where, OK, it’s a time to, you know, die to myself and criticize myself and and work on those things that I want to be better. And then there’s time to put that away and just go and live and do my best with the things that I’ve learned. And I think often doing that in community is the strongest way to do that and keep you grounded, because sometimes those outside of you can see when you’re falling into a pattern that isn’t healthy. And the words that they say or the action they do spark you out of it in a way that you couldn’t do if you just tried to do it all on your own. I see. I see a lot of people, right? Like they think that something is important and like nobody cares about this. But what are you doing? So, yeah, you were talking about expressing beauty. And then you said I couldn’t do that by just living. So do you get a sense that like the expression of beauty is also something that you can capture in your daily activity? Yeah, that if I said that statement, it wasn’t my summer. It wasn’t. Yeah, it wasn’t the fullest sense of what I meant, because I think the longer that I live, the more that I think the real beauty does come from how we live. But like we have to recognize that sometimes means embracing suffering and coming through that participation and understanding, you know, that pattern of life and death that we’re living and what it can reflect for beauty. But there is something where it’s like my lived experience. It’s my lived experience, so I can share a story with you about something beautiful in my life. But you’ll never really be able to express or not express, but like comprehend the beauty that I had unless you were in my body living it and seeing it exactly how as I saw it, which is impossible. And so for me, filmmaking and art becomes this form of taking this lived beauty, which is, I think, far simpler and harder to express, but more powerful. And crafting that in a way that shows something in a different form that I can’t quite give just from having my own lived experiences. But I know there’s plenty of beautiful stories and things that I’ll never share or put into my art because they’re almost too beautiful. And so you like you hold those precious things and let whatever you create be fueled by that, but then sort of reflect those things. But yeah, it’s if you can’t live the beauty in the world, it’s really hard to create it. When you’re talking about reflecting those things, would that be like taking them to like an archetypical state and depersonalizing them? And then is that the reflection that you’re talking about? Yeah, I mean, I think there’s different ways and modes to do it and different art forms require different participation in the way that you synthesize those things. But sometimes it’s yeah, that playing in and leaning into archetypes, but sometimes it’s subverting them and recognizing the pattern and the weird way that these things manifest in the world and how you’re seeing that express this idea of what humanity might be. Like for me, I often see filmmaking. I think sometimes we can look at it and we put on our like media glasses and say whatever is being shown on the screen to me, this is what they’re telling me. It’s true about the world and it’s saying something true about the world. And like I take that in and put that into my brain and calculate it and spit out the numbers. And this is what it is. And I don’t think we knowing we do that, but that’s sometimes how we like our brains display, especially in the modern frame. But I like to look at things of often these stories that are being told that there’s a there’s a crater behind them, right? There’s a director, there’s a writer, there’s a whole bunch of cast and it’s all of this collaborative effort to put out the story into the world that reflects how that group of people see the world. And so it might not tell me exactly what’s true about the world, but it could tell me about what other people are seeing. And I can use that and reflect that on the way that I see the world and the beauty that I see in it and try to find a way to get a bigger sense of the story because we’re all wired very differently. And what I would find beautiful might not be something that you find beautiful. That’s why it’s sort of interesting for people who get on their hobbies horses where you hear them talk about something. Nobody is interested about that except for you. Well, sometimes there’s that beauty in that where you need that one person to be very interested in it, to spark something about the human experience and what can potentially be beautiful in that. And now if you don’t integrate that into something fuller, it could definitely cause problems. But sometimes you need those very hyper-focused people to give us a spark of something very beautiful that we couldn’t see otherwise. Yep. Yeah, well, yeah, that’s the danger, right? Like if you go too high without being brought, you’re going to fall over. Yes. Well, it’s all like all this weird balancing game, right? And not every point of balance makes sense in our head. It’s like looking at those rock stacks. Have you seen those on like hiking trails where there’s these people who just get this sense of like balance in these, you know, un-uniform objects. And all of a sudden it’s like this shouldn’t work, yet here it is. Well, I think you have to let go of what you think the balance is like and you just let the rock lead you instead of the rock. There’s an intuitive sense in that. But yeah, there’s that trickiness where it’s like, OK, it shows us this different view of balance and what balance could be. Yet we also know that we have to be very careful in those very delicately stacked objects because one little, you know, sneeze, it’s all gone. Right? And so there’s, yeah, there’s different modes and places for things in this way of balance. And I think we’re all, I think we’re all wrestling in our orientation with that and the places that we’re in and finding ways to make sense of the differences for the things we see outside of ourselves. And that manifests itself in all these weird ways. So the last thing, I had just a bunch of notes and just like boom, it like folded in all of this other stuff. So the last thing that I wanted to highlight is that you said that participation or it creates genuine relationships, right? And like part of that participation is obviously the wrestling that you do in that participation. But yeah, I first wanted to look at like, do you feel like before that you didn’t have genuine relationships? That’s a good question. No, I wouldn’t say that’s the case. I think I did. And like I think it was the thing that didn’t make me spiral more. But I didn’t, I wouldn’t have been able to recognize that. I think even in our worst moments, like if you can find yourself embedded in a good community and open yourself up to it, you can have good relationships. But, you know. Right. Okay, that’s what I wanted. Like you said, opening up to it, right? So there’s something that allowed you to open up to it, even though you dissociated in some way? Well, I’m a very relational person. I’ve always been. My family often tells this story. I think they even told it at my wedding. We were at Disneyland when I was two for my birthday. And we’re sitting at, you know, like a snack stand eating something. And my parents are at the table, my sister at the table, they’re eating their little snack. And I’ve got my signature book and I’m talking to some random kid at the fountain showing them all my signatures. And my sister just goes, what is she doing? And they’re like, we don’t know. And so there’s always been this part of me that just like is genuinely drawn to people. And I don’t think even in my worst moments, I can stop that. It’s just very ingrained in who I am. And so I don’t think I had much trouble opening that up. And maybe that’s why I stumbled in those really strong relationships, even when I was at my worst. But where I think my problem was is that I wasn’t the most genuine in those relationships. I was genuine enough, but there were certainly things I was hiding in places where I was not wanting to be seen and didn’t allow that to enter the conversation. And I think once I did that, those relationships became even more beautiful. And it opened me up to even more relationships and a diversity in that, which I think was really helpful for me in understanding how to move forward. And I still hold on to a lot of those moments and relationships, even if I don’t have consistent communion with them now. There’s still that place in my life where they’ve shaped me and they’ve changed me. And I still hold on to the things they said, even if I don’t see them every day. What allowed you to make that shift from holding things back to, well, revealing them? Again, I’d say by the grace of God, there was just this spiritual… Well, there was this option to take a spiritual path. I was sort of presented with a crossroad in my life and I made the intention to take that. And through submitting to that, everything shifted. So I can’t fully express it. What was the reasoning or the motivation that you followed? You’re captured between two spirits. One is the status quo, like it’s a devil you know. You have to make that projection. So I’m looking for what was the inspiration or the conviction that you found. Yeah, well, I’ll have to probably embed it in real life because that really matters. So I had been spending my last year of school and high school working a minimum wage job that I hated. Constantly feeling like no matter how hard I worked, the money just kept going away. And I kept pouring it into this car that was just a beater. Like every two weeks, something broke and it was like just really struggling on my own to kind of get this thing going. And a week after I graduated from high school, I got into this little fender bender that ended up totaling this car. And I remember my dad comes and he picks me up and he’s talking to the police and I’m sitting in the front seat of his car, like heading in my hands crying like, what am I going to do? What am I going to do? What am I going to do? And in that moment, there was just this realization of like, oh, I say I’m a Christian. There’s this trust in that religion that there’s nothing that I can do, that I have to put my trust in God and allow him to be in control of the situation. And like in that moment, it’s like, oh, wow. So like I say I’m this thing and I do things like I go to church and I don’t drink. And I, you know, I live a relatively moral life, yet it isn’t fully committed to that thing. And the intention of it is more sort of checking boxes than really being driven in a belief in that. So what are you going to do? You can keep going down this road, which is obviously not leading to anything good. It’s making you apathetic and it’s not helpful at all. You can go down some other hedonistic road and just choose to do whatever you want, which I had seen enough in my life to know that that where that road ended probably wasn’t a wise choice. Or I could, you know, give it a shot, put my trust in this thing in a real genuine way and see what changed. And so that’s sort of what I did. And a lot of my actions didn’t change. I still did a lot of the same things that I was doing before. But my intention and my my my frame of it changed. And that made all the difference. All of a sudden you have this exponential growth of like I wasn’t angry anymore, or at least not not into the realm that I had been where I was just consistently angry. I wasn’t depressed. I had a genuine interest of of learning and challenging myself, which is something that I had avoided before. And yeah, I just like I became more forgiving. I became all of these things that that path had had given me, like said that there was that opportunity in. And so it became the thing that I trusted and kept moving forward. And even in that space where the intellectual side of it started to be challenged and I started wrestling with that. So you’re you’re yeah, you’re talking about effectively being in a legalistic framework, right? And then finding the spirit. Yep, yeah, potentially. But even even then it was it was less legalistic, but more sort of like overly reliant on the graced side of Christianity, where it’s like, well, I’m not as bad as I could be. So it’s fine. So it wasn’t like I have to do all of these things to gain salvation or to gain some sort of favor. It’s not it’s not trying to achieve, but it’s trying to uphold something. Yeah, yeah, it was it was sort of yeah, you’re sort of coasting. It’s like this is what I did. And this is what I believe. But, you know, I don’t think I fully knew what that meant. And I still probably don’t know what that means to follow God and participate. I know I don’t know that. But yeah, there was something in there that all of a sudden was like, well, I don’t know. You just I just recognize the importance of having an integrity with what I what I said I believed in what I what I did living out in the world. And it couldn’t be like no matter how terrifying or uncomfortable it was, I couldn’t just keep escaping into something like you had to you had to be hot or cold. Lukewarm was not going to do it. Right. So I wrote down recognizing the importance of having an integrity between confession and action. So the question that’s in my mind is, is the image of what you ought to be, was that something that was already there? Or did that reveal itself to you as a consequence of changing your orientation? There was definitely already an image of what at least I thought at the time there was certain enough. Yeah. How would you say it? Enough uncertainty in the idea of that to be changed by going down the path and understanding and adjusting my idea of what it was to live a holy or religious life or a life that I was called to or whatever, whatever you want to say that. But like because I was born in this Protestant evangelical family and raised with those values, there was a framework that I was given. And that at least by my mind, I had some belief in. And so I said, OK, well, you believe in it. The only way you can really know if it’s true is if you put it into practice. And so that’s what I did. I took the steps of taking it into practice. But with that, also tried to understand, well, what is this thing really? And together through that, discovered more and more of that process of how to participate well in religion and be that person that had integrity with themselves, but also sort of integrity with the world outside of me, because there was something in all of this. I had this real sense of a recognition that the truth mattered. So Christianity wasn’t true. I didn’t want to hold it. Yet I knew that I couldn’t really understand that question of truth unless I participated, at least to a point. And there’s a mix of those things, right? There’s the intellectual side and there’s the theological side. And then there’s that participation part. And so we’re stepping the toe into the water. And yeah. And so that thing of like that participation in Christianity, well, it did change me and it got me very far. But eventually it was the thing that I moved away from. I became Orthodox officially almost two years ago. Well, let’s turn it back to so you’re like going into college, whatever, right? Like you’re coming into new cultures, right? So you’re talking about integrity between well within the religious frame. And we also have the cultural frame that you need to find some integrity in. And then there’s a culture within the religion as well. So yeah, maybe there’s layers. Like some wrestling going on. It’s like a little Russian doll of cultures. Yeah. So what was your question? Well, like I’m trying to highlight the wrestling, right? So we basically set the framing. OK, like I want to have integrity, right? Like I’m an integrity is not autonomic, right? Like it’s not that I give myself my own name. I get named in relation to the religion and my participation in truth. All right. And so, yeah, like how does that manifest in all of these goals? Like, is there examples that you want to highlight? Yeah, I mean, I think it’s really interesting in that that recognition that what I was born into, what I was instilled as a kid is ingrained in me. Like I won’t ever fully lose it. Even now, being an Orthodox Christian, there’s always a part of me that recognizes. I can’t I can’t get rid of fully the non-denominational Protestant evangelical that I was. Yet through this path of like understanding it, I’ve gone through phases and transformations and all of those things. And I don’t think that’s always a bad thing. The stories we live and the things that we were given, especially at a young age, shape us and change us and teach us something about the world that we never could have known if we didn’t have those experiences. But we can also find that way to not live in the past and see that as the end of the story. But we also have to look forward and look future and recognize that we experience time in a linear way. But there’s also a part of it that it’s not quite linear at all. It all sort of intertwines with each other in this weird way that we can’t fully fully comprehend. Well, I have actually been thinking about this. And this has to do with redemption. So you can redeem something in your past. And then it changes the role that it plays. So in some sense, the story is written in the sense that the facts occurred. But it’s not written in its meaning, in its participation in the grand picture. And yes, there’s something with time that even though it happened, it’s not done happening. No. Yeah, it’s not the end of the story. And I think that’s something beautiful about this idea of redemption. That we all have things that we wish never happened. We all have pieces in our life that we wish we could have acted differently or we wish someone else would have acted differently. But you can recognize that in life if we open this up to the idea of redemption and nothing is unredeemable. We make way for a really beautiful story, not just in our lived experiences, but for the experience of others. And even potentially in our view of art and these manufactured stories that come from humans. There’s something very interesting about that. Do you want to connect that with wrestling? Because I find, what does wrestling with the past and redemption and wrestling with the present at the same time, right? Well, yeah, go ahead. Yeah. I’m really tempted to talk about Fight Club. And I’m going to. So spoiler alert, if you haven’t seen Fight Club, although it’s quite old now. I know we’re not supposed to talk about it. But in some ways you can look at life and wrestling through that film in interesting ways. Because one, our perceptions of the idea of what we’re engaging in and wrestling with is not always the reality of what actually is happening. So like in that movie, he sort of has this idea that he’s part of this. Well, he is part of this Fight Club and he’s wrestling with this guy who’s the leader. And throughout the whole movie, you see this dynamic between these two characters. And then towards the end of the film, you realize it’s actually just two versions of himself. So it’s in his mind, his manifest, this other person, but it’s really just him and this other personality of him. So, you know, there’s a scene at the beginning where he’s he’s wrestling in a parking lot with this guy who ends up starting the Fight Club. But then later on, you see it from a third person perspective and he’s just fighting himself. And so sometimes it feels like life is like that, where we feel like we’re wrestling something else and we have this perception of what we’re wrestling, but it ends up we’re just like punching ourselves in the face. Do you have an example of that? Yeah, I mean, I think. I think there was. So there was a time in my life. When I was living abroad in Australia, when I was wrestling really deeply with these questions of religion. And I would talk to anybody and everybody about religion and just ask them questions. What do you believe? And the way that I operated was very bulldog ish where, you know, I would, you know, fight. And if you saw it from the outside, you probably felt like I was very certain about I was believing I was like attacking this great evil that was outside. And if you really saw it from the perspective myself, I was wrestling with myself because I would go home and after these like long bouts with people who are willing to bout with me, I’d fact check myself and the person and try to make sense. And so it was like, in some ways you think you’re wrestling with the world and ideas, but in some ways I was just beating myself up. I’m interested in this idea, right? I would have given a different description, right? But that’s also because that’s my perspective. Like when I talk to people, like I just see them hitting themselves. Right. And I’m like all the time when I’ve talked to people is like, there’s a wall here. Stop hitting yourself. Like, don’t run into the wall. Like, just accept the wall for the wall and like do something else. And maybe some people looking in saw that. They saw me just hitting myself and they were like, you’re an idiot. Or they’re like, what are you doing? But I think it took some time for me to realize there was two games going on where I was wrestling with something bigger than myself. But in the same way, I was also just wrestling with myself. And like, you know, it was like that scene in the American office where Dwight is doing this training sequence and he’s, you know, he’s showing people how to defend themselves. And one of the gym, like the jokester in the office is like, well, it seems like the only person who can really defend against themselves is you. So how would you defend this? And he goes through this whole sequence of like how he would defend himself. And there’s just some sort of absurdity in that and recognizing that sometimes when we’re asking these questions about theology or religion or politics or whatever sort of thing we’re wrestling with to understand our place in the world, our identity. It can manifest in that way of like maybe we’re Dwight, you know, trying to show our power of like, you know, how to be themselves. But maybe you’re the guy from Fight Club just sitting in a parking lot punching yourself in the face to feel something. So, yeah, so one of the questions I wrestle with, like I don’t even know how to approach it, is like, do you think you can have an honest argument if you’re wrestling with yourself at the same time? Yeah. But it can be difficult. And I think it’s it. I think part of it. Um, means you have to allow your logical side and your emotional side to come together and wrestle each other, which is not often what we want to do when we wrestle with ourselves. We want to decompartimentalize both of these things because I don’t want my emotions to run away and stop me from, you know, Missing the facts or the way the world is, which can definitely happen. But I also don’t want to lose the the sight of humanity that my emotions give me or the instincts of something that I’m saying that I can’t express. And so I think you can have honest wrestlings with yourself. That wasn’t my question. I agree that I can have honest wrestling with myself. What I mean is that if you involve a third party, right, within that internal struggle, like aren’t they always suffering from your inner storm? Like, because that’s… Yeah, probably. But I guess I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing. I think there’s something about the world that is asking us to not only suffer ourselves, but bear the suffering of others and finding our right operation and participation in doing those things. And so sometimes maybe it’s not the right… you’re not allowing the right person into that suffering and it causes more suffering for everybody. But… Yeah, because like, let me contextualize it a little bit more, right? So if you’re saying, well, if I go to my priest and I have that conversation with my priest, I would say, OK, that’s fair, right? He’s supposed to be able to handle that. He got the capacity and he can look at you, right? And he can look at the spiritual struggle that you’re having, right? That was the third person perspective that I was talking about. Like, he can see that, right? Like, he can see you run into the wall and say, no, no, no, no, child, just calm down. There’s a wall there. But if you’re trying to do that with a peer, right, and you’re both incompetent in the ground that you’re trying to cover, right? Like, you just end up running into the wall like 15 different ways, right? And you’re actually being foolish, right? So I’m like, I’m trying to… Like, yeah, like maybe… But like, that’s if we go back to wrestling, right? Like, that would be a wrestling that would seem truly meaningful from the perspective of the wrestler, right? Oh, I’m almost there, right? I feel like I’m so close. But if you’re looking from the priest’s perspective, it’s like, what are you doing? Like, stop doing that. Well, yeah, and I think that what you’re getting at is the difference in relationships and the different types of wrestling that we do with each other, right? Because there’s a different way and operation of wrestling that I would go through in the presence of a priest versus my husband or my kid, right? Like, there’s going to be different operations and mode. And so we have to be careful about overstepping the boundaries of what we really have authority or responsibility to take on. Because not every battle is worth or is good for you to take on. It would be like taking a kid who likes to wrestle with his brother and putting him in an MMA ring with a top fighter who’s looking for the belt. And they’re not adjusting for these differences in size and mode and training and all of those things. And so like what I would do with a priest, what, you know, talking with him and maybe wrestling with these questions, it’s almost like, you know, Mr. Miyagi is teaching me how to, you know, wax the car or whatever. But, you know, the what I would, you know, how I would have those conversations with like my nieces or my sisters or something. There’s a different there’s a different relationship in that. And hopefully a more a more well, it’s all human, right? There’s just different forms of it, but it just gives us that sort of different side of humanity and the different places and roles that we take within our system. But I mean, like, yeah, dealing with somebody else’s wrestling, especially on the big questions, puts me directly involved in their suffering. But I know for me, because I went through that and because I did it quite often alone or tried to, I’m happy to take on someone else’s suffering in that in the way that I feel responsible to because, you know, I know what that would have meant for me. And it’s it actually becomes sort of a gift to be able to wrestle with others in these questions. Yeah, your curse turns into a gift. Yeah. But yeah, like in my church, they say don’t don’t teach others about what’s not revealed to you. Right. Right. I think that’s a really, really good standard to use. Like, yeah, so sometimes you’re just not the person you shouldn’t try to be. Well, and sometimes the best thing you can do, you know, like for someone who’s wrestling, not join them in the wrestling, like offer them a cup of tea. You see the guy punching himself in the face in the parking lot. I was like, can I get you a cab? Like, how can I help you? You know, you don’t have to you don’t have to engage with them and bout with them all the time. I think I think part of that is learning about communication styles and dynamics and wrestling through that whole participation, because it’s really, really difficult to talk with other people. It’s probably the hardest part of all of this stuff. It’s not the ideas, which those have their own complications. But the communication dynamics are probably much more of the tricky, important part of things that are going on. And they’re often the things that we sort of minimize or don’t recognize. That they don’t water with women. Right. Right. So I think I think that’s actually a good angle to go back to culture. Right. So how how does the the relational dynamics right within the culture affect the wrestling and the collective sense making right or the wrestling? Yeah. Is that maybe why orthodoxy actually appealed to you? That’s a good question. I don’t know if the culture aspect of it appealed to me. In fact, I think it’s the hardest part of it because I’m basically having to rewire myself and learn a different culture, which is a beautiful thing. But I guess for me, when I’ve when I’ve traveled and I’ve seen different international cultures outside of like a faith tradition, I loved observing it. But I wasn’t much of a conformer to it in the fullest sense. Right. Like I would I would adjust myself for better communication and trying to understand people. But, you know, I knew that I was not Australian and I never would be Australian. And so I appreciated what that brought and tried to find a way to dance with that with my Americanism. And like even being in the Netherlands, that that’s a whole different culture shock, too, especially because you’re adding a whole different language into the question as well. Because it’s not just different culture and like slang with the same sort of base language. It’s totally different language, totally different culture and learning those things. And I always know that I’m always going to be an American. But becoming Orthodox, it’s sort of like this assimilation process where you have to learn slowly but surely what that means and where I should adjust from the tradition that I came from. And so that’s also as far away from Dutch as you can get. Yeah, which probably makes me a little little odd in the in the frame of like the broader culture. But, you know, I’m you know, I’m already foreign. So maybe that gives me a little more intrigue. But I it’s hard to say exactly what was drawing me there, except that it started with this sense of truth. When I went in and I experienced the liturgy for the first time and I had my first conversation with the priest, I was left with this like sense of truth in a way that I hadn’t seen anything before. And I didn’t know what that meant or what it was, but I could feel that instinct. And it just made me go, OK, I don’t know what to say. Is authority a good framing for that? He spoke with authority. Well, that’s the thing. He didn’t speak with authority. He kind of talks. So when we sat down, he sort of asked me because it was my first service was a vesper service. And so I like just I really went in sat in and just watched the whole thing and sort of was like not knowing what was going on, but was really sort of drawn to some of the patterns and like the way that they moved and recognize. OK, everything they’re doing has a meaning. I don’t know what it means, but I know it does. And you could I just could sense that. And the priest came up to me and sort of like asked me, Oh, have you do you go to Vespers often like what he’s like, do you go to Vespers often? I was like, Oh, no, this is my first orthodox service. And he’s like, Oh, well, must have been a long journey to get here. Well, actually, it was. And so he sort of sits down and starts talking a little bit about orthodoxy. And then, you know, after a couple of minutes, he just kind of goes, Well, what do you want to know? And I was like, I sort of taken aback because that’s never how I have been approached by someone trying to share their religion with me. It was always like, let me tell you the gospel. Let me let me tell you about, you know, Jehovah’s Witness or Mormons or whatever. And there was sort of this process of how we tell you and bring you in, where he was sort of just like, well, what do you want to know? And so there was that curiosity that brought me in. And, you know, you’d ask the question and he would just give the answer the best way that he understood it. And when I got the answers, it was just like it just settled in my soul in a way that nothing else had. And I went, Oh, that makes sense. OK. And so, you know, and I didn’t even know what to fully ask, right? Because I had no real concept or orientation with orthodoxy before that. I had known about Catholicism and all about all these denominations of Protestantism. But, you know, I’ve never really engaged with or heard about orthodoxy. And so it was sort of that thing where you ask some of these questions and then it all started sort of open up a picture that was very beautiful to me. And from then on, it was just like, OK, I need to know more about this. I don’t it’s hard to say that that was a moment that I knew I would be orthodox. But in some ways, it felt it felt like way of like, oh, I think I might be in trouble here. Well, not trouble, but you know, I think I think this might be. And I never saw it as trouble. It actually was sort of I was pleasantly surprised by my embrace with like the icons and the liturgy and the tradition, because before that, I had actually been sort of bothered by it. You know, it was fine for somebody else, but I just didn’t get it. I didn’t connect with it. It felt weird to me. And so I don’t know why the culture doesn’t feel so weird. Sometimes it does. Sometimes I sit in church and what? How did I get here? And then I look back and go, well, where else am I going to go? Nowhere else. So we keep we keep moving forward. So if if I would describe it as you sensed a a external integrity within the church there, like that either thing that was appealing like this, the fact that there was this holistic and also obviously like a sense of beauty in there. Yeah. Well, in the Orthodox Church is very beauty first. Right. We have the icons. We have the very intricate, intricately designed worship places. Right. And it all has meaning in different things. And so it’s very it draws you in with that beauty and it draws you in with the participation. But it also puts you face to face with that idea of death and what what what that participation in beauty can cost in the taking on voluntarily of suffering, which is why we fast and why some of the reasons why we do these different traditions that we have. And yeah, there was something very. Yeah, there’s something very holistic about it. There’s something very deep to it in a way that after seeing orthodoxy, I would go to Protestant services again. In fact, for a covid, I did some work doing streaming for a Protestant church, one that I had spent a lot of time in in my youth. And, you know, you can still see the beauty in that. Yet I always felt wanting like it didn’t feel deep enough. And it’s not that I feel like Protestantism doesn’t have a depth to it because I couldn’t couldn’t have lived 30 years of my life committed to and exploring it. If it didn’t, it just didn’t feel as deeper curious than this other thing. And I couldn’t I couldn’t shake that. And so, yeah, again, it feels like I didn’t have much of a choice. Orthodoxy had chosen me and, you know, and that that part of me couldn’t fight it because I saw the beauty, truth and goodness in it. So are you conforming to orthodoxy? To Orthodox culture? I’m trying. I don’t know how successful I am, but, you know, like. What would what would that mean? What would you have to wrestle with inside of you in order for you to allow that? Well, a lot of it, especially at the start, is just real practical stuff like learning the fast calendars and learning how to pray in an orthodox way and having an icon corner and these sort of little things that remind me of the story I believe I find myself in. And it means sort of not abandoning the thing that I was given and wired as for most of my life, but being willing to let this new story shape that in a way that wires things a little a little differently. And yeah, there’s there are days that are easier and days that are harder. And when I first started, a lot of it was like, why? You know, a lot of people tell me orthodoxy is so demanding. It doesn’t seem that demanding to me. Yes, there are like these things and these disciplines. But I, you know, I self enforce disciplines in my life and Protestant frames that were much more extreme than this, because everybody’s sort of forming their own. Yet there, as time goes on and as you’re dealing with different cultures and in some ways mourning the thing you lost, because I still mourn the thing I lost by not being Protestant anymore. You, those simple things. They become not difficult, but like, you really have to kind of recognize, OK, what is my intention here? And like, what does it mean to have right intention with these things? Because I, I don’t fully know. And I feel I feel very lost in the story because it’s so deep. And so I never want to go at things with the brash confidence that I did maybe in some of my moments in Protestantism. Like, I want to have humility in that process. Well, that’s one proper intention, that you can make everything that you do humility. Yeah, but even that’s hard because then how does that, how does that, you know, posture of humility become a pride? I’m a very humble person. Well, that’s actually why I’m going into this line of questioning, right? If you say, I’m never going to give up these cultures, right? Like, there’s something that you’re holding on to, right? Like some pride instead of letting what needs to happen happen. And so I kind of was trying to poke at that. Well, yeah, I like it’s been, there have been moments that are very difficult about it. But like, I always see it as sort of like, I’m being broken in a very beautiful way. And I think there is some good that when I officially became Orthodox, it was only a couple months that I was still living in America before I started making my move to the Netherlands. So as I’m taking on this new culture in a church, I also have a little bit of separation from the culture that I was in before. And so it becomes sort of this like real reset of not being so reliant on the comfortability that I had before and trying to find a different way to engage and understand that and let it humble me. But you see that as a benefit? Well, it has its trade-offs, but I think it’s ultimately been a benefit for me because it gave me a little space to kind of slow down and rewire and face a new culture without that safety net of the thing that came before. And that’s just sort of how I’m wired. I don’t do great with safety nets for better or for worse. Like sometimes the moments where things are the most high risk is where I really have that space to take action. And there’s extremes in that behavior that have certainly not been helpful for me. But yeah, having that space where it isn’t so safe and being in the Netherlands in some ways is sort of that middle ground where I don’t know the language. I don’t know if I’m going to get flooded. Yes, I don’t know if I’m going to get flooded. You know, there might be a cow in my backyard. Like there’s all these things that are very different. Yet in some ways I’m more stable in my life than ever before, you know, being married, you know, on the way to having a baby. All these things that sort of slow me down and ground me in a different way. And they’ve been really challenging but helpful in that place where I can’t I can’t fully give into this prideful side of myself because I feel like a baby half of the time. Anyways, I can’t communicate with my grocer. I can’t I don’t know how to use the bike lanes. You know, like there are all these things where it’s like, how can I have pride in what I do? Like I don’t even know fully the religion I’m a part of. Like I have a trust in it and I have a sense of it and I’ve I’ve learned a lot in the last three, four years about it. But I’m a baby. And you know, that’s a humbling thing. So, yeah, no, you’re pointing out the last angle that I wanted to get into right like your relationship becoming a mom. There’s probably a bunch of wrestling involved there because like that’s really close to the chest literally. Yes, she keeps hitting my ribs and I’m just like get down. No, yeah, that’s that’s been really difficult. I mean, one just this operation of okay, well, what is the role of a mother? What is the role of a woman? And what is that role in the tradition that I’m now a part of? Because it probably is somewhat different from the tradition that I came from. And it’s very I’m guessing very different than the cultural cultural realm of motherhood and, you know, just the life of a family in general that has been given to me on this sort of secular view. And so you wrestle with those stories and those those fragmentations of what it is. And, you know, you have to deal with the suffering of what it is to bring life into the world because, you know, you’re you’re sick. I’ve been sick more in the last seven, eight months than I have probably in years. You’re you’re yeah, you get those little pains in your side. You have to take shots. You have to do all these things in the protection of this thing that is growing in you. And I think the faith aspect is huge for me, too, because I want to do what I can to best pass on a good participation and faith as I understand it the same way that my parents did for me. Except now, well, I’m actually sort of in a similar position that my parents were in, in that when they raised us, they were new in the faith that they had found in so many ways. And so they did the best that they could to pass that on in the way that they saw it. And now for me, I have to do that same thing. But now it’s with a different faith tradition. And so there are things that are going to be very different, but also things that I can learn from them and what they did. And yeah, that that’s always a scary thing. Like I said, I feel like a baby. And so, you know, a baby raising a baby, it’s like blind leading the blind. What’s what’s going to happen here? So but but I think in some ways that can be an asset for me as I enter motherhood, where I don’t become that parent that Yeah, feels that need to control the way it has to be. There’s a part of me that’s still trying to figure out what that even means and how like how to navigate that. And so if I can find good ways to do that, to be that sort of person she can watch, I think that could be a powerful thing. Oh, no, I can’t. I can’t be really powerful. Yeah, I think I think the most important thing is not to be in your own way. Which which I have a great pension for. So that I’m grateful for Ferdy because he never knows how to get in his own way. The Dutch people don’t don’t don’t have that much. It is like, yeah. Yeah. So so so yeah, the wrestling part is why I want to highlight the relationship maybe a little bit as well. It’s like, OK, so so you’re living, you’re living with a human being that’s in your face all the time. And they’re not in their own way and you’re in your own way. And it’s like, how do you do it? Yeah. Well, I mean, I feel lucky that me and Ferdy have fairly compatible personalities. I’m much more of a fighter than he is. I’m a fighter. He’s a peacemaker. And so there’s there’s ways where we check ourselves. And I think I’ve gotten to the realization gratefully that, you know, fighting is not always the answer to all these questions. And so I try to, you know, minimize that instinct in myself. But it’ll be interesting to see when you have this sort of chaos that that is parenthood, how that changes and shifts in the way that we wrestle with each other and we come to things. But I know I just feel really grateful. I’ve never been able to communicate so well with anybody as I have been with Ferdy. And I think we both see the value of vulnerability and the recognition that a lot of times this conflict is something much deeper than just the issue at hand. And so really trying to understand that and cultivate a life that’s beautiful has been helpful for us, even in the face of things that have been more conflict. I think he’s lucky that right now more of the tension comes from figuring out my space and orientation in a new world than anything he does. So, you know, maybe 10 years down the line, that wrestling will shift his way once I feel like I’ve got my my grounding. Yeah, no, then you’ve grounded yourself in the wrong thing. Yeah, probably. Yeah. So that’s that cycle of, you know, getting out of my own way. But, yeah, I don’t know. There’s yeah, there’s a beauty to, you know, I’ve said it before. I think Ferdy in a lot of ways is the best of the things that I’m not. And so by recognizing that and allowing him to influence me in that way and me to influence him, we can find that way to wrestle with each other where, you know, it’s not it’s not as much of a fight and it is more of a dance. Although, you know, there are different modes in those things. White people can dance. Yeah, so I think we’ve sketched where we are a little bit. Well, the big change is a few months away, but I’m not going to look at that. I’m going to look at five years into the future. So we got a couple tracks going right. We got the kid, we got Dutch culture and we got Orthodox culture. So, yeah, like what would ideal fulfillment of those tracks look like five years time? Yeah, I think. I think for me, it’s hard to say what it looks practically, but I hope that I just feel more more planted and grounded in them, that I see more beauty from it and that I learn to slow down and find the simplicity in those things and find that beauty. And, you know, and I hope in some ways those things can inspire me in creation and all the other little things that I do outside of my personal world in the way that I try to service other people, because in some ways my art has always been aimed in the service of others in some sense. And, you know, the things that I do with, you know, estuary and other stuff, like I want to be more of a service of others. And so if I can find that way to ground myself to be more of a service to those outside of me, I think that is what I’d hope to at least get a bit of a taste of in the next five years and enjoying the ups and downs of what it looks like to get there. That’s all great, but I’m going to make you get way more concrete than that. Okay. So what’s the type of mom that you want to be? Like what’s the relationship with your child that you want to have in five years, right? Like at primary school, right, we have a somewhat autonomous child running around. So how does mama provide the container, the nourishment for the child? Yeah, I mean, I think for me it’s like living it out the best way that I can, not just being the parent that says, do what I say, not what I do, but sort of like, you know, watch what I do, ask me questions, and let’s work together to participate and find ways to help you figure out what you should do. That’s sort of that’s the type of parent I hope I could be in giving her that space to understand what I believe and why, but also having space to wrestle with those questions herself. And at five years old, that’s a different process of wrestling than when you’re 20 or 25, you know, but kids are so smart and their intelligence, I don’t think changes, just their knowledge of the world and their experiences shifts who they are. And so I hope to have that recognition of the person she is and not minimize her for her age in the participation of these things that we all find important. So would you say you want to focus on integrating her in the dynamics or do you think that the child should have like their own space to do the self-development? Yeah, I mean, it’s a bit of both, but like there’s that recognition of as a family, you know, this is what we do and we’re passing on the thing that we were given and the thing that we’re thinking that’s true. So there’s not that place where you can’t have those questions or try to unpack the why, but hopefully giving her space to do that where it is as healthy as possible to avoid that spaces where it becomes out of bitterness, rebellion or, you know, any anything that could be easily corruptible. And so, you know, as far as faith, you know, a lot of people say they don’t want to indoctrinate their kid or whatever. And I think that word indoctrination has probably been demonized in a way that we don’t all fully mean, but that there’s something deeper in the recognition that it doesn’t matter whether you teach them something or you let the world teach them something. They’re being indoctrinated somehow. And so finding ways to be responsible in how we’re passing things on and yeah, trying to have integrity with myself and not just saying you have to do this because good for you. It’s like, well, what’s good for you is also good for me. And so we do this together. I’m like, it’s a corporal participation. So I was thinking that you’d or envisioning that you’d organize your house as like a liturgy in some sense, right? Where you’re having your child participate alongside you, right? Like having the ability to taste something of the higher meaning, right? And then bumping into meaning. That’s the thing. And I think the creative part of me as well, that the filmmaker in me, I think objects and things have stories and are so impactful. And so the way that we can order our houses or design it or what we put in it, they mean something, they say something. And I try to be very intentional about the things that I personally bring in. And so, yeah, there’s going to be a part where she can’t escape the orthodox sensibility in the house, both in sort of open spaces, semi-private spaces, and then her own. And I’m sure that’ll produce an amount of wrestling within her. And there’s those different phases. But by having that available, you hope that when they do have the curiosity, they ask the questions. And I guess my hope is that when the questions come, I do my best to answer in the way that I understand it, but give that space when I say I don’t know either. And that helps not being a cradle orthodox. I can go, oh, well, that’s a good question. Let’s look at that together. And I don’t know, there’s something, I think there’s something as you grow up finding those people, especially older people who are willing to encourage that curiosity and not act as if they have it all figured out, that gets really helpful in understanding the whole human experience. Because even as adults, we certainly mature and we grow and we find better ways to operate in the world, but we still have these moments where we feel like a child, we feel lost, we don’t have the answers to the question. And that’s the beauty of life is that we’ll never know enough to stop learning. There’s always going to be different mysteries in the world and things that we’re uncovering that re-enchant and reconnect us in ways. And I just hope I can instill that in her. That’s interesting that you described that as lost. I wouldn’t describe it that way. How would you describe it? Well, when I don’t know things, I’m just like, okay, I don’t know them. That doesn’t affect me at all. Yeah, well, it varies, right? You look at it in some things where it’s like, I don’t care if I don’t know all of the flora and fauna that are in Michigan. That’s just not something I have any interest, said no. But that idea of, well, what do I do next? What is this action going to? How is it going to affect the world? How do I put myself out there? I don’t ask these questions. We’re very different people then. That’s, I think, where your fate provides. It’s like, just do what you’re supposed to do and the good will come. You just aim up and you keep your eyes up and you keep going and good will manifest. And asking yourself these questions, I’m not saying you shouldn’t. Sometimes you need to orient yourself. You shouldn’t be doing stupid stuff. That’s for sure. But yeah, there’s what’s on you and then there’s the rest. You can’t take responsibility for the rest. Yeah. I mean, it’s an interesting participation in a dynamic. And I think each person’s wired a little differently. No, no, I rewired that stuff real hard. I was on the other side of that equation before. Yeah, well, and that’s the thing. It’s like we all go through patterns. There are some times where I feel much more secure and confident moving forward. The idea of feeling lost seems so foreign to me. Yet there are times where, yeah, you’re just, you have no idea where you’re going and you lose that confidence in the world. And how do you handle that? And how do you move forward in that? And then there’s obviously all of the things in the middle. And so, and that’s the beauty of life and living beautiful stories. If everything was fluffy and cute and nothing challenging ever happened, well, we wouldn’t want to watch that movie. But you have to find that right orientation in the participation of the things that we see and the way that suffering comes that opens that door for redemption and opens that place where you wrestle. And it’s moving towards life, not death. Yeah, that’s important. So, yeah, the orthodoxy question is maybe an extension of the family question in some sense, right? Yeah, it’s hard because, well, I’ve always thought faith wasn’t something that I could do. Like if it wasn’t integrated in your life fully, then it’s going to create funkiness. Like if you only address it on a Sunday morning, well, but like especially with orthodoxy, there’s so much of it that is so integrated into life and into the idea of how it manifests everything. And so, yeah, I mean, I guess for me, there’s a part of me that wants to say that I understand it more, but I don’t know if that’s the right intents. Like I think I just want to understand your place in it. Well, maybe not even that, but just like understand of what it really means to be more orthodox and like how to participate in that in all the different stages of life. But like you make it sound like there’s only one flavor. No, there’s not. Right. Maybe you need to make your own version within like you need to draw the things that you are called to within orthodoxy and focus on those. Because I guess I see this better than you, where you’re opening up this combinatorially exposed space. And like everything I’ve learned over the three years is like that’s a bad space, right? Like it’s too big. You can’t handle it. I don’t know what you mean by that. Explain that to me. Well, so when I go outside, right, like my understanding of what I’m doing can be, well, now I need to go down the stairs, right? I could also say, well, I can go up first and then I can take the elevator down or I can use the emergency escape to get down or I can go back in, right? And it’s like then I have to decide, well, what would be the consequences of all of these things, right? And then like, well, this one sounds kind of OK. And so now I need to say, well, maybe I should improve upon it. And then it’s actually a challenge for just going down. Right. And so you end up in this endless rationalization while it’s not relevant because all you have to do is go down. Like, just go down. Stop thinking. Yeah. Well, I guess it depends on the mode and the severity of what it is you’re looking to do. I think it’s universal. Well, let me challenge you on it, right? So if it’s me trying to go downstairs so I can eat dinner, I could think about all of the ways I could climb out that window. And I could I could maybe even find a way to like call a contractor to build and build an elevator and then go to dinner. Or I could just say I have to go to dinner. I’m going to go downstairs. But it’s sort of different if I’m building a whole house. Right. And thinking about, OK, I have to make this livable. I have to make it fit within the laws of the country that I’m in. I have to make sure that I build it so that it lasts, because the last thing I want to do is build a home. And then a year later it falls. And I kind of look at it in the sense of like two parables in the Bible, the one about the house built on sand versus stone. And so learning, OK, well, what is this foundation? And some of that some of that requires me doing stuff like just going downstairs, like in a sense of like the prayer rituals that I do. I go up the stairs in the corner every morning and do that. And I to over rationalize and think that is going to get in my way of doing that. But I shouldn’t. But there’s part of that that also understands that the recognition that if I can get a sense of the intentionality and the process of what that means and why the orthodox use that kind of pass that down, it can make it easier to do that every morning, potentially. And so like for me, faith seems like a real huge fundamental sort of on the rock thing. And so I do tend to think more, not just, OK, let me throw myself and do this. Although I also do that. You have to do both, especially with an orthodoxy. But trying to find that place where I’m not defining orthodoxy in my own terms, but trying to allow that to allow myself to be transformed by it and express it in the truest way that I can. And that will require some diversity within the expression and faith because there’s so much diversity in people. But it doesn’t make those rational questions unimportant. And in pairing that with sort of the parable Jesus talks about. Because I’m actually not convinced. So, for example, if the government says you have to adhere to these things, there’s a tradition there. You can just follow, you can just say I want to build that house that someone else designed. Like you don’t have to design the whole house yourself. Sure. Well, and that’s where we leverage different people and their experiences. But if I have a contractor and he doesn’t know the laws and he doesn’t know how to build the strong foundation, I don’t want that contractor. But on the other hand, if he knows what he’s doing, he knows what he’s doing. Sure. And you put that trust in it. And that’s where for me, I think orthodoxy, I’ve found that place where I can put my trust in something. It’s like finding a good contractor, even though that’s so limiting of what it actually feels like to, you know, participate in church. But here, hold on. The other part I was going to bring. I remember that story in the New Testament where the rich young ruler comes to Jesus and says, what do I need to do to be holy? And he says, follow the Torah. And he says, OK, I already do all that. What else could I do? And he says, sell everything you have and follow me. There’s something about that idea of like he couldn’t that he left sad because he was unwilling to do that. And so there’s part of this in that rationality of like counting the cost of what it really means to follow Christ, counting the cost of what it really means to participate well in spirituality, because it does require suffering and it does require not just expressing a religion the way that you see it, but letting it read you and you being transformed by it. And there’s this hope that that transformation makes you more yourself. And it creates some of these diversities you see within the broader scale of orthodoxy. But there’s there’s still a there’s still a foundation tying those churches together within those differences. And that’s where I kind of have that, you know, that sort of middle ground road where it’s like it’s a yes. Yes. And yes, we have to we have to get out of our heads and always be rationalizing and learn to participate. But we can’t just chuck that out the window and never think about the thing that we’re building and the cost of what it will be to build it. Or we’re participating in it. Because you might end up with a with a with a house of sand. Yeah, but you might end up with a house of rock. Yeah, maybe. But I want to do I want to find a way not to just gamble that. Yeah, but but what if you don’t get to control that? Well, part of that part of the because I want I want to reframe it a little bit because I think. When like I think revelation is really important, right? And you mentioned revelation, right? Like I couldn’t get into intimacy until I started participating. Right. And like, well, what what does that mean? Well, something something got revealed. Right. And and I couldn’t I couldn’t have manifested that before I saw it. Right. I experienced it. And so when when we’re trying to anticipate, right, because that’s what planning is, right? We’re anticipating revelation. I think we necessarily corrupted or at least frustrated in its expression. Um, again, I think it depends on intention and I’ll bring it back to my craft. I’ve heard people say and I agree with this, that a movie is not made when you shoot it. It’s made before you pick up the camera, meaning that pre-production matters so much from the writing to the planning of of the. The overall product of what you’re going to end up with once you finish in post-production. And it’s had being being part of productions that did not have very good pre-production. That is very true. Now, there’s always this understanding that doesn’t matter how much you plan. There’s always going to be unexpected chaos that comes your way. But by taking that process and thinking through, you can navigate those those curveballs a little bit more and sometimes lean into them to create an even more beautiful story. And that’s that’s something you kind of learn in both of finding that balance of like, yes, you can definitely get too far into a planning stage where it’s all just rationalization and trying to get all your ducks in a row. And I’ve certainly fallen into that path. But there’s there’s that like there’s this there’s this wrestling I think we have to do with those sides of ourselves, too, because either extreme is going to be really, really challenging and potentially harmful for you. And, you know, when you’re when you’re talking about counting the costs, it certainly can sound like you’re becoming controlling and it opens up the door to that. But it’s something more than that. It’s recognizing that there are things you can’t control and you have to think about is that risk of of of what that means to have that thing out of my control still makes sense in this this thing that I will commit to. It’s not an easy answer and you need both modes to come at that question holistically, I think. Okay, so so what what’s the role for prayer in that? In orthodoxy. Well, in your life. In my life. I mean, I am still trying to get my head around that for me. I think a lot of it, especially now being orthodox, we have prayer books, right? So we read prayers that have been passed on from generation to generation. And that’s been a big struggle where before prayer was spontaneous and you didn’t have that structure. And in fact, that structure was sort of framed away from it. So part of it is meditating on the story and the truth that I believe in the faith. I’m not that interested in in the structural aspect, right? Is there a part where it’s related to revelation? Like it’s giving the space to have things be revealed to you? I mean, it’s not that that can’t be. I don’t think in orthodoxy that’s as far as I understand it, that’s not the main aspect to receive some special revelation from God. Or the personal. Like is there an aspect where you’re in? A lot of ways, prayer is this practice of shaping you, right? It’s helping you refocus on the things that you believe in, holding on to the story that you believe you find yourself in. Maybe I’m mis-framing it to put it into prayer, but is there then a different activity that would facilitate that? A different practice? That would facilitate revelation? Yeah. Or being inspired, listening to the Holy Spirit? Yeah, I mean, I guess it depends on what you mean by like being inspired by the Holy Spirit or revelation. I mean, I think there’s certainly mystery in orthodoxy. But as I understand it, a lot of the practices that we do, the main focus isn’t that revelation, it’s transformation. Yet through that, we get these little pieces of things that are revealed to us. So it’s, I don’t know, I don’t see it as sort of like a formula. Like if you do A, B and C, then it necessarily leads to this. But by doing these practices that have been passed down and wrestling with those, like you inevitably have some type of revelation. I agree. Like there’s a sense in which you study the word, right, which is effectively what you’re talking about, right, or you’re contemplating the word, in which you let yourself be informed by it. There’s also a sense in which you call out, right, and have the answer come back at you. Sure. Well, I look at it in the frame of like reading scriptures, right? You start out and you read it, but eventually the more you meditate on it, and it’s designed to be meditated on, it starts to read you. And you start to see yourselves in the stories and the way that it reflects what’s happening now. And all of a sudden it opens you up to a different understanding of the world and a different place of orientation. And that’s this lifelong journey of being transformed and letting that transformation open you up to new insights in the world. And yeah, there’s something beautiful about that. But there’s, I don’t know, there’s always this trickiness because at least some of the churches that I have been a part of, they really emphasize that revelation, that spiritual experience part. And you understand why that’s really appealing. Yet I think there can sometimes be danger in getting so far on that side that we don’t recognize the sort of simplicity of what consistent practice and trust in something outside of these grand works that seem miraculous to us can mean in the full scope of humanity and spirituality and our relationship with that. I definitely agree that we feed into each other, right? And you first have to build the basis before you can get reliable answers, right? Because you have to integrate the word, right? Yeah, but anyway, the answer that you’re looking for, at least from my perspective, is that you will do the right thing in the moment, right? So if you’re oriented correctly, you can just participate and you will manifest the good. And when you use prayer, right, to basically take a step back and see whether you’re still on the right path or whether you’re deviating, then you’re always going to do the best thing possible. And I think that removes this responsibility feeling that you feel like you need to fulfill. Well, I think where my issue comes with that is recognizing that a lot of people have the best intentions. And I think the majority of people do believe that they’re pointing to and acting in good. And sometimes we can lie to ourselves and say, oh, I’m doing good. When deep down, we probably don’t believe that. But as a general rule, I like to give people a general grace and benefit of the doubt. Yet what might look good to you and would be a right action and my moral responsibility does not necessarily mean that I’m going to have that same instinct. And so it’s not important. Well, it’s somewhat important if we believe in some sort of ultimate version of truth or morality. Yeah, but it doesn’t matter because what matters is whether I participate in that as fully as I can. Well, that’s certainly a piece. But to say it doesn’t matter at all, I think is dismissive of part of the question. By definition, right? By definition of what? No, like if I participate as fully as I can, right, then I’m doing by definition the best that I can do because that’s the best that I can do. I would agree to a point. Except that what if my version of good is a delusion? I’m participating as best as I can. Sure, I’m not saying you can’t. Right, you have to a point, but you have to be self-critical enough to realize that to just say what feels good to me and my participation is good is denying the fact that I could be wrong about what good is. No, like you’re talking about humility at this point, right? So you need to have humility, right? And humility allows you to change, right, because it recognizes the limitations that you’re in and therefore that there’s a potential that’s higher than what you’re conceiving of right now. But having humility is the thing that allows you to correct. But you don’t think that humility, at least part of that question, means doing that self-reflection and that recognition of I can say I’m participating and doing my best, but maybe that participation is wrong? Like wouldn’t that be a way to gain humility? No, I think you have to do that in prayer, right? You have to ask God to reveal to you as opposed to that you’re going to find that out yourself. Because I don’t think you have the capacity to find that out yourself, because if you’re going to do it with the rational mind, right, the rational mind is going to look for self, yeah, for the patterns that it already has, right, and it’s going to look for affirmation of the patterns. Jonathan Peugeot, no, Mathieu Peugeot, he had a good thing about rumination. I don’t know if you’ve read it, but rumination he described as the letting go, basically letting the flood in, right? Like you let yourself get flooded and then you’re re-establishing your relationship to the principles that upholds your sense-making, right? So in some sense what you’re doing is you’re doing a radical act of humility, right? And then in faith with the act of discernment, right, because you allow for the opportunity of revelation, right, because you might be fundamentally wrong and that’s where you… So, yeah, I mean, yeah, maybe that’s not on the level that you’re operating on, but I think that’s the proper way. No, I mean, I think there’s different modes. Like personally as a Christian and a believer in the spiritual, I don’t think we can do anything without God. I couldn’t be here taking a breath without God. And I do think there’s a huge part of this that does require the embrace of revelation in some kind. But where I try to kind of get grounded more in these questions of like, well, how do we integrate a good participation with the rational? Because that is when I look at people who identify with a different religious tradition than I. So, for example, we have a couple that come to our house probably every two weeks now, they’re Jehovah’s Witnesses, and they come in and we invite them in, we have coffee, and they want to tell us about the truth of the gospel of what is Jehovah’s Witness. And, you know, we can certainly look at the things that are the same within our participation and belief about God. We both believe in, you know, like, what is it, an authority of some kind in scripture. We both believe that there is some higher power. But there are distinct differences in the way that those two traditions manifest themselves. And you have to wrestle with the question that one might be more beneficial to humans as a whole than another. But both are making ultimate truth claims about having the right or at least more right version of what God is and what proper participation is in that. And I used to have these conversations with Mormons all the time where I do think prayer is a huge part of it. You can’t deny prayer and meditation in this aspect of wrestling with these questions. If you do, I think you’re doing a disservice. But you’d have, like, I’d talk to Mormons and they’d often say, okay, well, how am I to know that Mormonism is true? Well, you have to pray and the Holy Spirit will tell you that it’s true. It’s like, okay, and that happened to you. Yes, that happened to me. The Holy Spirit told me it was true, and that’s why I’m a Mormon. I said, okay, great. Well, I’m praying to, and I’m asking sincerely, God show me. And what he’s doing is drawing me to orthodoxy and not Mormonism. So how do we how do we face these two prayer instincts and come to an understanding of which is more true? Because they can’t both be true because these religions are distinctly different and have a lot of similarities. But there are some distinctions that make them not the same. And that’s the place where that wrestling of the rational can be helpful if in its proper order. But if you’re looking at holistic things, it’s like we can’t say it’s just prayer because that’s not holistic either. There’s this balance where we have to find a way to talk about both and recognize that maybe the rational processes aren’t as helpful for you in this time and place in your life. But at some point, they were helpful for me, at least to a point. But they did go to an extreme. And I eventually had to pull back and find ways to get back into a participation in the most in the most honest way that I could trust it, which at the time was Protestantism, participating in Protestantism as I’m wrestling with these questions. And eventually that manifested into orthodoxy. And so now that’s what I do. I put my trust in orthodoxy, but I keep opening up that question and finding that proper relationship with the spiritual part and this rational part, because I don’t personally believe humans are rational beings. I think we’re far more irrational than we like to think we are. But we do seem to have this capability to reason. And how do we how do we how do we manifest ourselves in that? How do we operate well in that? And that’s sort of what I see in this battle of trying to talk about that spiritual participation side, while also thinking about the thought aspects and the theological big picture questions that we’re asking in all different areas of life. Okay, we’re going to go to the last thing. That’s culture. Five years I hope I’m fluent. In Dutch. Can we continue in Dutch now? I’m a little bit of a dutch, but not so good. That would be nice. Thank you. Yeah, I study every day. But yeah, it still hasn’t fully clicked. But I’m hoping that at least can feel that part of the culture integrated, because there is there is this recognition that even though most people in the Netherlands speak English or at least enough to get by, you can’t fully understand a culture without understanding the native language and how that shapes people and forms. Communications and communities and so I’ll never fully get it. But I can keep working on that to get closer. So, yeah, like language is important, but yeah, in some sense, also not to, right? Like you need to participate. One level of participation is going to be schools, right? Yeah. Another level of participation is what we have intense, what’s called club life in the sense that we organize around soccer clubs. Yeah. All of that stuff, right? Yeah, get a football. Yeah. So there’s a sense in which you’re going to have to, yeah, find your place in that constellation or do you think that church is just going to be that big? No, I think church is a big part of it. But even our church community, we’re 45 minutes away from the church we attend. And most of the people who attend that church, they live about an hour away from church also. So it’s not like you can fully have that as your whole integrated life. And honestly, I enjoy having communities outside of church because it creates that place to challenge myself and wrestle with the questions of what it is to be human. And so I wouldn’t want to be so integrated in a bubble that I don’t have that hospitality for people outside of it. So we live in a smaller city. And so having some integration within that city and that community of like what’s in my backyard is something I do hope I can foster. And I think it will be easier once I do have a baby because, you know, there’ll be other women with babies and, you know, you have that certain community. That’s sort of how you meet people when you’re out of college, I suppose. So do you have a vision of the role that you want to fulfill in that community? Not to the fullest extent, but I guess I just hope that my house becomes a safe harbor for people. The place where they know that no matter where they are, like they can come and be. And, you know, it might not be perfect. It might not be a mess. I might not have all of or it might be a mess. I might not have all the attention I wish I could if I didn’t have other responsibilities, but just recognize, like just hoping people can recognize they can come and be and like hopefully find a piece or some sort of piece in that place. Do you feel like you’re ready to do that? Or is there something that needs to change before you can? Am I ready to do that? Are you ever ready? Whenever you open yourself up like that, it’s like you don’t know what you’re asking. I think there’s a strong desire for me to have it. I don’t know if it’s my time quite yet. I think I’m slowly building towards it. And so there’s there’s the level in which I’m having to have patience with that because I’m definitely the type of person that throws yourself in headfirst. And even if I’m not prepared, I just do things. And that certainly gives a lot of benefit. But sometimes there’s that that recognition of the opposite can can also be helpful and true. And so I think my mind thinks I’m more ready than I have the capacity to do those things right now. But I. I’ve just seen the beauty in what that can offer and what that can do. And I think it’s one of those ways we can start in really small ways taking down these divisions of like ideology and ideas and identity and seeing each other for what does unite us, which is our humanity. And so like I am I’m ready to see how that can change me. And, you know, I don’t know what that will look like in practice, though. Definitely not ready to practically commit to what that looks like at this point. But that’s that’s part of the journey of like letting that seed grow and, you know, waiting to harvest in the right time. Yeah, I would I would say that when you’re not going to take down the divisions or whatever, right? The divisions will be taken down when you’re pointed towards the good. Yeah. I think for me, it’s like maybe there was a point in my life where I wanted to change people’s mind or like end division. But honestly, like I’m more I’m more interested in finding ways to resolve division in myself and change my own mind towards the good. And so you can be more open to the idea of letting things be un-unified, but connecting with the unity that we are as humans and showing love and understanding that sometimes these differences and personality and beliefs in the way we see the world are these different ways of showing us something about the complexity of what humanity is. And I like I like that ability of what that has taught me and what what I can learn from that and how to integrate that into my own perception of how I see the story I’m in. Yes. So what’s the thing that you need to wrestle with to to allow that? What is the thing I need to wrestle with to allow that? I’m not totally sure. That better said, how would you look like if you don’t the wrestling for five years and succeeded? That’s a really hard question. It’s hard for me to answer because there’s a piece of me that has died to the person I was moving to the Netherlands, the person I hoped I would be in 10 years. I’ve kind of accepted the fact that that probably won’t happen. And I’m OK with that. And I can because I see something more beautiful. But all I see is beauty. I don’t see an identification of what that looks like practically. Can you craft the beauty in a cloak and wear it? I don’t know what you mean by that. You got to figure out what that means. But the cloak is that which protects you from the outside. It’s also an extension of yourself, but it’s also the interface. So it’s in some sense the technique, but it’s the technique on the spiritual level in some sense. Because it’s a spiritual cloak. And so it changes who you are, like changes how you look, right? Like it changes what you can manage, right? Like how the external imposes itself upon you. And like it changes the flavor of that relationship as well. Because if you’re… What looks like a wrestle right now could be you just savoring beauty instead. Maybe that’s an angle in. There’s a part of me that feels like I’ve stopped wrestling and I’ve started gardening. So it’s like I’m not wrestling with people or ideas. I’m wrestling with soil and what it means to create a space that allows things to grow and take those cyclical natures. And so part of that is sort of resigning myself to not having that clear picture of, oh, this is what I think it will look like in five years. Well, I have no idea. And even if I did have an idea, the reality of it is probably more simple, yet more beautiful than anything I had whipped up in my mind. And so I’m trying to find that. Are you implicitly saying that that’s a bad idea to do that? No. No, no. I just think at the moment in my life, there’s something about being willing to accept the now and let that shape of what it looks like in the future and what I hope for grow organically instead of trying to construct it in a way that feels controlled. I do have that tendency to do that. I don’t think visions are controlled. Maybe that’s where we’re on a different track. I think a vision is what pulls you towards it. So when we’re talking about orientation, the vision is what you orient towards. And that allows you to do decision making. So the vision allows you to say, well, I need to go down the stairs right now. I shouldn’t waste my time with all of these other stuff. And if you have a different vision, those questions might have some reality in them. Yeah, it’s tricky. I mean, I’d have to think more of the idea of what vision really means. And I’d probably have to understand, too, more what you mean by vision because there’s certainly different ways that you can use that. Well, I think beauty is the right framing for that, right? Like the beauty that calls you, right? So the beauty is not explicit or specific, right? It’s glory that you want to participate in. So it’s like, OK. Yeah, it’s very hard because beauty scales and it manifests in so many ways. And so in some ways, if I was just living in my town, having the baby, going to dropping her off at school, doing the stay at home mom thing, there’s a beauty in that. But finding some hybrid where I can be a mom, do this estuary festival stuff that I do, find a way to keep doing these conversations online. Like there’s a beauty in that, too. But they all come with tradeoffs. And yeah, there’s just that real recognition of you can’t have it all. And that’s a good thing. There’s also a beauty in how you manifest being a mom, right? So you can walk around with resentment, right? Or you can walk around in a way that literally turns people’s heads, right? Like they don’t know what they’re looking at, but they’re looking at something and they can see it. Yeah, totally. Again, I think each individual has a different role in the world and what that looks like. And I don’t know what my role is fully anymore. There’s certain things that I hope for and there’s things that I think I’m good at and that I have a love for and that I would love to find a way to manifest. But I also recognize that just because I have an instinct for something doesn’t mean it’s what I’m supposed to do or an ultimate good. It might just be that stepping stone that lead me to something even more beautiful. And I couldn’t have gotten there without that love and that interest. And so I’m in this weird transition period. So it’s like, what does my life look like in five years? I don’t know. We’re all still alive. That would be lovely. Yeah, yeah. Like in some sense, it’s an insanely hard question. But in another sense, it’s like the most basic obvious question you can ask yourself. It’s funny because it’s a question I ask myself every day. And lately, it’s the question that goes, I don’t know. Like you get different glimpses and pieces of it, but you just don’t know. And that’s really odd from a person who always knew. I had a really clear sense that I think I’m a very visionary person in general. That’s how I think. I just think of things in this big picture frame. And so not having that ability and having some of that confidence broken in that is another way where it’s humbling me in a certain sense. The questions are important. The questions are important. Don’t stop asking the questions, but be OK with the realization that it doesn’t have to be clear every moment of every day. Some of that helps you enjoy the beauty of now. Yeah, it might also be the hormones, right? Maybe. In a couple months, there’s not going to be tomorrow. There’s just going to be a right now. What day is it? What is time? I don’t know. Am I upside down? When did I shower last? I don’t remember. So, yeah, like, do you feel like you want to add something more? No, not necessarily. I mean, what are your thoughts on the idea of wrestling? Does my concept of it make any sense to you or does it feel totally out of left field? Well, yeah, I think we went over a couple of important points, right? Wrestling is in some sense rebellion. It’s us taking charge. It’s a means to combat nihilism and whatever, right? Like a lot of people just get lost in the struggle and then they end up with crises effectively, right? Like getting a baby is literally wrestling for some semblance of self-identity. That’s not like you need to have a baby. You need to have yourself separate a little bit from that. So there’s a generative wrestling, right, where you’re genuinely, well, from a place of humility, right, like trying to reorganize your relationship. I think I’m going to use the rumination aspect again, right? And I think that’s kind of what you’re trying to get when you’re trying to define your relationship with orthodoxy, right? Like, okay, I know that I’m doing some things wrong or incomplete or not at all, right? I want to get in touch with that, right? And my idea about that is it will be revealed in the time. But yeah, and I think that revelatory attitude is important, right? And then, well, okay, like if we accept that as the method by which things come to us, then we have some sort of responsibility to allow that to manifest, right? And then, like you said, right, like the studying of the word is producing the framing, right, by which revelation manifests. And then we need to have activities like contemplation, rumination, meditation, that create the space and the relationary qualities in which these manifest. And all of that needs to be done from a place of humility, right? And then, well, yeah, right, like how much wrestling is appropriate in this? And sometimes I think that that wrestling that’s brought to you is exactly the thing that becomes the humbling aspect. And so like God works in mysterious ways in that way. But yeah, I think there’s a lot of truth of like, you know, wrestling is a part of life and it can be a really good thing. But like any good thing, like it has its dark side also. And so I think we’re all trying to find our right orientation with that and finding ways to be humble with that, because it’s very easy to assume that we’re coming at a position of humility when really we’re just fighting, we’re wrestling with ourselves in our own pride. And so sometimes that forced wrestling match breaks you down in a way that gets you to a place where you can actually recognize what humility is. And I think that’s what a lot of times wrestling has been for me. And so, you know, there’s something beautiful about the way it breaks me and the way that it changes the way that I see the world. But then there’s also that part of me that recognizes, well, maybe if you didn’t spend so much time wrestling, you wouldn’t have to spend so much time being broken, at least in this self-imposed way. So I still don’t have the balance figured out. I think wrestling is some sort of like a bootstrap. So if you’re talking about spiritual levels like Jacob’s Ladder, for example, right? Like something is bugging you, right? Like there’s pride, right? And then it doesn’t fit with reality, right? Like the reality of jealousy, right? It doesn’t fit with reality, right? Like the reality of jets and you’re like, right? Like that’s like the initial reaction. And I think there’s two ways to go through that. Right? Like I think there’s absolute humility, right? And just falling on your knees. Please help me. Right? And then there’s like, okay, like I’m going to tango with this and I’m going to find it out. Right? And I think maybe if there’s things that are like really big, like we just have to wrestle with it because like in some sense you can’t get around it because it’s too in front of you to ignore it. But I think most of the times when we wrestle things, we blow them up, right? Like we go stand in front of it and then it starts looking bigger and bigger and bigger, right? And then like if it’s reality that says no, right? Like you’re going to be smaller and smaller because like you’re not going to move that immovable object, right? So yes, it’s a dangerous thing, right? And I think most of the time it’s not necessary. And the way I deal with it is I just like if God needs me to deal with it, he will shove it in my face again. Right? And like if I don’t, then I can just put it aside. Like it’s not mine. It’s not my cross. Yeah. It’s a hard orientation and I think it’s so complex. It’s hard to like you get like for me, it’s hard to put it good or bad. Well, it’s neither. It’s like there’s so many factors in the way that it can express itself. Yeah. Yeah. Well, sometimes a hammer hammer is exactly the tool you need. But if you’re trying to hammer a screw, well, maybe something else but a nail. Great. You need to break down something. Sledgehammer. Perfect. But yeah, there’s something I think especially in the big idea space where wrestling has become the main mode. And you see that in debates or sort of commentaries that are teaching you what it is to be in the right orientation of things. And to me, I see that as a part of wrestling. And there’s a space for it. I don’t think there is I think there are profitable things that can come from that. But like, again, if we’re just going to use the hammer for everything, well, we’re not we’re not understanding the complexity and the holistic nature and the delicacy of what a lot of these things require, including that like that questioning of yourself and trying to orient when you don’t know where you’re going and how to do it. Where you’re going and how to fully come to good answers about those questions. So, in closing, do you have a takeaway that you want to share with everybody like is this inside that you gain? Yeah, I think I think what I’ve learned through all of it is that if we can find ways to hold on to beauty and not let fear overtake us in a way that’s destructive, you’re going to have a better chance of coming through that wrestling with that hope in the world and not falling into that nihilistic tendency. So that’s what I try to do, because there are times you can’t help. You can’t help when that that that fighting with life comes to you. But like, hold on to the beautiful, keep participating in that in the best way that you can see it. And through that wrestling, maybe you can learn what’s even more beautiful than the thing you see now. So that’s why are you using the word beauty there? You could use good, for example, or true or God. Yeah, well, a lot of it comes to this concept of a beauty first mentality of seeing the world. I for very long was a truth first mentality, and I think that’s where people who do struggle with wrestling end up generally having this truth first approach to life, because we have to understand what’s true to do what’s good to find what’s beautiful. But I think that beauty has this real power to remind us of hope and remind us of the good in the world. And so I tried to look at life beauty first. And I actually well, you’re sitting on it. But Timothy Patissus wrote a book called The Ethics of Beauty. And a lot of what he said about that has given me sort of a recognition that we talk about truth and good a lot, but beauty often gets sidelined. And I think it might be a really important part to bring back to the table to have these conversations about what it is to be human and how to pursue all three of those transcendentals, the true, the beautiful and the good. You skipped over the good. So I want to like, why is a good first approach not better? Well, so the way that he sort of describes it in the book and the way that I’ve started to see it, it’s like when we look at the beauty in the world, it’s the first thing that will move us to participate in it. And by through participating and engaging with beauty, it reveals to us what is good. And by participating in that good, we can understand what is true. And there’s always going to be extremes and complications with one of these three in these different orders. But I think when you do good first, well, how do we recognize what’s good? It’s hard to get to that place besides instinct to kind of get me to that sense. I almost feel like you have to lead with either truth or beauty. But they all have to dance with each other. And I think sometimes, yeah, if you put good as the ultimate, you can get into some funkiness about my definition of what is good. Whereas beauty, it feels more like something that you’re drawn to and sort of leads you to. And the other side of that is that often the good thing is the hard thing to do. And so if you don’t have something to ground you and push you to keep moving towards and through the good without seeing the hope that lies on the outside of it, it can be really, really difficult to hold on to that good. And beauty has that power to shine through and give you that hope to keep doing the good, even when you don’t quite understand the truth or any of those three in the fullest sense. Yeah, I agree that the good is in some sense the most abstract. Like it’s the hardest to participate in. Yeah, but I think it’s not hard to have people try to do the good. I think in our society, everybody’s trying to do good. And everybody, well, except maybe if you’re an extreme postmodernist, everybody’s trying to find truth in some way. But I think we take beauty for granted. And that’s why I put an extra emphasis on beauty, because it does have a valuable role to play in the world. And we certainly have to wrestle with our concept of what beauty is and what that means in the fullest sense. But I think it’s something we can often throw away when we’re wrestling because we think it’s a disservice to us. But I think that that isn’t the case. Yeah, but I also think that of the three, beauty is the least real. Yeah, most modern people do. I think it’s ineffable, right? Yeah, it’s not as linear or evident as some of the other transcendentals. But it’s got a sneaky power. I agree. It’s the most participatory. That’s why I called it good abstract. When we’re talking about emanation, and I’m reading Plato now, the good is the source of being, which frames everything. And sometimes I don’t think you can separate the transcendentals. No, not really. The truth is in the goodness, and the beauty is through expression, through death. I see that as an unfolding. The goodness is the smallest, and then truth is putting that on reality. And then the goodness is in the manifestation, so you can also put it with the Father, Son, and the Holy Ghost. I think that also matters. But anyway, I don’t want to get… I don’t want to get us into Trinity Talks. I know nothing. I don’t know enough to hold my own on that one. Yeah, the problem is that it maps in general, but when you start zooming in, you start getting into friction. No, but I think for me, yeah, there is something true about those three being so tied with each other that you can’t help see them in relationship with each other. But I do think that the order in which we see those and the order in which we pursue those does have an effect on the way that we live out in the world. And I think a truth-first mentality makes you far more prone to a wrestling mode. Yeah, I don’t think truth first is… That’s not the solution. I think when we’re talking about perception, I think we see beauty, then we recognize whether the beauty is true, and then that can point us at the good. But when we’re acting, we need to start at the good, manifest that in a true way to express something beautiful. So I think it’s just a directional… So here’s why I used to be a truth-first mentality, because how can I understand what’s good unless I understand what’s true? Because if I can understand what’s true, it will lead me to what is good, and then maybe I’ll get something beautiful, but that’s not really a question. Truth doesn’t lead to goodness at all. That’s just not true. Well, if there is an ultimate truth about morality that we all are attributed to, if I can understand that, then I’m not just trusting what I perceive to be good. I’m basing it on this higher standard, right? No, no, you still have to have the standard first. You can’t see the standard by gathering truth. That’s the problem. This is why science doesn’t help. Well, that’s where God comes into the equation, right? Because he establishes all of those things together. But in that understanding as a human, well, I have to order myself. The problem with a truth-first mentality without proper orientation with truth, it’s like we get into this postmodern mess where it’s like, well, what’s true for me might not be true for you. What’s good for you might not be good for me. Well, they believe they are. They have the instinct that what they’re acting on is good, and that’s why they fight for it. They’re pursuing their instinct. They’re not pursuing goodness. Well, how do you…? Because they’re self-referential. I think it’s more complicated than that. No, no, I think it’s just that simple. Nothing’s that simple, Manuel. No, no, no. I think everything is really, really simple in the end, like for real. I don’t think things are difficult at all. People make them difficult, right? So if you’re autonomous, which is literally what the postmoderns do, like they name themselves, right? Like they assign themselves pronouns. So what they’re doing is they’re taking what’s in their head and they’re superimposing that on reality. What about, let’s say, an ally? Someone who does not… They identify with the pronouns that they were given or that culture would say, yet they recognize that they’re… or they feel as though the good is to recognize these complexities in other people and their belief of themselves and their reflection, and we should be polite to do those things. It’s not all about just me, me, me, me. There’s something about the narrative that they’re being told and that we’re being sold, if you will, that’s affecting the way that they see the good. And they hold to that because it’s true. No, they don’t hold to that because it’s true. Well, at the end of the day. Because if it wasn’t true that it is a moral good to identify someone in the pronouns as they identify themselves, then why would it be imperative that everyone does it and that it’s a legal law that is requiring something of morality? If it was true, everybody would do it. Like, I don’t understand. Well, that’s not… Again, it’s more complex than that. No. Is it true that sunscreen protects our skin from cancer? Well, that’s sort of debatable, but let’s just say that is true. Not everybody does that. Okay. So there’s more complexity than humans. Does everybody to do that because it’s true? Well, but that’s a question. Some people believe that, like, because something is true and it’s an ultimate good, we should create laws that force people into that. Now, I’m not necessarily that fall into that camp. That’s not what I’m saying. But like that’s what we see as a sort of moral good. And again, it’s hard to kind of play with these things because they are so intertwined, but like good and true, they’re often so combined that like anything we want to turn into law or we say something is unjust, it’s saying something about the truth of morality outside of just my own perception of it. Right, right. Right. Like, yes, in order to have an organizing thing, right, like Peterson used this value, right, over the value. If you value something, like that implies that it’s good, right? Because else you wouldn’t value it. Not necessarily. Not necessarily. But then you shouldn’t value it. Like I can… Well, I don’t think it’s that you’re stupid. It’s that maybe you’re… Foolish, whatever. You’re buying and no, you’ve been told the narrative and you’re holding a narrative that doesn’t ultimately compare to reality. And it might not be dumb. You just might not have been told an alternative story that makes something more true. Why am I eating chocolate? Yeah, because you think it’s good. But why do I not eat chocolate? Because you’ve identified a higher good. It’s not always good for me. It’s not always good for me, right? Yeah, because you identified a higher good. Right, and again, there’s a tricky part here where it’s like, well, there’s two meanings of good. Like we use the word good. I’ve been wrestling with this too, right? Because you have the utilitarian good, right? Right. And then you have the spiritual good, right? Or degenerative good. But in order for the spiritual good to be good, it has to be pragmatic, right? Like it has to be implementable. Because if it’s not, then it’s not good because it’s pointing away from generativity. I don’t think I totally know what you mean by that. What I mean is that the spiritual principle has to be grounded in the flesh. That’s what I mean. Sure. If it’s not grounded in the flesh, then it’s a fantasy. Yeah, I’d have to think more about that. There’s probably lots of implications of what that means. There is, yes, lots of implications. And that’s a bold statement. But I’m pretty confident about making that statement. Anyway, since we were closing off, everybody’s like, it’s just starting to get fun. Or they’re like, this is not fun at all. Well, if you’re already tuned out, good riddance, you’re not going to see this anyway. Everybody else, I’d like to invite them to share their insights in the comment section so that Kassidy can learn from that. That we get some participation going as well because it’s important to turn these things towards the good and to make these things come together in a bigger whole. So, yeah, you have any last words? No, thanks for having me on. It was fun to chat. Yeah, it was a good talk. And see you next time, everyone.