Open Mic： Wounded Healer; Participation, antidote to suffering; Priests are better than therapists (cFQKuY4RopY)

https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=cFQKuY4RopY

I’m back in my own office. Back to the grind, back to the grindstone, uh, just in time for Catholic schools week. Uh, and speaking of Catholic schools, here’s Chad. Hey there. How you doing, Chad? Great. I’m just, uh, heading home from my weekly, uh, meeting. Yeah, yeah. Now, a couple weeks ago you were on and you were talking about having an interesting conversation with your, uh, pastor about Jordan Peterson. Yep. Do you ever have that conversation with him? Yeah, we, we got to meet and we talked a little bit. And, uh, he handed me a book called The Wounded Healer. So I have to get reading on that. Uh, but, uh, he’s been really busy. He had a baptism today and, uh, there was some kids singing and, uh, I think we’re going to call him this evening on my way to the meeting. And, uh, we’re going to talk tomorrow. Cool. Cool. Is that, uh, Henry Nowan? The Wounded Healer? Uh, I think so. He’s a pretty popular writer. Uh, so, yeah. Uh, I think so. Uh, I think so. Uh, I think so. Uh, I think so. Popular writer. Uh, so, yeah. We were talking about, um, service, being in service to others is, uh, explaining to them, um, what my, my, uh, convictions and commitments in AAR, and, uh, feeling that God, God had gotten sobered so that I might be able to be in service. To others, and, uh, that’s a big part of it. Yeah. And I think there’s something. I think you’ll like this book. Yeah, I mean, there’s definitely something to that. I feel like every time I make a good confession, I become a better confessor. You know, it’s like, oh, yeah, I wouldn’t did that again. Yeah. And I gotta go confess that. And that’s what the people coming into me. They’re just like me. They might have a few different sorts of temptations. But, uh, yeah, yeah. And, uh, yeah, that’s, it’s just like, um, what, uh, from the letter to the Hebrews that these, uh, tempted in every way like we are. Jesus is tempted in every way like we are. But without sin so that he can become a compassionate intercessor. That’s the Father Eric, uh, paraphrased version of that passage. Oh, yeah, I really, I really believe in this, uh, this idea of, uh, like, there’s this phrase in AA that we have where, uh, Like Bander, they talked about on this Q&A on Friday about, you know, hopping in the hole and saying, oh, I’ve been in this hole. Like, I know a way out, you wanna come with me? And there’s a real strong identification that happens. I know like when I call one of my sponsor shares his, his defects with me, like you’re saying, there’s almost a soothing quality to that of knowing like, oh, I’m not like an alien, you know? He’s a person, he’s not a superhero, you know? Yeah, yeah, for real. It’s not so unattainable as it could be. Yeah. Yeah, well, I’m, by the way, I need to get off my tiny and get to writing you, I’ve been procrastinating doing that. But I really wanna, before I start robotting for a moment, I really want you to know how much I appreciate, you know, what you and a lot of, you and Paul and, you know, people who have a lot of experience with being of service to others and sharing your faith and walking with people, how much it means to me, it means so much because I can make jokes all day long and be goofy and stuff, but life is real, man. It’s tough and it’s, I think it got more difficult in a strange way since being captured by Christ, it’s gotten a lot more difficult in some ways. A lot more free, but a lot more, just a lot more pressure in a different way than I’ve ever dealt with. So it’s good to have people to track with, talk with. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that’s the thing, that’s what our Lord does with us, you know. It’s like, well done, good and faithful servant, here’s some more work to do. Yeah. Oh man. Well, you know, I really think that if I could just get away with praying and that made me feel better, I don’t think I’d ever lift a finger to do anything else. I don’t know, I get kind of confused on all the language people have, arguments they have about, you know, what is faith and where does it come from? It’s like, can’t you just look at your own experience in some sense? Like, of course faith comes from him, God alone, but like faith without words is dead bit. That’s a real, I was reading some James today. That’s real. Yeah, James doesn’t mess around, he just tells you exactly how it is. Which is good, we need to hear that every once in a while. Yeah, man. It’s a great book. So can you tell me about some of these other wisdom books? Like, you have a book of wisdom in your Bible, obviously. Yeah, yeah. So you’re asking about like the book of Sirach and the wisdom of Solomon? Oh, he’s robotting. Well, I’m just gonna start monologuing until Chad comes back on then. So we have a couple pieces of wisdom literature in the Catholic Bible. One of them is the book of Sirach and the other one is the book of the wisdom of Solomon. The wisdom of Solomon’s a real interesting one. It was probably composed in Greek and it’s got some of the clearest Old Testament teachings about the immortality of the soul and the resurrection of the dead and eternal life and all that sort of stuff, which isn’t actually that major of an Old Testament theme, but if you’ve got the Catholic Bible, and I believe the Orthodox have that one too, they’ve got a lot of that. And the book of Ben Sirach is an awful lot similar to the book of Proverbs, but there’s like 60 chapters to it. So that one was probably originally written in Hebrew, but we only have a Greek translation of it available. Not sure how much of that you actually heard, Chad. Well, if you could hear me, I hear everything. I just robot. I get to receive all of it. I just don’t get to talk. Oh, that’s good to know actually. That’s good to know. Yeah. So, no, that’s, I’m interested in that. I like like Proverbs, like books. Yeah, wisdom literature. I’m interested in that. Oh, man. I should just get one of those books. I need to read the books I have, so. Yeah, yeah, that’s a problem. I haven’t finished Augustine’s Confessions yet, and I’ve got one that I know I should read, because I told Sam Adams I would read it, and I want to read it too, but it’s on the, Speaking in Tongues in the Early Church. Oh. Could be really interesting. I don’t know, we’ll see. So you read Reformations, eh? I did, I did. You know, that was one that really, like Paul BvK brought it up in his videos a fair bit while he was reading it, and it kind of sparked my curiosity, and yeah, you know, I had never gotten that historical era in that much detail, and that was pretty helpful actually to be able to get some of that. Well, I read it because your comment was referring to Reformations, and I know I heard Paul talk about it, but I’m like, well, Eric read it, I should just get it. And I’m like, oh, it’s like 35 hours on an audible. Okay, good, I like long ones. And I’m not all the way through it yet. Well, I like the longer ones because it’s more kind of bang for your buck. If you’re at work, I can just listen longer so I’m not just wasting credits, you know? Yeah, yeah. But so I’m not all the way through it. I’m probably not even a quarter of the way through it, but it is eye-opening, man. You know, like listening to Luther, the bits in there about Luther, it’s like, man, he was so neurotic, dude. How could he have not? Like, how could he have not played out the way he did? I mean, it’s- With him not being convinced that he was actually forgiven of any of his sins? Yeah. Like that. It’s so relatable. It’s very relatable. Like, I was really relating to him in that sense. Like, you know, and just, but like, you know, like driving yourself insane with, you know, with all this stuff and then like years and years of that. And then probably entering seminary when you probably shouldn’t have, you know, maybe, I don’t know. And it was just, I was really, I felt a different kind of compassion before him because before I just thought, oh, he’s just a dude in history. And you know, like sometimes you kind of, they kind of, they’re not kind of like, don’t seem as human. If you don’t really read about them, they’re just kind of characters. And so like reading about him, I was like, oh man, this sucked to be Luther for a while. But, so he was interesting. All of the weirdness was all, is all very interesting to me too. Like, yeah, some serious medieval weirdness going on there. Yeah, we should really learn from that. I think that, I think today’s church, all of us could probably learn something very valuable from just a once through in that book. Yeah, it was like, hello, Valerie. Hi. We’re talking about a book that I read and Chad is listening to on Audible. It’s about the Protestant Reformation and the Catholic Reformation at the same time. So, I don’t know. Have you ever read that one? I have not. I am woefully ignorant, but I am like very open to learning about stuff. I did read some Teresa of Avila a long time ago, quite a few years. So I can remember some of it. It was about the different mansion rooms and stuff. And I’m like- Yeah, the interior castle, that’s a classic. Yeah, I read that on one of the apps I have. And I was like, I kind of understand what she’s talking about. And then it got long winded and I’m like, I don’t know what she’s talking about. Yeah, the farther you get into that book, the more spiritual and mystical it becomes, the less relatable it is. And the Reformation is pretty quick pace book. I think it’s moving at a pretty good clip. I mean, it’s not, but I liked about it when he said he said that it was like, it’s not super in depth, but it’s just in depth enough, I think, to where it gets some of the point across. But it’s really fast. See, what was interesting to me about that book is that there was a lot of stuff I learned about the way Catholicism was being practiced in the late Middle Ages that were just like, holy mackerel, that’s different. And it was hard for me to relate to what they were dealing with. And for a while, it was kind of freaking me out. And then I got to enough points where it’s like, ah, yeah, that’s the faith that I’m practicing right now, especially the stuff about the sacraments and how they play the role they played in the life of the church. And then I was like, oh, okay. That’s something that we’d be kinda the same way on. Hello, Richard. Hello, and why not? What are you trying? Hey, Richard. Hi, Eho. Yeah, I’m actually really intrigued about where do the sacraments come from? Where does this idea sprout out of? I’m just really fascinated by it because I like tradition. And I just wonder how tightly to hold to it and how much is my soul in peril if I don’t and where? You know what I mean? I think those are good questions that people who are in positions of leadership could help develop it. Yeah, well, I guess one of the questions you gotta answer is how many of those sacraments are there? The Catholic answer being there seven, the Orthodox answer saying, I don’t know what they’d say. I don’t think they’d say seven, though. I think they’d say, we haven’t bothered counting. Right. And then Luther and Calvin were pretty firm on just two of them, baptism and the Eucharist. So yeah, and so anyway, yes. Chad, have you ever seen the movie Buckaroo, Buckaroo Banzai Across the Eighth Dimension? I have. Parts of it with John Lisco. Yeah, that’s an amazing movie. And it’s so wacky and ridiculous that you can miss pretty easily how amazing it is. But it all comes back to that line right at the very beginning where they’re doing the brain surgery together and Buckaroo Banzai is like, don’t pull on that. You don’t know what it’s connected to. And every time certain questions get answered, that’s what I think immediately. It’s like, oh, don’t pull on that. You don’t know what that’s connected to. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, that’s one of those things I’m trying to, it’s a curse and a blessing, I guess, to have the questions. Oh, I’m gonna start robotting. Well, I’ll see you guys. Thank you. Much love to you. Take care, Chad. Bye, Chad. Bye, 12. Yeah, these questions all get more complicated the more you learn about them. That makes life fun. Yeah. Yeah. Now, Valerie, this is the first time that you’ve been on one of my little live streams here. Yeah. Anything you’d like to share with the whole internet about yourself? Hi, I’m a writer. I respect Father Mike, Big Mac, and let’s see here. I saw the invitation to the chat in Discord and I’m like, sure, I’ll join. And then I was joined right away and I’m like, oh. I wasn’t quite ready. I’m working on a, well, if I get to promote something, I’m working on anthology with a group, with my writers group over at the writer’s server. And the theme is on community, which is important to Pastor Paul and everybody here in the Bridge of the Meaning community. And so if anybody wants to help support us, if you’re part of the Bridge of the Meaning community, feel free to go to my website, valerieflinn.com, V-A-L-E-R-I-E, F as in Frank, L-Y-N-N.com. Click on community and you’ll learn all about it and support it if you’d like to, or just cheer us on. That would be great. So yeah. Is it Rabbit Trails? Is that? Yep, that’s it. All right, I’ll drop the link into the chat here. Thank you. I can’t do the, I can do the private chat, but not the comments. I probably am supposed to sign up or something. And I don’t know. Yeah, you asked me to add them. Yeah, yeah, well, that’s fine. That’s fine. I found it in the chat. So your book project is about community. What else can you tell us about it? We actually, it’s really a homegrown, community endeavor. We’re going to publish it on Amazon and Barnes & Noble and a bunch of others. And we would like to be able to print actual hard copies and give it out to the different contributors. We have a number of writers so far, but we closed writing submissions, but if somebody really wants to write for us, just contact us. We’ll let you, you know, if it’s a good topic, talk to Jordan about it, he’s emailed on my website. But we are very open to, we need artists or an artist for the book cover. That would be a huge help. If other artists would like to contribute art to be included in the book, we’re open to that. We’re not sure how to technically do that, but if somebody with graphic arts wants to give it a hand, that would be fantastic. We have a number of beta readers, but if there’s a talented editor out there who, like this sounds like a really cool project, I want to be a part of it. We have space for you as well. If people can’t help us with that way, if people want to help us with marketing and promotion, or maybe even do honest reviews of the book, once we get review copies ready, that would be a huge help to put reviews on like Amazon and Goodreads and the different platforms. That would be cool. If people know people who have done books about community that we should talk to, to see if they might give us a blurb for the book, feel free to send that information on our way. That would be awesome. We created this project specifically to galvanize the writing server, as well as do something together as the Bridges of Meaning community for our little corner of the internet. But we wanted to make it accessible to anybody in general public who are not aware of Peterson or anything like that, so that it would be a good gift. I have a group of friends in real life call themselves the Geek Family Night, which we meet on Friday nights and we’re all geeks. And it’s very community oriented. So community is a very important thing to them as well. So I’m sure there’s like lots of people out there who community is important. Sometimes there’s bad communities, sometimes there’s like one of the pieces I’m writing that I’m struggling with is, the challenges disabled people have in joining communities. I have disabilities, my family has disabilities and health issues. And you just can’t just go out and go meet people. It’s not, you know, because you have challenges. And so I’m writing a piece trying to deal with that. So if somebody has an interesting perspective, you know, we wanna hear it. You know, we’re trying to have like, the working title for it is Kaleidoscope because it’s like, you know, multitude of different perspectives. But I can kind of go on off on this for like three hours. I don’t wanna monopolize this thing. That was not my intention. I appreciate you giving me the opportunity to chat about it. Well, sure, sure. This is an open mic. I don’t wanna talk into the microphone for two hours. That would be boring even to me. I do have a few questions for you though. Sure. Who that, let’s say people who might have found this YouTube live stream, who would they know who are contributing authors to this? So who are some of the people contributing to your anthology? Oh. Sorry about that. I bumped my little internet antenna and it put me offline. I apologize about that. That’s fine. To answer your question, there’s a couple of people I know. Josh is at the writing server. He’s the one who created the writers group on the writers server. And then Jordan is our third member. So there’s three of us in the writers group. So if anybody wants to join the writers group, you’re more than welcome to join us. We meet every second Thursday of the month and usually the meeting time is in the writers group channel and the writers server. But I have, oh, important person. Stephanie from England who helped coordinate a lot of the England tour stuff. She has a sub stack that kind of follows and shares what’s going on in the Bridges of the Community community. She is volunteered to kind of keep everybody updated in what’s going on. So her little sub stack is called This Little Cafe, kind of after this little corner. And I have a link on the website so people can join her sub stack and she promised to let people know when we have new stuff going on, news or updates or milestones that we’re making as we work through the process of the book. We’re scheduled to publish this coming December. So it might move forward or back a little bit depending on how we do everything because we’re just doing it all ourselves. But let’s see who else. I don’t know everybody who’s involved. I don’t think, I did talk to Paul on Friday in Q&A just kind of letting him know about the conspiracy and what we were up to. Because what we’re gonna do with the book is we want all the funds, the sales proceeds to go to his ministry to support his church. Okay. And so, because he’s kind of the one who first, all of us getting together in the beginning anyhow. But so it’s basically not for profit. It just basically helps support him and kind of get the word out about the community. I did ask if maybe John Von Donk or Esther Riley Bethel might be able and willing to write a piece on estuary to kind of get the word out about that to just regular people outside of our little corner of the internet and outside of the understanding who Peterson is. Just hopefully get that going more. That would be kind of cool. So they may come back and say they might be interested. I sent an email to Sherry. I’m blanking on her last name. She’s the artist who talked to Paul like last year or the year before, something like that. And she’s doing an art community. So I didn’t know if it was just all graphic artists or painters and stuff, or if they had a mix of different writers and filmmakers or something like that. So I’ve been trying to get the word out and see who gravitates towards getting involved. Now a lot of the stuff that you’re doing, you’re doing on the Bridges of Meaning Writers Club server, right? Yep, correct. And we do show you. I’m just gonna throw this up here on the screen here for those, you’ve got to make it to the Bridges of Meaning Discord server first. And if anybody’s having trouble, we’ll just throw out an SOS into the chat. And I could see that we’ve got at least one mod in the chat right now. They’d probably be able to hook you up. And you would come up to welcome start here and join the server Bridges of Meaning Writers Club. You just join it by clicking on that button right there. So that’s how, if you’re interested in contributing to this project, you would be able to get in contact with Valerie and the rest of the family there. Yeah. Yeah. Jordan’s the head guy in charge of most of the stuff. I help with, I volunteered to help with public relations and marketing, because I have a media background and I used to do a radio show with my dad for nine years. So I kind of understand what media people need. Yeah, you sounded like you had your pitch deck all ready to go when you hopped in there. Which is great. Which is great. I had no idea any of this was going on. So it’s nice that we can get the word out here. And then you say next December, I’ll certainly, I’ll certainly see if I can pick up a copy. If it’s gonna be on Amazon, that means I can get it on my Kindle, right? Yes, that’s right. It’ll be, it will be at least an ebook. Our aspirations is to also have print on demand available. And we want to try to, so people are like, they’re not creative and they’re not sure what to do, but they wanna support us being able to pay for like, you know, artists to do the book cover and an editor or marketing costs and maybe help us cover getting books for the contributors. They can also donate at the GoFundMe link on the webpage. So that’s available too. But one other side project that actually got birthed that I’ll, I haven’t really told a lot of people about it. I have a couple of gals who are working with me to try to figure out how to do this. But I wanted to have some kind of directory or list or something available for the Bridges of Meaning people. People like yourself, Father Big Mac, who have like a YouTube channel and are content creators and are reaching out and doing stuff, you know, and try to at least let people be able to find you a little bit easier, you know, because I know there’s the share your content stuff in, you know, promos and friends and stuff like that. But I’m like, so what if you, you know, are not able to always put that stuff in there, it’d be kind of nice for some way for us to find each other kind of thing. Yeah, yeah. I think that was actually the original idea behind Chad’s channel, so. Yeah, that was really cool. You know, I forget what the website’s called. I think it was called something like This Little Corner, but it was, I have no idea who put it together, but it was a website that somehow all of the different CLC channels were plugged into it. And you could like just search for terms and it would pull, yeah, yeah, that thing. So we could come up, we could say something like, Father Eric, see what that pulls up. Yeah, and it would give you timestamps, you can filter. That’s me on Jacob’s channel. It’s me on Jacob’s channel. That’s me on Jacob’s channel. It’s me. Yeah. Is your channel on there? I don’t know if I’m, I don’t know if I’m indexed. I think, who is it? Who is it that does this one? Yeah, who runs it? I can’t remember who runs this, but I don’t think my channel’s on here. I don’t produce much besides these live streams, so. Right. You know, yeah. So it’s called thislittlecorner.com or? Yeah, that’s what it looks like. Okay, I’m gonna bookmark that. I didn’t even know that existed. Yeah. Yeah, it’s actually come in handy quite a bit. I’ve found old videos that way. Okay, I have, I just have a bad link. So thislittlecorner.com says it’s, you have to buy this domain, so. Did you put the dashes in there? No, I didn’t put dashes in. Okay. Yeah, I think you need to put the dashes in there to get there. Okay. I do have to say though, as I have a rule here on this channel, and I’ve, and since you guys aren’t regulars, I didn’t expect you to know it, but here in this little corner, rule number one is we don’t talk about this little corner of the internet. Oh, I’m sorry. Yeah, no, no, no, no, no, no. I liked your book pitch, and I wasn’t gonna get in the middle of that, but. Oh, I’m so sorry. I thought this was more for a bridge of the meaning. I didn’t realize, I apologize. Yeah, yeah, no, no. It’s just sometimes those conversations tend to get a little bit navel gazey, and they just aren’t all that interesting. So I try and keep it off. But since you’re a first time caller, I wasn’t gonna jump in there the way I’d jump in on Mark or something who’s here every week. Ah, okay. Well, I’m actually reading through 11 books right now, so I can totally switch topics. Whoa. I mean, so. And I should let Richard talk a little bit too. That’s a lot of books, and I thought I was busy. Oh my goodness. Wow. I think I’m going through four books, technically. So not that many. Well, I should correct myself. I checked out 11 books. I’m going through three books. I just finished one book. Now I’m working on the next one. Technically, I’m only going through three books right now. I’m pretending that I’m reading, I think it’s called The Rulican Reapocles by the Young, by the Young. I’m pretending that I’m reading that. Is that a big, thick, scary book, Religion of the Apostles? It’s not, it’s just a nice 230. It’s pretty thin. So very accessible, more for popular audiences. Yeah, it’s good. But I’m actually reading, you know Eleanor Stump, father? Not. She’s a Catholic philosopher. And that is a big scary book. It’s like 540 pages. And it’s called One-year Inductness. Stump. Stump, okay. Yeah, it’s called One-year Inductness and it’s on, it’s attempting to use biblical narratives to answer the problem of suffering. Which is, it’s a really fascinating read. And she, I’m only like 50 pages in, but those first 50 pages are really concentrating on trying to argue for non-propositional knowledge. So it’s actually tying in with a lot of stuff. But the idea that trying to bring in narratives to address the problem of suffering gives you a different perspective that you otherwise wouldn’t have. So it’s definitely interesting to take. It’s a good book. It’s interesting. It’s interesting. It’s interesting. I’m looking at her bibliography on Wikipedia right now and it seems like she’s pretty hardcore in the old school medieval philosophy field. We’ve got things like absolute simplicity, Cambridge translations of medieval philosophical texts, being in goodness, intellect will and the principle of alternative possibilities. Just some real page turners right there. Yeah. But it’s interesting that now are you applying the notion of non-propositional knowledge to what you’re seeing in her work or is that language that she uses? So here’s the language she uses and it’s quite fun. So she, I think she probably does use the term non-propositional once or twice, but she distinguishes between what she calls Dominican knowledge and Franciscan knowledge. Yeah. So I think you know where it’s going. She’s very adamant of saying that she’s just a typology and she makes a point of saying that typology goes in the tradition of medieval philosophers. But yeah, the idea is that the Dominicans are very, very logical, very propositional, very, they use language a lot. The Franciscans are, the way she put it is like, Franciscan knowledge is knowledge that can’t be reduced to knowledge that, something. Yes, yes. Yeah. So the idea that I know you Father Eric, you can’t reduce that to, I know that you are someone of this identity or something like that. Every time you try and make the projection, you lose something. And so that’s the terminology that she develops. That is so interesting. I mean, I don’t know, maybe this whole movement to transcend logical, rational materialism that became dominant in our culture is much older than I give it credit for. And I’ve only started paying attention to it in the past couple of years. But it seems like we’ve got an attack on that whole dreary system of thought coming in from multiple angles, right? Like you have the Jordan Peterson angle coming in. You got the John Vervecky angle coming in. And now we’ve got this Catholic philosopher at St. Louis University coming in from the Catholic angle. And she’s had to invent like different terminology, but she’s pointing at the same thing. And yeah, so yeah. Everything that rises must converge. Yes. Oh, that’s cool. I’ve never tried it that way. That’s a title of an anthology of books by the Catholic author Flannery O’Connor in case you needed more Catholic authors in your library. Oh, nice. Okay. Yeah. Well, that’s really interesting. It’s definitely on my list. So I’m reading it for a seminar, it’s a seminar just on that book. And we’re going through it very slowly. But yeah, it was interesting to see that convergence. And I’m definitely interested to see, because she’s going to use, I’m not gonna remember the whole list, but she’s gonna use like Samson, Job, Mary Bethany, and three other biblical stories to try and evoke some sort of worldview change out of her readers. And we’ll see how successful she is. I hope she’s successful, because it will vindicate a lot of the work we’ve been doing. But yeah, we’ll see. Yeah. Yeah, and so like once you started explaining kind of the main thesis of the book, what popped into my head immediately was that proper participation is the antidote. It’s like the answer to the problem of evil. Yeah, right. And that’s, I think where people actually get themselves hung up on the problem of evil is that they’re trying to answer that question as if it were one of Euclid’s theorems, right? Trying to do a geometric proof. Yeah. But it’s just not how you answer that question. You engage with the world, you engage with God in a meaningful and deliberate way. And it’s through that that you actually receive the answer that you can’t put into words. Yeah, well, it was really interesting how she framed her argument initially, because she picked up on planting a distinction between a theodicy and a defense, where a theodicy is trying to argue that in this actual world, God exists and suffering exists. Whereas in a defense, you’re simply trying to construct a possible world in which the two could exist, right? And then she ties that in to the notion of world, having a worldview. So she’s trying to present a worldview where those two things are possible, because she thinks that when you engage on the level of worldview, instead of on the level of propositional reputation, et cetera, et cetera, you get down deeper into the philosophical priors and worldview priors that aren’t often addressed in typical discourse. So, yeah. Wow. So yeah, to tie that back in with what you were saying about participation as the solution to the problem of suffering, you need to participate in a worldview that assumes the problem of evil is not a problem. And then that’s sort of the way that you find out whether or not it’s a problem. Like no amount of propositional maneuvering is going to be able to fix that for you. Yeah. For most people. Right, right, yeah. Yeah, man, that’s cool. That’s cool. Somebody should interview her. Bring her in, bring her in. Bring her into the conversation. If she’s written books, I’m sure she’d love to be interviewed. Yeah, yeah. You just need to, you have a website? Yeah, I just had it up. I’ve closed it down, but it’s, what is it? Oh goodness, her name just vanished. Sorry about that. Yeah, yeah, stump. Yeah, I wanna know what’s- Eleanor Stump, Eleanor Stump, yeah. I’m gonna type that in real quick. Yeah, she has videos on YouTube. She, they’re all from like a decade ago. Although she does have one video promoting like a conference that happened last year. I think the conference is called like the feature of Christian Thought or something like that. And so I know we’ve been talking about these conferences we’re holding and she’s definitely the kind of person that you would have in mind to invite as a speaker, so. Yeah. Wow, wow. Yeah. Oh, Mark thinks that we just, it should be me and him bringing her in. We could do that, we could do that. You just send emails. A lot of things could just happen if you send people emails. See what happens. I’m trying to find her contact information on the website. I found the website. Yeah, she’s getting up there in age, so she might not be so willing to engage, but you never know how you could get it done. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And you know, she’s a Catholic so I could just flex this thing around and say, hey, for the church, huh? For the church. I found another website, St. Louis University. Is that where she teaches? That’s where she teaches, yeah. Her contact information is on it. I’m gonna copy it. I’ll copy this link and send it to you in the private chat. Private chat, yes. So that’s all I can do. And probably that way her information is not seen all over the internet. I don’t know about Jez. And there we go. It’s right underneath her photo on the left side. Let’s not dox her email address. Yeah, yeah. And she’s got the phone number too, so that might actually be the school number. It’s probably the school number. Hopefully she’s not putting herself out on the open internet, my goodness. I don’t know, some people can get away with it though. Yeah. Yeah, hopefully not. Yeah, it looks like a bio page on her college website. Yeah. So that’s a surprise. Yeah. Yeah, very interesting, very interesting. Yeah, well you- Go ahead. I was just gonna say, Richard, you gotta keep on telling us how that book goes. You see any new insights there, but- I will. Yeah. Are you still going to that Orthodox parish? Last time you were on, you were talking about that. Or was that somebody else? No, that was me, yeah. The Western, the Western Rite Orthodox parish. Yeah. I actually, so I brought a friend there, and my friend went to Catholic high school for a couple years. He’s a foreign exchange student from Haiti, I think. But so he grew up in a more charismatic background, and they’re going to Catholic school. And so I was interested in what he would think, because it is Western clergy. But so I actually have the pamphlet for it here. But so the title is, I can show it to you maybe, Selling Mass Within Sands, Rite of Saint Gregory. I don’t know what the Latin is. Misha Moriales, Mass of Sambu. Why don’t you show us the cover of that again? Yeah. It might be backwards, I’m not sure. Oh, it’s a little too blocky, a little too blocky. It’s a little too blocky. All right, let’s do it. Can I do it? Yeah, anyway. But he was commenting how, how do you say this? Like, because you know the Kyrie Eleasor and the Glory Bees and all of that, like doing a world mass, we do world masses during the week. Those are usually just spoken and recited, right? But in my church, we have these, I can show you this. We have these very elaborate medieval Western-style melodies that we set them to. Yes, looks like Mass Eight right there. What would that be? Kyrie Eleasor. Well, so Father, you know a lot more, you know what I hoped you would know, because that melody we sang in the fall. And so I learned that melody. And it was like my favorite part of the mass was like singing that. And then I come back after Christmas and they changed the melody. And so like. At different times of the year, they’ll use different mass settings. Okay. So yeah, that’s, they’ve got ones that are specified and then you’ve got Sundays that are kind of open of what you wanna do. So I would have to dig a little bit deeper into some old, old books to figure out exactly how it works. Because a lot of the rules have changed with the liturgical updates after Vatican II. So it’s not something I necessarily have at my fingertips. Well, and then of course, like the Western Orthodox guys, like they make a lot of the fact that they’re, that they’ve retained a lot of pre-Vatican II things. Yeah, I’d be super interested to see what they were doing. I would probably just nerd right out, nerd out all over the place. Yeah, it’s funny because I brought my mom, I brought my mom to one and she grew up Catholic in the Philippines. She was born in, oh, I don’t wanna get this wrong, 78. Okay. And so she came to the parish and so one thing she appreciated was that they had pamphlets there that had all of the words for the secret voice. And she said to the pastor, it’s very nice that I could read what you were saying and not just be in tower. But the father faces the same thing. He’s in the same direction as the congregation. He doesn’t face them, which is the biggest thing. And that was like something my mom was curious about with that. Yeah, that’s pretty. That seems to be the biggest change, I’m not sure. Yeah, yeah. No, there’d be a lot, there’d be a lot. And yeah, I would probably, I’d probably be like a kid in a candy store if I got to go to one. Well, you know, if you’re coming to Chino and you wanna skip Catholic mass for Western Orthodox mass, I will have you as a visitor. Now that would require some serious beard stroking for me to figure out. They haven’t posted like a website or anything for me to like get the info on this. No, not yet. Like I know they’ve got a date for it, but you know, it’s like, I don’t wanna make any plans until I can buy tickets, you know? Do I have to buy tickets or are they just gonna say, hey, meet us in the park, we’ll be there? There will be tickets, there will be tickets. I don’t know when. I’m not gonna be making any plans until I see a website like that pointing me, in a direction to go. Yes, for sure. Calm them down. Get us a speeder, just kidding. Thanks for all your work, John. Yeah. Yeah, it’s, you know, these things always happen on weekends and it’s hard for me to get weekends off. Yeah, for sure. I signed up to work weekends. I think like, it might start, here, let me, do you remember what the dates are, Father? I do not, I do not. I might be able to find them quickly. Yeah, I can also find them very quickly. I will have to find- May 18th, the weekend of May 18th. Oh, okay. Yeah. And so like, I remember most of it being during the week. Really? If I remember. Yeah. The 18th to the 21st. Oh wow, okay. Oh yeah, so you would get Thursday, Friday, Saturday. And then ends on Sunday. Wow, yeah, tempting, tempting, but- Yeah, probably not. Well, we’ll see, we’ll see. 18th to the 21st, huh? Yeah. I don’t think I have any weddings that weekend, so that makes it a little easier. All right. School mass graduation. They might want me there for that. We’ll see, we’ll see, we’ll see. Yeah, we’ll see. We’ll see. Yeah, we’ll see. All right. I won’t make any decisions right now. Yeah. So do the Catholic, do any parishes use those melodies anymore? Or is that not really a thing? Yes, yes. But it must be, it’s not universal, of course. No, no. So I know that the mass eight that you showed me and that I sang briefly, is we usually do that for big celebrations in our dioceses. So like when we have the chrism mass or when we have an ordination or something like that, we’ll usually do the mass eight setting. You drive it. Okay. But yeah, you know, now it’s all like, do whatever mass setting you want. Absolute freedom. There’s no guidance or structure anywhere. And yeah, but now you’re getting into a territory where I’m gonna rant for three hours without stopping. About how the Catholic Church didn’t actually implement Vatican II, they implemented something else. Right there. That could get me all sorts of attention. So ranting on Catholic politics. All right. Cause I was gonna say, I was gonna say if you’re inclined to rant about liturgy, our pastor has a master’s in liturgical theory. I bet you him and I would get along pretty well. Yeah. Well, so he is a former Lutheran. Oh, okay. From one liturgical tradition to another, yeah. Yes. And then, so I think he’s either the only or one of like two or three people who are qualified to serve both Western right and Eastern right services. He’s got bi-ritual faculties. That’s what we would call it in the Catholic world if somebody could do the Roman right and the divine liturgy of St. John Chrysostom. All that bi-ritual faculties. And the coolest guy in the world had bi-ritual faculties. I’m gonna pull up the photo here. The coolest guy in the world. Wow. All right, we got Bishop Fulton Sheen. Venerable Fulton Sheen who could represent the Roman rights but he had bi-ritual faculties to also act as a, I think a Rithuanian Catholic liturgy. So he could do them both. And that’s just like the coolest thinking photo in the world, Fulton Sheen and a crown, baby. Wow. Did he serve both often? I don’t know how often he would have actually been able to use his bi-ritual faculties. I don’t know, I don’t know. He was busy being on TV and that sort of thing. Okay. So yeah, hard for me to tell from, 60 years later, how often he would have been able to do that. Yeah, for sure. Cause I don’t think, yeah, I don’t think Father John, my pastor has ever served this family even though he’s qualified to. Well, so I guess another Catholic update I have, Father, is I’ve had a copy of the Liturgy of the Hours just lying sadly on my desk because I’m too lazy to figure out how it works. Yeah, it’s a little mysterious. Do you know which edition you would have? No, I do not. Unfortunately, I’m away from it at the moment. Is it all in Latin or all in English? It’s all in English, I think. Okay, okay. Yeah, that’s a, like the way priests end up learning it is that we go to seminary and then we’re just given, we’re given the page numbers to do morning and evening prayer every day and a little bit of instruction on how it works. But basically you just like, you do it and then you start to understand how it works. And then guys get ordained and they put their, their briefs away and just use their phones for the rest of their life. Okay. Yeah, I was wondering, I was wondering because. But I am not a phone guy. I am, I have to, because when I, when I do the Liturgy of the Hours on any screens, like I’m not paying proper attention to it. I’m like, I’m just so distracted when it’s just on a screen. When I got the paper, I actually stand a chance of paid attention. Cause I actually did, I used the phone. I wanted to play it, but I didn’t know what to play. So I was like, I wonder if I can find the daily prayer online and so I just Googled it. And so I played the Liturgy of the Hours on Thursday on the Baptist campus inside of a Baptist prayer chapel. It’s mostly the Psalms. Yeah, mostly, which I was, I was surprised by, but yeah. So it’s a lot of Psalms. It’s a lot of Psalms. So if you want to get serious about the Liturgy of the Hours, what you’re gonna need is one of these St. Joseph guides. So, so you can just. Like you put a guide for the Liturgy of the Hours. This one’s for 2022. So it’s not gonna do you as much good, but it would have. Do you have a one volume or a four volume? I have a four volume. Yeah, so let’s see if we can, yeah. Liturgy of the Hours guide for 2023 here at stjudeshop.com. That also says, it says 2022, but hopefully, but it says 2023 here, so buyer beware. Yeah, and this will like walk you through how to do it properly. And if you wanted to get real fancy, you could get what the priests have, which is one of these Ordos by Paulist Press. But these are a little bit, they’re like written in code and you have to know what the code is, right? So let’s look up February 6th. Let’s take a look at tomorrow. What are we doing? Yeah, so there’s the code for February 6th. Memorial, gotta wear red, votive and ritual mass, code two, Salter week one, season a weekday, all that. So anyway, that might be a little bit of a steep slope there, trying to get in on that. But the St. Joseph guides are usually a lot clearer. Okay, so I guess there aren’t any good online guides then for it. I’ll look around. I find the field, I wasn’t trying very hard because I was pretty busy. What a great excuse, right? I was busy, but say it would be. Yeah, I don’t know. I don’t know if they publish an online guide. There might be an app. I know there was, I had one app for a while that had liturgy in it, more like prayers and readings and stuff, from morning, afternoon, mid morning, afternoon and evening. And I apologize, I don’t remember the name of the app, but it was kind of, I think it was more of an Anglican kind of thing. But so you might be able to find something through the app stores or something like that. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, when I looked on all, I think it might have been Word on Fire, let me try and find it. Oh yeah. Yeah, Word on Fire’s got that new publication. It’s morning, evening and night prayer without any flipping and it’s a monthly subscription. Yeah, maybe it wasn’t, here it is. Devineoffice.org. I found this article on Altea.org. Beginner’s Guide to the Liturgy of the Hours. So maybe you’d find that helpful. Yeah. But this is only for the Christian Prayer, the one volume Christian Prayer version. Really, what you need to do is you just need to make friends with a Catholic who’s willing to teach you how to do it every day for a couple of weeks until you get the hang of it. Yeah, I need to bully my Catholic friend into doing that because he made me check out the book and then just threw me off the deep end. Because that’s actually how I got the book, because we’re Catholic friends. And yeah, we don’t see each other that often so it’s kind of hard to do. But you know, something interesting he was telling me, Father Eric, is that the Catholics affirm that all Orthodox Christians are, I don’t know what the terminology is, but they’re saved, they’re real Christians, they’re whatever. I think the best way to explain that would be to say that we would recognize all of the Orthodox sacraments. Okay. And there’s a fair amount that goes both ways on that. Okay. So I believe the Orthodox practice is that if a Catholic priest went into an Orthodox church, they would only be chrismated again, but they would not be ordained again. And then we would recognize the same thing, basically, coming the other way, that if an Orthodox priest wanted to become Catholic, we would not get them ordained again, which is not the way we would treat, say, an Anglican, a Lutheran, or any of the Protestant denominations. They would usually have to be ordained again. So yeah, that’s, I think, probably the easiest way to explain it. Got it. So I was baptized Catholic, and I’m pretty sure I have my certificate. So would I need to get baptized again in the Eastern Orthodox Church? Do you know? I don’t believe so, but you’d have to actually ask an Eastern Orthodox priest about that. But I think as long as you were baptized in the name of the Father and the Son of the Holy Spirit, they would do that. They are a little more free with chrismation. They seem to do that more than I think Catholics would the other way. So we would recognize what the Orthodox call chrismation as being the same as our confirmation. But it seems like the Orthodox tend to do that more with their converts’ soul. But then again, you’re talking to a guy who’s, not an expert, can’t give you a proper answer on that. So. Yeah, for sure, for sure. Yep, I should just ask my pastor. So. Yeah, just ask your pastor. That’s the answer to almost everything. Fair enough. Do you ever refer people to therapy in pastoral matters? I will, I will. If, I don’t know, a lot of times by the time they come into talking to me, they’re already in therapy and I’m happy to just let them go. I do want to be careful who I’m referring them to. I want to find somebody who’s solid. I know of a few solid Catholic therapists in town that I could trust and can reliably do it. But you know, when people come talk to me, I’m gonna start with the spiritual thing, which is kind of where I’m at. I’m not a very religious person, I’m not kind of where I’m at. And yeah, so I’m not against it. It’s just usually by the time, by the time they get to me, it’s usually something they’ve already made up their mind on. Okay, got it. Yeah, so I don’t have any trouble doing that. What I have to be careful of is just not trying to give people therapy. And that’s an easy thing to fall into, especially when you’ve listened to hours of Jordan Peterson lectures and think you’re an expert. Yeah. Oh no, yeah, that could try to be something. Oh, I’m getting this, I never thought of that. Yeah. So anyway, I try and stay in my lane, try and stay in my lane. But it’s not like we’ve got a concrete dividing line. You could just kind of drift, just kind of drift there, they’re kind of blurry there. Interesting. Oh yeah, my, sorry, go ahead, Rory. Just a quick note on that therapy thing. There was a Christian psychotherapist named Paul Tournier, who I think he was Swiss, but he wrote a bread-to-buck book in the industry called The Meaning of Persons. And he talks about the whole person and how everything bleeds into each other. So the spiritual part of the man, as well as the psychological part, as well as the heart part and the biological, so everything’s connected. And psychology is just a sliver of what the whole person is. And so he wrestles with that. He has written over 40 books. So he’s an interesting guy. I was referred to him in one of my, I’m looking for new books, what can you suggest? And I read a lot of psychology stuff, not heavy academic stuff, but more for the regular people. But Paul Tournier, yeah. So he might be interesting for you to read at some point. I apologize for interrupting you, Richard. Thanks, Mark. Thanks. No, no, I enjoyed it. Yeah. Mark says that priests are better than therapists. But while that may be true, I think going through the sometimes tedious work of working out people’s, let’s say, trigger to a stimulus and how to change a new response, there are certain things that I’m happy to delegate to a therapist who’s got more expertise in that area. Yeah, for sure. Now, Charlie says that priests are bolder than therapists. Isn’t that fair? And I happen to know at least one therapist who’s as bald as a cucumber. So I don’t actually think that. And plenty of priests who have quite a lot of foliage up here. There is no correlation. As much as we would like to think. All right, Mark, here’s my take, Mark. Here’s my take, all right? I point people to the ends and the supernatural means to get to those ends. And the therapist can be helpful in helping somebody with the natural means to an end, which support and compliment the supernatural means. Anyway, that’s what I think. That’s really well-worded. Yeah. I feel it’s so funny. But that’s so funny how far Mark has gone into enchantment. That he would. Wait, Mark, do you think that priests are entirely replaced therapists? Or any of the people you know? You know, this is something interesting. I’m sure you guys have probably run into her, she hosted the Thunder Bay event. She’s both a faithful Christian and a practicing therapist. She says that if the churches were doing their jobs properly, she would be out of a job. That we would be supporting people in such a way that they did not, that we would be supporting people in such a way that they did not, that they would not be needed. And Mark says we didn’t have therapists in the past, so that has to be true. Yeah, I’m not saying you’re wrong, but I’ve gotta do ministry where I’m at. And like I said, by the time, by the time a lot of people come to me, they’re already in therapy for whatever they’re dealing with. So I’m just gonna let them do that. And hopefully the therapist doesn’t send them in the wrong direction and can at least be something helpful. And this wouldn’t be a Sunday night live stream without promoting one of the greatest YouTube channels of all time, Navigating Patterns. And I guess Catherine appeared on Mark’s channel, Navigating Patterns. And Mark will probably put a link to that video below with just a little bit of prompting. Catherine’s great, Catherine’s great. You should all listen to her. She’s a fabulous, fabulous Christian disciple. Yeah. Yeah. That’s interesting though. I’ve never thought about it that way. You get to think about psychology as a side effect of modernity. And some is like necessary for now as we pass through modernity. Like I’ve been thinking about more stuff in this way that like, that things that are, that we rather not have are necessary. That things that we rather not have are necessary for a time because of the peculiar ways that we fall as human beings. I’m so bold. I’ve been tempted to think of women’s automation in that way. So much like we have to do that because we don’t understand how to think about, think about the gender roles in a way that makes sex exclusivity in church offices non-exclusive. So, yeah. It’s a pattern that I’ve been seeing more and more. Speaking of navigating patterns. Speaking of navigating patterns, yeah. The pattern of having to bear with something sub-ideal because of circumstance. So I guess what I could do. Somebody’s gonna have to fill me in on what trepanning is. I have no idea what it is. But this fellow said, let’s go back to the good old days of trepanning for demons in the skull. That doesn’t sound good. Yeah, that sounds like a more brutal medieval weirdness. Yeah. So, if you’re demons, I recommend safe and effective holy water. Available at your nearest Catholic church. Well, I did not know about this. So like last week, no, two weeks ago, our doing announcements after mass, our father just went into like, if you need a bottle for holy water, you can pick one up. If you already have one, you need to refill it. If you already have one, you should put it in your icon corner. And it’s a holy water. It’s a thing that you possess in a bottle and keep in your house and bust yourself with. I had no idea. Yeah, yeah. Go ahead, get the holy water. Speaking of getting the holy water, Mark is here. Hey, Mark. You need your holy water. They’re panning it so they can cut your skull open. They cut your skull open. The Neanderthals did it. Oh. Yeah, but they don’t know all the things they used it for. Like they have no idea. Like they think that it was just to release demons from the skull, but they don’t actually know. And I’m sure that was part of it. But there seemed to be, like we do it now. We drill holes in the head to relieve pressure all the time. And they’ve actually brought back taking pieces of the skull out in certain circumstances. So that was, I was in the hospital. Yeah, my first pastor had a brain bleed and they had to knock a hole right there. And so he said, if somebody ever stuck a pencil in there real hard, it could kill them. But so I just refrained from sticking pencils into it. We got along famously. It’s amazing how not sticking pencils into people’s heads can really make sure your relationship stays good. It’s through the thumb. And yeah, it looks like actually, they have found evidence that some of the trip panning wasn’t done due to evil spirit, but was in fact done to serve as some of the same medical problems that we now know about. The science, the magical science. Science has lots of good insights. Just recently in the past two years, they discovered that in fact, if you’re in love and then somebody breaks your heart, that your heart does in fact get damaged. And being in love can repair your heart. So science has validated something that literally every human has known since literally the beginning of time. So yay science. Pretty soon we’ll have something else that we know already knew. Mark, I didn’t figure that out until the sixth grade Christmas dance. Aw. No, I got shot down. Oh, it was painful. Aw. You were 11. So you were 11 years old and science has the equivalent knowledge of an 11 year old. Yay science, big fan. Oh. Boy. Just saying. But it’s too much emphasis on that and treating knowledge as material. Everybody wants to have it. They wanna internalize things. And I’m like, can you internalize? Like the only thing you internalize is food and air. I think everything else you don’t internalize. I think everything else kind of stays outside of you. But this consumption based sort of, it’s a strange world. Nice. Charlie, I love you man. Let’s not go there. Oh. Oh, let’s not go there, okay. Attacking the priestly vocation there. Yeah. Stink the Lutherans. Why is it the Lutheran’s fault? Oh, it’s Charlie. Charlie’s a Lutheran. Oh, do they allow their priest to get married? Isn’t that? Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Martin Luther married a nun. Yeah. Yep. Oh, okay. For real. I didn’t know that. It’s Luther guy. Wild crimes in Germany, man. This Luther guy, he’s like the modern philosophers. The more I learn, the more terrified I am. I’m curious about how anybody, any of these people seriously ever listen to anything. Because Martin Luther was an absolute riot. That dude was funny as heck. Like you probably would have liked him if you had actually met him. Probably. Maybe. So he’s like Trump, you know what I’m saying? He’s kind of like Trump now. He’s probably smarter than, or what? More articulate than Trump. I’m gonna be careful here because Mark is there and he’s gonna shred me if I’m imprecise in my language. Probably not. I don’t have to. I’ve got a cudgel now. Pull out the cudgel anytime. I can sit in your place. It’s not a big deal now. No, we’ve been noticing a lot of people with the internalizing theme, right? They wanna have things. They wanna get things. They wanna, you know, Carlos, I have a video on that on navigating patterns. Training versus education, good video. Learn all about it. It seems to me that the teachers, for the most part, just kind of set the stage and are able to kick out bad actors. Yeah. That’s what I observed about seminary, right? Like they can kind of set the rule of life. They can figure out what teachers they’re gonna bring in and what they’re gonna enforce in terms of policy and kick out bad actors. But at a certain point, like I had to be responsible for my own formation. Yeah. Well, and you should be. And your parents should be responsible for making you responsible for your own formation. And the bigger issue for me is, it looks from the data that I read, someday I’m gonna find that stupid article that basically, the sooner you put a child into a structured learning environment, the worse for the child. So you should keep them away from that stuff as much as possible. And then you should put them in an environment where there’s lots of recess, gym, art, music and religion teaching. Because those teachers in the making world would be participatory knowledge and not propositional knowledge. Well, so, and a big one I’m picking up. I’m taking a class called adolescent and emerging adulthood. And the process is really big on taking cultural perspective in a good way, I think. But he’s pointing out that because we group our kids in same-age cohorts, you delay maturation drastically because they’re not interacting with more mature peers and they’re not willing to have you teach the younger kids to get in shape at all. And what you’re saying is that we need to go back to one room schoolhouses. Right. Oh yeah. Well, the Montessori schools don’t do that. So there are schools like that. Well, so, I mean, yes, the Montessori school I went to, still, they widen the range a bit to like three grades in one classroom. But I still feel like you can widen it more. No, I don’t know. Three years difference is a lot when you’re young. I don’t know. Yeah, that’s true. I mean, you’re getting too far away at some point, right? Because maturation happens quickly when you’re young and slower as you get older. Oh yeah. So do you know that study, I think there’s a study where they noticed that like 80% of national hockey league players were born in like January? Yeah, yeah. I saw that. Yeah. And the reason was is that the time where you enroll your kids in like camps and stuff when they’re like five is in January. And so because of that, all of the kids who are about to turn six are the ones that get in. And then all of the younger ones get screened out because they’re less mature, right? And so that’s why they’re all born in January is because you get the snowball effect of, they get all of the club resources and they get the good boys teams and all of that. Right. Just so. Yeah, but that’s the problem that people don’t understand how reality works, right? Reality is filters. That’s what it is. And once you realize that everything’s a filter, then the whole world changes. What are you filtering out for? Because the first thing that happens is you filter stuff out. Because that’s how our brains work. I mean, Vervicki makes this point all the time actually, we filter out 99.9% of everything. That’s how we’re able to function. And so that pattern recurs, navigating the pattern, like it recurs everywhere and we have to do that. And this is why the critiques of that are invalid. It’s like, oh, we should change it. We can’t change it. We can change the filter, but that may make the world worse because we came at the filter for a reason and we don’t understand that reason because it’s distributed cognition through time. And now you’re into Chesterton’s fence problem. You’re changing something without understanding why it got there and how it got there and what it’s for. And that’s the problem, right? And we’re all complaining about things that are in the world that aren’t optional. Did we change Chesterton’s fence to Banzai’s brain surgery? Yes. Don’t pull on that. You don’t know what it’s connected to. Oh, no. No, no, I don’t wanna kick GK Chesterton out. I need to watch that movie again. Banzai? Buckaroo Banzai Across Eight Dimension. That was awesome. I love the ending. I haven’t seen it in a while. I should actually get myself. No, it’s probably, I haven’t seen it before. I haven’t seen it before. Well, for those who haven’t seen it. Mo, what’s that? What you can prepare yourself for is imagine being a space alien who knows nothing about the Marvel cinematic universe and drops into the third Avengers movie. That’s pretty accurate. Right? Because you’re just coming in at the middle of the story and you’re expected to already know and you’re expected to already know all these things and you just kinda have to pick it up as you go along. So it’s actually a lot of fun to just be sitting there like, oh, he’s got a comic book. Oh, he’s a brain, he’s also a musician. Okay, all right, here we go. It’s really based on a comic book, isn’t that right? Or am I mistaken? I don’t think it’s actually, I thought it was an original screenplay. But they were definitely looking to things like comic books and how they have, especially over time, these snowballing storylines and fingers going out in different directions and all these different threads all over the place. I remember someone saying there was a lot of Easter eggs in the movie for people who knew what was going on. An object in a room that doesn’t fit in the room and you’re like, why is it there? And it’s just like, don’t ask me now, everybody just moves on. And so there was a lot of little things like that. I could have misunderstood or misremembered it though. Yeah, yeah, I think it was like references to, like references to pieces of media that have never ever exited the director’s mind basically. Okay. Could be. Yeah, anyway, it was a fun movie. My buddy Christian showed it to me. I’m gonna go grab dinner. Go get some dinner, Richard. You’re looking peaky. Yeah. Oh my goodness, you and my mother. Oh my goodness. Oh my goodness, you and my mother. Oh my goodness, you and my mother. Nice meeting you, Richard. Take care, bye bye. You too, bye bye. Take care, bye bye. Alrighty. And the popular duo that returns together. That’s right. Bald men solving the meeting crisis. You, me, Vanderklay, we’re getting it done. We’re getting it done. The rest of them, they’re not doing anything. One soul at a time, yeah. Maybe chocolate would help solve the meeting crisis. No. Chocolate is solipsistic. It helps to solve the ego crisis, which creates the meeting crisis. I was just being suspicious. Maybe encountering the beauty of an excellent piece of chocolate would actually lead you out of yourself into the contemplation of higher realities. No. He says with a giant bag of peanut M&Ms behind him. Absolutely, yeah. That’s how I know it doesn’t fix the meeting crisis. Oh. Still meeting crisis right there. Okay. Had some Reese’s peanut butter cups earlier. Still meeting crisis. I have to experiment with all the things, so. Being scientific. Yeah. Yeah. Science will definitely get us out of the meeting crisis because that’s what got us in. It’s all good. Yeah. Yeah. More therapy. It’ll be great. Yeah. Chocolate. She’s in a fall state. Yeah. Insulated crisis. They have a new Hoshi chocolate at zero. Basically has no sugar in it. It tastes a little different, but it’s actually decent. So I’ve been eating those. Are they, it has artificial sweetener in it or? Probably, yeah. Probably. Which, it’s good and bad at the same time. So I was like, ah. Now when they came up with Sulacrose, commonly marketed as Splenda, I believe that they were trying to develop a new kind of pesticide. Oh. And they came up with Sulacrose. And the reason that it’s zero calorie is that your body doesn’t recognize it as food. Ah. So that’s kind of the frightening. I don’t know. I mean, maybe science could tell us more about why it doesn’t get digested, but, or what happens. Science is lying about all that. So yeah, that’s the problem. They have a bunch of theories. Whenever you go inside the body and you hear them make a statement, they’re wrong because they don’t have rules for seeing. They just make it all up. All right. All internal medicine now made up. You learned it here first, folks. Pretty much. But it’s like, yeah, this thing’s so stinking complicated. Like, you can’t take it apart and figure it out how it works. It’s not like a transistor radio. So yeah, you’re probably right. Just another thing for me not to have faith in. There you go. Yeah, you’ve got faith in all the right things. You’re fine. I think, asks, is Splenda as bad as aspartame? And I’m just gonna go ahead and say that they’re all bad and you should just drink water. Yes. And coffee, coffee’s fine too. No. See, Mark hasn’t been able to convince me of that. Coffee’s no good. How about tea, is tea okay? I drink tea all the time. Herbal tea is great. Okay. I drink it every once in a while, it’s fine. I like that you already disbelieve all other gods. Why not one more? But they don’t, that’s the problem. They adopt new gods as required to fit their feelings in the moment. That’s the new thing, feelings in the moment. And if my feelings were hurt, it must be your fault because you were there. Yeah, that’s pretty much it. Yeah, that’s perfectly reasonable and rational. And logical, but not wrong. So I have a question for you guys. What have you been learning this week? Mark, you go first. Oh, okay, I’ll go first. What I have been learning this week is the depth and breadth of people’s insanity around how they process their worldviews. That’s what I’ve been learning all week. And I have also been very slowly learning because I keep forgetting to read this about this from Christendom to apostolic mission stuff, which is quite interesting because it’s meaning crisis in Christian terms. So it’s interesting stuff. Really, interesting. That was published by University of Mary Press. There isn’t actually like a author’s name on it. So it could be a little hard to find, but it’s just a little, like it’s a book, but it’s just a little snack. It’s only a few hundred pages or something like that. It might be 130. Oh, that’s not too bad. Yeah, it’s more like a pamphlet. But it’s really, it’s like straight to the point. It talks about all this worldview, imaginal, unconscious assumptions, what you’re able to see kind of business. Meaning crisis stuff. And I also learned about this, this professor woman here that we need to talk about. This professor woman here that we need to talk to who has a YouTube video from April that was recorded in April of last year there. So yeah, we got to check her out. That’s going to be very interesting. 37 minutes and it’s on morning, at least that one of her slides is on the problem of morning, which is, which is Raviky’s perennial problem of grief. So that should be interesting tie in there. Well, you’d be interested to see what happens because this happened to Raviky in the talk with the Orthodox bishop, right? He’s like, well, that’s a problem. The bishop’s like, yeah, but that was solved already by this guy. Raviky was like, really? He’s like, yeah. I got to watch that. It’s in my YouTube watch list. I’m like, I got to watch that video. It’s really, really good. Yeah, he pretty much digs a six foot hole, throws neoplatonism in it, throws all the dirt over it, gives it a nice little headstone. It’s quite good. Wow. Yeah, it’s interesting when the secularists find out that the religious people actually do know about this and have been talking about this all along. And then they’re like, oh, wow, this is so enlightening. It’s like, okay. Oh no, I have to get that link too. I’m finding it. I got it. I got it. All right, thank you. You’re the best. I think it’s this one, Carly. It’s a good talk. 90% sir. It’s got a big bearded guy. So that should be an Orthodox bishop. Yeah. For choir. It’s like Monday or something it came out. Six days old, five days old, something like that. Yeah. What have I learned this week? I’ve learned how much of a pain in the butt it is to come back from vacation. Oh. I enjoyed my vacation. Had a great time. Would recommend. But it’s like, oh yeah. You leave all that work and then it’s there for you when you get back. So. Yeah. But yeah. How little sleep I can function on if I had to. I went to a marriage retreat and heard confessions from about 9.45 to 10.15 last night because that’s when it happened in their schedule. And then I woke up early for the early mass 7 a.m. confessions. So it was just sort of like. And then had a busy day today. We had our second grade reconciliation retreat and teaching the second graders how to confess their sins because by the time you’re a second grader, it’s now you’re not a toddler anymore. You now have some agency, which means you’ve sinned. But that went really well. My station was showing the kids the confessional and the different how to behave, orienting them, how to navigate a confessional. You can kneel here if you want to go behind the screen and you can sit here if you want to talk face to face. Now, how many of you want to go behind the screen? Yeah, consistently three quarters of you. That’s actually consistent with the way the adults here do it too. Three quarters of everybody goes behind the screen and only a quarter of people come face to face about. Oh, I didn’t know you go face to face. That’s interesting. Whenever you see it on TV, it’s always a screen. Yeah. And the screen is frankly cooler. And I like going behind the screen when I go, if it’s an option. Although oftentimes I’m making appointments with my, my friends to go, because I don’t want to take up regularly scheduled confession time for somebody else. Because anyway, yeah. Anyway, yeah. Yeah, I’m a fan of the screens. They definitely serve their purpose. It’s like, there’s this really paradoxical thing that can happen in liturgy. Where if you get farther away from something, you participate in it better. And I think that’s what the odd orient of worship, having the priest facing towards the altar, the same direction as the people during the liturgy did for a majority of church history up until the mid 1960s. You put a barrier up in there and that somehow invites a different sort of participation. And I think the same thing happens when you go to confession behind the screen. You don’t have as much of an impression that you’re confessing your sins to Father Eric, but directly to God. Yeah. Yeah, that was one of the things we sort of identified actually, I think it was today. One of the problems people have is that they’ll point at specific behaviors, right? Instead of focusing on the spirit behind the behaviors, right? So that’s sort of like treating it like an idol instead of an icon. Give us an example of what you’re talking about. Yeah, so a lot of people were, well, there’s a big dust up on the awakening server. So they opened the can of worms. Oh, of course. They opened the can of worms that they didn’t understand. And now they riled up basically a bunch of probably, not mentally stable people, let me put it that way. And so people have just gone completely bonkers, left, right and center. And one of the things they say is, like you did this, right? And this person did that. And it’s like, all right, well, when did this happen? Because if you’re gonna change something, you gotta know what it is that you’re changing. And then they don’t have that thing. It’s not there. It’s like, all right, so why are you pointing at words or things that were said or actions that occurred when you don’t have evidence that that actually happened? Right, and it’s because they’re trying. If it’s written down on Discord, you should be able to be like, you said that here. Right, and they can’t. But with the live chat, it might be a little harder to nail down. Well, but they can’t. They are saying it’s in text chat and it’s not there. And it’s, you know, and then, so they’re trying to materialize something that they felt, and say, I felt this because you’re here. They’re trying to make it material so they can point to it, say, that’s wrong. But it’s not there. And I think when you focus on that, when you try to, instead of owning up to, oh no, I felt this. It’s like, oh well, whatever. You may have felt that and somebody may have been in the room with you when you felt that, but that doesn’t mean that they’re responsible for your feelings because they’re yours. As it turns out, like, there’s a difference between the things inside you and the things outside of you. All right, and so I think that people get caught up and they like look for an idol to blame, right? Which is scapegoating, right? When you’re like fair enough. When in fact, you know, it’s them, right? And that’s what they’re trying to do. They’re trying to externalize that that in psychology that we call projection, right? And then make it concrete, right? Idolize it and then point to that as the source of their internal problem, something external to them. And then destroy it. And then destroy it, right? Or destroy the person that they’re actually upset at by using that idol. Saying, oh, you created this idol and this is the idol that has me trapped or is causing my emotions and therefore, right? And that’s the pattern. And it’s a very, you know, it’s a very old and common pattern, but that’s the sort of thing that people are doing. And they’re going the other way with it too. So just had a discussion with somebody who’s kept saying, oh no, internalizing the sage. I’m like, you don’t internalize a dead person. Like that’s, that’s called necromancy. Don’t do that. Ouch. Well, I mean, it is what it is. I’m a, you know, I didn’t make up the term. That’s why Jesus asked to have reason for the dead, right? So he wouldn’t, you wouldn’t be internalizing a dead person? I don’t know. And asking what would Jesus do isn’t internalizing the dead person. It’s pointing you, your attention outside of yourself and contrasting your behavior with behavior of something that isn’t your ego. And so I think it’s very, there’s a point, right? At which internalizing the sage or something like it, although I think again, that’s necromancy and bad, right? But saying what would Jesus do points you away from your own ego, right? And it just gives you contrast and says, well, what would somebody who isn’t you do? And well, if we’re gonna say isn’t you, why don’t we just use the perfect human form, right? That makes sense, right? What would that person do? Well, that’s a good question, right? Because then it gets you out of your solipsism and allows you to contrast your behavior with their behavior, at least in your head. And that’s better than not contrasting your behavior, you know, at all. And so it’s an improvement. But characterizing that, you know, is like Verbeke does and others is internalizing sage, I think is dangerous because, and people are talking like this now, like, well, I internalize knowledge. It’s like, so when you take the knowledge into yourself, is it no longer available for other people? Well, if it’s a, I mean, knowledge is spoken of as a common good and that it’s not diminished by being shared. Right, right, but it’s not a good, that’s the first problem. And it’s not common, because knowledge is about how you’re conforming to the world. Knowledge isn’t, it isn’t apart from you and it isn’t apart from the world. It’s the relationship between the two and it’s not material. But when you say you can internalize something, you’re speaking of it as though it is material. I misspoke, it’s truth that’s a common good. Truth is a common good, maybe. I definitely think about that. It’s not diminished, basically it’s not diminished by being shared. It can be, so you could think of like, another example of a common good is like a properly ordered and peaceful society, right? And it’s like, you know, within certain limits, you could just add more people to that. And as long as everybody is pointing at the same ideals, they’re all submitting to the same authorities and same spirits, if you will, same patterns, then that peaceful, harmonious ordering of society is not diminished by more people partaking. In fact, it may actually grow and become more able to bring people in there. Right, yeah, yeah, that’s true. And it’s the within limits that everyone’s arguing about. They don’t realize that. Because that is an important question. Where are those limits? How many people can we add to our project, our community? And at what point, like how do we determine if somebody’s actually gonna contribute thoughtfully or if they’re just gonna be a parasite? Yeah, and that that idolization is the problem, right? You crystallize something and then you identify it with something. You say, oh, you know, the current school system corrupts our children, right? Yes, but. And then you idolize the school children, right? When in fact, what’s corrupting the children is a change in school policy, not the school because the school isn’t bad in and of itself. And then what ends up happening is because you’ve idolized it, you try to smash that idol. But then you destroy all the goodness too. And you don’t, and you’re not telling people, for example, that I’m just making different trade-offs, right? I’m not, I’m drawing the line in a different place. I’m not actually telling you you don’t have to draw the lines. It’s like the postmodern trick, right? It’s postmodern power, right? But what they’re giving you is they’re not saying there’s a way out of it. They’re just saying you should have the power, not the person or people that have the power now. It’s like, I don’t know, it seems like a bad plan. Like if this is a bad thing, maybe we should stop doing it. Yeah, yeah, you made a big jump there from the public schools to postmodernism. Well, no, I mean, that’s what James Lindsay does in the WTF is SEL video. He talks about the- Okay, that’s what you had in mind. Well, I watched James Lindsay recently and it’s all over the place. He did a good video called The Negation of Reality. It’s really, really good. That’s like top tier stuff. The first 35 minutes is tough to get through, but after that, it’s like really, really good. Yeah, yeah. Shows where we’re at, where we have to defend reality. Like, I don’t know, I feel like reality is pretty real. It pushes back on me when I’m being ridiculous. But that’s what people are upset about. They’re upset about constraint and they don’t want the pushback. And so they’re living in their heads and then they’re getting angry and resentful. And because they’re trying to internalize everything and know stuff, and so for the purpose of controlling it, then they get wrapped up in that process and they make an idol out of freaking everything. They’re just idle this and idle that. And we gotta get rid of capitalism as though it’s some kind of an object that you can throw away or destroy or whatever. And it’s like, no, that’s not how that works. It’s a concept and a principle and it’s not going away no matter what you do, because it’s a pattern in the world. And you can’t just get rid of patterns in the world because that’s the constraint of reality. And they don’t want the constraint. They’re just trying to break free of all constraints. They wanna be free from all constraints. And that’s what makes them upset. What does it mean when we say that God is infinite? What it means when we say that God is infinite is that he is not relegated to any particular mode of being, but that he has the fullness of all possible power, all possible potential there, that he’s not constrained by anything except his own will. And so when these postmodernists are trying to break free of all constraint, they’re trying to replace God basically. Yep, right. Exactly. And James Lindsay makes the case in the negation of reality too that effectively that’s what happens with the postmodern ethos is that it leads to Gnosticism through Solipsism because of the constraints we have are evil. And therefore that God that you’re talking about, Father Eric, he’s the bad God. And then behind him is really the good God and we could break free to that. It’s like, what? Yeah, that’s Gnosticism in it. But I think the thing that Lindsay doesn’t necessarily recognize because he keeps drawing this through line through history is that a simple system like that where you’re relying on an existing framework, for example, through distributed cognition through a couple of thousand years, we’ll throw out all the hypotheticals here. Right. That system is arriveable by anybody with even a slightly below average IQ. And so it’s not so much that Hegel is a genius or that people who discover Hegel are geniuses because they have the same idea and then found Hegel. It’s that they had the same idea because any idiot can come up with it. And then they find Hegel and they go, oh, that guy, everybody thinks that guy was smart. And so maybe I’m smart too, or maybe I’m smarter than him because I came up with it by myself. And so that’s how that, I think with Lindsay, it’s like you can trace the through line through history. I’m like, nah, it’s an emergent pattern. It’s just a seductive worldview. It’s a very seductive worldview because you came up with it by yourself, it seems. And all these other smart people in the past, whether it’s Karl Marx or Hegel or whomever else, they also got there. So there’s gotta be something to it. Look at all these smart guys. This is why I keep saying they’re not smart, sorry. They’re actually not half right. They may have been fairly articulate, like Karl Marx doesn’t even make any sense. You read some of his quotes and you’re like, what? Like who would write such craziness? And it is crazy. Is the definition of Gnosticism that you’re using, this idea that the appearances and the common stories are all tricks and basically we have to transcend the tricks via secret knowledge. Is that the pattern you’re looking at? That’s what it leads to. I think the pattern is you become too egoic somehow. Doesn’t matter, there’s lots of paths to that, which you fall into the individualism, which grabs the materialism, the objectivism in it. I have a video on that because those three things go together somehow. I don’t know how, but they go together pretty reliably. And then that leads to the rest of this. Like the inevitable conclusion of that line of thought, and this is part of Lindsay’s point, is that the reason why there’s constraint is because there’s this God and he’s constraining you and you just have to break free through the hidden knowledge, right? And then once you get the hidden knowledge, you’ll be free of all this craziness. Well, I for one am happy for my constraints. I’m happy that God has put me in the constraint of time so that my whole life doesn’t happen to me all at once because I think that would be very confusing. Happy that I’ve got the constraint of space so I don’t have to try and be everywhere at all times. I could just be here. Yeah, and our span is 70 years, or 80 for those who are strong. And I think that’s gonna be long enough. And speaking of things that are long enough, I’m starting to get pretty close to my bedtime here. So we’ll go ahead and wrap this live stream up. Valerie, it was a delight to have you on. And I wish you all the best in your anthology project on the Bridges of Meeting Writings Club. Thank you very much. And thank you for having me on. And I’m thrilled I was able to join. I’ll try to keep an eye out for when you’re doing more of these. Maybe I’ll have some interesting books that I can share. Every Sunday night at 7.30 Central. Oh, really? I try, yeah, I’m all about regularity, you know. We go for two hours. Okay, cool. I’ll stick to my calendar. I’ll put it in my calendar and see if I can plot it in. Sometimes I’m busy, but sometimes I’m not. Whoever shows up, I’m happy to talk as long as I’m not sitting here talking to myself. I don’t have Jacob’s patience to sit on an empty live stream. Well, thank you very much, Father Eric. And always good to see you, Mark. And I wish you both a good week and a good evening. Good night, God bless you all. Good night. God bless.