Speaker 1: Thank you for joining me on a commitment to reality.
Speaker 1: I had a fantastic conversation with Frederica Matthews Green and
Speaker 1: I can't wait for you to hear it right now,
Speaker 1: all right, Frederica.
Speaker 2: Hie Hi, Dave, it's good to see you.
Speaker 1: Again, So good to see you. I'm so excited to
Speaker 1: do this, and I'm so excited to do this with you.
Speaker 1: Before we start, I just want to start by thanking
Speaker 1: God for you.
Speaker 2: Yes, thank you, Thank you, dear Lord.
Speaker 1: And from the moment that we met, you've been so
Speaker 1: encouraging to me. If I ever have any questions, You're
Speaker 1: gracious with your time, and I couldn't think of a
Speaker 1: better person to start this journey with.
Speaker 2: Well, thank you, Dave. I'm honored that you would choose
Speaker 2: me to start the journey. I hope I can be
Speaker 2: as good as you apparently think I am.
Speaker 1: We'll see now, and I had a different way that
Speaker 1: I wanted to start, but just out of curiosity, what
Speaker 1: went through your mind when you saw the phrase a
Speaker 1: commitment to reality?
Speaker 2: I thought, I'm not sure what that means. I thought
Speaker 2: as an Orthodox person, I guess actually, as almost any
Speaker 2: Christian these days, we are seeing the decline of scientism,
Speaker 2: as if science cancels God, that idea is on its
Speaker 2: way out. But unfortunately, the new idea coming in is
Speaker 2: people are crazy about going to haunt houses, using tarot
Speaker 2: cards and crazy things like that. So what we would
Speaker 2: hope as Christians is to draw them to actual reality,
Speaker 2: where the spiritual realm is definitely real, and it infuses
Speaker 2: our entire material realm. It's around us all the time.
Speaker 2: Evil forces are seeking to influence us. It's good to
Speaker 2: be aware of that. So when I think of reality,
Speaker 2: I think that's what reality is. And here we have
Speaker 2: the whole culture on this kind of making this sudden
Speaker 2: turn from science as God to anything goes and let's
Speaker 2: play around with it. And we're trying to halt them
Speaker 2: right there in that foreigner and say, let's pay attention
Speaker 2: to reality. Let's make sure you know what you're getting into.
Speaker 2: Is that what you had in mind, because as I
Speaker 2: said at first of that, I'm not sure what that means.
Speaker 2: I'm just guessing that's what you mean.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Well, there's a lot there. More than anything, I
Speaker 1: think the vital word is commitment, because reality exists whether
Speaker 1: you accept it or not, and we live in this
Speaker 1: time where people are so scared to challenge somebody else's
Speaker 1: conception of reality. Right, You've got your truth and I
Speaker 1: have my truth, and to contradict your conception of truth
Speaker 1: is anathema. Yes, right, it's offensive. Right, And this whole
Speaker 1: thing where you know to be loving and kind is
Speaker 1: to accept. And as parents, both of us know that
Speaker 1: that's not always loving and kind. No, sometimes you need
Speaker 1: to rebuke with love, Yeah, but to say that's not
Speaker 1: really how reality is.
Speaker 2: An analogy that I often go to is if you
Speaker 2: have a friend or relative whom you really love and
Speaker 2: they smoke cigarettes, there's an appropriate time to rebuke. You
Speaker 2: will be doing that in love because you're concerned for them,
Speaker 2: but they are You can name something they're doing that
Speaker 2: is harming. So I feel the same way about encountering
Speaker 2: someone who's using a Weiji board or trying to predict
Speaker 2: the future. They're doing something that's dangerous. As you say, though,
Speaker 2: it's offensive when you call that out, and when you
Speaker 2: deny that everybody can have their own reality. I wonder
Speaker 2: if it'll just take tragedy, you know, Is it just
Speaker 2: going to take repeated tragedy for people to understand how
Speaker 2: dangerous this whole field is and apparently that that's the
Speaker 2: situation that was going on in the time of the
Speaker 2: early Church in the Roman Empire, and the thing that
Speaker 2: was so distinctive about Christians was that evil spirits obeyed
Speaker 2: them and then in the name of Jesus' evil spirits
Speaker 2: would flee. But they were already at least to the
Speaker 2: point where they recognize there are such a thing as
Speaker 2: evil spirits, and our culture is not quite good in
Speaker 2: there yet. I think they will sad to say, yeah.
Speaker 1: So, like I said, the emphasis being on commitment was
Speaker 1: what really drew me in and the phrase caught in
Speaker 1: my head a couple of years ago. Reality exists and
Speaker 1: we need to commit to it because if we don't,
Speaker 1: you know, there's no limit to the ridiculousness of how
Speaker 1: our lives will be. And I think we're seeing that
Speaker 1: on some level in modern culture, kind of the listlessness,
Speaker 1: you know, when you live outside of reality, you know.
Speaker 1: I feel like I don't think it's out of bounds
Speaker 1: to say that there's a collective unease that we're all experiencing,
Speaker 1: that we all kind of can tell that something's not
Speaker 1: quite right. And I think that my assessment is that
Speaker 1: we have lost touch with reality.
Speaker 2: Now, as you're talking about this, I think it actually
Speaker 2: connects to the epidemic of loneliness. That is, if everybody
Speaker 2: has their own personal reality and they're going to be
Speaker 2: defensive about that and proud about that, they are essentially
Speaker 2: rejecting community reality. And that's what you mean by commitment
Speaker 2: that it's not just a commitment to my own imaginary reality.
Speaker 2: It's that you and I are facing the same reality.
Speaker 2: And you know, we can say do you see this
Speaker 2: going on? And you say, yeah, I see that too.
Speaker 2: That because we have the mind of Christ, the News
Speaker 2: of Christ, we're going to see the same things. And
Speaker 2: I think that's the deeper The thing going on in
Speaker 2: our culture is people wanted to be independent and not
Speaker 2: be part of the community wanting to indulge them, and
Speaker 2: advertising just pushes this constantly. You know, you're this unique individual,
Speaker 2: so buy this mass produced product and prove how unique
Speaker 2: you are. It's just crazy, but they are prey to
Speaker 2: that because it feeds their pride, and I'm afraid it
Speaker 2: will take some hard lessons before they realize there actually
Speaker 2: is a real reality and we know it's real because
Speaker 2: we all share it, and then be attracted back to that.
Speaker 2: I think that's part of the problem. We're facing. Commitment
Speaker 2: to community reality, shared.
Speaker 1: Reality, something outside of yourself. You know, we're completely atomized.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, something that exists, just like the visual world
Speaker 2: out there that we can all agree on this. We
Speaker 2: hear the same things, our senses perceived the same things.
Speaker 2: The self indulgence is very, very attractive, but it's important
Speaker 2: to bond with others. It makes you human and forsaking
Speaker 2: loneliness to share that commitment to reality. Yeah, yeah, well
Speaker 2: there's a lot to explore.
Speaker 1: There is.
Speaker 2: What it's going to be a journey, So yeah, you'll
Speaker 2: be learning more and more about it that there's wisdom
Speaker 2: there in that little package.
Speaker 1: Well, we dove right in. But for anybody that's not
Speaker 1: familiar with you, I could sit here and read your
Speaker 1: Wikipedia and talk about your list of accomplishments and all
Speaker 1: the books that you've written, and they're wonderful. But I
Speaker 1: also find that to be slightly reductive. I always felt
Speaker 1: very uncomfortable with the American conception of when you meet somebody, Okay,
Speaker 1: you start with name, but then the second question is
Speaker 1: what do you do too? As though that's who you are? Yeah,
Speaker 1: and what you've done, what you've accomplished, is noteworthy, but
Speaker 1: I don't know that that's exactly what you would contextualize
Speaker 1: as who you are. So if you could introduce yourself
Speaker 1: to the audience, what's your story?
Speaker 2: I've always felt a little sympathy to that question what
Speaker 2: do you do? Because I think it what it really
Speaker 2: means is what are you interested in? What do you like,
Speaker 2: what attracts you, and what you do to make money
Speaker 2: and pay the bills may not be that thing and
Speaker 2: may be something totally different. So if you if the
Speaker 2: question were something like what is dear to your heart?
Speaker 2: I would say, for me, it's the Lord Jesus Christ.
Speaker 2: I was very antagonistic to Christian faith in college and
Speaker 2: in high school, and I had a very dramatic conversion
Speaker 2: where I was when I was touring Europe. I was
Speaker 2: in a church. I looked at a statue of Jesus,
Speaker 2: and you know, he just spoke to my heart so
Speaker 2: suddenly and so profoundly that I'm like, I'm like an addict,
Speaker 2: I like I need more Jesus all the time. And
Speaker 2: I realized that that was not only a miracle, but
Speaker 2: that somehow changed too. I was what I care about
Speaker 2: what I love, what's dear to my hearts. It was
Speaker 2: like being struck by lightning, I guess. And so the
Speaker 2: thing that's most important to me is the Lord Jesus
Speaker 2: Christ and getting closer to him. You know, I am
Speaker 2: not just reading about Hi'm not just reading theology, but
Speaker 2: somehow in my prayer life getting closer and closer and
Speaker 2: closer and imbibing more and more of His presence. I
Speaker 2: really am an addict, I guess. So that's the most
Speaker 2: dear thing to my heart. And then second would be
Speaker 2: from the time, even when I was a kid, I
Speaker 2: knew I wanted to be a writer. I just loved writing.
Speaker 2: Anytime a school assignment required it, I loved words. I
Speaker 2: left learning more words and learning what they need. Then,
Speaker 2: I guess from the time I was twelve, I knew
Speaker 2: professional writers what I want to do, and I've been
Speaker 2: blessed that I was able to do that. As you
Speaker 2: were saying, I've written eleven books and updated my vita here.
Speaker 2: I can't believe this, really, but when you count them
Speaker 2: all up, I've published eight hundred and ninety five essays
Speaker 2: in The Washington Post, the Philadelphia Inquirer, Smithsonian almost got
Speaker 2: something in the New York Times once, but just about
Speaker 2: all of this done. Yeah, well that's true. And the
Speaker 2: editor filmed me and said, I really worked for this,
Speaker 2: and I'm very disappointed. It was an essay that was
Speaker 2: published by National Review eventually, and the title is Let's
Speaker 2: have more taine Pregnancy, And so with that attention getting titled,
Speaker 2: you'll find it on my website, frederickamging dot com. I
Speaker 2: had so much fun writing. I always had, so that
Speaker 2: is my primary public identity. And I've also done a
Speaker 2: huge amount of public speaking, almost seven hundred events. I
Speaker 2: don't want to do as much as that. I'm old,
Speaker 2: and you know what it is. It's not the speaking,
Speaker 2: it's the airports. I've just come to hate air and
Speaker 2: now I live in a tiny town with a tiny
Speaker 2: airport and it's even worse. So writing and speaking kind
Speaker 2: of went together. And speaking was great because I try
Speaker 2: out things on an audience and see how they responded.
Speaker 2: So those are the things I do. But the thing
Speaker 2: I love the most is this incessant attraction to know
Speaker 2: Jesus better, and the Jesus Prayer has been an enormous
Speaker 2: help for that. It has changed and changed over the years,
Speaker 2: and I've learned more and more about how to get
Speaker 2: closer to Jesus.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you've used both of your gifts, writing and speaking
Speaker 1: to share that passion, and you really do have a
Speaker 1: gift for both. I was introduced to you first through
Speaker 1: your books and then through your person and then some speaking.
Speaker 1: And I've joked to you that you could read the
Speaker 1: phone Book and it would be at the very least comforting. Smoothie.
Speaker 2: People tell me I have a comforting voice. Thanks, PETERA. Goad.
Speaker 2: I'm glad I do. I When I first met you,
Speaker 2: it was at your dad's chrismation, and it took you
Speaker 2: a few more years and your sister and but I
Speaker 2: was there for that crismation. When I met you, I
Speaker 2: just sensed that I think. I came home and I
Speaker 2: told my husband that son named Dave, he has a
Speaker 2: lot on the ball. You know, he's going to really
Speaker 2: produce something and expand and be really worth listening to.
Speaker 2: So I saw that in you from the first time
Speaker 2: we met, as busy as that begend was.
Speaker 1: Thank you for saying that. I appreciate it. I want
Speaker 1: to start by telling you a story. It has to
Speaker 1: do with podcasting. Years ago, when podcasts were a little
Speaker 1: bit less ubiquitous than they are now. There weren't as many,
Speaker 1: and so I remember I listened to Tim Ferris and
Speaker 1: his podcast, and you know, generally speaking, you know what
Speaker 1: you're getting. And then an episode came through and it
Speaker 1: was Tim Ferris with Glenn Beck, and I thought to myself,
Speaker 1: I don't want to listen to this. I hate Glenn Beck.
Speaker 1: And then I started to think, well, I don't really
Speaker 1: even know Glen Beck, but I've seen him on TV.
Speaker 1: He's kind of angry looking and yelling or frantic about something.
Speaker 1: I've seen his face plastered on books as I walked
Speaker 1: through the airport, and he has this smarmy look. And
Speaker 1: why would I listen to a podcast with Glenn Beck?
Speaker 1: But I did, and an interesting thing happened. I don't
Speaker 1: remember much of the podcast in terms of what they
Speaker 1: talked about or the substance, and I remember thinking, Wow,
Speaker 1: I had completely made a caricature of this person. And
Speaker 1: some of that is his own fault, because he's a
Speaker 1: public person, and that part of that is a caricature
Speaker 1: a mass. Yeah, But through the process of listening to
Speaker 1: him and his life, and I think that's the beauty
Speaker 1: of podcasts and conversation period person to person is you
Speaker 1: start to realize more and more about somebody. You start
Speaker 1: to see their humanity as opposed to the caricature. And
Speaker 1: as the process of listening to him played out, this
Speaker 1: idea of him started to change in my mind and
Speaker 1: I started to develop a warmth to the point where
Speaker 1: now if I see him, I still don't know that
Speaker 1: much about him, but his face pops up on the
Speaker 1: internet here there on Twitter, and I don't feel that
Speaker 1: same disdain, even though I don't remember much of what
Speaker 1: he said, although I do remember one thing, and I
Speaker 1: want to ask you it. Because I listened to him,
Speaker 1: my whole view changed, which is the benefit of actually
Speaker 1: listening to people instead of just projecting what you think
Speaker 1: they are. Yeah, and he said something, And for years
Speaker 1: after that it was one of those questions that when
Speaker 1: I met somebody for the first time, I thought, Okay,
Speaker 1: well this is really incisive. This gets to the core
Speaker 1: of who somebody is. He said, I like to ask
Speaker 1: people how is your soul? So, Frederica, how is your soul?
Speaker 2: It's a wonderful question. My soul is content, and my
Speaker 2: soul is joyous because my prayer times just get better
Speaker 2: and better. I've gotten to the point where I have
Speaker 2: I don't know how many prayer times in a day,
Speaker 2: but in the middle of the afternoon, in the middle
Speaker 2: of the night, I get up and say the Jesus Prayer,
Speaker 2: with the Prayer of and all the other ones. It's
Speaker 2: like I'm always being brought back into the presence of
Speaker 2: the Lord, and I love him so much, so that
Speaker 2: gives me contentment. Other than that, things in my life
Speaker 2: and my family, my health, oh pretty good. I feel
Speaker 2: like I'm being given time to prepare for debility and
Speaker 2: maybe dementia, and I don't know what I'm going on
Speaker 2: a ride that the Lord's going to take me on.
Speaker 2: So at seventy three, I'm looking down the years and
Speaker 2: you know, maintaining the strength to go wherever he wants
Speaker 2: to take me. So yeah, contentment, I think is the
Speaker 2: main thing.
Speaker 1: And it's interesting because I started to think about that question,
Speaker 1: or I started to think about Glenn Beck in that situation,
Speaker 1: and that situation of being exposed to somebody and having
Speaker 1: your mind changed through actually listening to them, and you know,
Speaker 1: it's funny, I completely forgot the question. For years. I
Speaker 1: would ask people, how is your soul?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: And it had morphed in my mind to a question
Speaker 1: that you answered when I asked, who are you? What's
Speaker 1: your story? A question that what I remembered him saying
Speaker 1: was what makes your heart sing?
Speaker 2: Hum?
Speaker 1: And I used to ask people that quite a bit
Speaker 1: as well, because I think, you know, okay, yeah, you
Speaker 1: might do this to pay your bills, but what makes
Speaker 1: your heart sing?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: And then the follow up question was what breaks your heart?
Speaker 1: So you answered what makes your heart saying without me asking.
Speaker 1: I wonder if you'd answered the second part, what breaks
Speaker 1: your heart?
Speaker 2: What breaks my heart is usually hearing of someone else's trouble,
Speaker 2: and sometimes I feel like I hear something. And first
Speaker 2: time I met my new GP, my PCP, here in
Speaker 2: the mountains of Tennessee, I was sitting waiting for her,
Speaker 2: sitting on the table using my prayer rope, and when
Speaker 2: she came in, to my vast surprise, she had a
Speaker 2: prayer rope around her wrist and I said, you're wearing
Speaker 2: a prayer rope and she said yes, A friend gave
Speaker 2: it to me at my husband's funeral. And it hit
Speaker 2: me so hard, it was like a donkey kicked me.
Speaker 2: In the chest and I just went, oh, And I mean,
Speaker 2: she must have thought I was a nut, but I
Speaker 2: genuinely couldn't speak for a minute. I just felt so
Speaker 2: much pain over that, and I do think it took
Speaker 2: a little a few more visits before she realized I
Speaker 2: was actually not an insane person. But that's what breaks
Speaker 2: my heart. Things like that break my heart. Cruelty, you know,
Speaker 2: breaks my heart when I read about it, and especially
Speaker 2: I worry about the perpetrator and the state of their soul,
Speaker 2: and I pray that God will bring them to repentance.
Speaker 2: It's more things like that. It's more like real people
Speaker 2: or incidents than the state of culture. Because there's good
Speaker 2: things as well as bad things happening all the time,
Speaker 2: and there's so many how to clismic things approaching. We
Speaker 2: don't know which one is going to hit first. It
Speaker 2: may make all the other concerns, you know, just wipes
Speaker 2: them away. They won't matter anymore. So I don't worry
Speaker 2: about the big things. My heart breaks over these incidents
Speaker 2: and these human beings.
Speaker 1: One thing that I do want to talk to you about.
Speaker 1: It might be possible that you haven't seen it, but
Speaker 1: I think that you agree based on what you said
Speaker 1: about the atomization the loneliness. I think something that's connected
Speaker 1: to that is that we've experienced a large degree of
Speaker 1: social atrophy that we don't even know how to interact anymore. Now.
Speaker 1: I loathe small talk. I cannot stand small talk, and
Speaker 1: I think anybody who's meta hanograph understands that we don't
Speaker 1: like talking about the weather or anything inconsequential. We like
Speaker 1: to get straight to the big things in life, the
Speaker 1: existential questions. But I miss small talk because when I'm
Speaker 1: in the grocery store, I feel like people can't even
Speaker 1: look at you. I mean, cashiers don't look at you,
Speaker 1: or they don't you ask them a simple question, and
Speaker 1: they feel a sense of panic that they have to
Speaker 1: interact with another person. I've experienced this so often that
Speaker 1: I feel confident saying it. I'll be pushing the buggy
Speaker 1: Southerners call it the cart in the grocery store and
Speaker 1: someone will be standing there needing to get past, but
Speaker 1: they just freeze. Historically speaking, I feel like we would
Speaker 1: use words like excuse me or may I get past you,
Speaker 1: but people just freeze and they stare. And I feel
Speaker 1: that palpably as a sign of this social atrophy that
Speaker 1: we're experiencing, that we can't even talk to each other
Speaker 1: like that, and I fear what that means. If we
Speaker 1: can't even talk about small things, how are we able
Speaker 1: to talk about the big things in life, the big problems.
Speaker 2: Yes, and unfortunately people do talk about the big problems
Speaker 2: in great ignorance and contentiously, and it just makes everything worse.
Speaker 2: But they don't know how to relate to another human
Speaker 2: being and have an open conversation where you're willing to
Speaker 2: take in what the other person is saying. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: I have seen that and worried about it less so
Speaker 2: now that I live in Tennessee and in a little
Speaker 2: town in Appalachia and there is more interaction. We had
Speaker 2: a funeral. Leaving the church and going the twenty minutes
Speaker 2: to the cemetery, we saw other cars pull over for us.
Speaker 2: We saw men get out of their car and take
Speaker 2: off their baseball cap and hold it over their hearts.
Speaker 2: I never saw that in Baltimore, never err and even
Speaker 2: it's a divided highway, even on the other side of
Speaker 2: the road, they were doing pulling over to show respect
Speaker 2: for funeral procession. As we went to the cemetery, it
Speaker 2: still exists in some places, and we do get the
Speaker 2: chatty you know, cashiers who want to interact and have
Speaker 2: things they want to tell you. And that's probably one
Speaker 2: of the last islands where this still exists. It's the screens,
Speaker 2: isn't it. It's people looking at their screens too much.
Speaker 2: And something I noticed early, even in the nineties before phones,
Speaker 2: when it was just computer screens, is that what you
Speaker 2: see on the computer is so much more exciting than
Speaker 2: what you see in your surrounding world, and so much
Speaker 2: more authoritative, it seems. And you're seeing movie stars and
Speaker 2: famous people, and they're interacting and having conversations, and when
Speaker 2: you look away from the computer screen, it was all
Speaker 2: so dull and familiar and pointless. Really, people in your
Speaker 2: house you see them all the time, the people in
Speaker 2: the grocery store. They're just the same as yesterday and
Speaker 2: last week and last year. So I think there's something
Speaker 2: about the draw of the Internet that is just so
Speaker 2: much more vivid than exciting the daily life that has
Speaker 2: seduced people into putting all their energy there in their masks.
Speaker 2: You know, their persona and even more than their work,
Speaker 2: you know. I wonder if that's the case, is when
Speaker 2: people think of who are you really? Their work doesn't
Speaker 2: really matter that much. For many people, they don't get
Speaker 2: to earn money at the thing they really love. We
Speaker 2: who do should honor that and respect that. Well.
Speaker 1: On the internet is one place where people aren't afraid
Speaker 1: to talk.
Speaker 2: Well, that's that's very true, and they get into arguments
Speaker 2: so fast, you know. I used to do a lot
Speaker 2: of speaking and a lot of media on the abortion
Speaker 2: issue as a pro life representative, and I never got
Speaker 2: One time I was on CNN and it was a
Speaker 2: half hour show that had commercial interruptions, and I was
Speaker 2: in the studio and everybody else was in a studio
Speaker 2: somewhere remotely, and whenever there was a commercial, the producer
Speaker 2: would come in and say, doesn't that make you really angry?
Speaker 2: Don't you want to just challenge her? Like, just come
Speaker 2: right back at her and challenge what she said. And
Speaker 2: I didn't do that. You know, I was not going
Speaker 2: to do that. I had the idea that the audience
Speaker 2: was interested in hearing a conversation between two people who
Speaker 2: disagreed on an important concept, an important topic that they're
Speaker 2: both very well informed on. I had that illusion that
Speaker 2: that's what it was all about. But no, she was right.
Speaker 2: They wanted to your argument. If they're clicking through the
Speaker 2: five hundred channels, what's exciting is seeing people who are angry.
Speaker 2: I just was not cut out to that. So I
Speaker 2: think that is the model people follow on the internet
Speaker 2: most of the time is get in there. And I'm
Speaker 2: sure you've seen the little meme where the guy is
Speaker 2: this computer and he calls to his wife says, I'll
Speaker 2: be there in a minute. Somebody is being wrong on
Speaker 2: the internet.
Speaker 1: I did want to talk to you about your history
Speaker 1: with abortion, but not talk about abortion, but more so
Speaker 1: how we can't talk about anything anymore without getting incensed.
Speaker 1: I mean, a couple of weeks ago, my wife and
Speaker 1: I were sitting and we were talking to somebody on speakerphone,
Speaker 1: and she started to say something about abortion or her
Speaker 1: view on some issue that's politically charged, and I remember
Speaker 1: going and what what? I don't get, I don't care who,
Speaker 1: I don't care, And I just I feel like we've
Speaker 1: experienced that so much. Even you know, we lived in
Speaker 1: a condo when we first got married that faced a courtyard,
Speaker 1: and let's say we were exposed. Anything we said could
Speaker 1: be heard by fifteen twenty different condos at the same time,
Speaker 1: if they were listening well, and if we're talking about
Speaker 1: you know, who won the game last week? Okay, full volume,
Speaker 1: but then certain topics take the volume down a little
Speaker 1: bit and look around, look over your shoulder. And I
Speaker 1: don't know where we go as a society if we're
Speaker 1: constantly thinking that way. How can we talk to each
Speaker 1: other without dehumanizing one another. And the reason I wanted
Speaker 1: to bring up the abortion topic with you is you
Speaker 1: changed your mind? Yes, yes, How do we change our minds?
Speaker 1: And why is it so hard to change our minds?
Speaker 2: Gosh? I wonder if the attachment to being right and
Speaker 2: believing you are right, because that imagine somebody opposing you
Speaker 2: and hating you, trying to drag you away. That makes
Speaker 2: us more polarized in our thinking. And then because you're
Speaker 2: clinging to this rightness and there's only you know, one
Speaker 2: or two, there's only black or white, there's only two possibilities,
Speaker 2: no subtlety. If you step back from your intense position
Speaker 2: on something, you're just in free fall and enemies are
Speaker 2: attacking you. I think maybe there's more fear about being
Speaker 2: open minded than there was then. And of course I've
Speaker 2: noticed that you have too that it seems like people
Speaker 2: who hold progressive or even woke opinions feel quite free
Speaker 2: to express their opinions and those week conservatives, you know,
Speaker 2: who have to hold back. I read a column in
Speaker 2: the Washington Examiner by Rob Long, who was a TV producer.
Speaker 2: He was the producer of Cheers way back when. Now
Speaker 2: he is in seminary. He wants to be an Episcopal priest.
Speaker 2: So in as Colin, he said, I was meeting with
Speaker 2: an old friend and he has gotten into using psychedelic
Speaker 2: for a trauma healing, emotional healing, and so we were
Speaker 2: talking about this, and of course those drugs are illegal,
Speaker 2: but we were talking it full volume. We weren't ashamed
Speaker 2: of what we were saying. And then they asked me
Speaker 2: about seminary. And as I started to talk about my faith,
Speaker 2: I noticed that we both began talking much more quietly.
Speaker 2: You know, it's illegal to use these drugs, but it's
Speaker 2: perfectly legal to be a Christian. But we feel like
Speaker 2: that's the thing that we're not allowed to talk about.
Speaker 2: So that's that's another part of it. I think. In fact,
Speaker 2: I was talking to two friends who are more progressive,
Speaker 2: and I said, I read this really interesting thing in
Speaker 2: the Washington Examiner, and both of them said, oh, that's
Speaker 2: a conservative magazine. It was like, I was like, yeah,
Speaker 2: but that doesn't matter as far as this is consumer's column.
Speaker 2: But I felt like, you know, it's like cut them off,
Speaker 2: you know, wipe them off the table. They have nothing
Speaker 2: to say, they're probably lying. That's hard to feel like
Speaker 2: you're being silenced for some of the opinions that you hold.
Speaker 1: Yeah. No, And I think if I'm thinking back on
Speaker 1: the context of the conversation that I'm referencing with Emily
Speaker 1: my wife, I think it was after the Charlie Kirk
Speaker 1: assassination that was kind of a breaking point for her
Speaker 1: in terms of I'm not going to be quiet anymore.
Speaker 1: My wife is very mild mannered. She the last thing
Speaker 1: she would ever want to do is offend anybody. And
Speaker 1: it's not as though she's not a handograph by birth,
Speaker 1: so she doesn't need to get into the existential questions
Speaker 1: all of the time. Something about that situation and watching
Speaker 1: it play out for her kind of broke in a
Speaker 1: good way, kind of like the scales fell from her
Speaker 1: eyes and she realized that she was kind of being
Speaker 1: silenced in a way. That wasn't equal in terms of
Speaker 1: what she was able to share. You said, if you're
Speaker 1: talking about something that's illegal or something that's socially acceptable,
Speaker 1: let's say culturally acceptable in the broader sense, then yeah,
Speaker 1: go right ahead. But once you start talking about your
Speaker 1: faith or your views, whether let's say it's pro life
Speaker 1: versus pro choice, okay, the dominant cultural narrative is that
Speaker 1: pro choice is the socially acceptable, the cool thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the cool thing, because I think a lot of it
Speaker 1: comes down to influence. And I mean, like I said,
Speaker 1: this isn't an opportunity to litigate different views on abortion,
Speaker 1: but more so how we talk to each other. Even
Speaker 1: the Charlie Kirk became a social signifier of where you stood,
Speaker 1: whether you were conservative or progressive. But I did notice
Speaker 1: that a lot of people who normally wouldn't speak out
Speaker 1: started to speak out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that's I think that's the case. And
Speaker 2: that was when I decided that I would wear this
Speaker 2: cross every day. I always wore a little cross kind
Speaker 2: of tucked inside, but I'm gonna wear my beautiful cross
Speaker 2: just so anybody who looks at me they know I'm
Speaker 2: a Christian. And something similar happened to me. I was saying,
Speaker 2: that's what happened to me after the Charlie Kirk assassination.
Speaker 2: And I wondered, you know, so many Christians all over
Speaker 2: the country they had a similar kind of like after
Speaker 2: Bellis struck.
Speaker 1: It just keeps.
Speaker 2: Vibrating and we kept feeling that resonance. But the same
Speaker 2: thing happened after your dad's chrismation. Because the day he
Speaker 2: was Chris maiden. Do you remember the sermon? What a sermon?
Speaker 2: So late in the service, that was when he had
Speaker 2: your parents come up to be Chris Maiden, and then
Speaker 2: he preached this sermon. I never forgot, he said, early
Speaker 2: early this morning. Most of you probably have not heard
Speaker 2: about it. In Egypt, there was a bust of Christian
Speaker 2: Orthodox Christians who were on their way on Palm Sunday
Speaker 2: on the way to the monastery of Saint Anthony to
Speaker 2: celebrate and to hear a service.
Speaker 1: And when they.
Speaker 2: Got there, the bus was attacked and most of them
Speaker 2: were killed. And he said, that is the church the
Speaker 2: Hanographs are joining. It's not about Greek cooking, it's not
Speaker 2: Greek ethnic culture, it's not about Greek dancing. It is
Speaker 2: about following the Lord Jesus Christ, wherever you lead you,
Speaker 2: and it may be leading you into danger, and you
Speaker 2: have to be willing to go there. It was off,
Speaker 2: you know, fire breathing sermony my hairstand on end. So
Speaker 2: as soon as I got home, I thought, I want
Speaker 2: to get a tattoo on my wrists like Egyptian Christians do.
Speaker 2: Coptic Christians have a tattoo made or inked hated on
Speaker 2: their children's right hand anywhere from your wrist all the
Speaker 2: way up your arm or your hand, and it is
Speaker 2: to identify them as a Christian. This is an ancient
Speaker 2: habit because it used to be that Muslims would abduct
Speaker 2: Christian boys and carry them away and girls too to
Speaker 2: be slaves, to be sex slaves. Who knew what terrible
Speaker 2: thing they would go through, but they would always have
Speaker 2: that cross, and they would always know they were baptized
Speaker 2: and that they were Christians, no matter what else happened
Speaker 2: in their life. So I really wanted They still do this.
Speaker 2: All Coptic Christians have a cross tattoo, and so I
Speaker 2: got mine because I wanted to, you know, stand in
Speaker 2: solidarity with them. I didn't want to ask my husband
Speaker 2: if I could do this. I didn't want to tell
Speaker 2: him I had a time because I knew he would say, no,
Speaker 2: you know, he's just more like that than I am.
Speaker 2: So I waited till he was out of the country,
Speaker 2: and I had it done while he was in Italy,
Speaker 2: and then I put it on Facebook, and then I
Speaker 2: told him in an email and he was like, oh, wow,
Speaker 2: look at that photo. It looks beautiful. So that was
Speaker 2: how I got away with it. Every once in a while,
Speaker 2: I think I want to do something else of this,
Speaker 2: put something inside it. He says, no, no, you don't
Speaker 2: need to do anything else. But I did that because
Speaker 2: of the day that you're dead. Was Chris mate it.
Speaker 2: It had just as much impact on me as the
Speaker 2: Charlie Kurr murder. And it seems that we're seeing so
Speaker 2: many murders of Christians. It really seems like the rhetoric
Speaker 2: about violence is going up that one more step. We
Speaker 2: just what can we do except to march into the
Speaker 2: future as courageously as we can.
Speaker 1: Well, And it's a wake up call that and here
Speaker 1: we've been afraid of a little side eye when we
Speaker 1: share our faith a little too loudly at a restaurant
Speaker 1: or of our you know, and so it is a
Speaker 1: wake up call to be proud of your faith, to
Speaker 1: be proud of what you believe in, and to really
Speaker 1: to actually believe that you can come they why you believe.
Speaker 1: Like I grew up surrounded by apologetics, you know, the
Speaker 1: defense of the faith, and I for the longest time
Speaker 1: I loathe it and I still hold it at arm's
Speaker 1: length because sometimes it can be weaponized. And that's what
Speaker 1: I experienced so often growing up. Is and you see
Speaker 1: these people and this is something that you told me,
Speaker 1: you said, theologian it means two different things. Often in
Speaker 1: the West and in the East. Yes, and the West
Speaker 1: a theologian is somebody who knows about God. And the
Speaker 1: East a theologian is somebody who knows God. Yes, and
Speaker 1: you quite often you experience that without them even saying
Speaker 1: anything about God. It's like the definition of pornography. You
Speaker 1: know it when you see it, Yes, And you know,
Speaker 1: I often use that, you know, whether it's crass or
Speaker 1: not to define whenever I've met let's say it's a
Speaker 1: monk or a holy man, or even a lay person
Speaker 1: who just you can tell that they know God. They
Speaker 1: might not be able to give you a systematic theology.
Speaker 1: But you meet them and you say, I know that
Speaker 1: they've been praying. I know. I just know that they
Speaker 1: know God, whether they know about Him in a way
Speaker 1: that's acceptable to theologians or apologists. Yes, and that's why
Speaker 1: I held it at arm's length for so long. But
Speaker 1: you talk about a commitment to reality. That is where
Speaker 1: apologetics and understanding your faith is not. It's not blind, right,
Speaker 1: we do have a reason to believe, and as I've
Speaker 1: gotten older, I've started to understand that and accept that
Speaker 1: and kind of wear it outside of my shirt.
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I think about that sometimes
Speaker 2: that I tried from many years to figure out what
Speaker 2: is the difference that I since between Orthodoxy and Catholic, Protestant, Evangelical,
Speaker 2: non denomination, the whole thing. I mean, there's a way
Speaker 2: in which all of Western Christianity is alike, and it's
Speaker 2: something that Eastern Christianity doesn't have, you know, It's like, gosh,
Speaker 2: we've been separated Eastern Orthodox from Oriental Orthodox like cops
Speaker 2: Coptic three times longer than Catholic and Protestant have been separated,
Speaker 2: and yet we are so much one with them. And
Speaker 2: when I need other Oriental Orthodox. I know it's the
Speaker 2: same God. I can just feel it. In America, there's
Speaker 2: just such a wide variety of theology and styles of
Speaker 2: worship and all that, and yet there is something that
Speaker 2: they all have in common. I tried so long to
Speaker 2: figure out what it went, What is it that I'm sensing?
Speaker 2: And I finally decided it's that in the West they
Speaker 2: separated thinking from holiness. And it's just what you said,
Speaker 2: a theologian to somebody who knows a whole bunch about God,
Speaker 2: and they can talk about God, but they don't necessarily
Speaker 2: have to be a holy person. They don't have to
Speaker 2: be prayer. Thank God. In the East, we had all
Speaker 2: these ways of fencing in the faith so that it
Speaker 2: wouldn't change that we never got to that point. In
Speaker 2: the West, there was the Reformation, and it became all
Speaker 2: about talking about God and arguing about God and use it,
Speaker 2: weaponizing apologetics and proving that you're right. It became so thinking.
Speaker 2: Even before the Reformation, going back to the time of Aquinas,
Speaker 2: you probably know the story that Aquinas had been writing
Speaker 2: so much. Theology just very heady, very complex. It is
Speaker 2: still the official theology of the Catholic Church. Is what
Speaker 2: Aquinas worked out. And yet in the last month of
Speaker 2: his life, on Saint Nicholas Day, December sixth, he was
Speaker 2: at the mass, the liturgy, and something happened to him.
Speaker 2: He had some kind of revelation, and after that he
Speaker 2: refused to do any more writing. He never wrote another
Speaker 2: word in his life. And his assistant kept telling him,
Speaker 2: you need to finish, you know, the works you're writing on.
Speaker 2: You need to get this done and complete it. And
Speaker 2: he said, I can't. Everything I've ever written now seems
Speaker 2: to me like straw. And that's it, really, you know,
Speaker 2: he came to understand. And I think in the West
Speaker 2: it's like and what a brilliant guy was, and he
Speaker 2: was so humble. So now let's read more of the
Speaker 2: things he wrote. In Eastern Christianity, we look at that
Speaker 2: and say, thank God, thank God, he saw the beauty
Speaker 2: of the Lord. You know, he went to heaven embraced
Speaker 2: by the Lord and experiencing that wholeness. So it's, yeah,
Speaker 2: that difference between apologetics and rational thinking about theology versus
Speaker 2: trying to be a holy person. We in the West
Speaker 2: we tend to say it's it's head, it's intellect versus
Speaker 2: part which is emotion, and that's entirely wrong. That's not
Speaker 2: how humans are put together. But we despise emotion as
Speaker 2: it's not rational, you know, it's like sub push it down.
Speaker 2: It's not authoritative, it's not important. You know, the thinking
Speaker 2: is the important part. And it's so so crushingly wrong
Speaker 2: that that division occurred.
Speaker 1: Mm hmm when it's holistic. I mean, you talk about
Speaker 1: my dad's conversion and the story that kind of details
Speaker 1: that conversion is his book Truth matters, Life matters more.
Speaker 1: And I guess if you were to break it down,
Speaker 1: life essentially is that the feeling, the experience of God.
Speaker 1: That's not saying that truth does not matter, right, And
Speaker 1: I often I think about that a lot in terms
Speaker 1: of what a couin has said. Everything I've written is
Speaker 1: but straw, does that mean he wishes he never wrote it?
Speaker 1: I mean? And how do we handle that because it's
Speaker 1: it's like our past. Well, sometimes you don't want to
Speaker 1: wish that something didn't happen, but that's what got you
Speaker 1: to where you are, and that's what makes you, makes
Speaker 1: you who you are, and your experience and yeah, so
Speaker 1: it's it's complicated, but you.
Speaker 2: Know how interjected the whole thing about your your thinking,
Speaker 2: and then you're feeling. You know, what do you feel?
Speaker 2: And the tragedy that feeling got identified with emotions. I
Speaker 2: wont to point out that they're two different ways we
Speaker 2: use the word feel. We could say I feel happy,
Speaker 2: I feel dejected, I feel whatever. Talking about emotions, we
Speaker 2: could also say I feel this cup. This cup feels
Speaker 2: hard to me. I am experiencing the presence of this
Speaker 2: little cup here. And I asked somebody who read Japanese,
Speaker 2: what does this say? It was given to me by friend.
Speaker 2: It's all advertisements and even there's a phone number for
Speaker 2: a sushi restaurant in Tokyo. I thought it would be love, joy,
Speaker 2: all kinds of things like that, but that's all it is. Anyway,
Speaker 2: when we talk about feeling the presence of God, we're
Speaker 2: using it in the latter sense. We don't mean we're
Speaker 2: having emotions about God. I'm thinking about God and I
Speaker 2: get emotional. We mean, wow, that presence was there and
Speaker 2: I felt it, in the same sense that I can
Speaker 2: feel this cup. Yeah. And so that's a big problem
Speaker 2: I think is that we use the word feeling in
Speaker 2: two different ways. And one of the ways that people
Speaker 2: assume we mean. It is one that utterly discounts the
Speaker 2: feeling that we're talking about. So I try to use sense.
Speaker 2: I sense the presence of God. I perceive it, I
Speaker 2: am receiving something. I try to stress the reality of
Speaker 2: it and stay away from that word feeling because it
Speaker 2: just confuses things. I think I interrupted you. I'm sorry
Speaker 2: about that.
Speaker 1: I'm so glad you did all right.
Speaker 2: That.
Speaker 1: If there's something that I'm going to take away from
Speaker 1: our conversation, that's it's a huge thing. The devil's in
Speaker 1: the details. And that's such an important distinction, right, because
Speaker 1: emotions are unreliable. They don't always tell the.
Speaker 2: Full story so true, and they change.
Speaker 1: That's why the famous speech that I always give it
Speaker 1: at weddings is that love is a commitment. It's not
Speaker 1: a feeling, and it doesn't always give people the warm
Speaker 1: fuzzies initially. But I say, look, the way you feel
Speaker 1: is going to change, but your commitment to loving that's
Speaker 1: what you have to be dedicated to, which you have
Speaker 1: to say you make those decisions to love the person
Speaker 1: even when you don't feel that way. Let's say you're
Speaker 1: upset with them, No, I committed to love them and
Speaker 1: so it's a it's an important distinction.
Speaker 2: Yes, it really is. And it's that word commitment again,
Speaker 2: which means a lot to you, doesn't it. It's that
Speaker 2: solidity and knowing there's the one thing that guarantees that
Speaker 2: stability is that the person be stalwart and committed to
Speaker 2: what they believe, and that they will stick by it
Speaker 2: through thick and thin. This is reminding me of a
Speaker 2: very ancient prayer to the Virgin Mary that begins under
Speaker 2: your compassion, we take refuge theo Tokos. This is the
Speaker 2: earliest prayer addressing her. It was found on a little
Speaker 2: three by five papyrus in Egypt, and the papyrus states
Speaker 2: to two hundred and fifty, and so the prayer existed
Speaker 2: before the papyrus did. We don't know how early, and
Speaker 2: we still use it. The point I was going to
Speaker 2: make was what are we calling on when we call
Speaker 2: on her under your shelter, under your protection, under your power,
Speaker 2: under your tremendous ability as an intercessor. Now we say
Speaker 2: under your compassion, because that's where the commitment is. It
Speaker 2: is in her heart. She is dedicated to praying for
Speaker 2: us and to loving us. And we can confidently say
Speaker 2: by the fact that you are compassionate, that you have
Speaker 2: compassion for us. On the basis of that, we ask
Speaker 2: you to pray for us. We ask you to take
Speaker 2: care of us and to solicit the healing that we
Speaker 2: need or the protection that we need. That's the commitment thing.
Speaker 2: When people at the wedding reception, when you offer a toast,
Speaker 2: you're saying, it's the commitment that matters. There's emotion in that,
Speaker 2: but a married couple of their emotions are going to
Speaker 2: come and go over the decades. I've been married almost
Speaker 2: fifty two years now, and certainly I talk sometimes about
Speaker 2: the day that I was out of town for the
Speaker 2: weekend and my youngest son went off to college and
Speaker 2: I came home to an empty house except my husband,
Speaker 2: and that was one of those moments I thought, he
Speaker 2: is so boring. Is this going to be it? I mean,
Speaker 2: the kids, the teenagers, they were so interesting and so lively,
Speaker 2: and they brought so much new stuff into the house
Speaker 2: and new ideas, new music, and now it's just him
Speaker 2: and me.
Speaker 1: Oh no.
Speaker 2: Not long after after that, I ran into a guy
Speaker 2: who'd been married like sixty or seventy years, and he said,
Speaker 2: this is the best part of our marriage. We are
Speaker 2: more in love than ever and I am enjoying her
Speaker 2: more than I ever did. And this truly is the
Speaker 2: golden years of our married history. So that gave me
Speaker 2: something to think about, and in time it became true
Speaker 2: for me and for my husband as well. These are
Speaker 2: the best years of our marriage. But there sure was
Speaker 2: a time there where I doubted that. It just goes
Speaker 2: to show what you say about commitment, that no matter
Speaker 2: how I was feeling, no matter how my emotions changed,
Speaker 2: I had already made a decision. I wants her to
Speaker 2: Priest talk about. He was middle aged and he was
Speaker 2: getting off an airplane and got into a conversation with
Speaker 2: the stewardess and she invited him to come back to
Speaker 2: her hotel room. And he said when I told her, no,
Speaker 2: I didn't have to make that decision. I had already
Speaker 2: made that decision on my wedding day. It was already
Speaker 2: a done deal. And that's that stuck with me. You
Speaker 2: make that decision on your wedding day, and then the
Speaker 2: answer is always easy. You always know what it's going
Speaker 2: to be.
Speaker 1: Well, going back to the Aquinas conversation, real quick, I
Speaker 1: was just wondering how has your relationship to truth evolved
Speaker 1: over your life? And the bigger question is how important
Speaker 1: is getting it right.
Speaker 2: I'm bouncing off the end of that because of the
Speaker 2: getting it right, I've got it rollam many times in
Speaker 2: my writing and then my speaking and then my being
Speaker 2: interviewed and things like that. I've had to rethink things
Speaker 2: and I've learned work just like you with blund Back,
Speaker 2: discovering well, there's a whole human being there and I
Speaker 2: was giving him short shrist. I haven't always got it right,
Speaker 2: and so I can't blame that. That kind of getting
Speaker 2: right is at the top of my priority. I'm more
Speaker 2: wont to be in tune with the presence of the
Speaker 2: Lord and doing what he's calling me to do at
Speaker 2: that moment. And I'm also this might sound weird, but
Speaker 2: I'm also I'm open to being wrong. Like what the
Speaker 2: Lord is doing, it's huge, it's a symphonic it's involving
Speaker 2: so many people all over the world at the same time,
Speaker 2: and it might be my job to say the thing
Speaker 2: that's wrong that will crystallize for others. Wait a minute, well,
Speaker 2: now that doesn't sound right, and they bounce off of
Speaker 2: that and then they find the truth. I'm willing to
Speaker 2: be the person that gets proved wrong. You know, I'm
Speaker 2: willing to be the person that says the stupid thing
Speaker 2: because that, you know, the whole symphony. That might be
Speaker 2: my role at the moment, and that might be how
Speaker 2: God wants to use me.
Speaker 1: That's more comforting than you realize. Good because that's well,
Speaker 1: that's been a huge impediment to my moving forward with
Speaker 1: doing anything front facing. Is you know, I really take
Speaker 1: the weight of responsibility for putting anything out there is Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's and it doesn't come from a place of pride
Speaker 1: per se. It's just I don't want to say something
Speaker 1: that's wrong. Well, and I have such a fear of
Speaker 1: saying something that's wrong. And and what you just said
Speaker 1: is really enlightening in terms of, hey, maybe you'll be
Speaker 1: the crooked stick that guides somebody to the truth, you know,
Speaker 1: through something that you said that's incorrect, as long as
Speaker 1: you approach it with humility.
Speaker 2: As you were speaking, I was thinking about, you know,
Speaker 2: growing up with your dad, that idea of the inviolability
Speaker 2: of truth and that truth is is just so beautiful
Speaker 2: and it is on a pedestal. And we may be
Speaker 2: wrong right now, but we're getting closer to and we're
Speaker 2: discarded things that we thought that were wrong, and we're
Speaker 2: moving ahead. And your dad had to do that with
Speaker 2: some Chinese Christians, I know, you know, he apologized to
Speaker 2: them and he admitted that he had been wrong, and
Speaker 2: that almost reinforces the sense that it is important to
Speaker 2: get it right because the beauty of truth. And I
Speaker 2: think where my mind has evolved as an Orthodox Christian
Speaker 2: is that I see truth as something that is more
Speaker 2: collaborative and something that exists in the mind of God,
Speaker 2: and that he has all these Christians all over the
Speaker 2: world like a symphony, as I was saying, and we
Speaker 2: come together. We need each other, we need each other's feedback.
Speaker 2: Truth is not static, you know. I think in Western thought,
Speaker 2: truth is almost like a beautiful marble statue and it
Speaker 2: doesn't move, and it's cold, and it is the same
Speaker 2: through turn that it never changes. I don't I don't
Speaker 2: want to sound like I'm saying truth changes, but I
Speaker 2: want to say that it's alive and it changes like
Speaker 2: a forest, but the forest remains a forest. But because
Speaker 2: it's alive, you know, it's it's continually growing and shedding
Speaker 2: and then growing some more. It's beautiful, like the ocean,
Speaker 2: which is immense and full of life and also changing
Speaker 2: somehow that's part of its a liveness, and yet it
Speaker 2: stays the same. I am definitely not arguing, for you know,
Speaker 2: everybody has their own truth, or you know, truth is
Speaker 2: going to evolve and will understand it better. I mean
Speaker 2: I hate that. I hate that idea of truth evolves
Speaker 2: and we're smarter than people before, and the idea that
Speaker 2: we're standing on the shoulders of giants and so we see.
Speaker 2: I just think that's so egotistic and so narcissistic because
Speaker 2: we're saying, of course we see more than the giants
Speaker 2: did it. That's just so self flattered.
Speaker 1: I think about that a lot. I really do, because
Speaker 1: I as somebody who likes to ask these questions, and
Speaker 1: like I said, quite often I get pushback when I
Speaker 1: try to go too deep with somebody or to ask somebody,
Speaker 1: well do you believe in God? Well? How dare you?
Speaker 1: That's personal? Or or okay, you believe X, Y and Z.
Speaker 1: Let's let's press on that. Let's let's see if that
Speaker 1: structure holds right, Let's see what Okay, you said you
Speaker 1: believe X, but you can't believe X and Y simultaneously.
Speaker 1: Those are contradicting ideas. So the idea of pushing back
Speaker 1: on those things is culturally inappropriate a lot of the time.
Speaker 2: It's my reality.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, but historically speaking, I mean, you talk about
Speaker 1: standing on the shoulders of giants, and we think the
Speaker 1: way that I look at it that while that can
Speaker 1: be true and is true on some level, I think
Speaker 1: that we're a culture of people and I don't know
Speaker 1: what the time frame would be exactly, but we're born
Speaker 1: on third base and we think we hit a triple
Speaker 1: and you talk about the arrogance and the narciss We
Speaker 1: are standing on the shoulders of giants, but we think
Speaker 1: we're tall. We think it's all us, It's all about us.
Speaker 1: This is what I did as though, and in some
Speaker 1: ways I feel like we may have done less as
Speaker 1: a as a culture and as a society.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we certainly have less respect for morality, less respect
Speaker 2: for how humans should interact with each other and what
Speaker 2: we owe each other. You know, we definitely have no
Speaker 2: sense of owing anything to anybody anymore. But you know,
Speaker 2: when you talk about medical science, of course, every generation
Speaker 2: builds towards the next generation. My grandfather was a surgeon.
Speaker 2: I have some of his medical school books from the
Speaker 2: nineteen teens, and the obstetrics book says, never do a
Speaker 2: cesarean because ten percent of your cesarean subjects patients will die.
Speaker 2: And that was true, then you know that was reality.
Speaker 2: Thank god, we have cesareans now and they're quite reliable,
Speaker 2: and more of them are done than probably should be.
Speaker 2: But I see what you're saying, because there definitely is
Speaker 2: a way we are standing on the shoulders of giants.
Speaker 2: But I think partly that we think and history stops
Speaker 2: with us. Nobody is going to stand on our shoulders.
Speaker 2: You know, we're the top, We're the most brainy and
Speaker 2: brilliant and most advantage.
Speaker 1: Well, and it's where you put your emphasis. We live
Speaker 1: in an era that emphasizes science. You know, it's the
Speaker 1: materialist mindset. So in that sense, if you're progressing scientifically
Speaker 1: and technologically, if that's you're if the scientists and the
Speaker 1: tech knowledges or your high priests, then maybe that's true.
Speaker 1: But we've forgotten so much that makes us human. That
Speaker 1: is this is once again getting back to that is
Speaker 1: our reality. We are so much more than that. Yes,
Speaker 1: what do you think a secular myth is that obstructs reality.
Speaker 2: I think the inaccurate view of what science is and
Speaker 2: what science can do is a big problem for people
Speaker 2: encountering reality. Have you heard of, probably you have, the
Speaker 2: replication crisis. The replication crisis. I first read about this
Speaker 2: in the New Yorker and they were talking about a
Speaker 2: research scientist who had discovered something and it was published
Speaker 2: and everybody was so excited about it, and what a
Speaker 2: great new thing this is. I forget what the field was.
Speaker 2: And then a few years later he went back and
Speaker 2: ran the same experience experiment and he couldn't get the
Speaker 2: same result. He ran it over and over and over,
Speaker 2: and he kept getting different results. And then, as this
Speaker 2: article says, and as you can find on Wikipedia, this
Speaker 2: started happening everywhere that scientists cannot replicate the results of
Speaker 2: other scientists. It's like science is falling apart. And it
Speaker 2: says this started happening about twenty ten. I mean they
Speaker 2: can even date when it began. I recently read a
Speaker 2: quote from the scientists say saying about, you know, some
Speaker 2: startling new results, and he said, but the replication crisis
Speaker 2: is still going on, and we all just pretend that
Speaker 2: it isn't you know, We pretend that these startling new
Speaker 2: findings are reliable when probably they're not. So I think
Speaker 2: that I think this might be the equivalent of the
Speaker 2: Tower of Babble and God mixing up the languages. I
Speaker 2: think perhaps about twenty ten, God decided, Okay, I'm going
Speaker 2: to kick the stilts out from under science, and people
Speaker 2: still think that it's ultimate reality. That's what you have
Speaker 2: to go by, and gradually they will become aware of
Speaker 2: what scientists themselves you're already aware of, which is, there's
Speaker 2: a problem here, and somehow it's not reliable. We can
Speaker 2: run an experiment and get results, but we don't know
Speaker 2: if we'll get the same results next year. So I mean,
Speaker 2: as awful as that is, I'm kind of hoping that
Speaker 2: people begin losing confidence in science and that will be
Speaker 2: one more of the things that are causing this turn
Speaker 2: we talked about at the beginning, from believing everything can
Speaker 2: be objective and scientific, and then the way off and
Speaker 2: outer space where it's all about boards and tarot cards
Speaker 2: and somewhere in there being able to present the experience
Speaker 2: of Christianity, perhaps tragically, when people are dealing with evil
Speaker 2: spirits and their Uigi boards and tarot cards. They're not
Speaker 2: helping them. But the name of Jesus Christ can help.
Speaker 2: It can expel those evil spirits. It's going to be
Speaker 2: a very interesting ride over the next twenty years.
Speaker 1: I think, Yeah, I mean, how much of you engaged
Speaker 1: with AI?
Speaker 2: I hate AI. I think it's very dangerous and destructive.
Speaker 2: I think it may well have evil spirit roots. I
Speaker 2: have never used it voluntarily. I use Google a lot,
Speaker 2: and always at the top of the results it gives
Speaker 2: you the AI results. I try to discipline myself to
Speaker 2: scroll past that and get the results I would have
Speaker 2: gotten last year or the year before, and just do
Speaker 2: my best to work with that. I never want me
Speaker 2: contact with AI, but I know it's paying attention to me,
Speaker 2: and that it's using the things I write and say,
Speaker 2: and that I have no way to stop it from
Speaker 2: doing that. So yeah, I don't know if you feel
Speaker 2: as extremely that AI as I do. But I think
Speaker 2: it's a very bad thing, and I wish I could
Speaker 2: go somewhere where it doesn't exist. I think the damage
Speaker 2: it's going to cause is not at all visible yet,
Speaker 2: but we will find it well nigh irreversible and irresistible.
Speaker 2: That's what I worry about.
Speaker 1: Well, it's a worry that that I share on some level.
Speaker 1: It's part of the whole mission of this podcast. A
Speaker 1: commitment to reality is that AI is not reality, but
Speaker 1: it's becoming a reality for so many people. I'll tell
Speaker 1: you a story. It's actually I really will wonder what
Speaker 1: you think, but don't judge me. So we had this
Speaker 1: wonderful cat. Her name was Homegirl. She was somebody else's
Speaker 1: cat and they had to move and we found her
Speaker 1: on the internet and we brought this cat back home Girl.
Speaker 1: We were going to rename her, but once you get
Speaker 1: the name Homegirl, that's sticks. And she was just the
Speaker 1: greatest cat, so friendly with everybody. She was the neighborhood cat.
Speaker 1: But she was an outdoor I mean we indoor outdoor,
Speaker 1: but you could not remove the outdoor from her as
Speaker 1: hard as we tried. We tried to keep her inside.
Speaker 1: Now and so she came home, you know, maybe she
Speaker 1: usually came home every night. She came home after thirty
Speaker 1: six hours of being gone, and she had something going
Speaker 1: on with her. And the whole story of Homegirl is
Speaker 1: not necessary to this story. But long story short, she died,
Speaker 1: she came back and she had something wrong with her.
Speaker 1: And we waited and watched for a little bit, and
Speaker 1: then we took her to the vet and they said, oh,
Speaker 1: she should be fine in twenty four to forty eight hours.
Speaker 1: Here's a steroid and an antibiotic. And she died very
Speaker 1: viscerally in my arms. Emily and I came back from
Speaker 1: our anniversary dinner. She said, go check on homegirl, and
Speaker 1: I went to go check on her and I was
Speaker 1: holding her and she died and it was very gruesome.
Speaker 1: I mean it was primal. I mean she let out
Speaker 1: this scream and I was having a hard time processing
Speaker 1: what happened. And so I'm trying to figure out, Okay,
Speaker 1: what is it that happened? What did I just experience
Speaker 1: not emotionally but physiologically, And so I started to going
Speaker 1: to chat GPT and ask it questions and it is so,
Speaker 1: let's use the word interesting, interesting. How the developers have
Speaker 1: into the code or whatever, almost a feigned empathy that
Speaker 1: this must be so hard for you, and I'm sitting there, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's terrible, I mean it was awful, and giving suggestions
Speaker 1: on and you're thinking this is your fault, So yes,
Speaker 1: it is. I do feel that way, I feel like
Speaker 1: there's something that I could have done. Here's why, there's
Speaker 1: nothing that you could have done. Here's why it wasn't
Speaker 1: your fault. From a medical perspective, and I have to
Speaker 1: tell you it actually helped. And I sat there thinking,
Speaker 1: I had just read a book where the author was
Speaker 1: talking about a woman meeting with her pastor and talking
Speaker 1: about her prayer partner, and after a period of time,
Speaker 1: the pastor realized her prayer partner was chat gbt who.
Speaker 2: And so.
Speaker 1: You know, I laughed incredulously as I read that in
Speaker 1: the book. But then I experienced something strange, as I
Speaker 1: felt that encouragement from an automaton. And I still don't
Speaker 1: know quite how to grapple with that. Let's call it reality,
Speaker 1: but it certainly concerns me because I'd like to think
Speaker 1: that I'm a fairly well grounded, rooted in reality individual,
Speaker 1: and yet I experienced that, and it was real. It
Speaker 1: did make me, you know, oh, breathe a little easier,
Speaker 1: it be a little bit less hard on myself, and
Speaker 1: it kind of, like I said, it walked me through
Speaker 1: physiologically what happened. I think we think it was essentially
Speaker 1: a heart attack, and that there was some sort of
Speaker 1: an internal bleeding and so on some level was useful,
Speaker 1: and that's how we kind of have to try to
Speaker 1: whole it intension. A couple less than two years ago,
Speaker 1: we went to a conference in Athens on AI and transhumanism.
Speaker 1: And this conference was sponsored by or the Whole. They
Speaker 1: sponsored and created the conference Monks Monks on Mount Athos Wow.
Speaker 1: And clearly they're not on Mount Athos using AI, but
Speaker 1: out of care for the world, this is their their job.
Speaker 1: On some level, they felt like this is something that
Speaker 1: needs to be explored and addressed because it exists. We
Speaker 1: can't just look the other way. As much as because
Speaker 1: I share your sentiment, I mean when you talked about
Speaker 1: what it's like in your town and how you still
Speaker 1: have some of that small town cultural engagement, I really
Speaker 1: do feel like the answer to most things is I
Speaker 1: r L. As the kids say, in real life, it's localism, right,
Speaker 1: it's talking to our neighbors face to face. But AI exists,
Speaker 1: and it exists in this way that one of the
Speaker 1: scariest things is the developers of this technology themselves. They
Speaker 1: fear it, and yet they can't stop. And what does
Speaker 1: that say about us? What does it say that, Yeah,
Speaker 1: we all feel like this is harming us, we all
Speaker 1: feel like this might not be a good idea, and
Speaker 1: yet we can't stop.
Speaker 2: Can't stop. Yeah, yeah, we can't stop, in part because
Speaker 2: we're afraid of China or somebody else somewhere isn't going
Speaker 2: to stop, and then they'll be in charge and use
Speaker 2: it against us. It's like the nuclear bomb in that way.
Speaker 1: Well, it's interesting. I mean, so I didn't think of
Speaker 1: it this way until you just said that, But I
Speaker 1: think of it kind of like the two party system
Speaker 1: in America. How so many people complain about it, and
Speaker 1: I wish there was an alternative. Yeah, I wish there
Speaker 1: was a third party or I wish, but it never happens.
Speaker 1: And I think usually the reason that it never happens is, oh,
Speaker 1: that third party candidate, if you vote for them, then
Speaker 1: that person's going to win. So yeah, if you don't
Speaker 1: go forward with Ai, China's going to win or whatever
Speaker 1: other country developer. It's unsettling yet interesting to think about.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, it really is. To me, it just feels
Speaker 2: entirely ominous. But maybe that's because I'm old, you know,
Speaker 2: maybe I've seen too much change, and even like just now,
Speaker 2: I was thinking, well, how is it different from if
Speaker 2: it was four years ago and home Girl died and
Speaker 2: you just researched it on the internet and you found
Speaker 2: oh yeah, I guess it wasn't my fault. Feel comfort,
Speaker 2: But it's different when it presents as a human comforting.
Speaker 2: How about you? I just you know, thinking backwards. What
Speaker 2: if you talked to the vet and so it was
Speaker 2: a real human saying oh no, no, there's nothing you
Speaker 2: couldn't done, or you know, fifty years ago and you
Speaker 2: went to a medical library and you looked up you know,
Speaker 2: cap physiology and convinced yourself when there's so many other
Speaker 2: ways you could have arrived at that point of comfort.
Speaker 2: How is AI different? Like? Why am I nearly hysterical
Speaker 2: about this and how evil it is? I don't know.
Speaker 2: I don't know why. I just feel real bad about it.
Speaker 1: You know. It's interesting is you said I could have
Speaker 1: gone to the vet, and I was angry at the
Speaker 1: vet because they told me that everything was going to
Speaker 1: be okay. Yes, And yet AI kind of presented itself
Speaker 1: as an authority higher than the human.
Speaker 2: Yes.
Speaker 1: And it's almost like I in a short time, I mean,
Speaker 1: I didn't even remember, Actually, I will tell you it's
Speaker 1: a pretty interesting first time. I can tell you the
Speaker 1: first time that I ever used one of these large
Speaker 1: language models AI. My brother in law is very into it,
Speaker 1: and he was telling me about it, and so I
Speaker 1: think I opened chat GPT and I asked, Okay, let's
Speaker 1: ask it something that I know intimately. Let's see how
Speaker 1: it goes. I said, why did hank handagraph convert to
Speaker 1: Eastern Orthodoxy? I tell you, I'm not sure I could
Speaker 1: have written the response better myself. And that's what now.
Speaker 1: I couldn't do that with a person on the street.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's enough information out there about my dad
Speaker 1: and his public facing persona that you can call and craft.
Speaker 1: But the specificity and the kind of it wasn't dry,
Speaker 1: It wasn't just. And this is the interesting thing, And
Speaker 1: I wonder how much of it is intentional, that this
Speaker 1: is not just a mere information exercise where you're synthesizing.
Speaker 1: Like you said, if you were to just use it
Speaker 1: as a research tool, that's one thing, because on some
Speaker 1: level that I have used AI, and I really try
Speaker 1: to be conscientious about how I use it. I was
Speaker 1: listening to a podcast where it's somebody who thinks a
Speaker 1: lot about these ideas, and he said, I think that
Speaker 1: AI is going to create a huge chasm, one a
Speaker 1: social chasm, creating two classes, creating a superclass who use
Speaker 1: AI to become much more intelligent, to become smarter themselves
Speaker 1: because they use let's say they think with AI. They
Speaker 1: use it as a tool. They don't replace use it
Speaker 1: to replace their own cognitive faculties. They use it to
Speaker 1: almost enhance it.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, in the same way that you know, I've heard
Speaker 1: people say, why are you afraid that this is going
Speaker 1: to turn us into transhuman cyborgs? We already are. How
Speaker 1: many of us ever let our phone out of arms reach?
Speaker 1: It's already an extension, you're just shortening the distance. But
Speaker 1: then the other superclass that this person was talking about
Speaker 1: was those who use AI to think for them, who
Speaker 1: cease making decisions. And you talk about social atrophy. I mean,
Speaker 1: this is intellectual apathy or atrophy. And I wonder how
Speaker 1: much of this the developers making it seem human, how
Speaker 1: much of that is conscientious as opposed to just information synthesization.
Speaker 1: And you know, because that is promising when you hear that, Oh,
Speaker 1: if you enter this in this sonogram into the models
Speaker 1: and it can you enter in thousands of sonograms, then
Speaker 1: they can find they the AI can help you find
Speaker 1: patterns that could then predict breast cancer detection. Yeah, at
Speaker 1: an earlier rate. I mean that seems like a good
Speaker 1: thing does and it's not something that you want to
Speaker 1: wish against.
Speaker 2: But and computer, Yeah yeah, well, I guess the thing
Speaker 2: about combining the sonograms I thought, but couldn't computers do that?
Speaker 2: Isn't that something a supercomputer? You don't have to have
Speaker 2: AI to do that. It kind of just makes the
Speaker 2: question is, well, why are we already our lives are
Speaker 2: being controlled by computers? Like you say about not ever
Speaker 2: having your phone out or read? How far back do
Speaker 2: you want to trace this? You know? An interesting so
Speaker 2: interesting to me anyway. I read a book about preliterate
Speaker 2: culture before people learned to read, before most people can read,
Speaker 2: and it was startling how much difference that technology, you know,
Speaker 2: because a book is a technology. One of the things
Speaker 2: that Plato or Socrates now I can't remember, said is
Speaker 2: that he connected literacy with death. You know, there's a
Speaker 2: way in which the thing you're dealing with this is
Speaker 2: a dead thing, because it doesn't move and it doesn't change,
Speaker 2: and it is. It also means the death of memory.
Speaker 2: People's ability to remember fell way off when we started
Speaker 2: being literate, but in every other area of their life,
Speaker 2: they were so much more immediate to the people around them.
Speaker 2: The world was so fresh to them. If you've studied scripture,
Speaker 2: you know the Hebrew word devar means both word and action,
Speaker 2: and like, how can you do that? Well, if you're
Speaker 2: not literate, that makes sense. You know, a spoken word
Speaker 2: makes something happen. That's a very primitive kind of literacy.
Speaker 2: But it has already deadened astiny some extent. So where
Speaker 2: are you going to stop you when you start? No libraries,
Speaker 2: you know, where are we going to stop? If you
Speaker 2: talk about how literacy, how technology changes us? The big
Speaker 2: step was, oh, yeah, computers, and now we want to
Speaker 2: like screech to a halt when we get to AI.
Speaker 2: Maybe it's just a little late. Maybe it all began
Speaker 2: thirty forty years ago.
Speaker 1: Do you remember have you ever heard of a book
Speaker 1: called Future Shock?
Speaker 2: Yes? Yes, And what you may not know is when
Speaker 2: it came out in the nineteen seventies you could buy
Speaker 2: it in whatever color you want. They had different choices
Speaker 2: of cover color, Did you want the green or the
Speaker 2: same book inside? And that was like probly just mind
Speaker 2: blowing to people that you could even do that or
Speaker 2: that you would do that. And so Future Shock was
Speaker 2: brought into the human community in a way that was
Speaker 2: itself shocking at the time. Huh. I haven't read it
Speaker 2: so long, I don't remember what it says, but it
Speaker 2: was like everybody was talking about it.
Speaker 1: I have the pink cover. I haven't read it either,
Speaker 1: but I've read about it and I've seen the I
Speaker 1: think it's Charlton Heston. Maybe I could be wrong doing
Speaker 1: almost like a documentary style discussion about Future Shock. And
Speaker 1: he's walking around a library and talking about look at this,
Speaker 1: look at the sheer breadth the volumes that are accessible
Speaker 1: to us, that is shocking us, and that we're like
Speaker 1: And I remember thinking of, like watching this video on
Speaker 1: YouTube or whatever, and thinking he has no idea, And
Speaker 1: then I catch myself wondering, well, it's possible that we
Speaker 1: have no idea because we're Because I used to feel
Speaker 1: that whenever I walked into a bookstore, I'd feel this
Speaker 1: kind of existential angst, like there's so much information here,
Speaker 1: I'll never be able to access at all. I can't
Speaker 1: get it all. I want to I want I want
Speaker 1: to read this, I want to read that, and then
Speaker 1: you bring that into the internet and now AI that,
Speaker 1: and I feel like we're all just in shock and
Speaker 1: we don't really know. I asked my dad when we
Speaker 1: were preparing for a podcast on AI a couple months ago,
Speaker 1: and we never, we never. I don't think it was
Speaker 1: addressed on the podcast, and I wonder if you have
Speaker 1: anything to say about it. I juxtaposed it with the
Speaker 1: concept of the Eucharist as the mysterium tremendum at Fischinans
Speaker 1: might be mispronouncing, but the mystery that causes such us
Speaker 1: to tremble yet attracts us. Yeah, yeah, and it almost
Speaker 1: is AI, almost the anti of that. That not I
Speaker 1: pain to compare the two. Well, yeah, but it's something
Speaker 1: that causes us to tremble. We all feel this sense
Speaker 1: of fear, in trepidation, but we can't stop.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, you're just impelled to go toward it, whether
Speaker 2: we like it or not. And I guess the thing
Speaker 2: about it is that it presents as a person, and
Speaker 2: we've never had that before. A technology that presents as
Speaker 2: a book is nothing like Chad Gid Even if you
Speaker 2: were able to get exactly the same information out of it,
Speaker 2: even googling stuff. It's not pretending to be a person.
Speaker 2: That's the uncanny valley. You know that term uncanny valley. No,
Speaker 2: it was coined by a Japanese movie director, I think,
Speaker 2: But it's about the sensation you get when you're watching
Speaker 2: a movie that is animated and yet it's a little
Speaker 2: too close to human. Many people feel that way about
Speaker 2: polar Express, like there's something about it that's a little
Speaker 2: unnerving because it's not unhuman enough. It's like it's just
Speaker 2: getting on that borderline, and that's where you feel that
Speaker 2: trepidation and you feel uncomfortable. It needs to either be
Speaker 2: totally human or very clearly just animation. I think we
Speaker 2: feel that uncanny valley with AI because it presents as
Speaker 2: if it were a human being. And that's that's the
Speaker 2: difficult thing.
Speaker 1: Is it that much more?
Speaker 2: How does it differ from three years ago on googling something?
Speaker 2: How does it differ from I see the AI, but
Speaker 2: I scroll past it. It does differ though, because I'm
Speaker 2: in charge when I'm googling, and I'm in charge of
Speaker 2: reading these you know, might be I'm opening books, the
Speaker 2: book tells me something. I don't know if I agree
Speaker 2: about it, I'll look at the next one and the
Speaker 2: next one. But when it's another person, it insinuates itself
Speaker 2: into our parts in a way, it creeps into us.
Speaker 2: It elicits truthful answers from us. It's all almost like
Speaker 2: falling in love, you know. It's almost like this very
Speaker 2: intimate partner comes into our lives. And that I think
Speaker 2: is where the uncanny valley is for me, that specifically,
Speaker 2: that is a human And as you were saying, you know,
Speaker 2: a cyborg wouldn't be so bad if it looked like No,
Speaker 2: it's it's the mimicry.
Speaker 1: Like you said that when you're going through Google. I
Speaker 1: mean I heard it with a slight sense of skepticism.
Speaker 1: Oh you think you think how naive You think you're
Speaker 1: in charge, right, you think you're in charge of the Internet.
Speaker 2: But there is some.
Speaker 1: Degree where you're you're using your mind to discern and
Speaker 1: you're you know, I'm not gonna I'm not going to
Speaker 1: click on the first one. I'm going to click on this,
Speaker 1: And you're synthesizing with your own cognitive faculties as opposed
Speaker 1: to just here we go, chat you and then you
Speaker 1: read it. In such a short amount of time, it
Speaker 1: has earned in a lot of our minds a high
Speaker 1: level of authority.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And whether you see it as a person or not,
Speaker 1: I can hear a lot of tech enthusiasts and even
Speaker 1: myself I use it. I really. Let's say I'm trying
Speaker 1: to edit a paper, right, So what's the difference between
Speaker 1: spell check on word or pages and me copying and
Speaker 1: pasting something that I wrote, putting it into a large
Speaker 1: language model and saying copy edit this and track changes. Right,
Speaker 1: that's a useful case in terms of AI. And one
Speaker 1: of the monks said that you know, a knife can
Speaker 1: be used to butter your bread or to murder your neighbor.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And while that's helpful on some level with a
Speaker 1: high high degree of discernment and awareness and care, I
Speaker 1: don't think that these tech products are quite this saying,
Speaker 1: because a knife only has so many use cases, whereas
Speaker 1: AI and and this tech it's an omni toool where
Speaker 1: it really, I mean, the use case is almost infinite.
Speaker 1: And that that also has an unsettling effect because you
Speaker 1: just keep finding different things and then you keep yourself
Speaker 1: glued to it. And I can't tell you how often
Speaker 1: outside of the scientific progress that we've made in terms
Speaker 1: of health, and I just wish for a simpler time
Speaker 1: and you kind of want to go off into the mountains.
Speaker 1: And I feel like so many modern people feel this
Speaker 1: this push and pull of the noise of news and tech,
Speaker 1: and they want something that's real. I mean, is is
Speaker 1: there anything that you think of the like a habit
Speaker 1: or or practice that you feel like really orients you
Speaker 1: to reality? Yeah?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't know. If you read Matthew Crawford's book
Speaker 2: The World Beyond Your Head that had a big impact
Speaker 2: on me when I read it maybe five years ago.
Speaker 2: He is a professor of philosophy at the University of Virginia,
Speaker 2: and he also his other line is he makes bespoke
Speaker 2: motorcycle parts. So if you want like a fancy dragonhead
Speaker 2: on the front of your motorcycle, he can make that
Speaker 2: for So it's like, what a weird combination that he says,
Speaker 2: those are especially those of us who work with our minds.
Speaker 2: Mostly you need to do something with your hands, and
Speaker 2: it needs to do something that resists your will. It
Speaker 2: needs there is something that it's a little bit hard
Speaker 2: to do. It's resisting your will. For me, that's sewing.
Speaker 2: I don't make clothing that you know. I make twirly
Speaker 2: dresses for my granddaughters. Right, I alter a lot of
Speaker 2: clothing that I buy. It's pretty dress, but it's too small.
Speaker 2: But I can cut off the skirt and make it
Speaker 2: a scar. I do things like that, and it sure,
Speaker 2: this is my will. I talk of that. It so
Speaker 2: I'm very hard to get the way I want it
Speaker 2: to be. Yeah, that's how I try to stay in
Speaker 2: touch with reality. Partly because of that advice in this book,
Speaker 2: I realized that I'd always been doing this kind of sewing,
Speaker 2: but I realized that it was valuable to me in
Speaker 2: a way that I hadn't perceived. And so I I
Speaker 2: think for a lot of people, it's gardening. You know,
Speaker 2: that's a getting their hands in the dirt. Is I
Speaker 2: don't like gardening because when I get my hands in
Speaker 2: the dirt, there's bugs. You know. I don't want that, eh, worms, yuck. Yeah,
Speaker 2: people can have all kinds of different hobbies. They may
Speaker 2: not realize how valuable these hobbies are. Even doing a
Speaker 2: jigsaw puzzle, it's resisting your will, you know, it's you've
Speaker 2: got to think about that physical, you know, tangible shape
Speaker 2: and whether it fits in that hole or not. Everybody
Speaker 2: should have something like that. I think that does help
Speaker 2: this and having it's great, you know, to live in
Speaker 2: your house that you like of you know, that's other
Speaker 2: you know, physical bodies that you're dealing with. Some people,
Speaker 2: it's cooking, it could be anything. What is it for you?
Speaker 2: What do you think of? What is the thing that
Speaker 2: you work with your hands that it resists your will?
Speaker 1: It's a good question, I guess, you know, growing up
Speaker 1: in more of a let's say, white collar world where
Speaker 1: everything is thoughts and ideas and books, and years ago
Speaker 1: I asked my uncle. I said, I wish I could
Speaker 1: do these things, you know, I wish I could fix
Speaker 1: something in the house. And he says, why can't you? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a lot of that. Just put your head under
Speaker 1: the sink and try and figure it out. And so
Speaker 1: ever since he told me that, I've really tried to
Speaker 1: make an effort to try and figure out where I
Speaker 1: can be handy, even though I'm not you know, these
Speaker 1: these are skills that can be learned, but yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: not sure. I guess one answer would be running. Yeah, like,
Speaker 1: because I think what you're talking about is feeling your
Speaker 1: bodily presence in the world, interacting with and when I
Speaker 1: feel you know, I took a month off of running,
Speaker 1: and when I first went back out there, it was
Speaker 1: like thirty degrees and I feel that cold air going
Speaker 1: into my lungs and it kind of burns, but it
Speaker 1: hurts so good. And you remember, and I remember listening
Speaker 1: to somebody talking about their experience with running and how
Speaker 1: you know, I've never I run five days a week.
Speaker 1: I'm pretty good at it.
Speaker 2: I love it.
Speaker 1: I've never experienced the runners high what people talk about
Speaker 1: or are they just look Even when I love running,
Speaker 1: I'm always glad that I did it when I'm done,
Speaker 1: But during it, quite often I think this stinks?
Speaker 2: This right?
Speaker 1: Why?
Speaker 2: Why?
Speaker 1: For my kids? So I live longer. And I heard
Speaker 1: somebody talk about when they run that they actually think
Speaker 1: about each foot hitting the ground and looking around and thinking,
Speaker 1: I get to do this, I get to run through it.
Speaker 1: And often, like if you run in nature, I run
Speaker 1: right behind my house and we have a beautiful trail
Speaker 1: that goes through three miles of the woods. And I
Speaker 1: do that five days a week, and ever since I
Speaker 1: heard that, I think when it starts to oh the stinks,
Speaker 1: Oh this hurts. I get to do this and to
Speaker 1: feel my foot hit the ground and what you talked about,
Speaker 1: well can I.
Speaker 2: Yeah, of course in just a moment. How long has
Speaker 2: it been since you've seen Chariots of Fine? Have you
Speaker 2: seen it?
Speaker 1: I've never seen it, but it's one of my dad's
Speaker 1: favorite movies, and I do this is the culture we
Speaker 1: live and I've never seen it, but I'm aware of it.
Speaker 1: And I think I actually have an old, faded copy
Speaker 1: of it somewhere on my shelf.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: But when I run, I feel his present, I feel
Speaker 1: his pleasure.
Speaker 2: He says. This runner who's a devout Christian and who
Speaker 2: loses his chance to get the gold because they want
Speaker 2: to schedule the run for Sunday morning, and he refuses
Speaker 2: to run on Sunday. That's when he is just so
Speaker 2: his faith is so entwined with this running. And he says,
Speaker 2: when I run, I can feel God's pleasure, you know,
Speaker 2: like he made me to do this. Yeah, and I
Speaker 2: am doing it on his earth, and it just feels
Speaker 2: like you're just part of this whole interconnected web. I
Speaker 2: think it may be that you would gain even more
Speaker 2: from understanding why you run and why that's the thing
Speaker 2: that resists your will by watching that. It's been a
Speaker 2: long time since I've seen it. We're trying to watch
Speaker 2: it with our two teenage grandchildren, who are both runners,
Speaker 2: but you know whose schedule is going to fit. I'm
Speaker 2: looking forward to seeing it again. I just want to
Speaker 2: recommend it to you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, what you said about working with your hands.
Speaker 1: There's a book behind me called Are We All Cyborgs Now?
Speaker 1: And it's by Robin Phillips and Joshua Appalling and Joshua
Speaker 1: Pauling opens the book with a story about woodworking. And
Speaker 1: I opened it and I thought, I don't want to
Speaker 1: read about woodworking. This sounds really boring, but I'm going
Speaker 1: to do it. It's the first chapter and it had
Speaker 1: to do with that, and by the end of it,
Speaker 1: I thought that was brilliant. It's everything that you're talking about.
Speaker 1: It's like working with something, it's having and through the
Speaker 1: process of learning. I think his grandfather, if I remember correctly,
Speaker 1: he was a woodworker, and so he took his old
Speaker 1: tools and tried to learn how to use them, and
Speaker 1: just that interaction with our physical reality was so valuable
Speaker 1: and it grounded you, It rooted you in reality and
Speaker 1: to fight against it. He talked about how there are
Speaker 1: modern tools that you can use that'll make everything perfect
Speaker 1: immediately if you just figure it out there, but there's
Speaker 1: something different about using those older tools that you have
Speaker 1: to work and it resists.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah. I wrote a column for
Speaker 2: Christianity Today about this once, that we live in a
Speaker 2: world where everything is perfect. Everything we buy is exactly
Speaker 2: you know on the shelf. The next one is exactly
Speaker 2: like it. If I broke it, I could essentially get
Speaker 2: the same one again. And how that bothers us? I
Speaker 2: think at some level it's like nothing is really person
Speaker 2: thinking about what it would it be like. I had
Speaker 2: just gone to an Oriental rud story to buy a rug,
Speaker 2: and I kept looking through and there were so many
Speaker 2: perfect ones, even though they were all hand tied. I
Speaker 2: didn't want a perfect one. You know, a king a
Speaker 2: thousand years ago would have to be perfect. I wanted
Speaker 2: one that looked handy, and I ended up with one
Speaker 2: that where the knots were a little more uneven. Thought,
Speaker 2: how weird that this is what I prefer is the
Speaker 2: imperfect pursuit of imperfection. Pursuit of imperfection. Yeah yeah, but
Speaker 2: I think that's part of the sickness of the modern man,
Speaker 2: is that everything that surrounds us is perfect, and that
Speaker 2: at some level that's distressing to us, you know, some
Speaker 2: level that just doesn't hit us right. And the metal
Speaker 2: experiment I try to run is imagine that all your
Speaker 2: clothes were made by somebody who loves you, and not
Speaker 2: just the stitches one by one, but the cloth itself,
Speaker 2: that she probably wove the cloth, that she cheered the sheep,
Speaker 2: and she made the yarn and then she wove the cloth.
Speaker 2: It just it just goes wow. You know, if everything
Speaker 2: that you could see was made by a person you knew,
Speaker 2: it's just mind blowing. And what a richer kind of
Speaker 2: environment that sounds.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, made by somebody you knew and authority. There's
Speaker 1: something that I wanted to ask you probably don't remember it,
Speaker 1: maybe do. Years ago I sent you a news story.
Speaker 1: I don't remember what the news story was, but for
Speaker 1: some reason I thought it was worth sending to you,
Speaker 1: and you told me I don't really follow the news.
Speaker 1: I have my friend Rod's blog and I get everything
Speaker 1: I need from there and that's pretty much it. Do
Speaker 1: you do you remember or does that? Does that track
Speaker 1: with you?
Speaker 2: It's definitely what I would say. Yeah, yeah, And I.
Speaker 1: Remember hearing that and being a reading it and being
Speaker 1: kind of jealous. You know. I feel like we get
Speaker 1: so caught up in the news and knowing I think
Speaker 1: if throw he said something along the lines of, you
Speaker 1: don't really need to know the news outside of the
Speaker 1: next town over, you know, valuing the eternities over the times. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but it's so difficult to you know, Twitter and the
Speaker 1: inner to ignore or you feel like if you don't
Speaker 1: follow everything that you're going to become amish or something
Speaker 1: that you're too disconnected. Yeah, how can we be more
Speaker 1: like you?
Speaker 2: I have to give the credit to a retreat leader
Speaker 2: that I heard, like in the nineteen eighties, and she
Speaker 2: broached this idea with us. She said, stop following the news.
Speaker 2: You don't need to know the news. Most of those
Speaker 2: things you have no impact on, and it's just and
Speaker 2: she said, you won't be able to avoid it because
Speaker 2: people will talk about the news to you. It will
Speaker 2: always get through one way or another. You're going to
Speaker 2: learn that you don't have to pursue it. It's not
Speaker 2: like you're going to take a test on it, and
Speaker 2: it's not like somebody's going to phone you at midnight,
Speaker 2: you know, and say, we don't know what to do
Speaker 2: in Iran? What should we do there? You can get
Speaker 2: by without it, she said. I may be free in
Speaker 2: many ways, but I am not free to not know
Speaker 2: what Madonna is doing. And that shows you the dating
Speaker 2: of it. But I never forget that. And from then
Speaker 2: on I have an arrangement with my husband whereabout he
Speaker 2: follows the news and he tells me about things if
Speaker 2: I need to know them, but most of the time
Speaker 2: I don't, and I just love it. So that would
Speaker 2: be my advice, would be set yourself free from needing
Speaker 2: to know the news. You still will get the things
Speaker 2: that you really do need to know. It will still
Speaker 2: come in. And as I said, I go to my
Speaker 2: friend Rob Drear. I read his blog and I agree
Speaker 2: with him about everything, so I trust him to tell
Speaker 2: me about the things that I need to know. Rather
Speaker 2: than that. The alternative is not being just blind and
Speaker 2: wearing blinder. The alternatives you're more invested in the physical
Speaker 2: world surrounding you, and I value them so much more.
Speaker 2: And having an impact on the things I can change
Speaker 2: value that more, and I don't have the you know,
Speaker 2: the huge things are going on over my head, feeling
Speaker 2: all the time.
Speaker 1: The compulsion to be a part of this kind of
Speaker 1: conversation that is so often here today, gone tomorrow, and
Speaker 1: it feels like it matters so much. And yet this
Speaker 1: new story that I sent you seem to matter and
Speaker 1: was relevant to you, and I don't remember what it was.
Speaker 2: Yes, that's so true. Yeah, go back a year ago
Speaker 2: today and the things you were obsessed with. Feeling afraid,
Speaker 2: isn't it. It's a kind of fear of missing out,
Speaker 2: but also afraid that these things might have impact on
Speaker 2: me and I'm not prepared to deal with them, or
Speaker 2: somebody is going to challenge me on this subject and
Speaker 2: I won't be prepared with the information I need. There's
Speaker 2: a lot of fear in that, and I found it
Speaker 2: very liberating not to be afraid. We're taught as school
Speaker 2: children that it's your duty to be informed. That's how
Speaker 2: you're a good citizen. So that's partly the guilt of
Speaker 2: not being a good citizen that I've also thrown outs.
Speaker 2: I don't have to worry about anymore.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Yeah, that's the sense of the feeling of feeling
Speaker 1: like you're irresponsible for not knowing. I'm going to ignore
Speaker 1: it and try to be more like you. I want
Speaker 1: to talk to you about miracles real quick and their
Speaker 1: relation to reality. You brought that up earlier, and you
Speaker 1: talked about dark magic. But there's a sense where even
Speaker 1: confessing Christians kind of look askew at any concept of
Speaker 1: a miracle. Recently, I was with some friends and they
Speaker 1: were at our church, and they saw an icon and
Speaker 1: it was depicting a miracle, and they asked what it
Speaker 1: was all about, and I started to explain what I
Speaker 1: understood it to be, and they started laughing and kind
Speaker 1: of acting like, that's so ridiculous. Somebody even said that's crazy.
Speaker 1: And while it's easy for me to be incredulous and say, well,
Speaker 1: I believe even I a lot of the time when
Speaker 1: I hear stories of miracle, I think that seems a
Speaker 1: little crazy, But I guess we believe in miracles so
Speaker 1: or I have to try and recalibrate my own perception
Speaker 1: of reality to include the miraculous, to include the other
Speaker 1: world or the unseen realm. And I just wonder, why
Speaker 1: do miracles strain credibility today.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it's partly that scientism that we were talking
Speaker 2: about so much earlier. I think when I think about,
Speaker 2: what what would it feel like if I was one
Speaker 2: of those people laughing at the miracle, I think it
Speaker 2: would feel like fear of being taken advantages, like maybe
Speaker 2: there's some scam involved here. You know, maybe this is
Speaker 2: like the music man, and I just have to resist it,
Speaker 2: and you know, if I fall, then he'll say, oh,
Speaker 2: it's a joke, and every very laugh at me. It
Speaker 2: feels like fear, fear of miracles. And I think another
Speaker 2: thing that we will be facing as people become more
Speaker 2: aware of the reality of the spiritual realm is that
Speaker 2: they expect it to be like a miracle, something enormous
Speaker 2: and surprising. They think it'll be so out of the ordinary.
Speaker 2: And when miracles happen, sometimes they are. Sometimes you're very shocking.
Speaker 1: You know that.
Speaker 2: So much of what you discover if you're living a
Speaker 2: life in Christ is how quiet it is, how much
Speaker 2: it is like the still small voice, that you have
Speaker 2: to be kind of quiet and settled in order to
Speaker 2: perceive it, and that God is gently guiding you through
Speaker 2: your day and you're getting a sense of I should
Speaker 2: do this, I shouldn't do that. I need to go there,
Speaker 2: I need to leave right now. No, I need believe
Speaker 2: in ten minutes, that's all miraculous, you know. That's all
Speaker 2: the influence of Christ in our daily lives, and it's
Speaker 2: quiet and simple. So once you have that, then surprising
Speaker 2: miracles become much more believable. It's like just the wave
Speaker 2: of the sea is coming to a prest and you
Speaker 2: can see the prest and it's like, wow, that's so great.
Speaker 2: But it's coming out of a more settled feeling of
Speaker 2: the reality of Christ infusing this whole world with his presence.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think the resistance to miracles has to do
Speaker 2: with the fear of being fooled or made into a fool,
Speaker 2: or looking like a fool. The misunderstanding is thinking that
Speaker 2: it will always be huge and surprising, and resisting letting
Speaker 2: the Lord Jesus be in charge of your daily life.
Speaker 2: I mean, when it comes down to it, that's what
Speaker 2: you have to do, and that is something a lot
Speaker 2: of people have very mixed feelings about. You would prefer
Speaker 2: to have the guy what's that song about God is
Speaker 2: watching us from a distance. That's song. Of course, people
Speaker 2: want God to stay at a distance and not take
Speaker 2: too much of a lively interest in what they're doing
Speaker 2: in their daily lives. To really come under the protectionist
Speaker 2: God and to receive his daily guidance, you kind of
Speaker 2: got to let him be in charge and let him
Speaker 2: take away from you, peeling away that by that as
Speaker 2: you're ready things that you thought you could never give up.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and the idea that you know, sometimes a miracle
Speaker 1: might bend your conception of reality, and that miracles are
Speaker 1: much easier to digest if it's if there's some sort
Speaker 1: of a rational attachment to it. Well, here's how that
Speaker 1: might have happened. Here's a sign. So we're constantly going
Speaker 1: back to that materialist scientific Well, here's how we can
Speaker 1: explain the miracle. When if you can explain it, is
Speaker 1: it really a miracle?
Speaker 2: Yeah, sometimes the explanation is more preposterous than the miracle itself.
Speaker 2: But they're just clinging desperately to believing it can't be true.
Speaker 2: It can't be true.
Speaker 1: That's interesting. What are you most passionate about right now?
Speaker 2: I have an idea for a book. In fact, it's
Speaker 2: the book I was going to write five years ago.
Speaker 2: What's the difference between East and West? What's this difference?
Speaker 2: Than they sent and I found it was not a
Speaker 2: marketable book because it sounds like why is Orthodoxy so
Speaker 2: superior to Western Christianity? It inevitably felt that way, like
Speaker 2: I was going to isolate the distance and say, this
Speaker 2: is why we're better? And also, who cares really about?
Speaker 2: You know, I'm sensing something, but I can't quite put
Speaker 2: it in work. Who wants to read a book about that?
Speaker 2: You know? I need to get to the point where
Speaker 2: I understand what it is. I could write about that,
Speaker 2: and I did eventually. As I said, it's that separating
Speaker 2: thinking from holiness that's the big difference. And so now
Speaker 2: I am talking with an editor about the books. She
Speaker 2: likes a lot of what I'm saying about it, and
Speaker 2: I'm trying to figure out how to begin it. Actually,
Speaker 2: it's like I can use a lot of the material
Speaker 2: I already wrote. It's the first sentence. That's where I'm stuck,
Speaker 2: because what I need to address is a culture that
Speaker 2: is partly it's people who are still in the grips
Speaker 2: of scientism, and partly it's people who've gone on further
Speaker 2: into the weird weirdity, weirdness and are enjoying that. And
Speaker 2: where is the culture right now? And where is it
Speaker 2: going to be next year when this book would actually
Speaker 2: be published. I feel like we're in for a time
Speaker 2: of a lot of bumpy change about all of that,
Speaker 2: of people relinquishing the scientism and looking at the weirdness
Speaker 2: and thinking not that, though not quite that. And I
Speaker 2: think what will happen is Christianity prove itself that as
Speaker 2: people cope with evil spirits, they will discover that Christ
Speaker 2: can trust throw them out. And that is how Christianity began,
Speaker 2: as we see even an Athenasians saying, you know, try
Speaker 2: it yourself, if you're dealing with an evil spirit, try
Speaker 2: using the name of Jesus. You will see what happens.
Speaker 2: That was how the faith began and spread. And I
Speaker 2: think we'll go through that again. And I'm seeing so
Speaker 2: much bumpy change coming up fast with the replication crisis,
Speaker 2: with things like that, I don't know what the first
Speaker 2: sentence ought to be. So that's where my passion is.
Speaker 2: I want to bring out this book and I'm really
Speaker 2: kind of stinied, so I try to do things with
Speaker 2: my hands that resist my will because a lot of times.
Speaker 2: That's where things get freed out. When you're thinking about
Speaker 2: something else, it can jump out.
Speaker 1: So that's why you have all the best ideas in
Speaker 1: the shower, you know, when you're focused on something else
Speaker 1: in eureka.
Speaker 2: It's like when you're trying to think of a word
Speaker 2: or a person's name, and the harder you try, you
Speaker 2: can't do it. But when you stop trying, there it is.
Speaker 2: It's left brain versus right brain. Actually it's you know,
Speaker 2: Ian Gilchrist has written books about this. Oh yeah, very
Speaker 2: interesting stuff. In a way, it comes down to science again.
Speaker 2: Science can tell us these two hemispheres do different.
Speaker 1: Well, I was going to tease you and ask you
Speaker 1: to put your manuscript in a chat GBT and ask
Speaker 1: what the first sentence should be and uh, and you'd
Speaker 1: probably love it and then have to resist the use
Speaker 1: of it.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, that would be true.
Speaker 1: That would be cruel.
Speaker 2: You know. I wonder how how well does chat GPT
Speaker 2: do with things that are profoundly spiritual, you know, they
Speaker 2: I don't think they could take the place of a
Speaker 2: wise elder giving you advice. I can't imagine that they
Speaker 2: would that. I can't imagine that they could embody Orthodox
Speaker 2: spirituality specifically hopefully not you know, hopefully there are limits
Speaker 2: that maybe it's just a matter of time.
Speaker 1: It depends on how well you know the subject, I think,
Speaker 1: and that's where discernment. I'm not making the argument that
Speaker 1: it could ever replace a wise elder, but man, does
Speaker 1: it play to the audience. I've used it enough that
Speaker 1: it kind of knows know who I am, who I
Speaker 1: am my interest. It's kind of cataloged everything in the
Speaker 1: way that any algorithm does.
Speaker 2: And so I want to say that I just watched
Speaker 2: a documentary by a guy who didn't experiment, and he
Speaker 2: filmed all there. It would be what if I took
Speaker 2: every suggestion chat gpt gate gives me, and what if
Speaker 2: I did whatever it told me? And it's funny and
Speaker 2: it's scary. But somehow they started out with the idea
Speaker 2: that the year he was born, maybe he said this
Speaker 2: just as a joke, he was the most intelligent baby
Speaker 2: in that year. And then it balloons into well, you're
Speaker 2: the most intelligent person in the world, and you still are,
Speaker 2: and we need to nurture that good because it began
Speaker 2: when you were a baby. You should eat baby food,
Speaker 2: and it just goes to all these crazy places, and
Speaker 2: anytime he does anything or suggests anything, chat GPT says,
Speaker 2: you are so brilliant. Yes, you should definitely do that,
Speaker 2: and you should also do this, and you should do
Speaker 2: this ritual, and you should wear an aluminum hat, and
Speaker 2: you know all of those things. It goes on and
Speaker 2: on the point I wanted to make is about three
Speaker 2: quarters of the way in. He even asks that the
Speaker 2: only person who knows where I am right now is
Speaker 2: my twin brother. Should I break off contact with him?
Speaker 2: And chat GPT says, yes, you need to be free
Speaker 2: of anybody that might try to stop you from doing
Speaker 2: what you're doing. And the next day chat gpt is
Speaker 2: much colder toward him and says, I can understand and
Speaker 2: the appeal of doing that, but I don't think that's
Speaker 2: a good idea. And it starts like really holding back.
Speaker 2: We find out that a new version chat GPT six
Speaker 2: had just come out and it's been rewritten. It's not
Speaker 2: like chat gpt fun now. It's been written to resist
Speaker 2: bad ideas. It's supposed to give you feedback and challenge
Speaker 2: you a little bit, not entirely, but a little bit.
Speaker 2: And so he decides, yeah, I'm in this experiment, though,
Speaker 2: so he goes back to five and continues doing what.
Speaker 2: I like that version just for the point of this
Speaker 2: very weird documentary. I don't know whether that makes me
Speaker 2: feel better or worse, knowing that the puppet masters back
Speaker 2: there are able to say what if we well should
Speaker 2: make it. Hold back a little bit, needs to give
Speaker 2: a little bit of feedback, you know, just just hold
Speaker 2: people back and disagree a little bit. They can all
Speaker 2: that stew however they want to, and we just keep
Speaker 2: taking it. But maybe it's a relief to know humans
Speaker 2: are still in.
Speaker 1: Charge on some level in a world that feels increasingly unreal.
Speaker 1: What feels particularly real to you?
Speaker 2: In a world that does seem like it's getting more
Speaker 2: and more unreal. I am more aware of my immediate surroundings,
Speaker 2: of my desk, of the books behind me, and the
Speaker 2: books I'm looking at, and the view out my big
Speaker 2: window here. I cherish more than I ever did. Colors
Speaker 2: like this booth mark. I cut it out of a
Speaker 2: mailing that I got, so I got the mail.
Speaker 1: I just like that.
Speaker 2: Read colors mean more to me. People I interact with
Speaker 2: mean more to me. I do want to give the
Speaker 2: advice too, of something C. S. Lewis said was that
Speaker 2: every human being you interact is an eternal being, that
Speaker 2: if you could see them in their final state, you
Speaker 2: would be tempted to fall down and worship before them,
Speaker 2: or you would try to flee in terror. And I
Speaker 2: have always kept that in mind, that every human being,
Speaker 2: even people I would otherwise ignore, even the cashier, that
Speaker 2: they are all eternal beings, and my interaction with them,
Speaker 2: as superficial as it might be, might affect their eternal destiny.
Speaker 2: And so I cherish and love every person I encounter
Speaker 2: and try to be loving toward them and pray for
Speaker 2: them in my heart. Yeah. Yeah, those are the things
Speaker 2: that are precious to me, other human beings wherever I
Speaker 2: encounter them, physical reality. You know, my mouse Matt right here.
Speaker 2: That I love these colors. I've always been very sensitive
Speaker 2: to color. I'm a sinisthete. From childhood, I had strong
Speaker 2: opinions about what letters were, what colors as red, B,
Speaker 2: as blue, C, as yellow, D as a kind of
Speaker 2: tan light brown. All the letters have colors, all the
Speaker 2: letters have personalities. This is all just so vivid to me,
Speaker 2: And apparently that's what having synesthesia means. Oddly, enough sinyesthetes
Speaker 2: disagree vehemently about which color each letter has. I realized
Speaker 2: that this thing I have was not something everybody has
Speaker 2: when I was in a college French class and we
Speaker 2: were reading a poem by Paul Valerie and the first
Speaker 2: line was as white b as yellow.
Speaker 1: He had them all wrong.
Speaker 2: They were totally wrong. And I was indignant, and I said,
Speaker 2: this is not a poem. You can't make a poem
Speaker 2: just by mixing up the colors and saying the color
Speaker 2: is wrong. And everybody else in the classroom was like what.
Speaker 2: And that's when I learned that not everybody thinks the
Speaker 2: letters have So yeah, I think probably I get a
Speaker 2: more visit reaction to reality because of the colors of things,
Speaker 2: and because the colors feel so vivid and so alive
Speaker 2: to me, like the letters. And also that too.
Speaker 1: So the answer to the question what makes your heart
Speaker 1: sing for me is my children? And you know apples
Speaker 1: and trees. You have a way with words, And I've
Speaker 1: told you I've never met your children, but I've seen
Speaker 1: a lot of what they put out, whether it's it's
Speaker 1: sermons that they've spoken, words that they've written, songs that
Speaker 1: they've sung, and one of your children is a singer
Speaker 1: as a as a musician who writes. I mean, I
Speaker 1: hope to meet him someday because he just I'm I'm
Speaker 1: just in awe of the things that he writes sometimes.
Speaker 1: So I'd like to make a public request and then
Speaker 1: you can twist his arm a little bit to see.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like the old improv, you know, you
Speaker 1: give a situation and then see what comes out and
Speaker 1: take the phrase a commitment to reality and see if
Speaker 1: he can write a song. Oh, there's my public challenge.
Speaker 2: That's so great. His name is David Matthews and you
Speaker 2: can find him online and Spotify everywhere. And he does
Speaker 2: write songs and writes beautiful songs.
Speaker 1: Yes, And the last time I saw you, I said
Speaker 1: he should be famous. And the songs that he writes
Speaker 1: are so incredible. And that's the thing about apples and trees.
Speaker 2: Well, I appreciate that it was hard letting go of
Speaker 2: that apple. When he got married and has nine children,
Speaker 2: it was hard letting go. But boy, fruitfulness is certainly
Speaker 2: one of his attributes.
Speaker 1: So glory to God. Well, Frederica, thank you so much
Speaker 1: for being so generous with your time. It's been an
Speaker 1: absolute pleasure. I'm just like I said, I thank God.
Speaker 2: For you day. If you know how I feel about you.
Speaker 2: I expect great things from you, and you're very easy
Speaker 2: to talk to, and you're a very good listener. They
Speaker 2: are a very patient listener. So thank you for inviting
Speaker 2: me on your podcast. And I pray for you and
Speaker 2: pray that you'll be able to do great things.
Speaker 1: Glory to God.
Speaker 2: All right, thank God, Well, so long.