At Sea with Justin McRoberts (Justin McRoberts)
Explore every episode of At Sea with Justin McRoberts
| Pub. Date | Title | Duration | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 06 Feb 2025 | Spiritual Art And Hope | 00:11:08 | |
Links For Justin:Coaching with Justin NEW Single - Let Go NEW Music - Sliver of Hope NEW Music - The Dood and The Bird The Book - It Is What You Make it | |||
| 11 Nov 2021 | David Zach | 00:44:36 | |
“If you really wanted to help, you’d up and move to Africa.” It was a few minutes after I’d just spoken at a college chapel and a particularly fired-up student was trying to convince his classmates to resist child sponsorship in favor of a more radical and, in his mind, more holistic response to the problem of extreme poverty. His suggestion that a serious person would uproot their entire lives in response to the information they’d just been handed is as dramatic as it is… problematic. See, aside from the white-savior complex that response borrows from, it also ignores an often overlooked opportunity the privileged have, because of our privilege; access to the hearts and minds of other, privileged people. Because, somewhere in the mix, that student was right that there is a link between the way people like me live and the tragic circumstances in which far too many other people live; that I should change the way I live if I’m serious about changing things for folks in extreme poverty. But/and… one of the opportunities I am afforded because of my position is to change and grow in a way that inspires and informs and even leads other people in my same position. And that’s not sexy work to do. I thank God for those stories. They’re just not mine. That’s not David Zach’s story, either. David, like I did, ran headlong into stories about human trafficking along the way he was already traveling. And the decisions he’d made about how he could respond, as a person of privilege, to leverage that privilege and power are truly powerful. I was thrilled to talk with him about his history and his work.
Check it out. Links For Justin:Coaching with Justin NEW Single - Let Go NEW Music - Sliver of Hope NEW Music - The Dood and The Bird The Book - It Is What You Make it | |||
| 25 Feb 2021 | Laura Joyce Davis | 00:51:30 | |
The ethos and heart of my next book is that just about nothing "is what it is." Instead, as the title of the book would have it, It Is What You Make Of It. I realize that shifting from "it is what it is" to "it is what you make of it" is a long process and can be a bit daunting. More so when the "is" we have to work with, our circumstances and opportunities is really sideways. When things go wrong or the unexpected takes over, it can feel like the most natural thing to do is to navigate to, grab hold of, and cling to something "solid" or "sure." What if, on the other hand, and on occasion, I read a lack of "solid ground" or the absence of a "sure thing" as an invitation into adventure? That's what I find inspiring and formative in Laura Joyce Davis. That, while I don't blame a soul for looking to "sure things" and more "solid ground" during the COVID era, she and her family took it as an opportunity to dive headlong into the unknown and see what they could make of the pieces they found there. She is a writer and the host of the "Shelter In Place" podcast. She is also my guest on this episode of the @ Sea Podcast. Check it out. Links For Justin:Coaching with Justin NEW Single - Let Go NEW Music - Sliver of Hope NEW Music - The Dood and The Bird The Book - It Is What You Make it | |||
| 01 Nov 2020 | Eugene Cho | 01:04:00 | |
Links for Eugene Cho Thou Shalt Not Be A Jerk - Latest Book
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| 14 Jan 2021 | Jon Steingard | 00:59:06 | |
Jon Steingard spent 16 years as a musician, songwriter and front man in a band whose success had its context in what some call the "Christian market." I've spent a bit of time there myself and there's a whole conversation herein about whether or not a marketplace can be "christian," (I think it can't). But that's what's significant and odd about that conversation is that what seems to bind that marketplace and its buyers together as a tribe is agreement on a very particular set of theological and social conclusions. Links For Justin:Coaching with Justin NEW Single - Let Go NEW Music - Sliver of Hope NEW Music - The Dood and The Bird The Book - It Is What You Make it | |||
| 28 Mar 2024 | Sacred Strides Chapter 11 | 00:30:03 | |
In this episode, Justin McRoberts and Dan Portnoy discuss Chapter 11 of the book 'Sacred Strides.' They explore the importance of leading with love and true compassion in advocacy work. Justin shares a personal story of his experience as an MC at a music festival and how he initially struggled to connect with the audience. He reflects on the need to meet people where they are and tap into their desires and experiences. The conversation also touches on the pitfalls of manipulative advocacy and the importance of building genuine connections with others. Links For Justin:Coaching with Justin NEW Single - Let Go NEW Music - Sliver of Hope NEW Music - The Dood and The Bird The Book - It Is What You Make it | |||
| 24 Aug 2023 | Re-Evaluating Our Metrics For Success | 00:05:58 | |
One of the conversations that I've been in for many years led to the desire to put together the book, Sacred Strides. And one of the conversations that comes up now that the book is out in the world has to do with burnout; you have most likely been around or been privy to or been in a conversation about burnout. One of the pivotal scenes or moments in the book sacred strides is one in which I point out how many folks actually experienced burnout in the ministry field. That's something along the lines of three out of every five persons who functions as a minister experiences burnout. 60% of the people who work in ministry claimed to admit to experiencing burnout. Usually, with statistics like social stats, the number tends to be a little skewed. Because with something like burnout, there tends to be kind of a shame piece where folks don't want to say they're burned out, so they don't. So if it's three out of five, and if it's 60%, by stats, you can assume there might be a few more folks than even that. Psychologically, when we talk about burnout, we're not just talking about being tired. And I think that's super important. There's one thing to be tired of. And there are certain kinds of tiredness that are actually really good for burnout isn't just about being tired. If you research burnout through the National Institute of Health, you'll see a definition of something along the lines of that burnout is a psychological syndrome emerging as a prolonged response to chronic interpersonal stressors on the job. So it's not just about the hours we put in; it's not just about the difficulty of those hours or the tasks we're up to. One way to talk about this is that burnout has as much to do with feeling misplaced and misused in our jobs and now in our lives as it has to do with the amount of time and energy we're spending. In other words, I can put in the same amount of time, with the same intensity, in a different place and not feel burned out. Another way to get into this conversation is to talk about metrics. Part of our sense of misplacement in our work lives oftentimes has to do with the metrics we're using for really just success. What makes me successful in this job can be a question that either sets me up for burnout or sets me up for healthy patterns of self-actualization and fulfillment. And so one of the gifts that a regular practice of rest does is it actually gives me altitude, not just to evaluate my experience of my job, but to actually evaluate the metrics I'm using when I think about how the job is going. So a couple of simple examples is I'll work with church leaders, who were trained in the metrics of numbers, and putting butts in seats, or conversions, or some sort of numbers-oriented metric. And because that's the metric they're using to evaluate success, anything that might add joy takes a massive backseat to achieve those numbers. And burnout comes when those numbers don't show up. Even if other aspects of the job that are truly life-giving to me are actually in place and going well. Same Same. I'll talk with artists who are bent on selling, and they're supposed to, or they think they're supposed to make a living, quote, unquote, make a living in the arts. And this will want to two ways with artists one, it'll be that they have a part-time job, or maybe even a full-time job, and they're trying to do their art on the side. And the burnout comes from recognizing, like, I don't want to try to hold both these pieces. And I need to actually take a season and full-blown invest in just my art for a season. Or at least as often. They recognize that tangling up their passion projects with the propensity or the need for sales is actually stealing joy. And they're experiencing burnout. because sales are displacing them, it's the thing they don't want to associate with their artwork. Again, one of the only ways to get out of the tube in our lives so we can pay attention to those metrics and how those metrics are shaping our experience of our work is to take regular time away to take a look back at what I'm experiencing and why I'm experiencing it on one level. Rest can be a place where I can look back at my life and figure out how to do the life I'm doing better. On another level, rest can be a way to take a step back and look at the life I'm living on a grander scale and actually make more fundamental changes that I don't want to try to achieve Some of the goals that I've been seeking to achieve, that's why I'm not happy. It's not like I want to get stronger or better at achieving some of these goals. I need to put some of these goals down, find new ones, and live a more fulfilled, happy, and therefore fruitful life. Friends, success is always, and I mean always, a moving target, and far more often than we allow ourselves. Success is the thing we get to decide on. What target do I want to hit? Well, I get to decide that more often than I'm told, which means it's really worth the time to figure out what it is I want to be achieving with the time, the talent, with the energy I have while I have it. Rest can provide space to figure that out. Links For Justin:Coaching with Justin NEW Single - Let Go NEW Music - Sliver of Hope NEW Music - The Dood and The Bird The Book - It Is What You Make it | |||
| 30 Jun 2020 | Sarah Heath | 01:14:44 | |
Links for Sarah:
Links for Justin : Links For Justin:Coaching with Justin NEW Single - Let Go NEW Music - Sliver of Hope NEW Music - The Dood and The Bird The Book - It Is What You Make it | |||
| 28 Sep 2023 | Why I Don't Like All Things In Moderation | 00:06:49 | |
I used to think the phrase, everything in moderation sounded like wisdom. I mean, it was the piece of wisdom folks would dole out when we talked about work-life balance and we talked about alcohol. And we talked about video games, everything in moderation, everything in moderation seemed like the thing that one would say that the goal would be to find the correct balance between all of these things. And that meeting in the middle of all things is still his dominant value. I just got an email, actually, from a work friend with whom I'm putting together this project. And there are differing opinions about how to spend the time on this retreat. And one of the participants said, Well, we will meet in the middle where everyone is happy. It says the notion that somehow there's this middle space between all things, and if we can just find the middle space between all things. Everything in moderation, we'll all be happy. And I'm just kind of over it. I no longer think that everything in moderation sounds like wisdom. I think it sounds impossible. I think it sounds not quite impossible. I think it sounds unhealthy. Now, I note some of that because I get prickly and nervous around any rule that I want to apply to all of life. That here's this rule, and it works for everything. And the phrase, at least the way we apply it, everything in moderation tends to get applied to everything that this will work for everything. As I said, it's about alcohol, it's about, it's about relationships, it's about how we're going to spend time, on a retreat, we'll find the middle space. In the middle, everyone will be happy. I'll find a middle space between my work and my happiness, right? It's just too easy, the harder work of life. And I think the more fruitful work of life. And I think those two things tend to come together and have more to do with paying attention to my life as I'm living it. And in other words, there are things that I don't want to make any time for. It's not a matter of moderation. It's not a matter of how much the how much is none. I don't want that at all. But even that, as a life rule, doesn't really fly in the long run. What flies in the long run is actually the short run. In other words, I need to pay attention to my life as I'm living it, to have a pace of life, to have a community of people around me, to have life practices that allow me to take some steps. And the nowhere I am to look at my own energies, my own interests, my own desires, what's available to me inside of me. What are my heart's desires? What are my limitations? Am I tired, or am I not tired? Then, I look around at the opportunities and challenges around me and make decisions based on where I am and what's available to me internally and externally. Living life paying attention to the life I'm living is more challenging. It's a more regular, and I think, more fruitful practice than just saying everything in moderation. Now, you might be thinking what I'm thinking, which is that it sort of lends itself towards that Ecclesiastes chapter that gets quoted in song, that there is a time for everything. And a season for every activity under the heavens, a time to be born at a time to die, a time to plant and a time to uproot, a time to kill, a time to heal, a time to tear down, and a time to build a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance a time to scatter stones. And a time to gather them and on and on and on. There's a time in your life and in my life for going way overboard. For spending way too much time, too much in quotes. Applying yourself to a certain practice or spending 90 hours a week on that startup project. There's a time for that. There's also a time in life to pull your hands off the wheel, hit the brakes, and just pull over and do nothing for a season. It's not a matter of moderation. It's a matter of attention. What season Am I in? What's available to me right now if I'm 23 to 29 years old, and I've got ideas for him. It's time to go here if you've got energy, you got space, you got parents who are willing to catch you when you fall. It's time to just go nuts and try a whole bunch of stuff. If you're 48 years old, you have two kids in a mortgage. It's not time to just throw random experiments at the wall through a pane of the wall and see what works. Not all the time, not centrally. Our seasons change our lives. There is a time for everything and a season for every activity under the heavens. The question isn't all things in moderation. And how do I achieve that? The question is, am I paying attention to my life? Do I have a pace of life in which I know what season I'm in and how to live it? So, if you are in that place, and you are trying to achieve balance, and you think still that all things in moderation are really the goal, but that's starting to degrade your soul because it feels impossible. It's why I wrote the book Sacred Strides. And if you haven't checked it out, I would highly suggest the book. And it's why I do what I do as a coach. So I'm here to help. If you haven't checked out the book, you can go to amazon.com you can go to hearts and minds books.com and order it. I think that the book Sacred Strides might provide some perspective and maybe even some permission for you to pay attention to the season on your end and find some pacing differently in your life so that you can pay attention to the season you're in. This is why I offer myself as a coach because it is difficult to pay attention to our lives as we're living them. It can take some help, and sometimes it can take a professional I am. That's why I do what I do. I can help you potentially pay attention to your season and make some wiser decisions based on what's available to you internally and externally. So check out the books, tickets, and rides, and jump to Justin mcroberts.com. Click on that coaching button and see if I can't help you figure out the season of life you're in Links For Justin:Coaching with Justin NEW Single - Let Go NEW Music - Sliver of Hope NEW Music - The Dood and The Bird The Book - It Is What You Make it | |||
| 20 May 2021 | JJ and Dave Heller | 01:04:53 | |
Close to 20 years ago, I sat in a park near my place in The Bay Area, talking with Dave and JJ about their hopes and dreams. Having spent the first few years of their musical career between Arizona and California, they were right on the edge of a move to Nashville.
Links for JJ and Dave Heller
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| 16 Dec 2022 | Depression and the Incarnation | 00:09:34 | |
It's possible, if not likely, that if you are remotely pop culture aware and spend any time on social media platforms, you'll see news about or posts about the death, the passing of dancer, DJ, choreographer named tWitch. I was struck by the moment I heard about his passing. A fan of his, I've liked his work, I've liked him on TV. I've liked his posture online otherwise. I was saddened by the fact that h e's only 40 years old. And I felt the thing that I read that Jen Hatmaker wrote in her public post. She said this line that struck me and sort of set this thought in motion, she said he was suffering, and we didn't even know pain has never been easier to hide. Some of what you might have seen, which is what I have seen, is folks confessing or saying out loud, like, you know, he seems so happy. It's so shocking. And it's always shocking. When depression or anxiety, when mental health issues surface. A lot of the time, it's a surprise; we're shocked. We're even to some degree scandalized. We didn't know that that was going on in someone's head in someone's heart. And especially when it comes to light that someone has been thinking about ending their own lives, much less when someone tries to end their own life. It's surprising, it's shocking. And it shakes us, I would hope. It shakes us when someone chooses to end their own life. Shared some of his own thoughts along the same lines. This notion that he was suffering and we didn't know pain has never been easier to hide. On the one hand, that's so true. You don't really know what someone is up against. You don't really know what's going on in someone's head. And then Carlos adds this caveat to that. He says, Yeah, but you do know that it's just hard sometimes for anyone. We do know you don't know the particulars, but you do know or maybe should assume that everyone is facing something. See, in these moments, when we are publicly engaging with or talking about depression, anxiety, and suicidal ideation, I hope we don't become more fearful of depression or anxiety. And the threat is to those around us and even to ourselves. I hope we don't become more afraid of the things that steal life. I do hope, instead, that we become more patient and kind, more long-suffering, more thankful for the raw gift it is to no people at all, including knowing their darker corners and the darker corners of their souls because that is one of the gifts of knowing someone knows that they are up against something, and valuing even their struggles. So what if instead of becoming more fearful of depression, and anxiety, and suicidal ideation, we actually change our posture towards one another. Because no, you don't get to know the specifics of what someone is going through in their lives. But we really should assume that they're going through something. And that it's hard. It is one thing to say I want to be someone who helps people carry their heavy things. It is another thing entirely to actually do the work of carrying those things for other people. It is an entirely different thing to become the kind of person who moves away from transactional relationships and begins to consider the gift is to be alive and to share in being alive with those around us, including those around us carrying heavy weights. We are, as of the day of this post, right about the middle of the Advent season, a season on the Christian calendar which we anticipate the birth of Jesus in the incarnation of God. And in a conversation with friends recently about the incarnation. We talked about the humanity of Jesus, we talked about what it looked like what it meant for God to be human. And one of the folks in the group pointed out this moment, and if you read the gospels, you know this moment. If you don't, I'll try to highlight it quickly that at some point in the life and ministry of Jesus, a lot of the people who were following Jesus stopped and just left. He had said some things publicly. So that I think we're confusing the pressure on him with from religious powers and political powers started scaring people off, and hordes of people who are following Jesus left, and he turns to the disciples, and the phrase in the scriptures is, are you going to leave me to? What about you? Are you going to leave too? And this person in the conversation said, you know, there are a couple of different ways to read that. And one is the way I grew up reading that it's it's a test like, Okay, well, everyone, everyone else left, what about you? Will you stay? Are you going to be faithful, like it's a test of the disciples? The other reading is that he doesn't want them to leave. Because they're his friends. And he kind of needs them emotionally. And instead of, are you going to leave me too. It's, what about you? Are you going to leave me to later on in the life of Jesus, right towards the tail end when things get hardest? He invites these two friends, these two disciples of his, to stay with him as he prays through the night, knowing that he's about to be arrested, he's about to be crucified. He knows this is the darkest moment in his life. And he invites these people. We call them the disciples. He invites these friends of his to stay with him as he prays to the night, and they keep falling asleep. And the way the writer of Matthew records this moment, he says that he awakened Jesus, Jesus awakened Peter, and said to him, could you not stay awake with me for even one hour? Again, is there a challenge to Peter to become a better person, bear, and more faithful friend, likely possibly? Is there also, though, the desire in Jesus for his friend to be with him when it's hardest and darkest? See that human reading of Jesus doesn't just normalize the need that you and I have for other people, and actually lifts that up and says, part of what it means to be a whole person is to need the people around you, especially when it's hardest and darkest. And if that's the kind of humanity that we are called to by the person of Christ, then maybe that's the kind of humanity we want to or ought to actually approach other people with, that the issues people are facing and the weights they are carrying, are not just obstacles to a more fulfilling experience of other people, but they are in fact, invitations to help the people around us carry their wounds and their shadows the way we would like the people around us to help us carry ours that it is, in fact, a gift to share in the struggles of those around us. So while it can be sometimes impossible to know the exact details and the exact nature of the details of someone else's struggle, we can assume that they are as human as we are. So may it be so of us that we don't become more nervous about or ashamed of or afraid of depression and anxiety. Instead, may we become more patient, more kind, more forgiving, more long-suffering, less transactional, and more purely thankful. For the raw gift is to no other people at all. May we live at a slower and less utilitarian pace in relationship to other people, and may we celebrate their full humanity, which includes their limitations and struggles and dark corners, the way we are taught in the Christian tradition to celebrate the humanity of Jesus. Links For Justin:Coaching with Justin NEW Single - Let Go NEW Music - Sliver of Hope NEW Music - The Dood and The Bird The Book - It Is What You Make it | |||
| 03 Nov 2023 | Sacred Strides - A False Start | 00:41:25 | |
We are doing a series in and by which we're digging back into and through the book Sacred Strides - chapter by chapter talking about the dominant themes in the book or extras on top of the book what you know what it looks like to apply some of the things that I get to in the book. Dan, who's been a friend for a long time and has produced this podcast from its beginning, has a really unique perspective on my work and on me as a worker. And so it's fun to talk about my stuff and have Dan poke around a little bit at, "Hey, what's behind this or underneath this? What's after this?" And so we've enjoyed doing this podcast series up to this point and we expect to continue to, and we think you are as well, judging by the numbers, the metrics. So this is chapter two of the book Sacred Strides, and will you please welcome Dan Portnoy to the microphone? Let's dig in. NEW Single - Let Go NEW Music - Sliver of Hope NEW Music - The Dood and The Bird The Book - It Is What You Make itHearts and Minds Amazon Barnes and Noble Links For Justin:Coaching with Justin NEW Single - Let Go NEW Music - Sliver of Hope NEW Music - The Dood and The Bird The Book - It Is What You Make it | |||
| 12 Aug 2022 | Frog and Toad and Work and Rest | 00:07:24 | |
You've probably had the bad experience that I had recently, that I'm about to tell you a story about, in which when your mind is already focused on something. You're already thinking about something regularly, and you start noticing it or connections to it everywhere. That happened the other night while I was reading a book to my daughter to help get her to sleep. I am in the process of editing and finishing this book called Sacred Strides, which will come out in 2023, about belovedness, about discovering my belovedness through both rest and work. My daughter, who's five right now, picked a pair of stories for me to read. And one of those stories was Lobos Classic Collection, The Adventures of Frog and Toad. I don't know how familiar you are with the stories, but they're brilliant. They're hilarious. They're well written, and there's wisdom in the stories that sneaks up and pinches me every once in a while, including this moment. So the story specifically is called the garden. And in that story, Toad notices Frog's garden, and it's going really well. And he asks how he, too, can have a garden. He wants a beautiful garden. So Frog, in all his generosity, hands, Toad some seeds and tells him that like once he plants them, he'll have a garden, and then he uses the phrase quite soon. So Toad immediately runs home to plant those seeds. And then, just as immediately, he starts yelling at those seeds to sprout and grow. And predictably, they don't. Frog comes running in response to all the noise that Toad is making because he's screaming at the seeds. And very kindly lets his friend know that you can't scream at the seeds. "You're going to scare them." So he tells them in a number of ways that he needs to give those seeds time to grow. But then Toad does the opposite. And it goes through any number of ways to try to get those seeds to grow on his own with his own efforts, he reads them by candlelight, and they don't grow. He sings to them, and they don't grow. He reads them poetry, and they don't grow. And no matter what he does or how he performs, he simply can't manage to get the seeds that he just planted to grow. He does, though, in his efforts, managed to wear himself completely out, and he falls asleep. Eventually, he's woken by his friend frog. And it looks to the ground and finds that, as promised, those seeds had sprouted and began to break through. And then the conversation goes something like this at last shouts, "Toad, my seeds have stopped being afraid to grow." And now says Frog, "You'll have a nice garden too. Yes, Toad." It was hard work. See, that's pretty much how my journey towards belovedness in work and rest went. I was committed really early on to newness and to growth. Because I came through the doorway of evangelicalism, and I'm thankful that I did. My initial practice of faith was galvanized by an energized and by the desire to build to make to pass on to communicate. That's where all the energy was.
And that desire to work well and effectively was a good one. But I misread the invitation See, I've been handed those seeds of the reference, the story of time and talent and passion, and invited into a process that would actually provide a loving home for my entire soul. And not just the use of my talents and my gifts and strengths, I came into the doorway of usefulness. I was told and taught that it was essential and good to pass on what I had been given, and it is, but I wasn't invited into this just to be a good instrument for the machine. No know my strengths and talents get to participate in the good work already having like seeds planted in the ground, I get to participate, I get to share but actually get to participate and share. I don't get to make it happen - No matter how I perform, no matter how I execute, no matter how loud I am. I can't shake seeds awake and into growth that aren't ready and whose time has not come. What I get to do is they get to share in that process, I share in the story, and I get to share in the work that is already at hand. This is a massive shift for me in my life, and it's the one I am now trying to pass on as best I can and books like It Is What You Make Of It. And the upcoming book called sacred strides. That there's a word Already at hand that you and I are invited into to share in not because you're useful, although you might find yourself really helpful times, but because you're actually beloved, what I've come to believe in and through the practice of work, and rest, is that the one who holds all things together has invited you and I into this beautiful process of things being reconciled, made right more whole, and into a story that actually does have a good end - that I don't have to function with the anxiousness of proving myself, much less the anxiousness of having to get it right, less all things fall apart. What I'm beginning to hear in the work, and in the rest, is a voice that doesn't say something like, "Come on, we've got work to do, we've got to get it done, or this is all going to hit the floor." I hear something more like this, "Slow down, wake up a little bit, and see what's already growing. Because that's how I've made this all to work, and I want you to join me in it. No, I don't want you to stop singing, and I don't want you to stop reading or playing or writing. I want you working while knowing that your work is a way to share in this life with me, with yourself, and with those you love. I also want you to know that when you don't work, either because you can't or because you've happily chosen not to that, you still share in this life with me yourself and those you love me the growth and newness in your soul and in mine, as well as the growth and newness in the soil that you and I work on." Be an expression of an outpouring of who we are, rather than an anxious response to what needs to be done. We are beloved ones, invited into a work of love by one who loves us. Links For Justin:Coaching with Justin NEW Single - Let Go NEW Music - Sliver of Hope NEW Music - The Dood and The Bird The Book - It Is What You Make it | |||
| 05 Oct 2023 | Coaching, Spiritual Direction and What Comes Next | 00:07:37 | |
Several years ago, six-ish, I think I don't really remember. Years ago, I started making myself available to artists, to ministers, to entrepreneurs, folks who had worked in fields that I had worked in, and I started doing so for free. And I wasn't calling it coaching. At the time, I was just making actual meetings to answer questions, and they were questions that had been coming up. And if you've been in an industry for long enough, this happens to you, as folks start asking you, Hey, how did you get there? Or what did you do about this? Or hate if x happens? Do you have a solution for scenario questions begging for some sort of wisdom from someone who's further down the line? But there's something more going on than just that. I have been around long enough, and I'm taking on more and more of these clients. I think there's something in the water. I think there's something in the culture. In fact, I think it's the very same thing that propelled me and the small team of folks that I work with to launch this podcast; it is the desire to navigate wisely and well. Waters we just aren't sure of and don't feel confident in. Now, some of those waters are institutional and cultural, some of those waters are very personal, they're interpersonal, they're actually deeply, individually personal. And as I read the lay of the land, in all of those spaces, there is an increasing number of people, or so it seems, who simply don't feel equipped, in and of themselves, much less in relationship to the institutional, cultural spaces, they're used to trusting, they don't feel equipped or prepared to navigate. What comes next. The mistrust of the tools we were using internally, institutionally, and culturally? Well, I think you are as familiar as I am with that mistrust, as it was projected in all kinds of critical criticisms and critiques, and most of them, or at least a lot of them were, were spot on and really helpful, that there was a critique of, of institutional religion, a critique of higher education, there was a critique of even mental health practices, there was a critique of interpersonal and individual religious practice, there was a critique of the economy, there's a critique of politics, everything it seemed, was on the table for critique everything it seemed, was being questioned, is this viable? Does this do what we want and need it to do for us? Now, one of my favorite pieces of cultural criticism and cultural wisdom comes from Andy Crouch, who says, and I love this, that the only cure for bad culture or for lesser culture is to make a better culture. And I think that's where the real fear comes in about tomorrow. Is it because what if the question isn't a matter of what comes next? And that we sit and wait for something to be revealed? What if the moment is something different and that in this moment, as we've grown disillusioned with the way our institutions and practices interpersonally, culturally, and otherwise have worked? What if the question isn't? Let's wait until the next thing shows up. What if the question actually is - What will we make for tomorrow? What will we make with what we have on hand? What will we make from what we've experienced with what we know? That we can trust? Tomorrow? That, I would suggest, is a far more terrifying question. Because it puts the onus on us. And if we've learned anything, collectively, we've learned that we just can't make it on our own. Especially, especially if it's not a matter of executing someone else's plans. If the next chapter in our shared history really is what I think it is, which is a time and a season in which we get to invent and reinvent and try and explore and experiment and relearn if it really is on us to build a future we can't see from here, then we have to know we can't do that on our own. And so I love that I get to offer myself as a spiritual director. And as a coach. For those who are maybe less initiated in these terms, spiritual direction, as I practice, is mostly about helping you as best I can hear or see, and no God in your own life, no agenda, no platform, and our goals outside of you, having a clearer and more competent sense of God. In you. Coaching tends to be a little bit more goal-oriented. Maybe there's a specific thing you want to achieve, or maybe something you want to quit and stop achieving. Or you've got a project you want to start or a specific way you want to be making or living differently. And if either one of those triggers something in you or stirs something in you, reach out, not just because you need it, but because maybe you do. But if you do, it won't just be so that you feel more settled into your own life. As you're living, it'll be because, and I don't think I'm overstating this when I said it'll be also because the future kind of hinges on it. And I'd love to help you build that. Links For Justin:Coaching with Justin NEW Single - Let Go NEW Music - Sliver of Hope NEW Music - The Dood and The Bird The Book - It Is What You Make it | |||
| 26 Oct 2023 | Sacred Strides - Getting Off on the Right Foot | 01:03:33 | |
Dan and I are doing a series of podcasts focused on my book. Reintroducing folks to the book Sacred Strides. We began last week with an overview of the book before it got into the introduction. And like why I wrote the book and some surrounding themes. This week, we will dive into Chapter One and talk about it. Dan is going to draw some stuff out. One of the things that's great about Dan and my partnership with Dan is that Dan has a unique perspective on the work I'm doing. Working more collaboratively with people is an enjoyable part of being an artist. So, welcome to this episode of The @Sea Podcast and interview with me, conducted by producer Dan Portnoy, centered on the book Sacred Strides. Here We Go.
Summary The book "Sacred Strides" with Justin McRoberts and Dan Portnoy. 0:07 Balance and prioritization in life and work. 1:15 Work-life balance and prioritizing projects. 5:43 Work-life balance and self-care. 9:39 Creativity, passion projects, and work-life balance. 14:24 Creativity, identity, and disillusionment. 19:38 Balancing work and family life as a creative professional. 24:09 Vulnerability and parenting with a focus on emotional connection. 30:23 Observing the Sabbath in modern times. 33:32 Scheduling and organization strategies. 42:04 Creative coaching and planning. 45:09 Creativity, work ethic, and entrepreneurship. 48:42 Identity and relationship with God. 53:12 Belovedness and rest for a deeper understanding of oneself. 57:08 NEW Single - Let Go NEW Music - Sliver of Hope NEW Music - The Dood and The Bird The Book - It Is What You Make itHearts and Minds Amazon Barnes and Noble Links For Justin:Coaching with Justin NEW Single - Let Go NEW Music - Sliver of Hope NEW Music - The Dood and The Bird The Book - It Is What You Make it | |||
| 19 Jul 2024 | Navigating Big Decisions | 00:21:48 | |
In this episode, Justin comes to you from the beautiful Young Life Woodleaf property, sharing his thoughts and insights amidst the serene setting of nature. This week, Justin dives deep into listener questions, offering profound advice on discernment, balancing suffering with hope, and the cultural movement of deconstruction. Key Topics Covered: 🔹 Discernment and Decision-Making:
🔹 Balancing Suffering and Hope:
🔹 The Courage to Build: Beyond Deconstruction:
Listener Questions Answered:
Justin's responses are both thoughtful and practical, offering actionable advice for those navigating similar challenges. Stay Connected:
Join the Conversation: If you have questions or topics you'd like Justin to address in future episodes, leave a comment or reach out via Instagram. 👍 Like, Comment, and Subscribe to stay updated with the latest episodes! #AtSeaPodcast #JustinMcRoberts #DecisionMaking #SufferingAndHope #Deconstruction #Coaching #PersonalGrowth #Leadership Links For Justin:Coaching with Justin NEW Single - Let Go NEW Music - Sliver of Hope NEW Music - The Dood and The Bird The Book - It Is What You Make it | |||
| 16 Nov 2023 | Sacred Strides Chapter 3 - Staying In My Lane | 00:45:55 | |
Another episode with producer, Dan Portnoy, marching through the book Sacred Strides. We're going to dive into Chapter 3 today - Staying In My Lane. This is a chapter about limitations - something we love to talk about.
Links For Justin:NEW Single - Let Go NEW Music - Sliver of Hope NEW Music - The Dood and The Bird The Book - It Is What You Make itHearts and Minds Amazon Barnes and Noble Links For Justin:Coaching with Justin NEW Single - Let Go NEW Music - Sliver of Hope NEW Music - The Dood and The Bird The Book - It Is What You Make it | |||
| 02 Dec 2021 | Dominique Dubois Gillard | 00:56:39 | |
During the first season of the podcast, I got to talk with Dominique Dubois Gillard about his book “Rethinking Incarceration.” One of the things we talked about was the difficulty and opportunity to steer the ship, even slightly, in institutional spaces already (and often blindly) dominated by whiteness and privilege. His most recent book dives directly into that very conversation. Subversive Witness coaches and encourages readers towards a leveraging of one’s privilege rather than simply being another critique of the problems that come with having it. I loved the book and, as always, loved talking with Dominique. Check it out Links For Justin:Coaching with Justin NEW Single - Let Go NEW Music - Sliver of Hope NEW Music - The Dood and The Bird The Book - It Is What You Make it | |||
| 16 Mar 2023 | Molly LaCroix | 00:48:01 | |
Welcome to the At Sea podcast. I'm your host, Justin McRoberts. Molly Lacroix is my guest on this episode. And as a marriage and family therapist, she engages in the kind of art I find inspiring, incredibly rare, and necessary. She takes what would otherwise be, perhaps even frustratingly, wildly difficult concepts, things out of the reach of the average person's daily knowledge, and then boils those down and communicates those in such a way that folks like me can get handles on those ideas, but does so in a way that doesn't, I don't know, demean me, or, just as importantly, doesn't do so in a way that diminishes the depth, richness, and complexity of the traditions and the systems she's referencing. Working at the intersection of spirituality and interpersonal relationships. As a family therapist, she's trained explicitly in internal family systems, which is a model of understanding human interaction, our engagement with the world, our relationships, and the systems we function in. I find it deeply freeing, and it has been really helpful for my practice and the lives of many people I care about. This was a fascinating and wonderful conversation. I think you'll benefit from it. Check it out.
Links for Molly LaCroixWebsite - https://mollylacroix.com Latest Book - Restoring Relationship: Transforming Fear into Love Through Connection Links For Justin:NEW Single - Let Go NEW Music - Sliver of Hope NEW Music - The Dood and The Bird NEW Book - Sacred Strides (Pre-order)It Is What You Make itHearts and Minds Amazon Barnes and Noble Links For Justin:Coaching with Justin NEW Single - Let Go NEW Music - Sliver of Hope NEW Music - The Dood and The Bird The Book - It Is What You Make it | |||
| 18 May 2023 | Seasons, Change, and Rest | 00:05:04 | |
I talk a lot about seasons, seasons of life, seasons of ministry seasons of work. I love the concept. I love the idea. I love the notion that for long stretches of time, somewhat indeterminate stretches of time, certain things are true certain things work. I like that there isn't a stringent timeline; when we talk about seasons, we can be in a really long season, or we can be in a really short season. One of the reasons we talk about seasons when they come up is because of transition. Not that we don't enjoy the seasons we're in. But normally, when we have a conversation about seasons of life, it's because we're moving from one season to another or we're sensing the end of a season and the beginning of a new one. And I used to think that the energy, the internal energy I needed to actually move me from one season to the next, was about competence and satisfaction that I was satisfied with the work I had done in the previous season. And, or I was confident about what was going to happen in the next season. And this is important because, as you know, we can be in that seasonal transitional moment and not be ready; I can come to the end of the season and not be ready to move on from that season. Or I can be moving into another season and not be or feel ready to start it. I used to think that was always because I was either not done with or not satisfied with the work I'd done in the previous season or not ready for and confident in the work I was already doing to do in the next. I've come to recognize that's actually not true. Because I care about the things I do, I'm pretty much never fully satisfied with the work that I've done; I can look back over the seasons in my past and rethink everything I can rethink top to bottom, and woulda, coulda, shoulda, a, I could have put the cherry on top. And this way, I kind of wish I'd have had this conversation differently; I should have added this element to this project; I can rethink and reinvent, in retrospect, for hours and hours on end every day. Because I care about what I do. Links For Justin:Coaching with Justin NEW Single - Let Go NEW Music - Sliver of Hope NEW Music - The Dood and The Bird The Book - It Is What You Make it | |||
| 28 Apr 2022 | Natalie Toon Patten | 00:25:39 | |
While the experiences of displacement and disorientation play such a significant role in conversations about cultural place, institutional belonging, and even interpersonal relationship. I am moved and inspired not only by the stories of those who endure and triumph over that sense of displacement or dislocation but in fact sometimes even choose displacement and the adventure of relocation in order to awaken some kind of new spirit in them and in the world around them. Check it out. Links For Justin:Coaching with Justin NEW Single - Let Go NEW Music - Sliver of Hope NEW Music - The Dood and The Bird The Book - It Is What You Make it | |||
| 04 Nov 2022 | Mine | 00:06:50 | |
It used to confuse me when, as people talked about relationships, romantic or otherwise, they would refer to the relationship as, like a third entity, there was the person and a person, or a few people. And then there was the relationship that they're in like it was this other thing. You, me, and then the relationship. But it turns out there's actually something to that. Sometimes what's being referred to by the relationship is this idea of what we should be or what we could be like, if we did this. Well. Sometimes it's a good thing, specifically when that vision is a shared vision. And we're in lockstep and headed in that direction, trying to become that vision, that ideal of what a relationship looks like. But sometimes, the relationship we're referring to and feel responsible for isn't at all reflective of the actuality of the connection between us. It doesn't help us love each other or even see each other. I can see this clearly. And so often when the relationship we're speaking of is with the church, or just with church, capital C church, circumstances change, so to expectations, heck, the particulars of the social and interpersonal contract, we've entered into change as well. In the end, belonging, like love, is a choice rather than a consequence. This is how we know what love is. As the writer John, Jesus Christ laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters. Why are you here? Because I choose to be because I'm yours. Because your mind. That's where it gets kind of complicated with the word mine. At the beginning of adolescence, I learned, or I thought I learned, that being possessive was one of the worst things that someone could be in a relationship being possessive was associated with jealousy and suspicion, judgment, and control. It was an entirely negative thing to be possessive to be as, as a boyfriend or girlfriend, or even friend. And yet, the older I've gotten, and the more I've lost relationally, I've grown in the desire to be bound to others, by far more than either my force of will or my effort or bound to others as a reward for my performances. I've longed to know that, even as things change, sometimes dramatically and sometimes sadly, I'm still worth belonging to. I'm worth belonging with. I'm worth someone saying, "You are mine." I don't entirely reject the lessons of my early adolescence. Still, at the same time, there certainly is something to being identified by someone as essential as part of their life, regardless of any and all things. I really resonate here with the biblical imagery of Christ and Christ's bride. And at the same time, I'm really challenged by this other biblical moment. I am inspired and moreso honestly scandalized. By the way that the writers of the early New Testament, a few of them constantly come back to calling Judas Iscariot, the one who betrays Jesus, one of us. They claim him as ours. Here it is in the book of Luke 22nd chapter. Now, the Festival of Unleavened Bread, which is called the Passover, was near the chief priests, and the scribes were looking for a way to put Jesus to death, for they were afraid of the people. Then Satan entered into Judas Iscariot, who was one of the 12. He went away and conferred with the chief priests and the officers of the temple police about how he might betray him, which is Jesus to them. And then a completely different writer at a different time. They've got Mark 14th Chapter. Immediately, while he was still speaking again, that's Jesus, Judas, one of the 12, came up accompanied by a crowd with swords and clubs, who were the chief priests and the scribes, and the elders. Now he who was betraying him had given them a signal whoever I kiss, he is the one sees him and leads him away under guard. There's no mistaking here that Anytime he's referenced, it's clear that foes acknowledge what he's done, that he betrayed Jesus. He did it with a kiss. It was awful. He sold them out for money. There's no getting around that description of Judas as actions. And yet, this is just to have four or five instances in which folks who are writing about the story of Judas use the phrase, one of the 12. I am scandalized and inspired and moved and challenged by that. Yes. They say he's the betrayer. He's also ours. And that kind of associate of belonging, that kind of commitment to someone, does not have to come along with, In fact, it doesn't come along with the denial of their wrongdoing, much less turning a blind eye and saying, Oh, that's not who they are, or excusing any sort of misstep or injustice or betrayal. It doesn't come along with any of that. It does, though. Reframe those missteps. Reframe those injustices, reframe even those betrayals that, yes, that is part of who they are, that they have done those things, that they have said those things, and they've lived that way. And part of what makes that so tragic is that there's so much more to them, including the fact that they belong to me. And I to them, yes, this is true of them. Also true of them. They're one of ours. And that doesn't come with forgetfulness. It also doesn't come with forgiveness. But maybe that's the kind of posture, the kind of commitment, the kind of relationship that actually makes something like forgiveness possible. That in order to want it bad enough for you to do the work that it takes to actually move you and me to a place of forgiveness, much less restoration. I have to want it. Like I would want it for myself. And maybe that comes with calling you mine Links For Justin:Coaching with Justin NEW Single - Let Go NEW Music - Sliver of Hope NEW Music - The Dood and The Bird The Book - It Is What You Make it | |||
| 08 Oct 2024 | Jubileee 2024 - Abe Cho | 00:40:43 | |
Episode Notes:Introduction by Justin McRoberts:
Balancing Ministry and Personal Life:
Defining Home and Navigating Cultural Identity:
Justice and Reconciliation:
Importance of Cities in the Context of Faith:
Challenges and Opportunities for the Western Church:
Closing Reflections:
Links For Justin:Coaching with Justin NEW Single - Let Go NEW Music - Sliver of Hope NEW Music - The Dood and The Bird The Book - It Is What You Make it | |||
| 21 Apr 2023 | Kevin Sweeney | 00:59:52 | |
Welcome to the At Sea Podcast. I'm your host, Justin McRoberts. When I first read Kevin Sweeney's initial book The Making of a Mystic, I found a bit of a kindred spirit that's somewhat unlikely person in the pastorate as well as a relatively unlikely person when one thing because of terms like mystical or contemplative. You might remember that conversation on this very podcast about that initial book from last season. His most recent book is called The Joy of Letting Go. And it actually met me exactly where I needed to be met when I picked it up as well. His language is a wonderful bridge between the everyday experience of life and the desired sacred posture with which I want to live that everyday life. I enjoy this conversation. I think you will as well. Check it out.
Links for Kevin SweeneyThe Joy Of Letting Go - https://a.co/d/0IQKE0D Links For Justin:NEW Single - Let Go NEW Music - Sliver of Hope NEW Music - The Dood and The Bird NEW Book - Sacred Strides (Pre-order)It Is What You Make itHearts and Minds Amazon Barnes and Noble Links For Justin:Coaching with Justin NEW Single - Let Go NEW Music - Sliver of Hope NEW Music - The Dood and The Bird The Book - It Is What You Make it | |||
| 16 Sep 2022 | Why Let Go? | 00:10:09 | |
My social landscape does not look the way I expected it to a few years ago. Some of that comes on the heels of religious difference or political disagreement. And as sad as that stuff can be, it's also a bit cliche and predictable.
If I'm being honest, what's been harder, is recognizing that the more I've grown into who I am, and the more distance I've experienced between myself and people I was once connected to - those connections have been harder to let go of, as has been the familiarity I had with my former self. I felt some of these things before I was experiencing something like it in 2004, when I first heard the song, let go. And on the other side of a very strange season, marked by both grief and newness, I found myself liking where I was in life, and also tasting the bitterness of saying goodbye to what had been true, and had been comfortable before. So it is again today, and maybe you resonate with that feeling, I have a feeling you might. So is there beauty in the breakdown. That's what I'm counting on, in my relationships, my friendships, and that hope is part of what moved me in part, to track my interpretation of the song.
In the same way, my religious landscape does not look the way I expected it to a few years ago. And some of that comes on the heels of a healthy and fruitful process of growth and maturity. In fact, most of it actually comes on the heels of such maturity and growth, it's a good thing, that I'm experiencing some distance from what I used to think what I used to believe. Part of that maturation process has come with knowing that in order for God to truly be God, I have to let go of my hold on how I think God works and who I think God is. And I need to mean that prayer of Meister Eckhart in which he writes, God, rid me of God. The struggle here, though, is that I built a fair amount of life around some of those earlier conclusions and assumptions and knowings of God and I also developed some significant emotional practices. In response to what I knew about God, I don't want to be one of those folks who's trying to make Jesus king by force. But it has been difficult, it has been hard to let go of what I used to believe what I used to know and how I used to relate to God because of how much life I built around. What used to be, is there is beauty in the breakdown. That's what I'm counting on. And that hope is part of what moved me in this season to track my interpretation of that song.
My political landscape does not look the way I expected it to a few years ago. I have this key memory of a mentor of mine, saying to me about choosing a party, that yes, it's a conflict and it's a bit of a choice. And it comes with some contentious feelings within your own soul. So he says Pick a party, one that you resonate with maybe a tad more deeply, even though you will never feel fully at home in a political party then be a faithful and lovingly critical part of that party, while being aligned to the principles of the kingdom, which is bigger and deeper and broader and more beautiful than any party platform. And I've tried to do that. I've wanted to not just be a good neighbor, but also to set a tone of neighborliness in an environment that favors rightness and victory instead. But, and the nature and depth of sheer awfulness between human beings over the last few years has left me in a state of relative disorientation. It's not that I don't know who my neighbor is, it's that I don't feel like that word. Or the reality it points to means the same thing, or in some cases means much anything at all, to people around me. Even some of those people that I consider neighbors.
The practice here has been recognizing my experience of other people and the ideas they are moved by as exactly about my experience, to heed some form of wisdom and recognize the limitations of my perspective in relationship to the social world around me, the neighborhood around me, the systems around me, I can only know so much I can only care so much I can only see so far. And to believe that there is a capital S Something capital M more a something more Twitch, all of this striving and arguing and battling, eventually does come home. To believe that there is beauty, not just after, but in the breakdown. See, that's what I'm counting on. And that's part of what has moved me in this season of my life to track this interpretation of this song. It is a song in which I receive and hear a promise. That in the moment of the breakdown, as things are falling apart, as my expectations fall by the wayside, my plans disintegrate before my very eyes as I'm even leaning on my own coping mechanisms, instead of dealing with the reality of life changing in ways that I didn't want it to that there is a hope. I hope without specifics, I hope that there's something better if I can simply let go, of what I wanted, of what I had planned for, and what expected.
Jesus tells the story, this parable, it's one a lot of us are familiar with. It's called the parable of the mustard seed. And this that's the way the editors denoted this particular story in parable. And in Mark, the way it reads is, again, he said, What shall we say the kingdom of God is like what parable show use to describe it. It's like a mustard seed, which is the smallest of all seeds on Earth. And yet, when it is planted, it grows, and becomes the largest of all garden plants with such big branches that the birds can perch in its shade. And the elements of this parable for me that just keep coming back are twofold. The one is that it's a really small seed. And it's really easy to make this really cute oh house precious an idea that just this tiny little seed of faith, this tiny little seed can do so much. It's cute until the reality of one's life as actually boiled down to a very little bit of knowledge, a very little bit of hope and a very little bit of any smidgen of plan you might have been holding to begin with, it's a very different thing, when the hope you have for the future really is that small. But the parable takes it even further. Because what Jesus says is yet, when planted, because even that seed, even that little tiny thing that I hold in my hand, I have to put it in the ground and let it go. And trust it to a process that is beyond my knowledge, beyond my power and in many ways beyond my imagining. And that if I can do that, it grows and becomes the largest of all garden plants with such big branches that the birds can perch in its shade.
These plans I've made and these expectations that I've held to many of which I've built my life around, I'd held to and planned on from good intention. I've wanted to feel cared for and I've wanted to care for the world around me. And the season has come over the last few years in which if I really do want to feel held, I have to let go of the things that I'm holding in order to be held. And if I really do want to care for the world, I have to release the control I have over all these aspects of my life so that I can see those aspects of my life held by the one who holds all things together. I've had to let go and trust that there is a beauty in the breakdown beyond my even wildest and most deeply caring imaginings.
That's what I'm counting on.
And that is why in part, in this season of my life I've chosen to track this interpretation of the song Links For Justin:Coaching with Justin NEW Single - Let Go NEW Music - Sliver of Hope NEW Music - The Dood and The Bird The Book - It Is What You Make it | |||
| 04 Nov 2021 | Overwhelmed And I Should Be | 00:09:49 | |
“Sometimes, God gives us glimpses into the enormity of the work at hand, not to increase our capacity to do a larger work or more work but so that the work we can do becomes more vital and less optional. We are compelled to do the work we can do because we cannot do all we want.” I wrote that on the way home from a 10 day trip to India with Compassion international. It was, to be entirely honest, a life-altering trip for several reasons, including a very humbling breakdown I had on day 9 of that trip. Guided by our hosts, a small group of us got to visit several church communities who were helping to feed, educate and provide medical care for kids who, without the open door of the Commission program, would most likely live without those necessities. Of course, I’d been on trips like that before. I’d seen extreme poverty in Central America, South America, Kenya, Uganda… and yes, it was always heartbreaking. But (and I know I sound distant, privileged, and desensitized) I was never entirely overwhelmed. I pretty much always felt like I had a grasp on things, philosophically, anthropologically, politically, and even theologically. But that 9th day in India… I fell to pieces. We’d gathered toward the end of the evening with Compassion staff and partners from all over the world. Several groups were visiting Kolkata at the same time. I remember starting to feel something like dizzy listening to German staff talk about the former prostitute who walked into the middle of the street in one of Kolkata’s red-light districts, only to be surrounded and mobbed by dozens of current prostitutes who consider her a mother-figure and care-giver. In the van on the way to that gathering, I remarked to my friend Bob that, on that drive, like all our others, every mile was covered by people. It was wearing on me that, for over a week, there were crowds of human lives extending as far as I could see and beyond… there was no break. No open space.. just sea after sea of humanity… So. Many. People. And earlier that day, we’d visited the convent where sick and destitute people received care from Catholic sisters; sisters who walked the block around their building, sometimes daily, to see if anyone had left children there to be picked up (or… in other cases, trampled). And before that, across town, we were invited to witness a religious ceremony at the temple to the god Kali. Around the temple were hundreds of women and children (and a few men), holding animals in their arms or on leashes, waiting in line to sacrifice that animal to Kali. There were animal screams inside the walls and the iron smell of blood got thicker the deeper into the temple we walked. The sacrifice, we were told, was to appease Kali so that Kali would not wreak havoc on peoples’ lives. Some of those sacrifices, we were also told, were of animals the family would much more greatly benefit from if kept alive; for milk and meat or farmland grazing. “Religion,” I thought to myself “can be so utterly detestable.” And got to thinking about the thousands or even millions of tiny gods, including diminished and manipulated forms of Jesus, that folks like myself made sacrifices to regularly; sacrifices of time and money and friendship and mental health and dreams and on and on… and that’s when the unraveling began… It’s. All. So. Much. There. Is. So. Much. Wrong. So that, by the time I stepped off our shuttle at the end of that 9th night and walked past the armed guard who held the line between the slum next door to our hotel and the crisp, clean hotel itself … I was dizzy and nauseous and couldn’t tell as clearly where the line was between real and imaginary, between what I knew of the world and what I projected onto it or between what I believed about goodness itself and what I simply hoped was true so I could feel better about the way I lived. There’s a fair bit of the rest of that night I don’t recall. I know there were tears and some pacing and some attempts at coherent prayer. Eventually, I found myself in the bathroom mirror, working away to remove my beard. I had flashed back to a moment several months before when a friend’s Rabi had pulled me aside at a party to tell me I needed to cut off my facial hair; that a beard was a sign of wisdom and I was far too young to have earned it. My buddy was embarrassed for me and apologized. But something about the moment stuck with me, apparently. Because here I was scraping away at my face feeling very much like I didn’t deserve to wear a beard. I’d been confronted by realities in my world I could make no sense of and that shook me pretty bad. I needed a way to show my contrition; a way to make clear I knew I had been wrong about how smart or understanding or how powerful I was. But even that thought, as right it might be, felt like it missed. If the cumulative effect of this moment was only that I felt bad,… that didn’t seem right. So, as I washed off my face, I felt my mind settle a bit and, in what little bit of peace and clarity I was gaining, turned my attention back toward the reasons I was in the country, to begin with. Compassion International had invited me to India because I was one of their speakers; I was and an advocate for children growing up in extreme poverty. And no, right there and then, the job I was doing on the scale I was able to do it flat out didn’t seem like it was big enough … And if my personal goal was to eradicate poverty entirely that week (or maybe even in my lifetime), then .. no.. nothing I do is enough. Not on that level. But maybe the point of this didn’t have to be that I felt bad about how little I had to offer. Maybe what I could do instead of simply give in to my circumstances and say “it is what it is” and “I am what I am,” is learn to soberly take my life more seriously in light of how very serious things are in the world I am choosing to love. Because things are VERY serious. And that should be overwhelming. But if I am to think of myself as more than a tool in the Divine tool belt whose value is determined by its usefulness and effectiveness, then just experiencing guilt at that moment was too small a thing. To be humbled? Yes? To be demoralized? No. See, this is the thing I find in my friends and sisters and brothers who are neck deep working in areas like hunger or extreme poverty or even human trafficking and slavery… The “wins” and victories are few and sometimes small and infrequent. The depth of the darkness is… pervasive and seemingly relentless. It can be overwhelming. And it should be. But what if that means I can offer my time and talents and efforts and energies, NOT because I’m effective and powerful, but because the people I’m offering myself to are worth it. And maybe that’s the key, long term; maybe that’s why awareness of the 40 million people living in slavery waxes and wanes and oscillates as wildly as it does; our effectiveness can be called into question, sidelining our efforts and sometimes crushing them, altogether. But if we are committed to loving people, the effectiveness of our plans has a much broader context and, when things seem dark and heavy, the love we are committed to says “do what you can with all your heart. You aren’t here to win. You’re here to love.” Links For Justin:Coaching with Justin NEW Single - Let Go NEW Music - Sliver of Hope NEW Music - The Dood and The Bird The Book - It Is What You Make it | |||
| 19 May 2022 | Kevin Sweeney | 01:03:18 | |
My son and I recently went to see the most recent Marvel release. It's a movie about Dr. Strange. He's one of the primary characters in the Marvel Universe. And he is, according to his title, a master of the Mystic Arts, which begs a little bit of a question about what mystic is. See in the films, him being the master of mystic arts is manifested in the ability to open portals to different universes or cast spells that send power waves that knock over buildings or enemies. My son and I had a really interesting conversation about mysticism and religion and spirituality and what makes it thing spiritual and what makes a thing mystic, after the film, I found myself referring to things that I discussed with Kevin Sweeney. During this conversation you're about to hear, Kevin's book, The Making of a Mystic is a really interesting take on his journey towards mysticism, and his practice of those things that we might call or might not call depending on who you are. mystical. I think you will enjoy this conversation. I think you'll be challenged by it. I really enjoyed it. Check it out. Links For Justin:Coaching with Justin NEW Single - Let Go NEW Music - Sliver of Hope NEW Music - The Dood and The Bird The Book - It Is What You Make it | |||
| 12 Aug 2021 | The Power of Celebrity | 00:06:00 | |
The way I hear it used, the word “celebrity” almost always comes with a tinge of disdain. In fact, I was recently interviewing a band about their relatively wild public success and used the word “celebrity” to ask a question about how it felt to have the kind of influence they’d garnered. Boy oh boy did they distance themselves from that word. They wanted nothing to do with it. Not one bit. The next few minutes featured phrases like “We’re not celebrities.” and “I really don’t think that word describes what we do.” Or just flat out “I don’t like that word.” The lead singer of the band then went on to be very clear that there were just “normal people” with normal lives who make music; That the celebrity aspect of things caused a gap between them and their audience they didn’t want. “We go through all the same things y’all go through.” At the same time (and you can feel this part coming), I struggle with making simple what I think is a slightly more nuanced reality. See, just about 3 hrs after I wrapped that interview with them, that band got on microphones that amplified their voices over hundreds of feet from the smoke-and-light drenched stage they stood on; a stage that was 8 feet off the ground, literally holding them up above the people who had paid to see them. Which makes me wonder if the actual moral dilemma good-hearted people have with the word or concept of “Celebrity” is that it’s a way to talk about power; I wonder if it’s the power we’re sometimes afraid of having.. or at least the power we’re afraid other people see us have. I remember being pointed towards James Baldwin’s work by black activist friends here in the Bay Area and being pretty surprised to find clip after clip of him on Television programs in the late 1960s. And not just his appearance on PBS programs but on celebrity-heavy programs like the Dick Cavett show, which preceded Johnny Carson’s show, which set the tone for Jay Lenno, David Letterman and pretty much any Late Night show you and I have ever seen. Part of why I found it surprising is not only because Baldwin was a black man in the 1960s but that he was also gay. And publicly so. In each of his TV appliances, James Baldwin is confident and clear; resolved and unshakeable, even in the face of at times direct challenges to his philosophy, his intellect, and (as a gay, black man) his right to even exist. Which is to say, I wonder if he didn’t worry much at all about being a “celebrity” or being seen as one because he knew what he was up to, knew it was important and knew he’d do it wisely, lovingly, and well. Before that band I was talking with left the stage from our interview, several audience members asked questions about their lives and practices; looking for inspiration or help or clairvoyant for their own lives and practices. A few even shared about ways the band’s work had deeply changed a moment or even a whole season in life.
The real question becomes, then, the same question anyone has to answer when offered power in another life: What will you do with the power that position offers you? Links For Justin:Coaching with Justin NEW Single - Let Go NEW Music - Sliver of Hope NEW Music - The Dood and The Bird The Book - It Is What You Make it | |||
| 02 Mar 2023 | Nicole Unice | 00:45:38 | |
Hello, and welcome to the At Sea podcast. I'm your host, Justin McRoberts. This episode of the podcast takes us deeper into the ongoing conversation here at the At Sea podcast. At the intersection of psychotherapeutics and spiritual practice, this time with author, pastor, speaker leader, and coach Nicole Unice. I think you'll pick up in the conversation that we haven't had a truckload of conversations. We've been trying to have this conversation for quite a while. I definitely find in Nicole Unice a kindred spirit not only because of our affinity for young life and kids but even in the odd gravity we both feel towards the word pastor and a love for the institutional church. She lives in Richmond, Virginia, although she speaks all over the country. And her most recent book, the one we'll talk about in the conversation, is called, The Miracle Moment: How Tough Conversations Can Actually Transform Your Most Important Relationships. I really enjoy how she enters into the relational dynamics at a granular level and is hyper-practical about her approach to people, ministry, and philosophy. I enjoyed this conversation and I think you will as well.
Links for Nicole UniceWebsite - https://nicoleunice.com Latest Book - The Miracle Moment: How Tough Conversations Can Actually Transform Your Most Important Relationships Links For Justin:NEW Single - Let Go NEW Music - Sliver of Hope NEW Music - The Dood and The Bird NEW Book - Sacred Strides (Pre-order)It Is What You Make itHearts and Minds Amazon Barnes and Noble Links For Justin:Coaching with Justin NEW Single - Let Go NEW Music - Sliver of Hope NEW Music - The Dood and The Bird The Book - It Is What You Make it | |||
| 11 Nov 2022 | Graduation | 00:05:57 | |
I’ve long lived with Seth Godin’s suggestion that art is anything you make that forges a connection between people. Over time, and in that light, I’ve also come to recognize that the depth and sustainability of my professional art life has a lot to do with the particular people I am connected to in/through my work. Which brings me to my now 12yo son, Asa. Asa wrote a lot of the melody for the song “Graduation” and is the main vocalist on the finished track. It was the thought of connection with him on this project that really moved me to do it. Of course, there were many points of connection throughout the whole process (and definitely now, after is release). But what provided the project’s core energy was specifically sharing the writing and recording process with my son. So, on a personal level, the life in and behind this EP is rooted in the love I have for that remarkable young man, Asa. And, on a broader scale, I think being able to name/identity specific people is what makes it possible for an Artist (of any kind) to do what they want to do long-term. Ideas and artifacts can be thrilling. They just don’t give real life. But regardless of how effective or well-received or profitable an idea or artifact might be, that experience simply pales in comparison to the deeply grounding experience of human connection. I risk a bit of overstepping here when I say that we’ve been in a season during which it seems like everything is on fire; that every “issue” and every conversation carries with it the utmost importance. And because of that urgency, not only you should not only know about all of it in detail, you also must see the right details from the correct angle and then (this is key) care about the right things to the correct degree and in the right way. It’s too much. So here’s the somewhat scandalous reality I’m living with now: If what I say I “care about” doesn’t have actual names of actual people attached to it, I’m either faking it or I’m at least a little bit wrong. Because the human heart doesn’t live on the energy of ideas or even the urgency of causes. The human heart runs on relationship and connection. Too much of what we mean by “Church” or “religion” became about ideas and artifacts. Too much of what we mean by “Politics” or “Justice” became about ideas and artifacts. And too much of our experience in all these areas has been very, very disappointing. So May my disappointment in myself and in others lead me to hope and work for change rather than to the desire to isolate or distance myself. And may that change mean a smaller and more personal experience of our own lives. For the sake of the very specific people around us and for our own, very specific souls. Links For Justin:Coaching with Justin NEW Single - Let Go NEW Music - Sliver of Hope NEW Music - The Dood and The Bird The Book - It Is What You Make it | |||
| 14 Apr 2022 | Bodies, Dancing and Bad Religion | 00:04:59 | |
One of my favorite characters in all of literature is from a Dostoevsky novel called The Brothers Karamazov. The character's name is Father Zosima. Father Zosima doles out wisdom throughout the course of the book and its particular instance stands out to me, it's one of the moments that solidifies him as a favorite character. He's counseling. a congregant, who is not just detached from and losing touch with theologically, a sense for the resurrection or even the embodied incarnation of Jesus, but is lamenting that loss. She's no longer believing that God became a human being was crucified, was raised from the dead, and she's lamenting this loss as a personal one in her life. And Father Zosima, instead of prescribing some sort of a theological treaty, some sort of book, some sort of study, or even prayer. When she says, "What should I do about this lack of faith in Jesus, and the resurrection", he says, "Feed the poor". That's confounding in some ways. And on the other side of the coin, it is revelatory and beautiful. The more I talk with therapists, including physical therapists, I keep hearing the same thing I hear when I talk to dancers is that there is a sad reality to the detachment we feel particularly among the religious from our own bodies. A distance from the actual vessel in which we live our lives, even sometimes a full-blown disrespect. That the way we practice our religion, the way we practice our lives, comes really close to denying the physical reality of the body we live life in. I'm recording this on the Tuesday of Holy Week, of the end of this week, Christians like me will celebrate the physical death and the physical resurrection of Jesus Christ. It is the central truth of Christianity. And yet, as a religion, that predicates the entirety of its truth, on the physicality of God, we really do struggle with bodies. Even the Incarnation and the physical death and resurrection of Jesus is often talked about and treated like a necessary act, rather than a joyful expression. That God had to become a human and hadn't to die, and then be raised in the body. It was something that God had to do, rather than a joyful choice. Which then really does show up in a culture in which we have to live in these bodies, and don't choose to live in them with joy. This brings me to this short reflection, this Holy Week 2022. Yes, there is a massive departure from the physical spaces in which people regularly used to show up to celebrate, to worship, to learn about, and to meet with the God that holds all things together. Yes, there is a mass exodus. And you've heard me reflect on this same dilemma, the same crisis, the same reality a few times. I wonder if part of why that is is not just because there's corruption in different corners of our culture. And fewer and fewer people are willing to put up with that corruption in order to belong somewhere. But also because we just don't dance enough. And we don't share meals enough. And we spend far too much time and physical proximity to one another and to our neighbors, ignoring, bypassing, and even degrading the physical reality of our lives. And maybe what all of that adds up to is this, that a God that does not recognize, celebrate and enjoy the physical reality of human life simply isn't a god worth paying attention to, at all. And if that's the God we're presenting, if that's the God we're celebrating, if that's the God we're worshiping, then maybe it's no wonder the folks who are looking for something else. Links For Justin:Coaching with Justin NEW Single - Let Go NEW Music - Sliver of Hope NEW Music - The Dood and The Bird The Book - It Is What You Make it | |||
| 03 Jun 2021 | Tanner Olson | 00:51:44 | |
In a bio of mine, I describe myself as someone who desires to “provide language for the process of life and faith” I am a “words” person. Not everyone has to be or is. But I certainly care quite a bit about the words I use and the words that I take into my life. For a number of years, Tanner Olson has been making poetry and putting it in the world. He’s also one of those artists who recognize that the work he does requires a bit of translation. He’s not just a poet who puts poems in the world and hopes that people might or might not get them. He actually invites people into his process as a writer because he is actually doing the work of caring for the language is using and its impact on those to take it in. Links For Justin:Coaching with Justin NEW Single - Let Go NEW Music - Sliver of Hope NEW Music - The Dood and The Bird The Book - It Is What You Make it | |||
| 10 Aug 2024 | Spirituality, Deep Work, and Meaningful Debates | 00:15:34 | |
In this episode of the At Sea Podcast, host Justin McRoberts turns the focus inward, addressing audience questions in a traditional Q&A format. He discusses finding a new connection with God post-untangling, tips for achieving deep work amid distractions, recognizing when it's time for a new chapter in life, and balancing arguments with interpersonal relationships. Justin provides personal insights and practical advice on spirituality, productivity, change, and valuing relationships over winning debates. Tune in for a deep and thoughtful conversation aimed at enriching your personal and spiritual journey. Links For Justin:Coaching with Justin NEW Single - Let Go NEW Music - Sliver of Hope NEW Music - The Dood and The Bird The Book - It Is What You Make it | |||
| 12 Nov 2024 | Navigating Politics in Public | 00:19:00 | |
Show Notes:
Links For Justin:Coaching with Justin NEW Single - Let Go NEW Music - Sliver of Hope NEW Music - The Dood and The Bird The Book - It Is What You Make it | |||
| 10 Feb 2022 | The Dood and the Bird | 00:05:01 | |
Whether you are a kid or you have kids, or you like kids, or you were a kid, or whatever, I think you're gonna like this project and the songs on it and you can pick it up from us directly at www.thedudeandthebird.bandcamp.com or beginning February 22, you can listen to it and all your favorite streaming services. Check it out. Links For Justin:Coaching with Justin NEW Single - Let Go NEW Music - Sliver of Hope NEW Music - The Dood and The Bird The Book - It Is What You Make it | |||
| 16 Feb 2023 | Stephen Roach | 00:46:01 | |
I met Stephen Roach a number of years ago at an event he curates called the Breath and the Clay. It's a conference, an Arts and Faith Conference in North Carolina. And I'd heard about the Breath in the Clay through artists who had participated in the conferences, as presenters. And then some folks who had attended the thing. And, and all of them had something similar to say about it, that it was not just different, but different in this particular way, that they left with a sense of belonging in the world of the arts, that less, less than leaving just equipped as an artist to make their art, or less than just feeling inspired. More than that, they left feeling they had a place in the world of the arts. And that's such a vital aspect, I would suggest great art, of great culture, and of life. Not just feeling equipped, internally, but feeling a sense of belonging in place in my world, and in my particular culture. We've become friends since then we chit chat off and on. And I've been looking forward to this interview for a long time, namely, because over the last 18 months or two years since the last breath in the clay event, Steven has spent a considerable amount of time investing in his own health and his own place in his own life and his own in his own culture, that he's actually spent the time to attend to who he is, as he does what he does. That I think is the engine behind great art lives and great careers. So I was thrilled to do this conversation. I enjoyed it.
I think you will too. Links For Justin:Coaching with Justin NEW Single - Let Go NEW Music - Sliver of Hope NEW Music - The Dood and The Bird The Book - It Is What You Make it | |||
| 06 Jan 2022 | Mike Donehey | 00:42:53 | |
Just as there are artists who work at the edges of a culture, pushing boundaries and breaking rules that need breaking, there are also artists doing essential work closer to the heart or center of a their chosen culture. For two decades, Mike Donehey has taken the sacred trust of folks at the heart of his culture and led, lovingly and faithfully. Check it out. Links For Justin:Coaching with Justin NEW Single - Let Go NEW Music - Sliver of Hope NEW Music - The Dood and The Bird The Book - It Is What You Make it | |||
| 12 Jan 2023 | Scott Cairns | 01:05:40 | |
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, and sorry, I could not travel them both and be one traveler, long I stood and looked down one as far as I could, to where it bent in the undergrowth, you might recognize that as the opening stanza to the Robert Frost poem, The Road Not Taken. It's the poem that ends, Two roads diverged in the wood, and I took the one less traveled by, and it has made all the difference. It's probably even more familiar. I remember being exposed to that poem. It was probably the first poem as a whole poem that I was actually taught or read really fully exposed to. I think I was a freshman in high school. And as I was exposed to and read and saw this poem, really for the first time, two things happened in me that I recall. One was a kind of, I guess, embarrassed response poetry, poems. They were written by and for hyper, emotive, weird people. And that if you were into poems and you liked poetry, then you must be a hyper-emotive and weird person. I was on the football team. I ran track. I was a guy. That was the one thing happening in my brain. The other thing happening in me was that I was really resonating, and I really liked the poem. And I really liked the rest of that section in our English class about poetry. Something about the very intentional use and shape and reframing of words actually resonated with my soul. That tension resolved itself over the years, till the beginning and even later in high school, as life got weirder and required more complex and deeper emotional responses. Poetry became an actual feature in my life as something I attempted to write. But definitely, I started reading more poetry all the way through college. And to be entirely honest, really, in the last decade or so, the more I've spent time, intentionally on, in my own inner universe, and done my best to come alongside people working in the arts and working in religious spaces where life is hard and complex and weird and strange. Poetry has not just become a useful tool or a powerful practice. It has become a really safe, generative, and transformative aspect of expression. It's a beautiful part of my life. I listened to Scott Cairns's read and lecture at the festival faith in writing. I believe it was in 2016. And not just not only was I struck by his writing and the way he read the things he wrote, but I was also really captured by the way he talked about his work. That's one of those. It's one of the aspects of art-making that oftentimes inspires me. So someone who's excellent in their craft and has the ability to talk about what they do, how they do it, and why they do it. I've been thinking about and hoping to catch Scott to talk about the power of poetry, the essence of poetry, and the necessity of poetry for a really long time. And so I'm really glad I got some time to sit down with him. I enjoy this conversation. I think you will as well. Links For Justin:Coaching with Justin NEW Single - Let Go NEW Music - Sliver of Hope NEW Music - The Dood and The Bird The Book - It Is What You Make it | |||
| 19 Aug 2021 | Matthew Paul Turner | 01:00:03 | |
When Rachel Held Evans died, on May 4 of 2019, she left a significant m emotional and cultural void; one that was felt by her followers and readers but also one that was felt differently by those she was working alongside. See, Rachel was part of a whole tribe of persons working to establish and celebrate a new language for a generation of people of faith. In the long shadow of her passing, other members of the tribe felt a kind of witty responsibility to continue the legacy she was forging. Among those people was (and is) Matthew Paul Turner. when I met Matthew recently, he was quite literally surrounded by hundreds of copies of his most recent children’s book. As a New York Times best-selling children’s author, Matthew had taken on the particular and beautiful responsibility of finishing a children’s book project Rachel had begun before she passed. Entitled, “What Is God Like?” the book is less an effort to answer the question precisely and more an imaginative exploration of the possibilities that question presents; possibilities that might mean that there is room in God for everyone. It is a poignant and appropriate continuation of Rachel Held Evans‘s legacy. It is also a beautiful and powerful addition to the body of work Matthew Paul Turner is releasing into the world. I truly enjoyed my conversation with Matthew and I think you will too. Check it out Links For Justin:Coaching with Justin NEW Single - Let Go NEW Music - Sliver of Hope NEW Music - The Dood and The Bird The Book - It Is What You Make it | |||
| 13 May 2021 | Listening Comes First | 00:05:59 | |
In the 8th chapter of the biblical book of acts is a fascinating story about a man named Philip. Philip, a member of the early Church, hears what the writer of the story names as the voice of God saying “Go south.” And as he does, he comes across an Ethiopian eunuch riding in a chariot You know... like ya do. Upon this encounter, Philip hears what the writer of the story identifies as the voice of God says “Go to that chariot and stay near it.” Which Phillip then does. And standing there long enough, he hears the eunuch in the chariot reading from what we now call the Old Testament prophets; readings Phillip and his new religious community would be familiar with. From that moment, Phillip then engages in a deeply resonant conversion with his new friend in which he is asked to help guide and clarify the spiritual awakening Already taking place in the heart, mind, and spirit, and body in the chariot. Which is to say, the entirety of this story is predicated on Phillip’s ability, capacity, and choice to listen. Without that choice and without that discipline, there is no encounter, no relationship, and no story. In art, like in a relationship and, I would suggest, in good religion, listening comes first. A number of years ago now, perhaps 15 or so, a large group of teenagers from a different state descended upon San Francisco California, just next to where I live. Their mission was to call on the citizens of that city and its leadership to repent from sin and turn their eyes upon the Lord. Being from elsewhere, most of the rumors and stories they were familiar with about San Francisco were of the sordid type. It was, in their estimation and understanding, a broken place in need of rescue from the outside. Most of what they did with their time looked a bit like a protest, gatherings on the steps of City Hall holding signs about repentance while singing songs they learned in church services or at youth gatherings. And I’ll be honest right now and tell you that I don’t think the primary error here had to do with bringing their particular brand of the Christian religion to San Francisco. Instead, the thing missing here for me is that they did not talk to and listen to Christians whose religion was being lived out in San Francisco and included a deep love for that city. They did not go to the chariot and stand near long enough to hear or see or smell or sense what God might already be up to in the place they were going. I might go so far as to suggest that nothing on the other side of such an error was going to go well. When I started this podcast, my hope and intention was to bend my ear towards murky and turbulent waters in which important decisions are being made that change the lives and trajectories of beloved human beings. What I wasn’t interested in was attending to the problems in those waters as I understood them. Instead, what I have chosen and attempted to do is to hear what it sounds like for goodness, truth, and beauty shine and stir and grow in places I don’t fully understand and in people I don’t know yet. Which is to say, for the past six seasons, I have been learning to conclude more slowly and judge less harshly, and act more wisely,… primarily by learning to listen more carefully. Because, if I do not do that well, I cannot love well. Among the many short snippets of wisdom I have gathered on my Instagram feed, is this one I return to often.
In order to wisely and lovingly deliver goodness to another soul, (and here I would add: “or another place or culture,“ I need to know that soul, that place or that culture. The lifeblood of any good work is listening.
Links for Justin :
Pre-Order the new book - It Is What You Make It Links For Justin:Coaching with Justin NEW Single - Let Go NEW Music - Sliver of Hope NEW Music - The Dood and The Bird The Book - It Is What You Make it | |||
| 11 Feb 2021 | Jennifer Ko | 00:32:58 | |
Often enough, the topic of pain gets tied up into the same kind of conversations had about “evil.” Spoken of as a “problem” or a thing to be avoided. A thing that diminishes the human experience and limits relationships. Oddly, pain, including physical pain, is perhaps the most common human experience. And there might not be anything quite as soul-binding as suffering together. Which is what makes the work Jennifer Ko does so beautiful, so good and so humanly true. Chronic pain and physical limitation take center stage in Jennifer’s story and her work. And rather than speaking in terms of “problems” and “ways to avoid,” Jennifer shares the reality of her pain as an experience and expression of her full humanity. I am regularly informed and inspired by who she is and how she shares herself. This is my conversation with Jennifer Ko. Links For Justin:Coaching with Justin NEW Single - Let Go NEW Music - Sliver of Hope NEW Music - The Dood and The Bird The Book - It Is What You Make it | |||
| 13 Apr 2023 | Jess Ray | 00:59:04 | |
Welcome to the At Sea podcast. I'm your host, Justin McRoberts. I met Jess Ray a number of years ago at a conference where she was helping to lead songs and realize there was some of her music that I had heard before. Maybe you had that experience where you're paying attention to someone or something, you hear something and you realize, like, oh my gosh, this is already in my system. I'm already a fan of this. Well, having already been a fan of her music, just by nature of the songs themselves, then watching her engage with people. In the art of song-leading, I was locked in as a lifetime fan. I really like what Jess Ray does musically. I also really liked the way she goes about doing it. When I return to this theme over and over that art is anything we create that forges a connection between people. I think about people like Jess Ray, who really is actually about that connection, who pays attention to the connection, who senses that connection in herself. You'll hear that in the conversation. And I think you'll feel that in the worksheet as if you're not already familiar with it. So check out this conversation. I think you'll dig it.
Links for Jess RayWebsite - www.jessray.com
Links For Justin:NEW Single - Let Go NEW Music - Sliver of Hope NEW Music - The Dood and The Bird NEW Book - Sacred Strides (Pre-order)It Is What You Make itHearts and Minds Amazon Barnes and Noble Links For Justin:Coaching with Justin NEW Single - Let Go NEW Music - Sliver of Hope NEW Music - The Dood and The Bird The Book - It Is What You Make it | |||
| 21 Mar 2024 | Sacred Strides Chapter 10 - Quitting the Race "For Good" | 00:30:47 | |
In this episode, Justin and Dan discuss Chapter 10 of the book 'Sacred Strides' titled 'Quitting the Race for Good' or 'Disconnect and Repair'. They start by talking about technology and its metaphorical significance. Justin shares his experiences with tech issues and the need for intentional disconnection. He explains the analogy of Bluetooth connections and the importance of forgetting certain connections to reconnect in a healthier way. Justin also discusses his journey of disconnecting from transactional relationships and finding true connections that remind him of his belovedness. Takeaways
Chapters 00:00 Introduction and Scheduling 00:30 Root Canal and West Wing 03:04 Technology as a Metaphor 06:15 Disconnecting and Repairing 11:12 Bluetooth and Connections 13:01 Forgetting Connections 15:20 Deep Dive into the Soul 22:56 Disconnecting and Forgetting 28:01 Recognizing Belovedness 29:43 Conclusion Links For Justin:Coaching with Justin NEW Single - Let Go NEW Music - Sliver of Hope NEW Music - The Dood and The Bird The Book - It Is What You Make it | |||
| 05 Sep 2024 | Navigating Grief and Loneliness: Insights on Self-Care and Leadership | 00:17:05 | |
In this episode of the At Sea Podcast, host Justin McRoberts discusses the podcast's shift towards direct conversations. He shares insights on various topics, including self-care as a parent, the distinction between loneliness and solitude, and leadership lessons as his faith has evolved. Justin answers questions from his Instagram followers on managing grief and finding stillness as a parent, moving from loneliness to solitude, and his biggest leadership lessons. 00:00 Introduction to the At Sea Podcast 00:59 Transition to Direct Conversations 01:57 Addressing Listener Questions 02:04 Finding Stillness and Moving Through Grief 02:46 The Balance Narrative in Parenting 05:40 Redefining Stillness and Self-Care 08:07 From Loneliness to Solitude 13:14 Leadership Lessons and Faith Evolution 16:27 Closing Remarks and Support Links For Justin:Coaching with Justin NEW Single - Let Go NEW Music - Sliver of Hope NEW Music - The Dood and The Bird The Book - It Is What You Make it | |||
| 02 Feb 2023 | Poetry & Relationship | 00:08:49 | |
Among the many gifts I got early in high school was an F I got on a paper from an English class, a paper that the teacher said was too poetic. What he didn't mean by that is that I had written great poetry in the wrong place. What he meant really, in large part, is that it was really poorly written poetry. A lot was going on for me at the moment. One was I really wasn't actually prepared to write the paper he suggested I write. I didn't actually do the assignment the way it was assigned. So there was that I was a bad student. Secondly, a lot of my literary influences weren't literary in the academic sense. They were. They were poems. They were Lyrics by Morrissey or Robert Smith of the cure any number of folks in the new wave kind of genre of music, and I was deeply influenced by their words because I felt their words. And the topic of the paper. I don't remember specifically, but I wanted to feel it when I wrote about it. It had to do with what you wanted to be when you grew up. And for me, at the time, I was a freshman. That was a feeling question. It wasn't an idea question. It wasn't a mathematical question. It wasn't a reasoning question. What I wanted to be when I grew up was a feeling question. It was something that was attached to my emotions. And the words that I would have normally used in an academic setting. It just really didn't do it for me. So I reached for poetry. I know this now, as a 49-year-old guy, I wouldn't have articulated quite like that as a freshman, but I'm pretty sure that was what was going on is, yeah, I'm supposed to write this paper about my feelings and dreams. It feels too boring to write it like an essay. I'm going to write it like a poem. That totally worked for me emotionally. It did not work for me at all. Academically, I got an F on the paper. I think I ended up with a D or a C. In the class. That anecdote, as silly and goofy and hopefully as funny as it might be to you, also reflects a tension I have often lived in, not just as a writer, but as a person when it comes to the particular uses of language for particular things. proper grammar, and getting the words right to speak correctly. I think it doesn't just have a place; I think it's vitally important. Learning the rules of grammar is important. Part of what makes learning the rules of grammar important is that I know intentionally when working outside of those rules, that that realm of poetry is at least as important as learning the rules of grammar and getting it right. One of the reasons I'm spending so much time talking with poets during the season. And referencing people's poetic work because I think the world of poetry and the practice of poetry might help to unlock a little bit of what's missing in our communication with one another. I've watched a conversation between two very like-minded persons about a topic that they, for the most part, really agree on devolve into vitriol and disgust and insults. Because a wrong word was chosen because of the wrong phrase or because of a word in the wrong place. And the emphasis on getting the right word, the correct word became more important than the person on the other side of the word that we stopped in those moments asking the question, what might this person mean by it? Which is a question about the person, and we instead get locked up on the fact that that would not be the word I would choose. They didn't say it or do it the way I would. We miss one another. When a relationship, in general, much less than a broad cultural scale, becomes about getting it right. Part of what poetry does is it invites us to move through conversations to more patiently, slowly, and attentively look at, listen to, examine, and take in the language in front of us, whether that's the language we're using or the language someone else is using in conversation with us. And not to investigate that word, according to some scale of its rightness, but allow the possibilities, the word opens up to open up the possibilities in relationship. At one point in Jesus's work life, he was asked by one of his disciples, Why he spoke to people in parables. If you know the work of Jesus, you know that a lot of the time, he would tell a story about a field or a farmer about sowing seeds. Instead of telling the story straight or telling the truth straight, he would use analogies to use imagery. And one of these folks who spent a lot of time lives and why do you speak to be Put in parables. This is from the NIV, it says, he replied, This is Matthew 13, he replied, Because the knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of heaven has been given to you, but not to them, whoever has will be given more, and they will have an abundance, whoever does not have even what they have, will be taken from them. This is why I speak to them in parables. And then quoting from the book of Isaiah, he says, Though seeing they do not see through hearing, they do not hear or understand it is fulfilled in them from the prophet Isaiah, you will be ever hearing but never understanding you will be ever seen but never perceiving. Now, I'm going to assume that you've had conversations like this in which you are speaking, and the person who is listening to you isn't actually listening. They might be looking at you, and they might like have an ear open to you, but they're not really listening. They've maybe decided what you're going to say. Or maybe they've decided how they're going to feel about what you're going to say in any number of options outside of actually attending to what it is you're saying, which is why I really love what Jesus says. He says, Listen, I speak to people in parables because I'm challenging them to listen. You are actually doing the work of listening. And because you're doing the work of listening, you'll continue to receive more of this, which is how relationship works. And by that, I mean all relationships, interpersonal relationships, corporate relationships, societal relationships, administrative relationships, and cultural relationships. It's all predicated on Listening, paying attention, and not just to the words used, but to the people using the words. Poetry asks us to slow down and attend to the words, not just themselves, but all the possibilities. Those words open up between us and those we are conversing with. Again, there I am at 15 years old, trying to find words that actually match what's going on in my guts. And absolutely, Mr. Griswold was correct that using an academic paper to work that out was not the right place. But it was the right thing for me to be doing. And the more time I've spent in areas in my life where the right words, academically, even societally, just don't actually match what's going on in me or around me or between me and other people. The more stretching, invitational practice of poetry has allowed me to create space in my own psychology and, yes, in between myself and other people. Which leads me to this. I honestly can't see the next season of life here where I live in the United States, becoming less nuanced, becoming less complicated, culturally, racially interpersonally. I think it's going to get weirder. And the weirder it gets, the harder it will be to connect with one another if we're expecting people to jump through all the right hoops in order to communicate with us. So how do we become better listeners at think reading some poetry on occasion, somewhat regularly, and maybe even getting into that practice of finding some space in our lives to maybe write some poetry to get outside of the language we're used to using in our academic, relational, religious spaces, and create a pattern in our own minds in which words don't kill relationship but open up the possibility of it Links For Justin:Coaching with Justin NEW Single - Let Go NEW Music - Sliver of Hope NEW Music - The Dood and The Bird The Book - It Is What You Make it | |||
| 18 Mar 2021 | Fear and Booze & Beer and Taboos | 00:05:15 | |
When Donald Miller’s book “Blue Like Jazz” was initially making its rounds through religious circles, one of the hot topics of conversation had to do with cultural taboos.
Which is why I really prefer hearing care-takers approach issues like booze or cussing or tattoos or sex say something more like “I’m not comfortable with this and, having thought a lot about it, here are my reasons.” First, because there are some things that are, flat out, just plain wrong and the toxicity and seriousness of those things are lessened when treated with a similar weight as something like foul language or horror films. But also because it’s better leadership. Saying “This is the way I am going because, based on the information I have, it is a good way for me and I wonder if it might be better for you” is a thing I can respect and follow, particularly as it’s handed to me as a way to care; it’s also what is really meant oftentimes. But saying “I’ve discovered or seen a cosmic and unmovable truth that you don’t see about this very particular (and even small) thing. You should get on board.” is harder to swallow and is dripping with fear; fear of the thing itself and (worse), fear that I’ll choose poorly and unwisely given the chance. Fear makes bad religion and unhealthy relationship Fear also corrupts and undoes good religion and healthy relationship
But it’s more humanly true And it’s more caring.
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| 01 Feb 2024 | Sacred Strides Chapter 7 - Tripping Over Myself | 00:25:46 | |
We are walking through the book Sacred Strides. Dan is asking questions, and we're re-narrating this book because it's cool. And I'd like to get it in your life somehow, shape, or form. So Dan has known me for a very long time; we've been partners for, goodness gracious, like a couple of decades, and we've done many different works together. And so he has a unique take on my work and what I'm doing with it. And it's been fun to walk through these chapters, have Dan point stuff out, and show me where the work could have made this a better project. - What a terrible podcast! I'm kidding. Join us as we go over the lessons and stories of Chapter 7. Links For Justin:Coaching with Justin NEW Single - Let Go NEW Music - Sliver of Hope NEW Music - The Dood and The Bird The Book - It Is What You Make it | |||
| 14 Oct 2021 | Tara Owens | 00:34:02 | |
In the book Prayer: 40 Days of Practice, I take a swing at unpacking the word “spiritual;” not an effort to redefine the word for all users, but an effort to expand its application to meet my own experience and expectation. I do so by way of a kind of allegory; one in which a young man visits a religious guide of some kind, I think I call him a priest in the actual chapter, and shares that something feels wrong in his connection with The Divine. He describes it as a kind of pain in his chest; one he experiences most keenly at night when he lays down to reflect on his day. After describing the discomfort in some detail, the young man expects a particular kind of “spiritual” response from his priest friend. But that priest friend reaches into his bag to retrieve an antacid, saying “Son, you have heartburn.” My hope is that the story expands a readers’ take on what it means to think of themselves spiritually. That, instead of “spiritual” matters being those that are disembodied and separate from financial, social, physical, mental, or emotional ones, thinking spiritually is about seeing all those aspects of one’s existence as integrated, sacred, and attended to by The One Who Holds All Things Together. And while the story presents a bit more prescriptive role from the priest, that expanded expectation regarding what is “spiritual” is part of the work of spiritual direction. And spiritual direction, as a practice and a profession, deserves a whole long look before we go simply and easily defining it. If living spiritually has to do with considering every square inch of my life worth the attention of God, then learning to practice that kind of life takes a very nuanced, very detailed, and (dare I say) very personal help. That has been the role of spiritual direction for me and one I have longed to play in the lives of others. I am currently apprenticed to Tara Owens who is a spiritual director and the founder of Man Cara Ministries. Her wisdom and experience have been on the revolutionary side of enriching for me and because I know my attempts at passing along the things (and the ways) I’ve come to see by way of her guidance, I visited her in Colorado Springs so that I could pass along our conversation. I think you’ll dig it. Check it out. Links For Justin:Coaching with Justin NEW Single - Let Go NEW Music - Sliver of Hope NEW Music - The Dood and The Bird The Book - It Is What You Make it | |||
| 25 Mar 2021 | Karen Swallow Prior | 00:49:20 | |
I don’t know when the words “liberal” or “conservative” became insults. What I do know is that I can’t remember a time when they weren’t. So, maybe it’s always been this way to some degree. I’m not sure. My guest on this episode of the podcast is a voice who shows up on what many might call the “conservative side” of conversations, online and off. I’ve watched her navigate the nuances of those engagements without slipping into the snark and dismissiveness that has become a hallmark of political argument. I’ve also marveled at her capacity to both belong to and deeply critique her own culture. A Ph.D., she is a Research Professor of English and Christianity and Culture at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. She is an author and contributor to a library of books including a very interesting book entitled “Cultural Engagement: A Crash Course In Contemporary Issues.” This is my conversation with Karen Swallow Prior.
Links for Karen Swallow Prior
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| 16 Sep 2021 | Taylor Schumann | 00:47:48 | |
I’ve come to pretty fundamentally believe that some things cannot (and should not) be discussed outside of personal experience. That might sound odd coming from someone with a relatively traditional education in western philosophy. But… here I am. One of the keenest examples of that is gun violence. The way I see it: despite the numbers, And the value of human life is established in places outside of Mathematica and statistics; Places we call “emotional” or even “sentimental.” Taylor Schumann’s accounting of gun violence is personal. And that, in my opinion, makes it powerful. Not because the story is dramatic or even culturally triggering. But because, as a matter of statistics fact, there are only so many people who have heard gun-shots near them and faced the actual reality that they might die at the end of a gun. Taylor Schumann has. And because she has, I believe her and think what she says matters. I think you will, too. Check it out. Links For Justin:Coaching with Justin NEW Single - Let Go NEW Music - Sliver of Hope NEW Music - The Dood and The Bird The Book - It Is What You Make it | |||
| 28 Jun 2024 | New Season Intro | 00:14:52 | |
Join Justin McRoberts for a fresh and engaging chapter of the At Sea Podcast! After many years of evolving and connecting with our amazing listeners, we're excited to bring you a season focused on your questions, stories, and journey. This season, we'll dive into what truly matters to you, offering insightful conversations on art, religion, leadership, and more. 📚💡 Whether you're a longtime listener or just joining us, you'll find thought-provoking discussions every week. Links For Justin:Coaching with Justin NEW Single - Let Go NEW Music - Sliver of Hope NEW Music - The Dood and The Bird The Book - It Is What You Make it | |||
| 21 Apr 2022 | John J Thompson | 00:48:58 | |
For a number of years, my favorite event in the country was The Festival of Faith and Music in Grand Rapids, Michigan. The festival host, a gentleman named Ken Hefner would stand up in front of headlining artists' audiences and challenge those audiences to be as prepared for the show, as the band that we were about to see. He would say, "That you would expect this band to have brought their A-game with regard to performance. I'm asking you if you brought your A-game with regards to listening." Stephen Covey, who's the writer of the book, Seven Habits of Highly Effective People is quoted as saying that most people do not listen with the intent to understand they listen with the intent to reply. You've been in those conversations when the person listening to you is really just paying attention so that they can say what they've already planned on saying, along with people like Ken Hefner, John J. Thompson has spent the lion's share of his career trying to and coaching people to listen differently. Beyond trying to simply understand, much less reply. John J. Thompson believes that listening can be and most of the time is a transformative experience. I got to catch up with John at the White Owl festival just outside of Nashville, Tennessee not too long ago, and I really enjoyed our conversation. I think you will too. Check it out. Links For Justin:Coaching with Justin NEW Single - Let Go NEW Music - Sliver of Hope NEW Music - The Dood and The Bird The Book - It Is What You Make it | |||
| 16 Jun 2020 | Jennifer Lahl | 00:50:04 | |
The Center For Bioethics and Culture Network Links For Justin:Coaching with Justin NEW Single - Let Go NEW Music - Sliver of Hope NEW Music - The Dood and The Bird The Book - It Is What You Make it | |||
| 26 Aug 2021 | Rachel Held Evans, Language, and Trust | 00:04:59 | |
I have mentioned Caroline McIntyre‘s book “caring for words in a culture of lies“ many times over the course of this podcast’s five years. It was, upon first read, a formative and grounding resource; it continues to be. Similarly, McIntyre warns that misuse or careless use of words disconnects us from the heart of the things we were talking about; that, if I truly love a subject or an idea or experience or a truth, it is my responsibility, through language, to communicate that subject or idea or experience or truth in a way others might come to appreciate it as well; that when there is a disconnect between a thought I am moved by and the ability of someone I care about to perceive it, that gap is my problem and is a problem of language. In short, Caroline McIntyre suggests that language is a primary expression of love; love for the things I take interest in and love for those I am living life with. And in so far as that is the case, that language is an expression of love, how important it is that I recognize the often tragic limitation of language. My words, your words, can never quite capture or enlighten every aspect, angle, and nuance of Life and the particular elements of life in which we find joy and pain. Which is part of why I am so often moved by the courage of those who are willing to put the best of their words on the table while knowing those words can only do so much. It is also why I am often moved by the courage of those who, after a time, find and apply new words to older conversations in which we’ve grown maybe too comfortable with our language gaps and the divisions we settle into because of them. For instance, I’ve marveled at those who have faithfully approached the language “God is love” and have been not only consistent enough but humble enough to allow a phrase like that to become less about particular conclusions and more about possibilities. Which is often what I see in stories about Jesus when, as the conversation about the Love of God hits the table, ends up handling questions like “who is my neighbor?” In response, Jesus offers a story that has layers of cultural implications and a much broader set of possibilities than the “conclusions” his audience had learned were associated with “God” or “Love.” The possibilities and pathways available in the Divine will always be infinitely more interesting and beautiful than the language we use to point at them; which leads me to think that perhaps the best we can do with our language is hope to point others (or even our own souls) at the Good, True and Beautiful and then trust not only the fuller reality of those things but even other people’s experiences of those things to fill in “the gap.” Maybe everything else is an exercise in control? So, I think of recent writers like Rachel Held Evans, I don’t find any kind of real scandal in the conclusions she was trying to get people to come to (if there really were any of those); I think the “scandal” of her legacy was the constant and wild suggestion that the love of God is actually for everyone and that, whenever someone has left off of that “everyone,” we’ve come up against a limitation of language and human will and can do better. I love that. Namely, because I really do believe that if I am not actually scandalized on occasion, I must not be actually paying attention to God. Great religious language points us to possibilities beyond the words we are currently using and then invites us to trust the rest of our process to the Divine who desires far more than the understanding and cognition we chase with words, but desires, instead… So, maybe we can take the pressure off ourselves and those we’re giving our precious attention to by not having to trust so deeply the messengers, specific. Instead, perhaps can we learn to trust the larger process that the messenger is part of. Links For Justin:Coaching with Justin NEW Single - Let Go NEW Music - Sliver of Hope NEW Music - The Dood and The Bird The Book - It Is What You Make it | |||
| 05 Aug 2022 | Work/Life Balance | 00:57:38 | |
I want to spend a few moments dissecting and maybe even dismantling this phrase. This idea that comes up in coaching conversations and has come up for a long, long time. In my 20-plus years in pastoral ministry as an artist and is the phrase work-life balance. I've got a lot of issues with this. And not just theoretical, but more so as a practical reality. So I'll start where I'm going to end and basically say that there is no such thing as a work-life balance, and more to the point, that the ideas that lead us to talk about work-life balance are not just toxic, they're destructive, and they're anti-human. So, I don't like the phrase. First of all, because it puts a line somewhere between work and life as if there's this thing called life that we're living. And that work is a thing that gets in the way of life; I've actually had conversations with artist friends who will actually flip this terminology on its head. And they'll talk about how life gets in the way of work. And what has been meant by that? And way too many conversations is that being a dad gets in the way of making art or being a husband or being a neighbor or that being anything other than a working person gets in the way of work. So life gets in the way of work; it puts life anything else that doesn't work somehow in competition with life. Now with a lot of other folks with folks who work at nine to five jobs and cubicles, sometimes the way this conversation goes is that work is this necessary evil that I have to do to support my quote-unquote, life. And folks who live in that place for too long and wear themselves out. I don't think there is such a work-life balance because I don't think there is a division between work. And life work should be an outpouring of our whole lives. And life should be this menagerie of experiences, obligations, freedoms, and expressions enriched by the work we do with our hands and our time with talent. I bristle at the notion that work and life are somehow a competition or are separate things. They are intertwined. They're not opposites. They're in relationship with one another. The word balance is the other massive hang-up I have with this phrase work-life balance. I don't think that's a reality at all. I think that works in mathematics. I think it works with physical objects. But with a human life, I don't think balance is a healthy goal at all, not even close. Instead, I think about our lives, priorities, obligations, freedoms, and expressions. They work in seasons. I actually hear the word balance. When we talk about life, when we say work-life balance, what I actually hear a saying oftentimes, is that I intend to or want to somehow keep all of my relationships, all of my obligations, and all of my commitments equally happy all of the time. And that kind of commitment or dream or idea will tear you to shreds and leave you miserable, and leave most of the things in your life have done or done poorly. Instead, I think there are seasons for full investment in things at the cost of other things. In other words, and this is a really, really rough example. But there are times when I have to look my kids in the face and say I'm going to be gone for ten days. And I don't get to be a full-time present dad because I'm somewhere else in the country or in the world, doing a work of my life that I hope enriches the world that I belong to. And that I'm called to for that, "season" for that ten days. So that two weeks, I can't be both places at the same time, that is a season in microcosm during which I have to be focused somewhere else. Now, panning back out. I actually think that happens over the course of years and over the course of months for sure. When there are times, and there are seasons when it's actually important for you and me to look at what is happening in front of our faces and say, "This is the season in my life during which I'm going to have to focus on this particular aspect of my life at the cost of others. I have to invest in my work during this season of my life. Yes, at the cost of the time I would spend with my friends with my family, with my neighbors." And there's a time to say that during this season, "I'm going to give myself over more completely to my kids, to my neighbors, to my loved ones, and to my friends to my community at the cost of the work that I could get done during that same time." I don't think It's possible to do all those things all the time, equally well, on every single day. I think it happens in seasons. And as I've moved away from the idea of balance towards seasons, I found myself much healthier, much happier. And doing all of the things that I actually do with my time, my life, my talents, and my relationships far more joyfully because I recognize the season that I'm in, and I get to plan for the seasons that I know are coming. Here's what I mean by that. Right now, we're coming towards the tail end of the summer. My summers, because I'm a dad of a 12-year-old and a five-year-old, during this broad season in my life, during which I get to be a dad to a 12 and five-year-old, while my summers just are not productive work times. And because I recognize the broad season as a father, and the particular season, summer, I just don't pressure myself the way we might have; if I was trying to achieve balance, I'm just not going to get as much done. What I also know, though, is that there is a season coming because I know my patterns, because I've been living in seasons during the fall and definitely as the winter sets in, where I'm going to be able to take whatever ideas pop up during this time. And they're going to have their time, their attention. Because during the fall and during the winter, my emphasis changes. And during the winter, I get to take a deep dive into some really interesting projects. I know that I'm going to have that time. So because I know I live in seasons, I'm not bummed out that during the summer, I'm not being as work productive. And then in the winter, I know I can be more project-focused, I can dig deep into some creative idea that I've been maybe dreaming about, and have tension about through the summer and early fall. Because I'm living in seasons, I know that there's a season coming for the things that I want to do, regardless of what that thing is. I want to spend time with my kids and have those days when they know that they have me all day long. And I'm not going anywhere. I have nothing else to do but have fun with you. I also want to give myself over completely to the projects and the ideas that dream in my heart, my soul, and my mind because I want to make beautiful works in the world. And I get to give those projects as ideas, actual time, because I know there's a season for them. If I was living with the promise, the expectation of a life-work balance, I would steal joy from all aspects of my life, instead of giving all aspects of my life their due time in the season Links For Justin:Coaching with Justin NEW Single - Let Go NEW Music - Sliver of Hope NEW Music - The Dood and The Bird The Book - It Is What You Make it | |||
| 31 Aug 2023 | Steph Curry, Marshawn Lynch, Rest and Value | 00:06:29 | |
During the first round of the 2023 playoffs, Stephon Curry of the Golden State Warriors, my favorite team, was on the sideline, and his head coach, Steve Kerr, came to him and said, I'm going to rest you for a little while to save your energy. Now, let me hit pause here and confess, admit to pointing out, yes, you are getting a sports analogy. And so if you're not a sports See, type person, and you're not down with the sports ball, I'm sorry, I'm sorry for several reasons, one of which is that they are just such great analogies and images. Sports really do provide some wonderful parallels to the practice of life in general. So yes, I'm a sports fan. And yes, I like the Golden State Warriors. I love Steph Curry. And having lost both my other teams to Las Vegas. I'm celebrating and savoring my relationship with the Golden State Warriors. So with a few minutes left, I believe in the third quarter, head coach Steve Kerr comes to Steph Curry, potentially the greatest point guard in the history of basketball, and says I'm going to arrest you. Now, that is the kind of rest you and I, most of us, are used to not only getting but seeking. It's the kind of rest that is contextualized. By work, I am resting right now from work I've been doing so that I can get back to work and do it more effectively. And better. That's a certain kind of rest. And it's not a bad kind of rest. It's just limited that kind of rest in the long run, won't actually get to the depths of my soul, my being, and help reframe not just my work but my life and my orientation, even towards the work that I'm doing. In other words, there are different kinds of rest. And we kind of need all of them. Steve Kerr knew that Steph would just call them stuff out here. needed some rest in order for the second half to be everything. It could be for Steph Curry. And it turns out it was Steph dropping 30 points in the second half. And we beat us collectively. I took part in this victory. We beat the Sacramento Kings in game seven, a game seven in which Steph Curry scored 50 points, which at the time was the highest point total in all NBA history and a game seven. He's just fantastic. That was the rest he needed in order to do the job. And the value of the rest was predicated on its effectiveness on the work. And part of what we learn is that rest exposes our values, rest points at the things we think are most valuable about ourselves. And at that moment, the most important and valuable thing about Steph Curry was his ability to score. If all of the rest of my life is angled at setting me up so that I can work more efficiently, then what I expose in that kind of rest is that I believe my highest value is my productivity. Rest is a way it's a metric by which we understand, evaluate, and expose our own values. Which is why Sabbath Keeping is such an absolute scandal. Because what it says to the culture around us is that there are things more important about me than what I do for you. And you'll hear great athletes or great artists say something along those lines when interviewed, especially deeper into their careers, that there's more to them than basketball, there's more to them than rock and roll. There's more to them than what they do with even the best of their talents. About three years previous before that basketball game Marshawn Lynch, who had played in the NFL for a number of years, including for the Raiders, when they were in Oakland, gave an interview about football and, ultimately, about rest and rhythm. And he was asked to some degree, like what his advice would be to younger players, and you can read the entire thing. Or you can watch the video, which I would suggest you do for so many reasons whether or not you're a sports person. It's actually a fantastic piece of communication, what he says to the young the advice he would give to young folks, this is you said I've been on the other side of retirement, and it's good when you get over there. And you can do what you want. So I'll tell you all right now, while you're on it, take care of your bread. So when you're done, you can go ahead and take care of yourself. So while you're in it right now, to kill those bodies. Take care of those chicken. Chicken's a way to talk about money. Take care of those mental because, look, we ain't last in that long. I had a couple of players that I played with that they're no longer here no more. They're no longer you feel me. Take care of your metals, heals bodies, y'all chicken. So when you're ready to walk away, y'all walk away, and you'll be able to do what y'all want to do. What Marshawn Lynch is communicating is, while you're in the game, take care of yourself for something more than the game itself, that there is more to who you are than what you're doing in a particular season. That game was game seven of the playoffs, and Steph was tired. So the rest he needed was just enough to get him back on the court so he could do the job. And that's a way to do the game while you're in the game. It is not a way to live long-term. Sabbath Keeping and rest are practices that expose the values we are living with. And, namely, they expose the overvaluing we have of productivity as a way to define our lives. So take the advice of football legend, local hero of entrepreneur, and all-around dope dude Marshawn Lynch, that while you're doing what you're doing, take care of yourself, yes for the thing you're doing, but also in a way that when you walk away from the thing you're doing right now in this season, there's more of you. 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| 26 Nov 2024 | Church Hurt, Boundaries, and Spiritual Growth | 00:16:25 | |
Podcast Show Notes:
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| 15 Oct 2024 | Jubilee 2024 - Dr. Elissa Yukiko Weichbrodt | 00:21:56 | |
Show Notes:
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| 06 May 2021 | Nick Laparra | 01:02:01 | |
The @ Sea podcast started out to be (and I hope continues to be) a helpful and hopeful guide through sometimes murky or turbulent cultural waters. Some of what that looks like is talking to people I don't align with politically, ideologically, culturally,...
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| 28 Jan 2021 | Kayla Craig | 00:54:01 | |
If you've been around me for any significant time, you'll likely know that my mother is a hero of mine. not in a cute "I love my mom, you guys" kind of way but more like "I hope I can be the kind of resilient and faithful and strong as that person" kind of way. From her very difficult childhood, marked by various in-house abuses and financial destitution to her adventures west to CA from Albuquerque, NM to the ways she held our family together while my father was falling apart and, more recently the relentless ways she cares for me and my kids, I marvel at her parenthood. Which leads me to this: The significance of parenthood seems to often allude faithful and respectful conversation. Either idolized in a kind of glass box and set aside untouched by critique or minimized in a smaller cardboard box and cast aside so that it doesn’t touch other vital things. Parenthood often gets treated as the alter on which all other aspects of life must be sacrificed or the pit of despair that must be avoided so that other aspects of life can be enjoyed and pursued. Either way, the battle lines are drawn: Adventure vs parenthood Romance vs parenthood Ministry vs parenthood Art-making vs parenthood And on and on. And then there’s Kayla Craig, whose practice of integrating her parenthood and her career and adventure and romance and ministry and art is something like a marvel and (more important) something like a beacon and a call forward. She is, like I am, a parent. She is also working on a book of prayers for parents while co-hosting the Upside Down Podcast (on which I’ve been a guest) and producing another the Sacred Ordinary Days And what I love about her posture in doing all of that is that she doesn’t think it makes her special. It makes her normal. Well, I like her kind of normal. I think you will, too. This is my conversation with Kayla Craig.
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| 02 Oct 2021 | David Dark #2 | 00:55:15 | |
When I am asked what I do, I often say that I try to prove language for the process of faith and art. I think that does a decent job of describing my work, even if it’s a bit nebulous. Thing is, language shapes and defines cultures; the difference between one culture and another is often a matter of difference between the words we’re using for the same things.. or even the same experiences. This is why David Dark is one of the very few second-time guests on this podcast. His very peculiar and precise use of language stretches my imagination to reconsider the words I’m using and more seriously consider many words I avoid. In this second conversation, we cover a lot of ground (as we often do when we talk), but spend the lions share of our time on, not just a word, but a name: Reality Winner That name, and the life of the woman that name references, has been a lightning rod for David on many levels. His continual responsibility to that names has brought to life conversations about what it means to be a patriot, what it means to be a Christian, what it means to be a citizen; words whose ideas propel whole cultures. Check it out Links For Justin:Coaching with Justin NEW Single - Let Go NEW Music - Sliver of Hope NEW Music - The Dood and The Bird The Book - It Is What You Make it | |||
| 03 Mar 2022 | Staci Frenes | 00:48:04 | |
During my time as a pastor in the Evangelical Covenant Church, I was in an ongoing conversation about the relationship between LGBTQ folks and local churches. And over the years, regardless of all the different kinds of settings in which that conversation was happening, it kept bringing me back to this very particular biblical imagery. Moses and his people were on the edge of a body of water that they could not safely cross with the armies of Egypt, bearing down on them from behind an impossibility. Any change necessary for a peaceful, free future was just off the table, something very new, something not just unprecedented, but unexpected and very unlikely would need to happen. It has pretty much always felt that same way to me in the institutional conversation about sexuality and gender and identity, and communal religious practice, that any change necessary in order for a peaceful, connected communal future, to be possible just seemed off the table. For that reason, then for several years, I've turned my attention to places in which I saw actual newness, and that was almost always in relationship. It was almost always happening on a level that the institutional conversation was too busy or too noisy, to notice. But as quiet as some of those spaces and moments might have been, they continue to grant me deep and sincere hope for a future. I can't see it. Staci Frenes story is one of those spaces and places and it was a joy to reconnect with her in conversation. Check it out. Links For Justin:Coaching with Justin NEW Single - Let Go NEW Music - Sliver of Hope NEW Music - The Dood and The Bird The Book - It Is What You Make it | |||
| 10 Jun 2021 | Poetry, Love and Control | 00:06:55 | |
A number of years ago, I sat in on a reading by the poet Gregory Orr. Gregory Or was then (and is now) a favorite poet of mine. In fact, he’s a favorite writer of mine. He was maybe five or six pieces into this reading when a conversation struck up between two of the other gentleman in the room. Sitting behind me, I heard one of them saying, loudly enough for me to hear,
So, that’s not the remarkable part of the story; to say or hear “I don’t understand this poem or poetry.” What was notable was that the person he was talking to gave that moment of pause and said… “Actually, not everything is meant to be understood.” This need or desire and me to understand is, in essence, an expression of control. When I talk about “getting” something, when I talk about “understanding” something, part of what I mean by that is that I have a kind of power over it. Part of what good (if not great) poetry does is it disorients me to my own language; the words I normally would use to identify, name, pin down and control the world around me. Great poetry gives me the opportunity to get an attitude over my own life; to re-orient myself and my perspective to be, in fact, charmed again by the life I’m actually living.
to be more than understood and more than powerful too, in fact, be loved And to be Beloved is a thing I can only be named from outside myself. Poetry primes the spirit, primes the mind, loosens to grips I have on the language by which I will control my life my definitions and postures me to actually become someone who can be loved. slightly wider to a different understanding of the same word that I might receive that word might receive that reality on a deeper level in a different way. then maybe I can do that with the people around me. Links For Justin:Coaching with Justin NEW Single - Let Go NEW Music - Sliver of Hope NEW Music - The Dood and The Bird The Book - It Is What You Make it | |||
| 19 Nov 2021 | Stay in Your Lane / Know Your Power | 00:04:19 | |
This will take on a bit of a confessional tone. A few years ago, Dr. Christena Cleveland talked on my podcast about the need for black leaders to steer away from trying to influence white spaces so often. The effort, she clarified, to change white minds about whiteness, should be executed by white hands. Not because of a hatred or distain among black leaders for the people in white-centered cultures, but as a matter of workload, exhaustion and, in a sense, effectiveness. The translation and code switching needed in order to establish not just trust but a baseline of knowledge just wasn’t worth it for a lot of black leaders, who could be spending their time organizing and inspiring in black spaces where agreements about life experience are already made. For example, more often than not, a room of non-white persons doesn’t need convincing that the black experience of the legal system is profoundly different than it is for white persons. As she is so keen at doing, Dr. Cleveland delivered that truth with a fair mix between “stay in your lane” and “know your power.” And that’s a very important distinction for me to make. Absolutely, I have needed to learn how to stay in my lane. I have a tendency to overreach because I want to do so much. That can lead to not just taking on more than I can handle well but even taking on roles FAR better filled by other people with different training, history and socio-cultural positioning. Meanwhile, i’m functionally stealing energy from efforts I can be making in roles more my cup of tea; places I can have a more lasting and deeper impact. But I can witness their courage and work and can translate those efforts and victories for folks more like me. I don’t think will be a leader among those building faith communities in the next season of Western religious life. But I can coach and champion and motivate and help those who are. That old author’s dilemma of knowing your audience translates into a lot of life, including areas of leadership. And just as it can be true of authors, so it is for leaders, that learning where and with whom your work really lands can be as surprising as it is freeing. For both my recent guests, Alan Smyth and David Zach, their entrance into the fight against human slavery has meant learning which parts of that enormous, messy and interconnected world they are most effective in. For both, they’ve recognized that moving the hearts and minds of folks more like themselves is an area of power for them. Alan, a long-time leader of men, wrote a book on the connection between manhood and the vulnerability of children. A long time musician, David Zach career behind the mic of a band making music for the religiously inclined has meant taking stories from some very dark corners of the world into places that would never otherwise hear them. There are victories I thought I’d have at this point in my life and goals I thought I’d have achieved that I simply had to let go of because they don’t fall within the wise and loving parameters of my limited life. Meanwhile, within those limits, there are depths of connection and difference I didn’t know were available to me until I traded in breadth of influence for that depth. It’s a trade I’m happy to have made. Links For Justin:Coaching with Justin NEW Single - Let Go NEW Music - Sliver of Hope NEW Music - The Dood and The Bird The Book - It Is What You Make it | |||
| 29 Jul 2021 | Simone Biles, Athletics and Whole Health | 00:04:59 | |
Stephen Pressfield calls it “Resistance.” A number of religious traditions call it “sin.” But regardless of the name folks apply to it, it seems to me that we generally share, cross-culturally and throughout history, a sense and a lament that things don’t work out perfectly; that things fall apart and that plans don’t always go in order. In that light, part of what that means in my personal history is that planning for success means planning for (or at the very least be prepared for) things not going well. Now before you hear me preaching an “it is what it is” message, counter to the heart of my most recent book effort, I promise you that’s not what I’m saying. Instead, I’d suggest that the anticipation of obstacles and missteps sets me up to see those moments differently; that even my missteps and failed attempts can be elements of my creative process. What do I do with the moment things go … wrong? This week, gymnastics legend Simone Biles pulled out of events in the Olympics, setting off a series of reflections and discussions (including this one) about mental health, sports ethics, performance patterns, rising to the challenge, and public responsibility. There are moments when the best of us, in us or about isn’t available for our “greatest opportunities.” Things don’t always work optimally in optimal situations. In my reading, it’s not what Simone Biles was up against (internally and externally), it’s what she did with that moment, both professionally and publicly, that makes this the moment it is. She chose her health over performance and then told the world. And in so doing, I’d suggest that she moved the goal post regarding what “greatness” can look like for a Legendary athlete. In 2020, the American Medical Society for Sports Medicine published a short study about the detection, treatment, and prevention of mental health issues in competitive athletes. Along with more recognizable factors like “perfectionism,” the study delves into what is known as “Athlete Identity,” which is the degree to which someone views themselves within the athletic role and looks to others for confirmation of that role. In short, an unhealthy dependence of an individual on their success in that one area of life comes at the cost of overall health. And we hear that put really simply by athletes like Simone Biles when she says, just hours after pulling herself from competition on the global stage, “There's more to life than athletics.” Or why, in response to Simone Biles's story, we hear Michael Phelps, a legend in his own right and time, say “We’re human beings. Nobody is perfect. It’s okay not to be okay.” See,.. what if it’s harder to be a whole and healthy human being than it is to be great at any particular thing? What if Simone Biles actually took a step towards whole human goodness by removing herself from the metrics that confirm her greatness as an “Athlete?” In 2009, David Bazan released one of my favorite songs, entitled “Hard To Be.” A somewhat tongue-in-cheek examination of the Biblical notion of sin, David walks through some of the odder explanations and justifications for the fact that life is hard; that things fall apart, and that people get hurt. Then, he daftly returns, in the chorus to the very simple, fundamental truth that It’s hard to be Hard to be Hard to be A decent human being. Yes, it is. And let that make us fans of one another. That, just as we pause the celebrate Simone Biles’s remarkable and unparalleled talent, we’d pause to cheer on our neighbors and roommates as they pursue wholeness and health and the full life God desires for beloved ones around us. As hard as it might be to achieve the things that make one an Olympic champion in a season of life, it just might be harder to live healthily, well, and wholly over the course of a lifetime. Links For Justin:Coaching with Justin NEW Single - Let Go NEW Music - Sliver of Hope NEW Music - The Dood and The Bird The Book - It Is What You Make it | |||
| 14 Jul 2022 | Burnout | 00:07:10 | |
Last week, I introduced a new element to the podcast; namely, bringing part of my Instagram Q&A sessions to this space and providing a longer answer to some of the deeper or, in my opinion, more pressing questions. On Monday, during the Q&A, this question really stuck out to me: “How do we manage over-pouring ourselves when there is an unending well available?” It might be worth noting here, particularly for listeners who aren’t as familiar with some religious terminologies, that this “ unending well“ is a reference to some of the teachings of Jesus in which he promises a kind of well within those who follow him and know him. For instance in John chapter 4, Jesus says “whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become a spring of water welling up to eternal life.“ Now, while the dilemma of giving oneself away “too much“ isn’t just a consideration for the religious, I think that Jesus‘s teachings here have quite a bit to say, which I’ll come back around to. The fear or concern of overextending ourselves is actually a conversation I have quite a bit with the clients I coach. Among both artists and ministers, burnout is a really common theme and an overlap between those two vocations. I don’t know what the numbers are for those who claim to the artists but I do know that a recent study of ministers found that over 60% of pastors polled identified burnout. That’s really sad. Part of what I’ve come to believe is that the primary question here doesn’t have as much to do with “how much“ I’m giving myself away; it has more to do with where and to whom or to what I am giving myself away. I’m going to assume you’ve had similar experiences in this way; I can tell you for certain that there have been times when I have given considerable amount of my energy to a particular group or person in a particular context and then left feeling energized and full. Not that I wasn’t tired, per se. I just wasn’t worn out. I didn’t feel wasted or used. Conversely, I have been in situations where I’ve offered far less of myself and left feeling exhausted, wiped out, and really low. The difference is context. In one scenario, my soul resonated with the culture and the people in the work. In the other scenario, I felt more like an instrument being used rather than a person who belongs. Now, finding ourselves in somewhat transactional and utilitarian contexts Is pretty much unavoidable; that is the shape of most industries and, if we are honest, a whole lot of relationships. And that brings me right back to the initial question which was “what does one do?” First, as I noted, I think this feeling or experience can serve as a kind of benchmark moment in which I can make an honest evaluation of the places and people to whom I am giving myself (and namely the better parts of myself). It can be an invitation to self-knowledge rather than just a problem to be solved. Once I can see it that way, and start to do the work of evaluating my work life for the places I am “pouring myself out,“ that is the place where having a coach or a spiritual Director can be really helpful. For a lot of us who experience burnout, the line between what is truly joyful work and what is simply obligation with decent compensatory rewards is either too thin to notice or may be completely eroded. I’m a relatively high responsibility person and I want to do well by those who ask me for my time or my talents or my energy or my resources. That said, I will only live so long and I don’t have an endless supply of those things. Which brings me back to that teaching of Jesus. I don’t think the invitation here is that, once you are “in Christ,“ you have an endless reservoir of energy to tap into, regardless of what it is you want to apply that energy to. I think the invitation here is to actually be “in Christ“ first; to live and relate an offerer oneself the way Jesus did. It is absolutely worth noting that Jesus did not give himself way to just anybody at whatever point. He was strangely and often mysteriously selective. Remember that he chose 12 people to live that three years of life with. Note, also, that he didn’t “pour himself out endlessly” but chose a particular season (that 3-year period I just mentioned). Also, there were people he chose to not engage with and whole towns he decided to avoid because of the cultural, emotional, political environment. Also, and most vitally, note that Jesus regularly rested. He left at times and made room to be entirely by himself, connected to his Source and separated even from the most life-giving of his relationships. In other words, I think a significant part of what makes this all problematic is the idea that I could, if I were healthy or more religious or more efficient or whatever, be endlessly available and have fewer or no limits. The invitation and opportunity here is to live more like Jesus, who waited until somewhat deeper into his life before he applied the best of his energies to the work in front of him, chose a small group of people to do that with, and took regular breaks from that work along the way. I am currently in the process of writing and editing a book on this very topic because i think the temptation to limitlessness and utility is as powerful as ever and I’d like to help. The book will be called “Sacred Strides” and I hope it helps. I hope this episode helped, too. 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| 01 Dec 2022 | Keith Simon : Truth Over Tribe | 01:07:33 | |
I'm recording this introduction a few days after Thanksgiving. And if you're listening to this when the episode comes out, it'll be roughly a week, maybe a week and a day or so after the Thanksgiving holiday, which is to say this is the holiday season. And between Thanksgiving and maybe some things that happen in between. And the Christmas holiday is a season during which we sit down at a table with neighbors, with friends, with family, with people who share different ideas hold different ideas about how the world works. Usually, what we mean by that is they hold different religious or different political perspectives. And the rule the cultural rule has become you don't talk about politics. You don't talk about religion. At the dinner table, and specifically during the holidays, I see story after story or anecdote after anecdote on most of my social media platforms about nightmare scenarios or nightmare fears, things happening during the holidays, around politics, and religion among family members and neighbors, etc. You don't talk about religion and politics during the holidays. And as much as I understand, and I really do, because I've certainly been in the scenarios in which a political or religious conversation was problematic relationally just really disappoints me, and it saddens me. In fact, I find it a little bit boring. And I long for conversations and places for conversation in which politics and religion are not just on the table, but welcomed, invited, where we can have real-life differences about real life, things that really do matter, which is why I was thrilled to sit down and talk with Keith Simon. Key Simon is the co-author of a book called Truth over tribe pledging allegiance to the lamb, not the donkey or the elephant. He is the pastor of a church. He's a thoughtful and caring individual. And he's someone who, like me, is aware of his own biases, is aware of his own history, and is aware of the unfortunate and massive gap between far too many people who don't feel the capacity, the ability, or the willingness to share in some of the ideas that actually drive their lives. I enjoyed our conversation. I think you will too. Check it out. Links For Justin:Coaching with Justin NEW Single - Let Go NEW Music - Sliver of Hope NEW Music - The Dood and The Bird The Book - It Is What You Make it | |||
| 01 Jun 2023 | @Sea - Ep143 - What I Learned While Writing Sacred Strides | 00:07:43 | |
It has been said, and I've come to believe this as a truth, that writing for an author is as much as anything else, a process of self-discovery, that one of the things that happen necessarily, in the process of writing, actually writing is that I see myself, I look into my own soul, I recognize things about my own life patterns, history, my moments, I learned me as I write. And I've been asked a few times, including last night at the book release party for Sacred Strides. What are the things that I learned about myself in the process of writing Sacred Strides? And I think there are three there; there's more, some logistical stuff. But internally, when it comes to my soul, there are three things that I've come to over the course of writing this project. And the first one is this, I really do prefer and want to live a smaller life, not just to live the same life at a slower pace; I want my life to get smaller. And here's some of what I mean by that. There are relationships in my life, institutional and interpersonal relationships, that I had thought for many, many years were more central than they actually are. And I've thought they were healthier as more central relationships than they really are. They're not bad. They're not bad places. They're not bad relationships, and they are not bad people. They're not bad institutions. They just can't be central. One, because there's only so much of me. And I can only give so much of myself. While I have time on the planet. And associated with that. I want to give the best of me, to the things, to the relationships, to the institutions, to the projects that I actually give myself to. I want to be more fully present. When I am present, institutionally, vocationally, and personally, that comes with being pickier about where I'm actually giving myself away. And when I'm applying myself to where I'm present, I need fewer central relationships; I look at the model of Jesus, who certainly had the masses around him, certainly had even the 72, who were more regular round and even had the 12. But within the 12, there were really two; I want my life to get smaller so that I can be more fully present in the life I'm living. That's the first thing I've come to, and come to recognize and appreciate and want in the process of writing sacred strides. The second thing is kind of a sad realization, which is that a lot of the agencies, ideologies, institutions, platforms, the environments that I put myself in are not neutral. They have their own agendas. And in those agendas, they're things that are wanted of me that I don't want to give. In other words, I am regularly being acted upon. When I give myself over to institutional settings, to online platforms, to communal settings, that's when I am placed with other people, and I'm actually inserting myself into a sort of tidal movement of agenda of interest of desire. And while that's not a bad thing, I have acted as if my environments, institutional and otherwise, have been neutral, and they're simply not. You can probably see some of the connection to the first learning curve about the smaller life. Some of why I feel the things I feel some of why I fight some of the battles internally I fight is because over the course of many years, my soul has been acted upon by agendas that I did not know I was participating in. I wasn't paying attention. I wasn't listening. I thought I was just somewhere in space, and I wasn't. I was in Tides. I was in flow with agendas and ideologies that weren't always good for my soul, my relationships, and my career. The third thing I can say without question is that I have come to. I've learned I've agreed in the process of writing this book how absolutely wonderful it is to be a dad. And I don't mean that in just this sort of sentimental Hallmark card way. I mean that The deeper I get in the discovery and understanding of who I am at the core of myself as a beloved one of God's, the more being a dad to my kids and even a kind of dad figure to kids that aren't exactly mine becomes a favorite place. And a really, really clear place to practice my own belovedness. And to extend that belovedness, there is a kind of archetypal experience to fatherhood, that as much as I might try to tell you what it's like to be a dad, you really can't compare it to something else being a parent in general, for me, being a dad, you can't compare it to being a coach, you can't compare it to being a teacher, those are things that you would compare to being a parent, it is an archetypal experience, there's nothing quite like being a parent, apologies to dog parents. But now this experience of being aces dad, of being Kaitland stab, of being a father figure to neighborhood kids, and the sons and the daughters of sisters and brothers of mine have unveiled and sharpened and clarified my own belovedness in ways that just I wouldn't have said I wouldn't have seen or even received really otherwise. And in the process of writing this book, I've been able to look at those relationships with a much deeper thankfulness that I get to be here, I get to be this person with foreign to these people. So those are the three things that I can think of off the top of my head that I know I have learned in the process of writing sacred strides. As you read the book, I'd love to hear from you about what it unveils in you, what it exposes in you about maybe some things in your own life that highlights or even down the road. Maybe after you've read the book and slowed down a tad, or pay more specific attention to certain aspects of your work life. I'd love to hear what it is you're learning as well. This is why I do what I do publicly so that we can share these things and learn and grow together. Until next time, Links For Justin:Coaching with Justin NEW Single - Let Go NEW Music - Sliver of Hope NEW Music - The Dood and The Bird The Book - It Is What You Make it | |||
| 09 Feb 2023 | KJ Ramsey | 01:00:48 | |
Welcome to the At Sea podcast. I'm your host, Justin McRoberts. The emphasis I've placed so far this season on the practice of poetry actually positions us to have some conversations well to continue some conversations that I care a whole lot about. Really specifically beginning with this episode of Focus, concentrated focus on the intersection and overlap between psychotherapy and religious practice. As someone who's benefited both from therapy and spiritual direction, this intersection is a place I experienced a great deal of life while also coming to a great deal of very complex and really interesting questions about what it means to be me, what it means to be human, what it means to have relationship what it means to be a person of faith. One of my favorite people working in that intersection at that intersection is KJ Ramsay. KJ works at that intersection as a therapist and an author who talks profoundly about issues of faith. And it just so happens, has recently produced a volume of poems and prayers, which makes such a beautiful bridge into the heart of this conversation about what it means to be fully human. To value that which is beyond our understanding and to dig really deeply and thoughtfully into the things we can and should understand, like brain chemistry. I thoroughly enjoyed this conversation, and I think you will as well. Check it out. Links for KJ RamseyWebsite - https://www.kjramsey.com Latest Book - The Book Of Common Courage Links For Justin:Coaching with Justin NEW Single - Let Go NEW Music - Sliver of Hope NEW Music - The Dood and The Bird The Book - It Is What You Make it | |||
| 05 Feb 2021 | Sacred vs “Ordinary” | 00:07:05 | |
I didn’t know a lot about the actual life of Jesus before I was in my mid-twenties. Honestly, even after I started calling myself a Christian (which is far more interesting conversation now than it was then), What actually led me to do the work of discovery and research wasn’t a sermon series; it was seeing a series of books or short documentaries on what people were calling the “Lost Years” of Jesus’ life. As the 4 biblical accounts of Jesus’ life have it, we can read about his birth, which is mostly about his mother’s faith and the political environment he’s born into, and then we actually get nothing until he’s right about 12 when he wanders off from his parents and ends up in a conversation with religious elders. THEN, there’s nothing until he’s about 30. In fact, all there is to read of the actual life of Jesus is roughly 3 years. So, I started noticing these books in which a whole slew of folks basically gave in to imaginative conjecture about what Jesus was doing as a young adult into his mid-twenties. In most of these stories, he’d gone on some kind of religious pilgrimage. Some folks suggested he’d studied with the Hindus and some with the Buddhists and others with other groups or tribes. Part of it felt like folks trying to make Jesus “one of theirs” instead of being challenged by him on his own terms, much the way Nationalists have done so destructively here in the US. And that was weird to see, even if it was a bit obvious. But, there was a whole other element to the “Lost Years of Jesus” narrative that gnawed at me namelessly for a while. I couldn’t figure out what bugged me until much later, after years of feeling a kind of distance between the life I was living and any kind of deep, cosmic significance; even though I was chasing that significance with every bit of my person I could muster. Why was it necessary that, in order to be a wise, spiritually insightful person, Jesus had to leave home and go be hyper-religious somewhere? What was this fascination with “exotic” religious experience? More to the point, what was missing on the ground beneath Jesus’ feet that would have required him to leave the people nearest him, the world with which he was most familiar (and was most familiar with him) and look elsewhere? Because if there wasn’t sufficient … if the neighborhood Jesus was in didn’t have any kind of sacred resonance… what did that say about mine? In other words, these stories reinforced the same garbage sales pitch every other bad religious marketing scheme was rooted in; you’re not enough, your life is not significant as it is. Here’s what I’ve come to: a religious narrative that doesn’t set the world around you and within you aglow with meaning and energy and hope and potential is absolute trash and is entirely undeserving of your time and attention. If you leave your religious gathering and your home seems darker because it doesn’t’ feel as good as the show the team of well-funded professionals put on, you aren’t being decoupled; you’re being swindled. Because, if the incarnation story of Jesus says anything clearly, (and I think it does) it announces, in no uncertain terms that God was pleased to live as a human being and to do so in such a way that for early 30 years, that life looked so much like yours and mine that we didn’t even notice it. It says that it’s not just “okay” to be human and have a job and a neighborhood and a family and friends and to sleep and snack and make love and fight and forget and remember and work and rest and learn… it’s sacred. It says you don’t have to LOOK for significance, you are significant. It says you don’t have to go on a pilgrimage to find holy ground, you’re standing on it now, and that the point of the pilgrimage is to come home and see the place you live more completely. Part of what I think you hear in my conversation with Kayla Craig is the way her integrated life gleans energy and insight from its various dimensions. Parenting and neighboring and writing and on and on… not disparate elements to be handled one at a time, lest they detract from or lessen or even corrupt one another, but a living network of relationships beautifully tangled up in Kayla’s own joy and desire. Some of my guests are people who are doing remarkable work I want you to know about. Some of my guests are doing that remarkable work in a way that I find deeply challenging and informative. I’d like to do both. I think you might want to as well. Links For Justin:Coaching with Justin NEW Single - Let Go NEW Music - Sliver of Hope NEW Music - The Dood and The Bird The Book - It Is What You Make it | |||
| 22 Dec 2022 | Winter Solstice, Sick Kids, and The Incarnation | 00:06:08 | |
Welcome to the At Sea Podcast. I'm your host, Justin McRoberts. I'm recording this on December 21, 2022. It is the winter solstice, the day where I live that features the least amount of light. The night is longest. And I'll be honest with you, I'm not feeling great. I don't know if I quite have the flu yet, but I might. Because my daughter does. And I found that out a few hours ago. It's been really since Sunday. She wasn't feeling well on Sunday. She was feeling not so great on Monday, so she didn't go to school, then she didn't go to school on Tuesday, and then today, Wednesday. She certainly did not go to school. She has been very sick. Last night, when she went to bed, it was mostly just cold symptoms. That was sniffles, and it was a little bit of a headache. And then she mentioned that one of her ears wasn't feeling great. Oh, I thought. And not too long ago, her being in bed by herself. She woke up and started vomiting. Her brother came downstairs to let us know that she had, in his words, puked everywhere. So we went ahead and cleaned up what we could clean up. And if you're a parent, you're probably not as grossed out as others would be because kid puke is different than other puke in some way. And then, as I was settling her back in and tucking her back, she asked me if I would stay because she was scared. Sure, absolutely. I got my pillow and a blanket. And I laid down on the floor, and I did not sleep really much at all. She woke up every 1015 minutes. She was uncomfortable. She was nauseous, and she threw up a few more times. And I'll be honest with you, it wasn't a pain in the butt to get my back hurt. And, like I said, it didn't sleep, and my shoulders hurt. And you know, I'm almost 50 sleeping on the floor is not my forte. But there was this gift that I was experiencing, especially in the darker, later, deeper hours of the night. I get to be there for her. I get to be the person in the room. When she doesn't feel well. And a scared. I wanted to be there. So it was a kind of a joy. Speak speaking of joy. In a few days, we, in the Christian tradition, celebrate Christmas, this magical and miraculous celebration of God becoming a person, and I do get it. There's that I'm aware of the sort of kerfuffle of sorts around Jesus not being actually born in December. I've heard it's June. I've heard other things. And that's fine. I'm not at all saying that that conversation is unimportant in the grander sense or in some grand sense. I will say, though, on a personal level, I'm not all that moved by it. See, what I don't really care about when I come to religious faith or religious practice are things like exactly where Jesus was born or what the exact date was. I am instead drawn to religion, religious faith, and religious practice. With questions more like when it is darkest when it's hardest, when it is coldest. Is God not just there? But willfully and joyfully? There when my life is not okay. When I am not okay. In my wife, is God with me? And IS GOD WITH ME joyfully? And happily and willfully. We've had a few conversations with Caitlin. Over the last few days, and certainly, today, as this sickness has gotten worse and keeps dragging on, she understands she's sick. It's just something that's part of being human. There are going to be days when you don't feel well. And sometimes those days run into other days and become weeks. There are just times in life when you don't feel well. And what she has wanted, honestly, more than medication is to just be around people. That's what she's wanted. Does she want the medication? Honestly, she doesn't like the medication cuz it tastes like crap. It really does. It's awful. I can't believe we haven't fixed that yet. But more than medication, she wants to know that people are going to be with her in her room overnight, on the couch next to her during the day, that if she's not going to feel well if that's part of what it means to be human, then will you live that with me and again, this is part of what makes so much poetic sense that we celebrate the incarnation of God. In a time when for a lot of us, things are coldest, and the nights are longest. Not just because we feel more comforted, but like good religion does, it points us forward that if we want to be loving and caring people, when it gets harder when it gets darker, and when it gets colder, what the people around us are really going to ask is, are you going to be there with me? Will you show up when it gets bad? Will you show up in a way in which you risk getting some of what makes me sick and bearing some of what brings me down. Links For Justin:Coaching with Justin NEW Single - Let Go NEW Music - Sliver of Hope NEW Music - The Dood and The Bird The Book - It Is What You Make it | |||
| 26 Jan 2023 | Gregory Orr | 00:57:02 | |
I don't remember the exact details surrounding my introduction to Gregory or his work. I do remember that upon my first reading, I was captured. In fact, one of my favorite live performance moments ever was sitting with my friend David dark, who's also been a guest on this podcast several times, at a reading of Gregory Orr's at Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, Mass., and having one of those shared when I grew up, I would like to be like that moments. I could say quite a bit about his work in order to set this up. Instead, I would like to get you directly to the interview he reads from a most recent volume of his towards the tail end. And I'm so glad that he did. I think you will be too. Enjoy this.
Links for Gregory OrrWebsite - http://gregoryorr.net Latest Book - Selected Books of the Beloved Links For Justin:Coaching with Justin NEW Single - Let Go NEW Music - Sliver of Hope NEW Music - The Dood and The Bird The Book - It Is What You Make it | |||
| 29 Apr 2021 | Hermeneutics, LGBTQ Youth, and the Pursuit of Love | 00:07:54 | |
I remember being in a conversation, I think it was my Junior year of college, in which I was fully introduced to the term “hermeneutics.” I’d been familiar with “interpretation” before but the idea that there was a field of study based on the interpretive potters of readers was fascinating to me. It actually gave me a bit of altitude in understanding and appreciating the differences I was running into among people, specifically around religious ideas.
Then, our professor, who had mostly been quiet, asked “where did you get your interpretation?” The room fell silent. Literally, nobody had thought about it; the lot of us was quietly and unknowingly not only favoring our interpretive angle but not even seeing it as an angle. Now, for anyone who isn’t white or male, that encounter might not seem all that revelatory. But for us, mostly white men in that room, we’d not considered that our take on things was interpretive; we had assumed we were the baseline… Now, it’s both worth noting and it is unsurprising that the process of seeing my perspective and experience as one among many has been ongoing, at times uncomfortable and, more than anything, deeply enriching. Far from diminishing my understanding of Truth, recognizing my own hermeneutic(s) has come with far more mature and humbler respect for Divine truth, Scientific Fact, and Human the human experience of Reality. I don’t have to be right in order to feel and be rightly placed. If the Truth or Meaning does not belong to me, then I am free to belong to the Truth and for my life to have Meaning well beyond myself and my understanding. It’s all just bigger and deeper and wider and just… more.. and far deeper and wider and more than my capacity to possess it. Which is part of why I’ve found the brick wall and friction that so often characterizes conversations about homosexuality or queerness and religion so… sad. At least some (if not a large part) of what is at hand in religious disagreement about human sexuality is a matter of hermeneutics; it is, in large part, an interpretive difference. And I’ll risk sounding naive here by saying that, while I certainly understand that some interpretive disagreements are more serious because some matters are more serious, I’m … flat out heartbroken by the ways this particular hermeneutic, theological and philosophical conversation ends relationships, personally and institutionally. And I’m not here to say “can’t we all just get along?” No, I want to say something else, entirely. During the second half of that conversation my Junior year, the half led by our professor, he reminded us that the name of the course we were in was “Philosophy.” Which literally means “the love of wisdom.” He challenged us to note that what we were doing wasn’t philosophy at all. And while I wouldn’t have named it at the time, I can now: we weren’t pushing wisdom out of love, we were pursuing control by way of knowledge. We wanted to decide who gets in and who stays out, not just according to the articulation of their knowledge base, but according to whether or not their existing knowledge matched our own. If I am truly to pursue wisdom, I don’t get to decide who else joins the chase. How much more is that the case If I am truly to seek God. And again, I’ll risk sounding simple-minded here: I sincerely wonder if the chaos and division and impassability of this space isn’t predominately because of a lack of sincere love between those arguing or conversing. I wonder if, as the Scriptures themselves warn against, too many of us are too full and puffed up with the knowledge that we lack room in us for the Love that would make our knowledge worth having at all. Earlier this year, rapper Propaganda released a song in which is written: “We ain't gotta be enemies but I got non-negotiables All ideas ain't equal, bro“ Not all interpretations are equal and not all ideas are equal. But the people who hold those ideas and hold to these interpretations… are. And that is a thing far more vital than my rightness and far more weighty than my knowledge. Suicide rates among LGBTQ teens in religious settings is statistically and significantly higher. And while there are many ways to interpret that data, here’s a thing I’m comfortable saying: it matters more that kids are made to feel less safe and valuable in religious settings than it matters that my religious interpretations are on point. So, forgive me for projecting a bit here. But if that’s not the place we’re starting from, then it’s no wonder we seem to be getting nowhere.
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| 17 Jul 2020 | Shaun Groves | 00:52:21 | |
Links for Shaun:
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| 17 Nov 2022 | That's Love | 00:10:49 | |
In 2002, I wrote and recorded a song called love. And I've been waiting to write some kind of follow-up to that song pretty much since I released it. It was a song that meant a lot to me at the time because I was trying to publicly and personally redefine the word and my experience of the word love for myself. And for people that were interested in paying attention. To me, it was this hopeful attempt, I guess, to push back on the idea, or the constant suggestion that love was a feeling. And that just hadn't been my experience. Certainly, there have been feelings involved, as it were. But love, while it included feelings was just more complex, it was more difficult. It was harder, it was Messier. It was just bigger. And I wanted to write something that actually spoke to maybe the more difficult and messier and poetic slash practical elements and aspects of love. And so I wrote this song that is, as it's recorded, both Sung and screamed, which was part of my experience of love. Here's a clip of that song and how it comes off as it's recorded. Now, among my existing listeners, love as a song had some legs to it folks really resonated with the song. To some degree, I know they resonated with the energy of the song in this sort of like middle space between folk, and rock. But I think actually, no, my listeners really resonated with that particular expression of love. At what point shortly after the album, that that record was on was released, the song was covered by a rock band, like an actual rock band, and I think actually found a bit more of a home sonically, with this band, they were called Kids in the way. And the way they interpreted the song, it was definitely more full-throated, it was definitely more screaming. And there were electric guitars and drums and the whole mind, and it definitely felt more like that's the spirit of the song. But I've got to say that the peak moment of that songs life, and, and the place it found its home in at least in what I meant by it. When I recorded it came when I was asked to sing that song at a friend's wedding. Now, you just heard a clip of the song and how it comes off. Like I said, it's sort of screamed and sung at the same time. So imagine, if you will, sitting at the wedding of a friend of yours, and watching the ceremony proceed as it normally does. And then coming to the moment of communion, where the pastor or the preacher, whoever is facilitating the moment, invites the crowd to take a few moments of reflection, while the couple takes communions. Normally this very low-key, almost contemplative moment in the ceremony. But that was the moment that my friend asked me to step up to the mic and play that song. Now, I've got to be honest. And if you've been around me long enough, you know, I've definitely had some moments when what I was doing up front, musically just didn't go over with the crowd that I was in front of this was something entirely different because it wasn't just a matter of distaste, there was utter confusion among the attendees of this wedding. And then, during the reception, this friend of mine who had asked me to play that song, during his ceremony, got the chance multiple times to answer the question, because people came to him and said, Hey, was that song he was supposed to play? Did Justin just pick a random song and play it instead of something more appropriate to the moment and what he said was that that had been his experience of love. And he wanted there to be a moment in his wedding ceremony. That said, this is what love sounds like and feels like when it's been real. For me, that was a peak moment. And that songs life, it was also a peak moment in my understanding of the practice of the expression of in the experience of love. A few years ago, I was asked to lead songs and teach at a church community that I was actually somewhat unfamiliar with. It's a thing I don't do very much, but on the suggestion of and the request of a friend. I planned a few songs to lead and I planned a teaching around their requested topic, which was the love of God. Now, they had suggested and requested that I turn in my notes and my slides ahead of time because they were unfamiliar with me and they wanted to make sure they knew what I was going. So I turned in my notes well ahead of time, and I turned in the slides for the songs that I was doing, most of which were traditional. And again, if you've been around me at all in the last several years in See me song lead. I prefer to lead older traditional songs. And this one particular song that I had included in my setlist, they really wanted to do a different version of It's a song called Nothing but the blood of Jesus. It's a very traditional older him like song that's relatively familiar with folks who are part of the Christian tradition. What they said, though, was that they wanted to do their version of this song. And again, because this is a traditional song that's been sung, and led for many, many years by many, many people in many different contexts. It's a traditional classic song and wanting to do your version of a classic song is like saying, I'd like to do my version of Nikes. Yeah, that's called a knockoff. Well, when they sent me the lyrics back to the song, their version of this song, they had replaced the word blood with love, so that the song said nothing but the love of Jesus rather than Nothing but the blood of Jesus explaining that they did not like the violent imagery associated with blood. And at first glance, I understood Oh, yes, I get that that's a little bit gross to be singing about blood. But then I actually thought back to this moment, when, during my friend's wedding ceremony, at a point in which we were supposed to have a contemplative moment, during communion, to reflect on the love of God for them, they asked me to sing a song that actually shook the room a little bit about the nature of love. As they stood behind me eating the body, and drinking the blood of Jesus, I sang a song that was a bit toothy-er, a bit messier, a bit more violent. In his epistle, John writes that this is how we know what love is that Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters. When John goes to redefine what love is, he actually references the violent moment of the cross. And I honest to goodness, think there is something really important about that definition of love. That certainly there are feelings involved, that certainly it can be a thing that feels good and brings light and joy and happiness. But that if love is to truly be love, it has to meet our humanity, in the whole of our humanity in both our high peak glowy fascinating, glittery, big-eyed, sparkly moments. And in the utter, destructive, terrible depths of our existence, our practice, it has to meet us in both our glory. And in our depraved violence, if that's the kind of love we're talking about, I'm in. And if it's not, if it's something more sentimental, that's fine. It just doesn't meet me as a whole human. If the love of God is to truly be the love of God, for all of humanity, must it not, in some way, speak to the violence that is also true about our nature, which is why I love the image of the cross as an expression of love. It's why I love the life of Jesus on the whole, including the cross, as an expression of love. Are there adorable, cute, big-eyed puppy-like moments? Certainly, there are. And there is also the cross in Oakland, California, just by itself. Last year, there were 125 murders. And that's a small chunk of the nearly 17,000 murders that took place across the country. And then earliest statistics from this year suggests that there are at least 16 gang-related violent crimes perpetuated in Oakland every single day. And that's part of what it looks like. To be human and to belong to the human race. So as I see it, if love is to truly be the kind of reality and power the human heart desires, and not only can't turn a blind eye, to our more violent nature, it has to look at that nature, square in the face and say I can handle that has to look at least in part, like the cross. So 20 years after the release of that first song called Love, I finally found some words and a melody to really communicate those thoughts in the song is called that's love. Not the most imaginative title, but it works. And I don't screen this time, but I think the energy is still there. It's still a thing I want to see. It's still a thing I want to be Leave about the love of God that is available to me and then helps me make sense of and make something good out of what it means to be human Links For Justin:Coaching with Justin NEW Single - Let Go NEW Music - Sliver of Hope NEW Music - The Dood and The Bird The Book - It Is What You Make it | |||
| 30 Mar 2023 | Angie Ward | 00:57:55 | |
Welcome to the At Sea Podcast. I'm your host, Justin McRoberts. What does it mean to lead well? Heck, what does it even mean to lead period? And specifically, what does it mean to lead and lead well, in a religious context, when we talk about ministry, we talk about Church we talk about religious culture in general. Nowadays, the question of what good healthy leadership looks like might be the most important conversation on the table when it comes to the "Future of the American church and American religion." It's a conversation that Angie Ward has been in for a long time, and had some poignant thoughts, not only in her books but in podcasts and interviews like this one, I really enjoyed the clarity and the confidence and the humility with which Angie Ward approaches conversations about what it looks like to not just lead but to lead well. I enjoyed this conversation. I think you will also. Check it out.
Links for Angie WardWebsite - www.angieward.net Links For Justin:NEW Single - Let Go NEW Music - Sliver of Hope NEW Music - The Dood and The Bird NEW Book - Sacred Strides (Pre-order)It Is What You Make itHearts and Minds Amazon Barnes and Noble Links For Justin:Coaching with Justin NEW Single - Let Go NEW Music - Sliver of Hope NEW Music - The Dood and The Bird The Book - It Is What You Make it | |||
| 27 May 2021 | Staying Power | 00:06:18 | |
During studio sessions with younger or inexperienced musicians, my dear friend and music producer Masaki Liu would often be asked questions like “What do you think about our chances?” Or “Do you think we can make it?” And, more often than not, he’d consistently respond with an intentionally cryptic piece of encouragement that went pretty much like this, word-for-word: “If you keep at it and stick with it, stay together as a band and keep making music, you’re going to be around for a long time.” Often enough, the band would take that as a compliment, though it wasn’t entirely intended to be. See, in that moment, what the band or artist wanted to know and hear was that they were good enough right there, right then. And that, because they were good enough, right there and right then, they had a more secure and hopeful future. The thing is… like just about everyone, including me when I started recording with him, … that young or inexperienced artist or band wasn’t good enough to “make it” right there, right then. Most of those artists and bands aren’t “around” right now making music. They didn’t make it long-term the way they were dreaming too. And there’s no shame in that: very few do. And I’m pretty convinced part of that part of why so few are still at it, investing in their chosen discipline years down the line is because it’s so easy to become focused to the point of obsession with early success or shallow metrics like being good enough, right now. Yes, there is something to be said for having talent for the thing I want to do. But, more substantial than that, the strengths and capacities that are necessary in order to make a career or a relationship or an organization or movement or dream work long-term are only developed over time and in a commitment to my own process of becoming.
But not so that they would go out and win battle after battle and conquer the world around them with the fervor of young soldiers. “so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground” When it passes, will you still be here? Will you still be standing? At the time of this writing, I’m just a few days away from the release of what will be my 5th book, overall. Entitled “It Is What You Make Of It,” there are stories in the book from the past few years of my work as well as from as long ago as high school and my childhood. The thing that binds together the stories in this book is the perspective and the wisdom I have from where I am. Which is to say, 'who I am now looking back on who I was'. I did what Masaki said to do. I stayed. I’m still here. And there simply isn’t a singular victory or success in the entirety of my career that means as much to me as to say, “I’m still here. I’m still at it. And yes, because I’ve been at it for this long, I am better at what I do now than I’ve ever been at anything I’ve done previously. I am more equipped because I am more of the person I need to be in order to do the work I want to do.” The day I’m writing this is also the one-year anniversary of the murder of George Floyd. A moment in America’s racial history that opened the door for a great many people to enter into the work of justice and reconciliation, many of them for the first time. It is a good work. It is a necessary work. It is also a difficult work in which victories and accomplishments and benchmarks can seem small, at times insignificant, and far too infrequent. Which is to say that it is a work that can be deeply exhausting, particularly if I am deriving my energies from achieving the next success required of the work instead of becoming the kind of person who does the work, even in the face of disappointment See, there was and is a pearl of very practical and lifelong wisdom in Masaki Liu‘s decision to not answer directly the question being asked of him in the studio. If you want to know if you’re good enough right now, I’m not going to answer that question for you. The real question is,... Will you be here long enough to become the kind of person who does the kind of work you want to do today? Links For Justin:Coaching with Justin NEW Single - Let Go NEW Music - Sliver of Hope NEW Music - The Dood and The Bird The Book - It Is What You Make it | |||
| 21 Sep 2023 | Great vs. Good | 00:09:14 | |
A few weeks ago, I was in the middle of a call with a client, an artist I'm coaching. When? Well, we talked about the project he was doing, which is a project, by the way, that he'd been dying to do for three or four years. We finally created the time we got some money involved. And he was able to put this project together. And what he said to me in the conversation, he said I know that it's good. I just wished that it was great. So we dove into that. But what's the difference between this being good and being great, and the more he talks, the more he self-identified with that tension. In fact, at some point, he said, I know that as an artist, I'm just good. But I wish I was great. Which then begs another series of questions. And it's led to this reflection, and we've talked three or four times since then. So we've talked about these things. And this reflection comes from those conversations, that in every facet of his career, he will look at what he was looking at, what was in front of him, and what he was able to bring to the table, and he could identify that it was good. And he wanted more, that the songs are good. He just wishes they were better, and he thinks he'll probably get this many streams. He wished that he would get more and that he would sell this many vinyls, but he wished that he could sell more. And in every facet of his professional life, he was happy that he had achieved what he achieved, that it was good. And he wished there was more. Now, I don't disparage that kind of thinking, and I think I want to be better. And to grow is fantastic. The problem I started to identify was with the word greatness. I think it was in that conversation, and oftentimes, it is a kind of distraction that instead of saying this is where I am, and I want to take steps from here forward. greatness in the conversation I was having with him was this image somewhere out there, always just beyond his reach, that he was striving towards. He wasn't working from what was true and good about him into a potentially joyful future. He was working away from what was true and good and established in him towards some other thing. Greatness oftentimes can be a terrible distraction from what is. And oftentimes, it's actually rooted in the same system of metrics that steals the joy of our actual processes. In other words, instead of saying, This feels good, this is good. I'm taking joy in this. And I want there to be more of what I have because it is good. Greatness inserts itself as this mist, as this idea, this disembodied image four steps beyond where I am, and says, it's not enough for you to be as you are. You shouldn't be happy, you shouldn't be satisfied, you shouldn't take true joy, it isn't actually good. And it won't be until you get here. The problem with that, if you've been in the cycle before, is that you can work and get to that point, that next step that used to be four steps away. And then once you're there, greatness, quote, unquote, greatness, this image, this misses out there somewhere, the idea will still reinsert itself and say, well, that's fine that you've come this far, but you shouldn't be happy. You shouldn't take joy. It's not good enough. You need to have more. Another way to talk about the way greatness steals joy is the way we enjoy our sports or our music, that you can say, hey, this is my favorite band. And then, as soon as we've talked about our favorite bands, we often move into this conversation about the greatest band in that genre, that it's not enough for this person to be good at what they do. They're not the greatest. And if they're not the greatest in this genre, then you like what they do is a kind of compromise. It's fine that you like this artist, but you really should like this artist. That's what's best: greatness as an idea steals the joy of what makes art, actually art. Greatness can steal the human joy of the process of creation. I think there's something magical to the way of the very beginning of the Hebrew Scriptures. When God creates a thing, God will say that it's good, and then at the end of this whole long process of creating, Shouldn't what God doesn't say is okay? Now we've done all this good, we've gotten to great what God says is instead, as the writer has said, this is very good, not great, very good, more of the goodness that was already. The way I read that is that the value of creation itself is rooted in God's pleasure and joy rather than in what creation can or will achieve. It's not about what comes next. It's about how much pleasure and joy God takes God took in the act of the process of creation. The conversations we oftentimes have centered on the word greatness, steal the human joy, of the act of becoming, and the work of making the steal the joy of art and humanity. In athletics. It's not enough, says greatness, to begin at six years old, and to achieve and to grow, and to get better and to get to college and to get that scholarship and then maybe even get drafted and play in the NBA and be a point guard in the NBA if you're not the greatest. Again, I'll go back to a few weeks ago when I talked about Stefan Curry. And this conversation that's now happening, and I even played into it when I did the podcast, and maybe I'm experiencing a bit of regret that watching Stefan Curry play basketball is a joyous, incredible thing to do. He's amazing what he's so good at what he does. And because he's as good as he is at what he does, his career gets entered into this media-driven conversation about who the greatest point guard in human history is. was that Isaiah Thomas, or was it Magic Johnson? Or is it Stefan Curry? And it's almost as if, if we can't solve that problem, we can't really rightly enjoy this person's career as he's going about it. And that's just so tragic. We do the same thing with musicians. We do the same thing with painters. We do the same thing with friends. Hell, we do it with authors, we do it with spiritual guides, we do it with churches, this disembodied mist of an idea that we call greatness, this kind of perfection of the thing steals the joy of having what we have in front of us, and knowing what it is and celebrating it as it is. Which is to say, learning to actually enjoy the goodness of my life might mean abandoning the pursuit or the idea of greatness. It might mean regularly dissociating myself from systems that want to always measure one thing against the other instead of simply enjoying the thing in front of us. This is why I regularly suggest, for artists specifically, a kind of combination of spiritual practices of rest. In the examination, rest provides space, space between things, but also space for my soul to catch up with itself. And in that space, practicing the examination, intentionally look back over the days that I just lived and asked my soul the question, Where was it good? As I have personally practiced this combination of rest and the examination, I have just had less of an association with an obsession with some disembodied, distant goal towards which I'm working. Instead, I've been able to look at the goodness of the life I'm living and just want more of what it is. I actually have already. Links For Justin:Coaching with Justin NEW Single - Let Go NEW Music - Sliver of Hope NEW Music - The Dood and The Bird The Book - It Is What You Make it | |||
| 11 Mar 2021 | Harding House Brewery | 00:38:07 | |
The very first beer I ever had was, I believe, a Bud Dry. That’s probably not true for a lot of folks, but it’s part of my story and I like it as someone who tests as a 4 on the enneagram. At the time, beer pretty much only showed up at parties or in TV commercials and was never any talk about “hops” or or “malt” between beer drinkers. Which is to say, the culture around beer was thin.
The most recent beer I had was last night at a neighbor-friend’s birthday party where we tasted 8 different beers from local breweries and talked about the differences in composition and flavor and complexity; the way people talk about wine or paintings or songs. I got to sit down with them in Nashville a few weeks ago. It was a delightful conversation. Check it out. http://www.hardinghousebrew.com/ Links for Justin: Pre-order the NEW Book - It Is What You Make It Links For Justin:Coaching with Justin NEW Single - Let Go NEW Music - Sliver of Hope NEW Music - The Dood and The Bird The Book - It Is What You Make it | |||
| 06 Jan 2021 | Season Six | 00:02:48 | |
When I started the @ Sea Podcast, I was doing a bit of soul searching. The way I communicated it originally was that the cultural spaces I was used to hosting the work of soul-shaping and meaning-making had ceased to work for enough people or enough kinds of people. In response to that, I wanted to be a guide (a good captain, as it were), helping to navigate the turbulent waters of an unsure/unclear future. So, I set out to talk with people who were building that future, people who were making what comes next. Over time, I learned something vital: it wasn't' the artifact or the program or even the culture that comes next; it was the person doing the work of making and changing and rethinking and maintaining; that person is what's next. In short, you're what comes next. Then it hit me that I'm part of what comes next, in my own way. And this podcast is part of how I live into that. Over this next season, we will certainly touch on the issues and topics that have been a hallmark of this podcast. But I'll do less focusing on the material and more on the people holding it. A few of the interviews I've already recorded are with people whose names you'll know. Though, many of these conversations will be with people you don't know, people who are part of what comes next in art and faith and leadership. People quietly and diligently working at their craft and culture and who don't have the time to (or interest in) building a brand. You'll also hear a bit more from me, which is a thing I've been somewhat hesitant to do. I've sought to decentralize my own voice with this podcast, and I've benefitted from doing so. But if I'm going to suggest to you that you're part of what comes next and that your work and words make room for others, I'd like to present a clearer example of what it sounds like for me to try doing the same. So, in a sense, a lot will have changed this coming season, even if a lot will not have changed. We're still @ Sea, navigating and listening and paying close attention. But I'd like to look off in the distance a bit less, in search of some safe port or place to anchor. Rather, I'd like to celebrate the reality that you and I are that safe port; and that we didn't set out to just find what's next, we set out to become what's next. Links For Justin:Coaching with Justin NEW Single - Let Go NEW Music - Sliver of Hope NEW Music - The Dood and The Bird The Book - It Is What You Make it | |||
| 02 Sep 2022 | Art As Self-Discovery (and the new EP) | 00:06:06 | |
When I first started playing music professionally, it wasn't the beginning of a dream. It wasn't the culmination of a wish from my youth, not really. I thought of playing music. I thought it would be cool. But it's probably most true to say about that moment, the moment in which I decided to see what it would be like to have a career in music was that it was another step. And a long trajectory of vocational decision-making that wasn't about a particular career. So it wasn't about I really want to play music, or I really want to perform.
It was always about connecting with people.
And finding the best way to do that for me, before I started playing music professionally in 1998, I'd been on Young Life staff for about five years. And during that stretch from 1993, to 1998, I also picked up some jobs as a teacher. I was looking for ways to connect with people to give myself away with the best of my gifts, my talents, and my energies.
Over the course of time, that made it kind of easy to let go of some of the musical orientation of my career, as I started being hired for retreats as a speaker and then started passing myself on as a coach. And as a spiritual director. It's always been about connecting with people.
And as I've grown in my ability, my capacity or even in my skill, to actually make those connections, as a songwriter or as a pastor, or as a coach, or as an author, something magical has happened because one of the persons I connect with most deeply in the better work I make is me.
And maybe that sounds weird to say. I hope it doesn't. Maybe that actually resonates with you that one of the persons I become more familiar with, one of the persons I learned to like more, one of the persons that actually is helped in my better work is me.
In my better work, I recognize and get to celebrate the work that God has established in me. I get to notice and pay attention to the work that God is doing in me. I get to see me in a context of the story being written in and through my life. The art making, for me, began as a way to bless other people, to make other people laugh, to help other people to inform, and to inspire other people. And along the way, I have learned to be blessed. And to laugh, to be helped to be informed, and to be inspired, even in my own process of making. Which brings me to the most recent project; I've put together this five-song EP that I'm calling a sliver of hope. You might have heard an artist or someone who coaches artists or someone in the art world say, "Make the work that you need to or want to see in the world." These songs are the songs that I wanted to hear. These are words and melodies, and expressions that I've needed. And so I've put them together because I feel it in me. I need that sliver of hope as I pay attention to the world around me and in me and how so much has changed dramatically. And how unsure the future is, I found myself giving up on the idea of a plan. I don't want to look for a big fat plan and the strategy and a methodology. What I want to see, what I'm looking for, is the seed of a future, a future that is surprising, a future that grows organically. And because of care rather than strategy, a future that has life in itself and isn't dependent upon machinery to keep it alive. I'm looking for that sliver of hope. And so I've written a series of songs about the desire in me to not only let go of what I've had in the past so that I can make room in my heart for the future, but also what might be necessary for me in order to actually participate in that future, including the kinds of relationships partnerships institutional and personal that I will want, and want to share that future with. So I hope that this particular work does connect with you. That is part of why I've made it. It's part of why I wrote the songs. It's certainly why I'm making them public. But also, these are songs I needed. These are songs I needed to hear. These are words I needed to be in the world, as has been the case since I've been aware of it. I got to discover something established in me as I put the songs together, something God's been up to. I'm also attending to things that God is working on in me and working those things out in song. And I think you'll hear that. I think you might even feel that as you engage with this new project, and maybe you'll resonate with it for the same reasons that I made it. The big plan laid at my feet that says this is how things go from here on, and here's the evidence of things working out exactly the way they're supposed to be, what I really want and what I think you might want to and maybe that's why you would come to a project like this or a podcast like this. I just want to see that there is a seed of hope for a future beyond my imagining and way more beautiful than my designs. Links For Justin:Coaching with Justin NEW Single - Let Go NEW Music - Sliver of Hope NEW Music - The Dood and The Bird The Book - It Is What You Make it | |||
| 17 Mar 2022 | Christa Wells | 00:32:15 | |
Reinvention is one of the hallmarks of a long-term career as an artist. The ability and the desire, the capacity to take something that used to work a certain way during a certain season and do something new, something different with that same material with that same pattern with those same skills. One of the things I've admired about Christa Wells, in her career is her ability and her capacity to not just reinvent as a writer, a songwriter, a podcaster as a guide, but to do so in a way that paves the way and sets an example for other artists to do the same. I really enjoyed my conversation with her sitting down in Nashville. I think you will too. Check it out. Links For Justin:Coaching with Justin NEW Single - Let Go NEW Music - Sliver of Hope NEW Music - The Dood and The Bird The Book - It Is What You Make it | |||
| 24 Feb 2022 | Episode 100 | 00:12:54 | |
Hello, and welcome to episode 100 of the @Sea podcast. We launched this thing on April 30th, 2016. And 100 episodes later, here we are. I want to pause right here at Episode 100; you do a couple of things, two things very specifically. The first one is simply to say thank you, thank you for listening for paying attention, I do not take for granted at all, not for a moment, that you offer your attention your time to this podcast, anything that I do, but specifically today, this podcast, thank you for paying attention. If you are a patron, doubly Thank you, because not only your attention but your actual contributions make it possible for me to do this, to take care of equipment costs, and also to free up the time it takes me to invest in these conversations, to do the research, I am enriched by this work. And your support allows me to continue to enter into it. So thank you very, very, very much. Thank you also, and very specifically to Dan Portnoy, who is the producer of this episode, and really the vast majority of episodes of the @Sea podcast, the last 100 episodes, your skillset your attention, your availability, there's just stuff along with this podcast, there's just stuff that's true about my life, and is that exists in my life that simply would not were you not the person you are with the skill set you have and the attention you pay. So thank you. Thank you for making all this possible. If you're a listener, if you're Dan, if you are a patron. That's first. The first is Thanks. And thanks because this like I said, this is an enriching work. I love this work. I love this work because I'm growing as I do it, which leads me to the second thing that I want to do. I grew up watching David Letterman, which means that what I'm going to offer you as a David Letterman type thing, I'm going to offer you a top 10. The top 10 things I have learned as the host of the @Sea podcast after 100 episodes. Number 10. I don't have to know everything. But seems like kind of a win. I say it out loud. But the reality is, is life is just better recognizing my limitations, that I don't have to make a goal of assembling a bunch of knowledge and becoming a know at all. It's actually a really good posture to be in to recognize that I'm limited in my knowledge. I'm actually sometimes limited in my ability to know. That makes life more interesting and makes people more interesting. I don't have to know everything doesn't pretend. Number nine, I don't have to pretend like I know everything. My mom used to say, no one likes it. know it all. Maybe your mom said the same thing. 100 episodes into this podcast. I really believe it. Folks really enjoy being asked questions. I enjoy being asked questions. I don't have to pretend like I know everything. In fact, there's just not a lot of respect to be gained. By pretending like I've got knowledge, there is a lot to be gained by knowing that I don't know everything and acting like someone who is looking for what's next in someone's life was looking for truth, beauty, goodness, as opposed to thinking that they've got it. Which leads me to number eight. Curiosity is a sign of respect. To say to someone tell me about that. To say to someone, I don't think I quite understand that. Can you break that down? For me? There is this maybe a fear of sorts that that like folks would be offended, to be asked questions about who they are. But the more I've done it, the more I've asked like really poignant questions of really sensitive matters and people's lives the more I recognize how respected and honored people feel, when I ask questions, as opposed to make assumptions. Curiosity is a sign of respect. Number seven, mystery is an invitation. It is often used the word mystery maybe misused it is sometimes misused the word mystery as a way to excuse the work it takes to get to know someone to a way to excuse the work it takes or the responsibility of coming to know of asking good questions and waiting for answers or even waiting through answers that we don't understand. "Oh it's just mysterious." No, real mystery true mystery is an invitation into relationship is an invitation into a deeper kind of knowledge. It's the it begins with that sense of like I don't really get this that leads to really good questions. Mystery is not a dead end when it comes to culture or religion or anything. It is an invitation "Hey, there's more here, there's more than you can see, there's more than you can know, maybe there's more than it's possible for you to know maybe there's actually more than this possible the edges of human knowledge." mystery is an invitation and not a dead end. Number six, knowledge isn't power. Knowledge is a facet of relationship. This notion that this, you know, it's a saying, I've heard it I've seen on posters, no, just power. No, you know that that's true. If the goal in my life is to control, if the goal of my life is to control the world around me, then knowledge can be power. But if the goal in my life is relationship, then knowledge is simply a facet of that relationship. And it ends up being a commitment to a relationship, like a particular commitment to a relationship that I get to know you, I get to see you and experience you now as you are. And knowledge is power means that you have to stay there. Otherwise, we have a problem. Once I've come to know you, that's who you are. And if you change, then we've got a problem. What if instead, knowledge is a way for it's a facet of like, I get to see you now. And then as you change, I'm committed to relearning you over the course of time. That's true into relationally as true interpersonally. It's also true societally, that suit institutionally, culturally, things are as they are now. And I can come to a certain understanding and a grasp, here's that control piece, a grasp of the way things are now. But real knowledge then is like this is going to change. And when it changes, when you change, I'm going to ask the next set of questions in order to re-enter into this relationship as it exists. Tomorrow, knowledge, isn't power, knowledge is a facet of relationship. Number five. I'm hesitant to even say this out loud, I shouldn't because I mean, this. Not everything has to be important to me. To say, there are things that have been important to my guests over the over 100 episodes that like; they're just not as important to me. And some of that has to do with place in life, some of that has to do with the position of power that I can't do much about some of the things that some of my guests care deeply about and have committed their lives to. So it can't be important to me in the same way. There are things that are important to me that aren't important to other folks who don't have the kind of access or don't have the same kind of doorways. It's important for me to recognize like, these are the things that I get to know that these are the things I get to do something about these are things that are that are actually important to me so that I can play my part and respect you for playing your part that doesn't have to be important to me in the same way that it is you I can just think that you're a hero in your specific lane and let you drive in it and do it really well. And then I can stay in my lane and do my part well, and trust the whole process, the fabric of the world societally becomes far more interesting. And I get to be more responsible for my part of it. If I recognize that not everything has to be important to me, I just want to be really responsible to the stuff that is. Number four, listening is the key. The key, not just a key listening is the key to good relationship, and great art. To have a good idea and even to have a skill set is wonderful. It's necessary if this podcast was a good idea, and I have a certain skill set that allows me to do this, and I think do this decently well. But it's my capacity to and my growing capacity to pay attention and to listen, that actually makes this work. That's true on a bunch of different levels. It's also true in the rest of my art that I have, I can have a great idea. But if I'm not paying attention to the world around me, I don't know where that idea goes. And I just kind of place things out of context or in the wrong time or among the wrong tribe of people. Listening is the key to good relationship the key to good relationship, and it is also the key to great art. Number three, listening is actually hard. Because what it requires me to do is it requires me to put my agendas to the side. It requires me to relegate my ideas to maybe even better ideas. Listening requires me to slow down and to cease my desire for control to cease my desire for a certain kind of knowledge. Listening is hard because it requires me to find my place in the stay in it and not try to be the center of every conversation, to not be the center of every culture. Again, as a, you know, as a straight, white, male listening has become maybe the most essential practice of my life has come to recognize, like my necessary place, and my better place in my neighborhood, my world online. And it's been hard, because it is more so than anything else, listening, is a relinquishing of power, or the desire for power. Listening is hard. Number two, not all stories are good stories. The emphasis on story you know, the folks over at Pixar like to say the story is king and I absolutely believe that story is King story is the framework. Story is a framework for really all kinds of knowledge, relational, institutional, otherwise, story really is king. But not every story is a good story. There are actually bad stories in the world and discerning that. Having that discernment, recognizing when I'm paying attention to a bad story, or recognizing when I'm contributing to a bad story begins with the recognition in the confession, that not every story is a good story. There are some stories that are simply bad ones, and should be replaced. Not necessarily silenced, but should be seized, yes, remembered so that we would know I hate that's a bad story. We don't want to do that again. But some stories should come to an end. Not all stories are good. And lastly, the number one thing that I've learned and relearned over the course of 100 episodes: I like people. I really like people. The more knowledge there is in the world of how bad things are, how bad things can be, how badly we can mess things up. How complicated and mean people can be. It could be really easy to become jaded, not just to culture, not just the certain cultures, not just to religion and not just to politics. They become jaded, in a deeper sense. I'm so glad that after all these years of paying attention and listening and being in conversation, I continue to fall in love with people. I continue to love and like who people are, I really do like people. Which takes me back to the number one thing I was doing with this podcast. Thanks for making this possible. Thanks for joining me for this episode. Thanks for joining me for this episode of the @Sea podcast. We will return to our regularly scheduled program and the next few weeks. Thanks for 100 episodes. Let's do 100 more. Links For Justin:Coaching with Justin NEW Single - Let Go NEW Music - Sliver of Hope NEW Music - The Dood and The Bird The Book - It Is What You Make it | |||
| 23 Mar 2023 | Jenai Auman | 00:58:42 | |
If you are around or in conversations about mental health for much time at all, you probably hear the word trauma used relatively often. And if you are in or around conversations at the intersection of mental health and religious life, you'll probably hear the phrase church trauma, or religious trauma used, at least as regularly. Those conversations can be really tricky, can be really difficult, and also can be really necessary. Some of the most helpful voices in those conversations, at least that I've come across, aren't even necessarily folks trained as therapists or even working as pastors. Some of the most helpful folks in conversations about church trauma are those who have experienced it, have done the work in their own hearts, minds, and communities, and then are speaking back into some of those spaces, not even just correctively. But both correctively and compassionately, a lot of what I've enjoyed and benefited from with regards to Janai Auman's work is that posture that she's remarkably articulate, and she is abundantly clear about the places lines have been crossed about the abuse of power in church leadership. She is also speaking from a place of hope. I really enjoyed this conversation with her, and I think you will as well. Check it out.
Links for Jenai AumanWebsite - https://www.jenaiauman.com Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/jenaiauman/ Links For Justin:NEW Single - Let Go NEW Music - Sliver of Hope NEW Music - The Dood and The Bird NEW Book - Sacred Strides (Pre-order)It Is What You Make itHearts and Minds Amazon Barnes and Noble Links For Justin:Coaching with Justin NEW Single - Let Go NEW Music - Sliver of Hope NEW Music - The Dood and The Bird The Book - It Is What You Make it | |||
| 09 Feb 2024 | Sacred Strides Chapter 8 - Taking a Breather | 00:39:27 | |
Today, we're embarking on a unique exploration not just of what's written, but of the stories and insights that lie beneath the surface of each chapter. Joining me on this adventure is none other than Dan Portnoy, a dear friend, and producer. Dan's perspective on my work is truly one-of-a-kind. He's been by my side through the highs and lows, understanding not just the essence of my writing, but the passion and purpose that drive it. Today, we're not just revisiting the chapters of 'Sacred Strides,' but we're also delving into the layers underneath—the thoughts, the motivations, and the untold stories that have shaped this book. And let me tell you, having Dan here isn't just about having a fan in the room; it's about sharing this space with someone who genuinely cares about the work, appreciates the craft of writing, and, most importantly, isn't afraid to dive deep into the discussion, challenging and enriching our journey through 'Sacred Strides.' So, whether you've been a part of our story from the beginning or are just joining us, we're thrilled to have you with us. Let's peel back the layers together, uncovering the heart and soul behind 'Sacred Strides.' Check it out. Links For Justin:Coaching with Justin NEW Single - Let Go NEW Music - Sliver of Hope NEW Music - The Dood and The Bird The Book - It Is What You Make it | |||
| 15 Feb 2024 | Sacred Strides Chapter 9 - Running Hurt | 00:47:11 | |
Dan and I have been walking through my most recent book, Sacred Strides. We're going chapter by chapter providing some insights into the stories and some add-ons. You know, kind of not quite behind the scenes of the making of it per se, but more like, what are the themes and why are they important? And do I still believe the things I said when I published this book. This week we go through Chapter 9. Links For Justin:Coaching with Justin NEW Single - Let Go NEW Music - Sliver of Hope NEW Music - The Dood and The Bird The Book - It Is What You Make it | |||
| 17 Feb 2021 | Pain & Strength | 00:05:50 | |
I think it was 6 or so years ago, I was in a session with a therapist who practiced cranial - sacral therapy. Which, in short, attends to the alignment of the body between the cranium (my noggin) and the sacrum (which is pretty much my tailbone). It’s a series of long tensions and pulls rather than muscle squeezing and all that. About 15 min into the session, she asked me, “It feels like you have some injuries on your left side.” “Yeah, probably.” She paused and then pulled me over onto my back and said, “tell me.” I’d never been asked before to recount my history of injuries. Regardless, I could recall all of them. broken ankle multiple sprained ankles (6-7) hairline fracture of my tibia ACL tear some other mind of knee blowout dislocated hip 3 broken ribs (2 occasions) Broken collarbone (2x) Broken shoulder Broken wrist (2x) Hairline skull fracture (2x) All of it on the left side of my body. “That’s a lot of trauma.” My brain immediately reacted with something like, “What?! I don’t have ‘trauma.’ I just got hurt a few times.” She took my wrists and folded my arms across my chest. Then, pressing down hard into my shoulders, “Let’s see what we can do. Close your eyes and take a deep breath.” After 30 more min, I stood up and felt ... new? It was really, really strange. I had to readjust to what felt like... Strength. But it was quite literally unlike any strength I’d felt in myself previously. I’d been used to the kind of strength normally prescribed by calls and challenges to “stay strong” or “be strong.” The kind of strength that’s was, in and of itself, an effort to maintain. This strength was just … there, holding my body together at my center. Literally, the only thing that had changed (the only thing that had happened) was that someone had felt the trauma(s) in me, kindly helped me acknowledge them as real, and then actively engaged with the places in me where I was still carrying, by injury, those pieces of my history. I think this is what is often meant by “entering into” someone’s pain. And the fruit of that work, that entering in was strength. — Lent begins today. It is a season characterized by the practice of fasting; the choice to deny myself of some joy or pleasure (or even some need); in short, a season marked by the decision to suffer. And, along with the opportunity to practice that personal disciplines in order to clarify my own life and connection with The Divine, Lent is also an invitation to reach out to (or reach into) a world actually bound together by the shared experience of pain and say something along the lines of “that’s a lot of trauma.” And then, if we are welcomed, enter in. And not to simply “fix” what’s wrong in one another (though that is a shared dream, too) but enter in because there is a kind of magic in the meeting of tired and wounded human lives; A hope for healing and resurrection and actually new life. And I don’t know exactly how it works. I just know it does That friendships are deeper after adventure, and communities are richer after trial. That there is a power and a peace available to human hearts and human lives that is accessible only through the doorway of pain and suffering BUT/AND it is a doorway that cannot be passed through alone. Sometimes it takes therapy. Sometimes it takes a podcast guest like Jennifer Ko sometimes it’s friends or family or a child sponsorship program or AA meetings Almost always, it takes someone saying, “I see this in you, and I would like to help carry it. I would consider it an honor.” And someone else saying, “Yes, please do. I trust you. Come closer.” And almost always, in time what we find between us and in us is not the diminished effort and energy of persons carrying more than they should (because we are carrying someone else’s burdens) we find a strength we didn’t know before and would rather not live without. Links For Justin:Coaching with Justin NEW Single - Let Go NEW Music - Sliver of Hope NEW Music - The Dood and The Bird The Book - It Is What You Make it | |||
| 04 Mar 2021 | Deconstruction and Fundamentalism | 00:10:46 | |
I just got off the phone with a long-time friend who is now a coaching client. It's the call I needed in order to finish this script. This beloved friend began the conversation with the nearly universal phrase: "I feel like I'm always in the middle." And I get that. Even though I disagree a bit. I don't think he's in the "middle," per se; I think he's trapped in a relationship with people who hold somewhat opposing perspectives (political, social, theological) and hold those perspectives more tightly and more dearly than they do the people around them. In other words, he is in a relationship with fundamentalists who hold differing opinions; People who are so sure that what they think is correct and who are so sure that the things they think are important that they are willing to sacrifice relationship in order to hold onto their perspectives and ideas. That's the actual trauma and tragedy of Fundamentalism; it strips people of their humanity and rends us from those we would otherwise love. I'm not allowed to be on a journey or in a process. I MUST come to conclusions and have some form of certainty. Namely about things the machinery I've aligned myself with has deemed most important. -- in 2008, I released a collection of songs entitled "Deconstruction." The title was actually a remnant from my collegiate studies in philosophy, where I spent a bit of time around the work and words of Jaques Derrida. At the time, "post-modernism" was the buzz phrase, particularly as some of its core tenants threatened the seemingly secure hold Modernity had on daily life. Most western, white-male-dominated cultures stood firmly on the assumption that some things were "True" and, in their being True and immovable. That assurance meant that the building of institutions and rules of life were safer and would be long-lasting. What Derrida offered, though, was the suggestion that the language used to communicate and understand those assurances was fraught with contradiction and complexity; that language did not reliably point in the direction of a controlling and anchoring "Truth." Instead, words are bound together by the tension and connection found between themselves. There was (and is) no central reference point from which each individual word derives its meaning. More simply, if a word has "meaning," it has that meaning in relationship to the words around it. And that's the constant; language and the connection between words. Some critics read Derrida as one more expression of "relative truth," but Derrida was up to something fundamentally different; he was suggesting that the "constant" was relationship itself. The relationship between words and between the people who used them. For example: In a religious context, that Truth might be expressed in a phrase like "God is love. "For Derrida, the wild differences between what I mean by "God "and what you meant suggests a lack of common experience; there is no "thing" to be called "God." what there is, though, is the connection between you and me. And, in that case, meaning wasn't to be discovered in a common experience of whatever the word "God" meant; it was forged and fostered in the connection and tension in the relationship between you and I. He called this "Deconstruction." DERRIDADIAN DECONSTRUCTION:
At the heart of his initial work was (and is) a frustration about the inherent desire in human hearts to place "meaning" at the center of existence. That just because we are alive, our lives must have meaning. He found this problematic and sought to undo it. Derrida saw it problematic that philosophy was driven by the need to find a centering, grounding meaning at all. He bristled at the certainty with which philosophers sought to find meaning somewhere; believing their certainty in any kind of absolute blinded them. My religious training counters that idea by suggesting that the desire in human hearts to live in and with meaning is a hunger similar to the hunger for food, a thing to actually schedule one's days around rather than learn to ignore, for really any reason. The details, of course, are negotiable, to say the least; but that nudge at the core of one's soul that says "there's more. not just out there, but in you" is real; it's part of what it means to be human. And this is why I find myself struggling with the use of the word "deconstruction" as a description for so much socio-religious conversation recently. The way I hear it, I think we're mostly talking about reorganization and maturity and growing and discernment, all of which is not just fine; it's good. It's true. It's beautiful. And I guess I wish we would let good things be good, sometimes. Most of the institutional conversations i'm around feature a critique of systems that poorly reflect a central truth or Reality that deserves a better treatment and culture. For many, churches are problematic, not because they're organized around a reality that is non-existent, but because their corporeal practices distract from the beauty and goodness of that Reality. Yes, please? I like that a lot. But that's not deconstruction. It's something ( i would suggest) richer and harder and more communal and more fluid and more human; it's the work part of belonging to people. It is the practice of Beloved Community. I have long believed that one of the most corrosive aspects of Fundamentalism is that it convinces us that ideas and definitions are more vital and important than the people who hold them. In that light, Fundamentalism convinces us that change is a necessarily deconstructive process; things are either true or false, black or white, real or not, in or out, Biblical or sinful, sacred or secular - alive to the Glory of and service of God or fit to be torn down and trampled... there is no movement or growth or progress or even redemption; I've either got it right, or I've got to go. The glaring feature in that fundamentalist mindset is fear, mostly fear that the center won't hold if it's moved or challenged or not protected. And.. here's where I'd like to land this plane: I don't think that's what we have on hand, collectively and culturally. I don't think despair at the absence of existential meaning is winning the day. I think that nudge.. got a lot stronger.. for a lot more people. And a lot more people want to move whatever it is in the way of getting more of that nudge. I think we're seeing a scandalously broad awakening ... that this nudge and the fact that I sense it matters MORE than the words some paid professional uses to describe it, control it and commodify it. What I'm seeing is the fervent and sometimes angry tearing away at whatever artifice is deemed in the way of a clear vision of what's most real. I'm hearing conviction and frustration that there is, in fact, a center (though it might not be static) and that there are fundamental truths (though they may be interpersonal in nature) but that all this gatekeeping garbage culture is keeping people we love and like and want and need from the goodness of it. I don't mind the word "deconstruction" but historically, deconstruction is a very specific and often highly individualized process by which one unearths the very core and center of their being and decides that if there is meaning in their world or in their life, it must be constructed and held together by the sheer force of the own, individual will. So, if that's you, I get it, and that's real and can be terrifying and also really good. But if it's not, then consider that you might not be deconstructing. You might be feeling an invitation to a legitimate "awakening" to be shared by all kinds of people, with whom you agree and disagree; an awakening angled towards (and maybe even prompted by) a goodness, Truth, and beauty worth tearing things down for... as well as worth building around. Links for Justin : Pre-order the new book - It Is What You Make it Hearts and Minds Links For Justin:Coaching with Justin NEW Single - Let Go NEW Music - Sliver of Hope NEW Music - The Dood and The Bird The Book - It Is What You Make it | |||
| 15 Aug 2024 | Community, Faith, and Perseverance | 00:19:04 | |
Join host Justin McRoberts on this unique episode of the At Sea Podcast, where he engages directly with viewers' questions. Learn about the importance of community in religious practice, authentically sharing one's faith, and discerning when to persevere or move on from a project or relationship. Tune in for deep reflections on belonging, leadership, and living a joyous life. 00:00 Introduction to the At Sea Podcast 01:03 New Podcast Format: Q&A Sessions 01:58 Question 1: The Importance of Church Community 07:57 Question 2: Tips on Sharing Your Faith 11:38 Question 3: When to Persevere or Let Go 18:51 Conclusion and Final Thoughts Links For Justin:Coaching with Justin NEW Single - Let Go NEW Music - Sliver of Hope NEW Music - The Dood and The Bird The Book - It Is What You Make it | |||
| 29 Jun 2023 | Hard Weeks, Integration, and The Gift Of Rest | 00:05:36 | |
My last couple of weeks, two weeks really almost at the mark right now, have been turbulent; I would say they'd been rough. But that's mostly just been turbulent. It's been hard. Not because I wasn't a part of and doing some really great things, I was. I had a wonderful time in Green Bay, Wisconsin, and I was in Santa Cruz with Young Life staff. And I was doing things that were wonderful. I was only somewhat present in some of those things. Because internally, I was really having a hard time. And while there are a number of factors to that, one of the main factors is the two weekends ago was Father's Day weekend. And it's almost always a tricky, sticky, and other kind of icky weekend for me; as a dad, I love being celebrated. Obviously, I like being with my kids. But man, as time has passed, I just miss my dad more on those days. The older I get, the closer I get to his age; when I lost him, the harder it is to miss him when I miss him. So it happens more. It happens less frequently than it used to happen. But when it happens, and it's exacerbated by an entire holiday celebrating fatherhood, woof. That was a predominant factor. So in the meantime, I'm having these incredible experiences. And I get to do this incredible work. And I'm with these wonderful people. And I'm living in some form of disintegration, not terrible. And this is part of how we live a lot of the time. I didn't have space. I didn't have room, and I didn't really want it to. I didn't. I didn't have space; I didn't have room to actually deal with all that was going on in me. I needed to be present for what was in front of me. That's part of how we live; that's kind of unavoidable. I can have internal struggles; I can be doing something really incredible and wonderful, but I have to be in both places and both things at the same time. So I live a little bit divided. But I didn't have time to let my soul catch up with myself entirely. This brings me to this; my friend Daniel introduced me to this John Dewey quote, the reads; We do not learn from experience; we learn from reflecting on experience. So I don't learn from experience; the thing I'm in doesn't really teach me anything directly. I can have all these experiences; I can receive all this data. I can have all these feelings. And then, at some point, the gift of rest as a practice is I let my soul and my experiences catch up with me. And intentionally, we call this the examine, look through what's going on in me. And then I can learn I just had not until a couple of days ago had the time to let my life catch up with me so that I could be integrated and be whole, which is one way to talk about belovedness. In the book Sacred Strides, in the introduction, I lead out with this story, this image about jogging with my dad for the last time. Their story reads like this from the book. Running together with my dad was a key connection point until I lost him to depression and suicide in 1998. To this day, I still remember our last run. It was really hard. It was hard for him physically; it was hard for both of us emotionally. We barely got into the four miles that we planned to run before he started falling apart. His left knee hurt from a foul he'd taken a few months previously, and he couldn't maintain his rhythm or his pace. He limped back to the car. And I remember him trying to hide his face. So I couldn't see that he was crying. I'm sorry, I can't keep up. He said. I was in my mid-20s At the time, and I was in decent running shape. But I didn't need him to keep up. I just wanted him to be with me. Because I loved him. I know now how hard it was for my dad to believe the simple truth that he was just playing loved. I moved around to his weak side, lightly grabbed his wrist, and threw his arm over my shoulders, and we finished the last half mile that way, arms around each other. Walking step by step together, his weakness meant room for strength in me, which meant connection. And that's all they ever wanted. Wholeness and integration is one of the gifts of the practice of rest that I can let my whole life catch up with me, including the things that are tearing me apart inside. I don't have space for that, and most of my life, I actually have to be present in what's in front of me. And sometimes, if not oftentimes, especially if I'm having a rough time internally. I've got to put that somewhere close to a backburner so that I can be present to the people to the job that I'm doing in front of me, which means that rest gets to be a place where I catch up with my whole self or my whole self catches up with me and I can look at the whole of my life, my victories, my successes, my positive and negative experience and let me be entirely myself and know that I am loved in every square inch of my whole life. Links For Justin:Coaching with Justin NEW Single - Let Go NEW Music - Sliver of Hope NEW Music - The Dood and The Bird The Book - It Is What You Make it | |||
| 04 May 2023 | Sara Billups | 00:48:21 | |
Sarah Billups is a Seattle-based writer who has been speaking at and about the communal practice of religion for a number of years now. Most recently, she's collected a number of those thoughts in a book called orphaned believers. It's a wonderful book actually deeply insightful. And I was thrilled to have her on the podcast to talk not only about that book, but about the history she's had with religion with Christianity specifically, and the things that led to the assembly of those thoughts that make up that book. I enjoyed the conversation. I think you will as well. Check it out.
Links for Sara BillupsWebsite - https://www.sarabillups.com Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/sara.billups/ Links For Justin:NEW Single - Let Go NEW Music - Sliver of Hope NEW Music - The Dood and The Bird NEW Book - Sacred Strides (Pre-order)It Is What You Make itHearts and Minds Amazon Barnes and Noble Links For Justin:Coaching with Justin NEW Single - Let Go NEW Music - Sliver of Hope NEW Music - The Dood and The Bird The Book - It Is What You Make it | |||
| 07 Oct 2021 | The Problem of Care | 00:05:53 | |
A few weeks ago, I was in a contraption with a few folks my age and older who were voicing concerns about all the “information” kids get online. During that conversation, statistics were thrown around about how much data we’re subject to. Apparently, every person creates something like 1.7 MB of data every second, which amounted to 2.5 quintillion data bytes per day. That Is A Lot At some point, someone said something about kids knowing too much. I don’t remember the exact phrase but it was something along the lines of “it’s just too much information. They’re overwhelmed.” That.. gave me pause. Something about it rang true, but not entirely. You see, I wonder if the hang-up here isn’t that there’s too much to know; I wonder if it’s that I feel responsible for caring about all of it... or even too much of it. And saying I don’t care about everything can be a slightly troublesome thing to say. Because “everything” is a very long list and it includes things you might think are REALLY vital; maybe even essential. So, as I confess my limitation of care, I just might be telling you that I don’t care about the things you care about the way you care about them or to the same depth… and now… now we might have a problem. And that… that’s overwhelming; to feel like I have to overextend my care or even pretend to overextend my care in order to remain true to my tribe. What if I care about the hungry teens in Pleasant Hill / Martinez, CA who are sleeping in cars around the corner from their local HS instead of at home so they know they can get to school on time … but my heart isn’t drawn to the clean water crisis in Sub-Saharan Africa? What if I spend the lion's share of my charitable, care time and energy in the area of child exploitation and human trafficking and, because I do, I don’t know enough about trans persons or biology or the science in the mix? What if I don’t care about what you care about? And what if it scares me to tell you that? What if it’s not the amount of information available to us. What if it’s the degree of responsibility we feel we have to have for that information; I don’t have the time or energy or the resources to effectively and consistently care for more than a few things. That’s just true… and I know it’s true. I also know it’s true that there are absences on (or from) my care list that have been disappointing to more than a few people. And that’s been a point of stress at times; Moving the question from “what do I care about?” To “what should I care about?” Author and Missiologist Michael Frost gets a lot of questions that basically boil down to the question of care. Because he’s in the field of teaching religious-minded about responsible “mission,” he regularly converses with folks who are searching the world around them for urgent needs to fill so that they can participate in the Grand Work of Redemption and Restoration. Rather than prescribe to folks attention to “that which matters most,” Michael turns the question towards people To whom are you called? Who will go with you? Michael redirects issue-focused conversations to the people whose actual, human, soft, and precious lives are affected, altered, damaged, or saved; the people whose fundamental value is the foundation of value for any and every “issue” or idea in all of human history. This is why I have been so richly blessed by David Dark’s commitment to Reality. It is her complex and sacred humanity that is David’s doorway into care for issues and ideas like criminal justice, responsible citizenship, and a more comprehensive expression of what it means to be “Pro-Life.” “To love a person” David has written, “is to love a process.” Yes. Also, to love a person is to enter into a world full of ideas and dilemmas and issues, but to find them in their proper context; encased in the soft, impermanent flesh of humanity. What if we’re not so much overwhelmed by the amount of information available to us; what if we’re simply distracted by it. And in our distraction, we lose touch with what enlivens us; what grounds us what makes any and all of the 2.5 quintillion daily data bytes worth a thing. That our hearts are not build to simply KNOW the world and those who live in it; we are built to care for the world and those who live in it…. So far as we are capable. Links For Justin:Coaching with Justin NEW Single - Let Go NEW Music - Sliver of Hope NEW Music - The Dood and The Bird The Book - It Is What You Make it | |||
| 21 Oct 2021 | God, Context, and Bad Religion | 00:05:10 | |
I ran into a friend recently whom I haven’t seen in a while. And at first, I didn’t recognize him. Some of that had to do with the time between meetings. But more of it had to do with context. The last time I saw him was in California in the Sierra Nevada foothills. This recent meeting was in a town called Goshen, Virginia. He and I were walking into buildings adjacent to one another and caught each other's eye. Then we did “that thing;” just staring at one another quizzically and awkwardly until he (his name is Mike) said “McRoberts!?” There were hugs and high fives and that “guy” hug with the clasped palms thing in the middle. I’m guessing you’ve had a similar moment: seeing someone or something you know well enough but in a context that threw off your expectations. Them? Here? No.. that can’t be. They belong somewhere else,… right? Part of what has been exposed in my religious training is that this happens to me, in relationship to God, somewhat regularly. An “encounter” or a moment of clarity is cast into substantial doubt because, .. well. God doesn’t go “here;” God goes to certain places at certain times (and sometimes in certain ways). This isn’t to say that those places and spaces and times and ways are, in and of themselves, problematic; more so, they become problematic when I try to stuff the entirely of my expectant longing for God into them. They can’t hold that. They break. What if the spaces and places we call “sacred” were less like consumer packaging and more like training grounds; always pointing beyond themselves and humbly aware of their transience. May it be so that I learn to see The Divine there (goodness, truth, beauty) so that I can recognize Divine love and movement everywhere else… not so that I would know where to go should I desire to find it. So, The 10 am -11 am hour on a Sunday The specific words of specific prayers The specific chord progressions The specific genre of music or art are all fine But/And/Also… They are small. So small. Alexander Schmemann, in his book “For The Life of the world” criticized what he called “the religion of this world,” suggesting that too much of it has called this one, small area of life “sacred” and, in doing so the way we’ve done it, rendered the MAJORITY of the rest of life and the experience of life “plain” or ‘other” or even “bad.” That’s terrible religion. And if those of us at the helm of contemporary religious machinery are truly honest with ourselves, we have to admit that this is the case, at least in part (if not in large part) because we’ve made it this way. If I am a gatekeeper to your spiritual/religious experience or if something I’ve created is THE place and way you see The Divine, then you need me and you need what I make and I get to keep my job and my power. This takes me all the way back to the poetic, prophetic challenge issued by the writers of Genesis, who, in the third chapter, expose the core, human temptation to “be like God, knowing good and evil.” It is a temptation, in part, to set the parameters of reality and decide where things should go, including The Divine. But God is who, what, and how God is, wherever God is. Just like my friend Mike is Mike, wherever he is. And getting to know him how and where and when I did should mean that, when I discover him on the other side of the country, I recognize him.. as Mike. May it be so for you and I in relationship to each other and may it be so for you and I in relationship to the Divine and may it be so for us who continue to forge pathways for people to encounter God - that we would not be gatekeepers. We would set the stage for folks to come into an encounter with the Divine by which/in which they would learn to see God however God shows up, wherever God shows up. Links For Justin:Coaching with Justin NEW Single - Let Go NEW Music - Sliver of Hope NEW Music - The Dood and The Bird The Book - It Is What You Make it | |||
| 27 Jul 2023 | A Short Reflection on Vacation | 00:07:25 | |
I have had a somewhat unusual summer. And so far as I've taken a little bit of actual vacation time, I actually don't vacation much. I've never been one to enjoy vacation very much. Which isn't to say I don't like getting away. I do like the getaway; I like having days off. I like adventure, all that kind of stuff, vacation. It just has had historically this really odd association to it. Some of it has to do with childhood stuff, I think. But a lot of it just has to do with the experience I've had when taking vacations, and maybe you're like me in this, that for many, many years, I would be on vacation. And it would I would find it profoundly disappointing or profoundly unsatisfying. And then I'd come home from vacation and feel like I either wasted my time or I felt tired, or I would re-enter my life like something other than refreshed and ready. So the book Sacred Strides actually commits a couple of pages in a chapter to a conversation about vacation and some reflection on our American practice of getting away and taking vacations; I've got some criticisms of how we do it. And I won't read that chapter right now. It's some stuff we'll do later on. But part of what I've figured out as, as I come to those criticisms has to do with the way I have learned to approach time away, time off, and vacation. So here's the thing that I recognize, I learned, and part of why I'm enjoying vacation time in the summer. So when I leave for a vacation, when I'm on vacation, I don't actually like having a plan. That's not to say I don't want to know where I'm going; I want to know where I'm going. I want to have a destination for sure. I want to know that I've got a place to stay, and there'll be food to eat, etc. Outside of that, I really like to keep things kind of loosey-goosey and make decisions as I go along to be stuck with, like, here's the agenda, here's what time you're supposed to be there. Here's what time it's over like. Like, that's how I live the rest of my life vacation time away. I really like not having a plan. But the problem with not having a plan is it leaves me open to impulses. And then the question is about the nature of my impulses. And in the past, this was part of my historical pattern. Because I like my work, and I like my job so much that left to do nothing, I'll just kind of gravitate towards a project or gravitate towards like doing something maybe creatively or even logistically, like that's my natural impulse, my natural pattern, because I've developed that at practice that. And so I'll spend my quote-unquote vacation time tinkering with ideas and with projects or work stuff that I would actually just be happier doing back home, in my office space where all my stuff's available to me. So I would live in this tension like, I'm only half here, the impulses, I'm actually giving myself over to find a deeper, more comprehensive fulfillment when I'm at home in my office. That doesn't tell me I spent some time over the course of years in the practice of rest, paying attention to those impulses in me; why do I gravitate towards work? Some of it really does have to do with my joy. At work, I actually love what I do. But there was this other thing that I didn't recognize in me until I started paying attention. Because an impulse is a momentary explosion of interest or desire, that means that our impulses, which were the way I was thinking about my impulses, have a lot to do with knowing what I want. And in a lot of popular religious culture, all impulse is considered problematic. And sadly, I think that's because, in a lot of our religious contexts, all desire is painted as problematic. And I had spent very little time in my life, slowing down enough to pay attention to different wants in my life. So I could verify I could acknowledge, and celebrate my desire to make something I want to make good things in the world. That's a good thing to want to do. But outside of that, I think I was nervous. Actually, no, I was nervous to ask myself, what would you want for yourself? What would feel good to you? If we weren't doing something productive? We weren't adding to the bottom line. Maybe you resonate with that, that I just wasn't trained and paying attention to my own desire to paint and paying attention to the things that I wanted to my soul is even asking for. It's been in rest and moving away from the normal and very satisfying work patterns that I've learned myself as a person. With desires and interests, it's been in rest that I've had the space to examine and measure the differences between those desires. And those interests, I would be afraid of the desire, in fact, to nap, like it felt guilty like I don't, I shouldn't want to nap, lazy people nap, or to enjoy a nicer meal, not like I don't eat like super expensive stuff, but like, I'm definitely kind of a peanut butter and jelly kind of person most of the days, and so to go out somewhere and actually get a nicer drink and a nicer like, I was afraid to confess to myself that those were things that would actually satisfy my soul in a unique way. See, there are, without question, competing interests and desires in me. And if I don't give myself space and time to recognize them, and examine them, then I can't weigh the one versus the other and actually go ahead and choose better desires over lesser ones or even know the metric by which I'm making that decision. And I think this is where cheap religion and deep religion have their most profound difference. In cheap religion, it's just really simple. You're a corrupt vessel. And the only good in you is what gets injected into you either by your religion or by a Savior who doesn't really like you and tells you we're better than you are already. In deep religion, there are seeds of desire in you that if you chase them, if you follow them, they will lead you to good places because you were designed good by a loving and Good God, who holds your life together, as it is in a posture of joy, and love. And yes, in fact, desire. One of the experiences I have come to in vacation time is I get to be met by the same guy that meets me at work. I get to be met in fun, in recreation, and in that big, fat map. Rest. Far from just being a thing I do between work projects, it is a space in which I get to pay attention to myself and my desires. So that when I separate myself from my life's normal patterns, I can experience joys I wouldn't otherwise know. Links For Justin:Coaching with Justin NEW Single - Let Go NEW Music - Sliver of Hope NEW Music - The Dood and The Bird The Book - It Is What You Make it | |||
| 05 Aug 2021 | Ben Higgins | 00:38:30 | |
I actually never watched the Batchelor. And that’s not a thing I say with pride or any sense of superiority. I honestly just don’t watch a lot of TV and haven’t since I was about 12, when shows like “The A-Team” and “Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom” took up space on the probably 20 networks available. So, when I connected with Ben Higgins on Twitter, I didn’t exactly know why a few of my online friends freaked out a bit. See, while I came to find out Ben was a “celebrity” in the most “celebrity” of ways, having done reality TV like The Bachelor, I found a man who wasn’t resting on the random success that such a thing offers; I found in him someone who was looking at where he was, the influence he had on hand and asking the question “What can I make with this?”
I think you’ll enjoy it, too. Check it out. Links For Justin:Coaching with Justin NEW Single - Let Go NEW Music - Sliver of Hope NEW Music - The Dood and The Bird The Book - It Is What You Make it | |||
| 24 Mar 2022 | Reinvention, Art, and Good Religion | 00:07:02 | |
A few episodes ago, I shared a short story about being what I called misnamed at an event. The organizer called me a singer/songwriter when I was there to speak. Now, part of that setup for me emotionally was I was actually in the process of reinventing. I had been playing music for many, many years. And I had been speaking a little bit at the time but paying attention to what was going on in me, honoring what was happening in me, and honoring the things that people around me were responding to. I recognized that I was in a moment of reinvention. The one side of that story that I told him was that I wanted to be called something else, I wanted to be called an author, I wanted to be called a speaker instead of a singer-songwriter. Well, there's another side to that. Because sometimes that reinvention process, and sometimes those reinvention moments or seasons come with a bit of grief. And that for two reasons. Maybe there was part of who I was before, how I functioned before what I did before, even primarily did before that I have to put down to become what's coming next, that I actually will miss. And I'll grieve that, that I really liked being that singer-songwriter. But the season has changed, and I have to do something else. Maybe it's sad for me to let go of what I thought was what I hoped I would do with those skills or those talents. The other part of it has to do with disappointing people. And you've seen this play out where someone will change their musical style, someone will change up their fashion. And the folks who had been paying attention to them offering their time their money don't like the new version. Everyone's heard the stories about Bob Dylan coming out with an electric guitar, and all the chaos ensued. Following that first electric set, similar things have happened to bands like you to, or Kanye West, even the Beatles, or Stevie Wonder, when the time came for them to honor the existing and ongoing change in them as artists, the people paying attention to them, were disappointed, I'm going to suggest that that kind of risk, that that kind of bravery to reinvent is necessary for a long term career in the arts. And if Seth Godin is right, that art is anything we create that forges a relationship between people. That risk of reinventing and disappointing people is necessary for any good work in the world. I coach artists and ministers, and entrepreneurs. And pretty much everyone on my roster right now is in some reinvention phase. They're looking at the skills, talents, abilities, and time they have had until now and trying to figure out what to do with them next. And some of the deepest grief I'm experiencing is from folks who have been trying to practice religion publicly, trying to lead spiritually in public, and are having to reinvent that particular form of art, not only because of the level of disappointment they experienced by their tribes, persons but also because among the people that I know who lead spiritually, it is a really deeply personal expression. Titles like pastor or minister get rooted in people's hearts, souls, minds, skin. It is who you are, and changing the title, the function of that job, or work becomes a challenge to that person's identity. If I do this differently, maybe I'm not who I used to be. And that can be scary. Which takes me back to that moment. At that conference, the person up front called me a singer-songwriter instead of an author. The reality was at the core of things; I'm neither one of those things. Those are expressions. I'm not an author. I do write books. I'm not a singer/songwriter. I do write songs, and I sing them. I'm an artist, which is to say, I don't make music because music needs to be made. And I don't write books because books need to be made. I make music. And I write books to forge a relationship between people, between myself and people, between myself and myself at times, between people and the God that holds all things together. So among the religious and those who lead in religious settings, perhaps words like pastor or minister, or even church, become traps. Because those words come in certain shapes. A pastor does this looks like this works these hours. Church happens at this time on this day in this way. And when the season comes, that calls on us to be brave. And to take the risk to do and be and act differently. We have to let go of what was to make room for what is coming and what is new. And yes, that comes with grief. Yes, that comes with fear. But we didn't get into the ministry work of pastoring and the church because we wanted to be ministers and pastors and have churches. In the same way that an artist doesn't get into music, painting, or storytelling, because they want to just paint and just tell stories and make music.
It's about connection. It's about people. It's about love. It's about how do I best communicate reality? What's going on in me? Honor, the truth. Honor, the beauty, honor the goodness going on in me. How do I best communicate that? And how do I best set up a guide, help assist champion and celebrate that same work in the lives of others? It is now and has been for a while, a season at a time of reinvention for religion in America. Things are going to be different. And the choice on the table in front of us is to either honor the change that is already happening in us as persons or honor the desire. Those around us for something new/ something different, or we will hold to those old patterns and miss the moment in fear of our own grief. Links For Justin:Coaching with Justin NEW Single - Let Go NEW Music - Sliver of Hope NEW Music - The Dood and The Bird The Book - It Is What You Make it | |||
| 23 Feb 2023 | @Sea - Ep131- Lent and Limitation (A Reflection For People Who Care and Are Tired) | 00:09:17 | |
Early on in my vocational career, I was on staff with a ministry organization. I was hoping to plant a church, making some music. I was around a lot of people, and a partner of mine, a friend, someone I knew who I was working with, described my overall posture as that of an ambulance chaser. They intended to point out that I tended to lean into difficult situations. That I wasn't causing drama. But as he put it, "If there's a bleeding wound somewhere, you want to go patch it up." Their hope and intention wasn't to insult me or disparage my character, so much as it was to point out this tendency in me to, maybe, overextend myself, that while it's a good thing that I want to help, while it's a good thing, that I actually do care. Both of those things are true, they were true, they're true now. I really do care. And I really do want to help, just because I care. And just because I want to help doesn't mean it's my business. Probably more important than that was this, they were pointing out that I was wearing myself out, from emergency to emergency, from dire situation to dire situation, I was drawn to places and to people that needed a lot of help. I've returned to that memory about that conversation somewhat frequently since the beginning of the year because I recognize in me I'm tired. And maybe you resonate with that. I look around at the world immediately around me, or a few steps away from me much less on Twitter, or Facebook, or Instagram, and it can be kind of overwhelming. Maybe not kind of, it can just be overwhelming. If you are someone who actually does care, if you're someone who really does want to help - right now is a heck of a time to be alive. Because on the one hand, the consciousness we share about what's going on in the world, the world around us, or even the world, two worlds over from where we live, can facilitate a sense of connectedness that we are in this together. And on the other hand, sometimes. Let me rephrase that far too often. Not just the amount of information available but how it is made available can make it seem like it's not enough to care where you can care. It's not enough to help where you can help. You can apply the best of your energies to the small corner of the world where you can be effective and wise. You have to care about everything and do so well. And if you do not care wisely and well and effectively about that which is popping in the moment, you are part of the problem. So that if you spend the best of your energies to make your small corner of the world better and more beautiful for the people you've been given to, and then have nothing left over for the causes the world around you is screaming are important today. You have missed. And you are part of what's wrong. And so I'm tired. And maybe you are too. So I don't share this reflection, this confession as it were, because I want to air my dirty laundry and hope that you find empathy with me instead. I wonder if you feel something similar. I wonder if you feel tired, and not tired because you're the kind of person who just doesn't have space for other people, not tired because you're the kind of person who has over other people's stories—tired because you really do care. And you really do want to help, and you're doing everything you think you can do to the best of your ability, and you still feel like you're getting judged and you're failing. We are now in the season of Lent. It's the season that I look forward to and celebrate and dive headfirst into every year because it's a reset for me. And it's a reset for me because it is a season in which I celebrate, lean into, and practice my limitations. I limit my drinking. I limit my eating. I limit the time I spend in certain places. I actually intentionally practice living as a limited person. And after all these years of practicing my limitation in the season of Lent, part of what I'm coming to realize is that my limitations aren't a problem. My limitations are part of what it means for me to be whole. And when I judge myself for being limited, for not being able to care about everything wisely and well, when I treat myself as if I should be able to overcome my limitations so that I can be more productive, more caring, more present in more places, what I actually do is I diminish my humanity, and I diminish the person I actually am, which includes, and is defined by my limitations. So, this Lent 2023, my hope and intention is not simply to practice limitation the way have often practiced limitation. But as I practice, and lean into, and in fact, celebrate my limitations. I also practice what Henry Nouwen calls the ministry of disappointment. I will be bummed to find, at the end of myself, that there are things I wish I could care about more completely that I simply can't, that there are ways I wish I could help. But I simply won't be able to. I'll be bound to disappoint other people who really do wish I cared about the things they cared about the way they care about them. I don't. I can't. And I won't expect them to care about my corner of the world. And the things that I care about the way I do. See, I don't want to feel tired anymore, the way I have felt tired, because the work I have to do in the very specific place I've been planted is just too important. And the people that I've been given to that I can actually care for wisely and well are just too important. And the help I can offer and the places I've actually been planted is help I can offer because I've been planted here. And I don't want to be too tired, or too distracted, or too demoralized to do the work that I can do the work right in front of. Because I've spent all of my energy worrying, and being sad, and disappointed and kicking myself for not being able to do more. So maybe no one ever called you an ambulance chaser. The way I was called an ambulance chaser. But maybe you resonate with that feeling that man you care. And boy, you really want to help. But you don't want to be so damn tired all the time. So that you can offer the best of your energies, your time, your efforts, your wisdom, your life. To the places where you can make an actual difference, make an impact, and make the kind of change you're designed to make. Consider joining me this Lent and practicing in some way shape or form your own limitations, and re-envisioning, re-embracing yourself as the limited person that you were created to be planted in a particular place at a particular time among a particular people. So that it might be with you and with me as it was and is with Jesus, the Christ. Born to Mary and Joseph and the town of Nazareth, and his brother James and his small group of friends, that he spent a particular amount of time with him in that particular place. And because he attended so well and so wisely to that which was right in front of him. The whole role changed. Links For Justin:Coaching with Justin NEW Single - Let Go NEW Music - Sliver of Hope NEW Music - The Dood and The Bird The Book - It Is What You Make it | |||
| 28 Dec 2023 | Sacred Strides Chapter 5 - Pacing Myself | 00:42:27 | |
Welcome to the odd, like a spiral, like a downward spiral of information and conversation that has become this podcast because, in essence, I am the host, and I am hosting Dan Portnoy, who is playing host to me. Let's start calling a media company, Meta. There are lots of triggers going off right now. Some of them are justified, but not all of them. Today, Dan and I walk through the book Sacred Strides, digging into the story and talking about the themes, giving you an opportunity if you liked book, which I think you did, if I'm honest. And give you an opportunity to dig a little bit deeper and hear more about it. And if you have not come across the book or giving it a shot, giving you all kinds of reasons to to do it. This is a chapter chapter five. That is entitled, Pacing Myself or Coffee, College, and knowing my limits. Dan, welcome back to the show. Links For Justin:Coaching with Justin NEW Single - Let Go NEW Music - Sliver of Hope NEW Music - The Dood and The Bird The Book - It Is What You Make it | |||
| 16 Dec 2021 | Aundi Kolber | 00:57:38 | |
In recent years, I have noticed a kind of uptick in conversations and the pace of conversations and the intensity of conversations about mental health come the holidays. Some of that has to do with maybe the shorter days, some of that has to do with being around people who might be triggering, or just some difficult family dynamics, the pressure of spending a whole lot of money or not spending money. It's a kind of intense time and so it seemed an appropriate time to release this conversation with Andi colder. Andi is a licensed therapist, she is also an author, and she works at that wonderful dynamic intersection of mental health, spiritual practice, religion, and science. The place where we all live. I had a delightful conversation with her turns out we have a little bit of personal history. I've benefited from her work, and I've mostly benefited in recent years from paying attention to the way she talks about engages in, and guides other people through conversations about that really turbulent intersection. I think you'll enjoy this conversation. Check it out. Links For Justin:Coaching with Justin NEW Single - Let Go NEW Music - Sliver of Hope NEW Music - The Dood and The Bird The Book - It Is What You Make it | |||
| 10 Mar 2022 | LGBTQ folks and Church Practice | 00:04:56 | |
In the introduction to last week’s episode, I mentioned that in the years I spent as a pastor in an evangelical setting, the conversation about the place of LGBTQ folks in a local church was a regular and often difficult one. That the Biblical image I kept coming back to was of Moses and his people stuck between the uncrossable waters in front of them and the violent forces behind them. The tensions felt are often theological and institutional. But the cost, the main cost, was and is personal. Yes, I saw pastors lose their jobs and I saw a flood of people leave congregations they loved or stay in congregations in which they felt deep sadness and stress. I lost friends, too. And because that cost was and is so personal, my thoughts and feelings about what’s at hand in this conversation started to evolve and change and, in some way, clarify. Are there institutional and theological steps to be taken and moves to be made? Yes? But I’ve never felt it was an agreement that was what actually held healthy communities and relationships together. I recognized that disagreeing well was actually key. More than that, it is always the value of the The hope has never been communities bound together ONLY by common conclusions. Instead, it has been communities bound together by relationships and committed conversation, particularly about things that matter and more so when those things that matter on DEEPLY personal levels. This takes me back to that Biblical imagery. Moses and his people facing uncrossable waters with violence at their back and something utterly miraculous has to happen for there to be a pathway forward. There is nothing so miraculous as the change of a human heart. So I started paying attention to the places where folks who loved one another were in conversation and compromise and commitment together and my hopes have risen since then. The way I’ve come to think; If waters aren’t parted between people who love and like each other, I wonder if much happening on the theological and institutional level matters anyway. In fact, I wonder, at times, if the entire ballgame when it comes to wholesale institutional change just plain pivots on our willingness to love and make room for one another. I wonder if what has been exposed, more so than anything else in the years we’ve been invested in this “conversation” is a shortage of hospitality and a lack of willingness to love like Jesus. Jesus, whose love was marked and defined by sacrifice; Who broke standards of culture and religious expectations, not for the thrill of being a rule breaker or to scorn the institution, but because people are always more than (and worth more than) the conclusions we have about them or the rules we make for them. I don’t know what the pathway forward actually looks like when it comes to local churches and LGBTQ members of the family of Christ. I assume that, logistically, it’s tied up into the larger questions about what “church” looks like in practice over the next few decades. This means that, regardless of strategy and theology, the true hope for Chruch practice in this context or any is the miraculous capacity of human beings to love one another well, in conflict and disagreement, in sickness and in health. Links For Justin:Coaching with Justin NEW Single - Let Go NEW Music - Sliver of Hope NEW Music - The Dood and The Bird The Book - It Is What You Make it | |||