Well, hello and welcome to the Speak Life Podcast. My name is Paul Feasy, and I was gonna say, as always, I'm joined, but I've really not been joined by you very often. You've been doing this by yourself, haven't you?
SPEAKER_01For the second time for the second Mr. Thomas Thoroughgood. Hello, good to see you. Well, not see hear you. Well, we need to be a bit of a good idea. I was speaking to the listener.
SPEAKER_02Well, we're not seeing them either. So exactly. I think we talked a little bit about the intensive week on the punk cast, actually. I think we do mention a little bit of what happened there. You got any particular highlights though? I mean, I was only there for one day, so but you were there all week.
SPEAKER_01No, no, it was really good actually. It was great to hear from Vanessa Bailey, um filmmaker who uh works with Glenn a bit and she had some great insights into the filmmaking process.
SPEAKER_02And I believe she was in Meet the Nativity that we did a few years ago.
SPEAKER_01Yes, yes, she was the mum in that, is that mate? That's right. So you might know who she is. When I when I saw her, I was like, oh my goodness, autograph. Well, I've been thinking that about you as well. You've just released a a Christmas single. True.
SPEAKER_02Good to do a bit of plugging for that, yes. So um, yeah, my band, All Their Kings Fall, is uh has released a Christmas single called It's Christmas Time, which is available on the iTunes Store and also on Amazon, and it is now on Spotify, but you can stream it on Spotify, but it's for a good cause, you see, it's for a charity, it's for great Ormond Street Hospital because my daughter Libby was there for so long this year. Um so whilst you can spot uh stream it on Spotify, um a much better way to raise money for charity is to spend that 99p at Amazon or on iTunes, just because you probably have to stream it about six million times to make half a penny on Spotify. So, you know, that won't go very far for the kids in Great Walmart Street, I doubt. But um yeah, all their kings for it's Christmas time. Uh you can go and find it and uh yeah, let your friends know as well. And uh we'll get rid of Ed and Elton, push them out the way, and we'll get that Christmas number one.
SPEAKER_01It's very exciting, yeah. Love it, it's a great trip. Go check it out. And um, what's the subject, the main subject of this uh speakeasy? Yeah, well, we're talking about have yourself a carnal little Christmas. Oh, awesome. Well, um, on to the show.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yes. So over to uh me. Hello, welcome to the speakeasy. My name's Paul Feezy, and as always, I'm joined by Nay Morgan Locke and Glenn Scrivener.
SPEAKER_03Hey. It should be it's it rhymes with Feasy, the speakeasy with Feasy.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, exactly. It should be easy for me to remember, yes, yes. So everyone okay?
SPEAKER_03I think we're doing alright. We're getting our Christmas. Two of us are getting our Christmases on. Yeah, I've got my Darth Christmas festive.
SPEAKER_06I've got a plan for how I can wear a Christmas jumper by the end of this episode. Are you gonna sneak it off us in seconds? Where's my watch gun? Where's my jumper gun? That's a real trick. I'm not gonna do that, but just yeah, um, I think I think it's gonna come up. I think it's gonna be relevant in what we're talking about.
SPEAKER_02Well, in a moment, hopefully we're uh maybe you've seen the title. It's called Have Yourself a Carnal Little Christmas. And actually, as Christoph Keating has already jumped in, hopefully, to tell us, he says, for those not in the know, carne is meat or flesh in both Latin and modern day Italian. So there you go. We're gonna be thinking a little bit about what carnal means at Christmas time and what that means for us in regards to some of the things that are in the news at the moment. Um but before we get to that, let's just look back over the last week. So last week, if you were if you were watching last week or you listened in, you might have heard some of our uh we had some people with us who were coming for the intensive. I don't know what we call them. What do we call people who come to the intensive guests? Just guests. Students, strangers who became friends. Uh found a place in our hearts. They did. Despite all the judgment. Um uh but they that was last Monday, so they'd only been with us for kind of a day then, but they had a whole week with us. So can you guys tell us a little bit about kind of what went on during the the week and what happened there?
SPEAKER_06We were world building or talking about world building.
SPEAKER_03Right, yes, world building uh what is art, world building and representation or representation of a truth that you already know in a different mode. So God is into represent representing himself in Christ and building a world thereby, and we are world builders made by God to build our little miniature world where we represent truth to the world and and on it goes.
SPEAKER_06So and we spent most of the week actually looking at the creative process and what we'd done um in previous videos or books or curriculum or whatever it was, and then we or we'd we'd talk about those and talk about the process of making them and potentially be asked how much they cost. That was a sort of consistent theme throughout. Um and yeah, as part of that, I think we we looked at uh the idea that world building is play and creative work is playing because you're sort of doing a let's pretend kind of thing. So one one um diagram I like to draw is you draw a great big kind of arc, not a big boat, but a big kind of um line, a curved line, and you call label that reality, and then underneath it you'll draw a small one and you'll say play. So there's the real world, and then within the real world there's this play world, and it could be um a game of chess, or it could be um a video game, or it could be a book, or it could be a film, or whatever it might be. And there's a question when you're looking at that little world, that play world, about what's the correspondence between reality and this world? What is there in this little world that connects to reality? And asking the questions, well, but sometimes it's good if it doesn't, because you can try other things out and you can you know imagine different possibilities and as part of the enjoyment of it. So we looked we looked quite a bit at that, and then as we were talking about that, we discussed how the worlds the the online worlds, the virtual worlds that that we're part of have some correspondence to reality. And and the question is, are we becoming increasingly excited by living in a little play world for good or for ill? And what is missing in those worlds and what's exciting to explore? So that was one of the things we looked at.
SPEAKER_03Although it kind of reminds me of the Matrix kind of coming out, Matrix resurrection is the new one coming out. In cinemas? Like, is it coming out in cinemas, or do you just get it beamed in your skull? In your pod. You can your eyelids go. Yeah, you you'll have the impression of going and eating popcorn, but actually it's all a lie.
SPEAKER_02And do we know what it's about? The new one? I don't know. I kind of I don't think I've even seen the second and third one since I saw it in the cinema because they weren't very good.
SPEAKER_03It just looked like a computer game, just like a a a really boring boring one and a playthrough that somebody else is going through. But the but the original matrix, I think, captured our imaginations as I think the whole generation of people started asking questions that philosophers had been asking for millennia, which is what if I'm just a brain in a vat being poked by a mad scientist? And what if everything that I think is real is a game, is a simulation. How would I ever know that? Well, I guess reality would have to break in somehow from outside and do all that kind of stuff. But I I think more and more people are starting to ask questions about whether life itself is a simulation, whether we're in a game, how could we ever know? And then also so much of life is yeah, world building. I I live in a sim world, you know. I I live in I live on Twitter, you know, like where social interactions have been gamified, or Facebook where social interactions are.
SPEAKER_02We want that to be the case. We we want to be in that world. Yeah. Which is kind of that comes up in the first matrix, doesn't it? With the guy, he doesn't want to be in the real world. He wants to go back in, he wants to taste the steak, and doesn't he say, like, no, I'm not eating steak, I know it's just a simulation, but I'd rather be having the steak. So he'd rather be in the simulation than the real world.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. And then, you know, Facebook has you know, Mark Zuckerberg has come out and said we're now called meta because there's such a thing as a metaverse poll. They've rebadged it. What is what is this thing called a metaverse?
SPEAKER_02Uh yeah. Do we gonna watch this trailer first? We're gonna have that first, yeah. Tom's trailer? Is that what we're gonna watch that? Are you gonna team that up for us a little bit? Yeah, just before we crack on.
SPEAKER_06Wonderful staff members, Thomas Thorgood. Um likes to play around with with editing, and so he's edited together a parody trailer for the social network two into the metaverse. So here it is.
SPEAKER_01I'm just gonna jump in here quickly because obviously this trailer isn't gonna play very well over the podcast. If you want to check it out, it's on my personal YouTube channel, youtube.com forward slash stir and fry. But back to the real meat of this discussion.
SPEAKER_02We were talking a little bit before about what is the metaverse, and I suppose in some ways, um, if we're thinking about what is it gonna be, w I suppose we we're looking at kind of virtual reality, augmented reality stuff, but it's not kind of it's not something that's in the future, it's kind of something we're already living in, really. So, you know, with the fact we've got our phones um or our laptops or whatever, probably our phones mostly, you know, we we open up our phone in the morning and you you jump on social media and you choke talk to people and then you get your emails and then maybe you have a Zoom meeting or a team meeting, and then you can go on Amazon and buy whatever you want, um, and then you can do you know gaming as well. Like you are kind of already living in this sort of virtual, a type of virtual reality anyway. Um, but Zuckerberg's thing seems to be about kind of what's the next step of that and taking it onto the next level. So in his presentation, when he talked about the metaverse, he has a guy, he says, you know, things have changed a lot over the last 80 months or whatever. Homeworking's probably here to stay, and he has a guy kind of going into the kitchen, sitting down at the table, hitting a little button, and the office basically appears around him, you know. So there's Bob and Sandra or whoever it is, in the office. Although he's still in the kitchen drinking his cup of coffee, he's now got all his work stuff there. You can see the people, they're all kind of cartoony like avatars. And then he says, you know, oh hey, let's have a meeting, and a few people say they're free, and they all appear in another little room, and they're like a it's a bit like Star Wars, you know, with the the holograms around them and stuff, and he even says that like people having kind of holograms and things like that. Um but I guess it's so where we are now, I suppose there's a sense in which we we still have quite a big distinction, I suppose, between what we see as reality and what's on our phones. But I guess the metaverse is looking at how much more that will begin to overlap. So there was talk of kind of, you know, maybe you'll have like a pair of glasses, and I guess Google Glass was like a very early thing of this where you might be talking to each other, we might be talking here now, but yet we would have other things going on in the lens that you know we can be browsing other bits or buying things and whatnot. And you know you you were we were saying earlier that you could um you know you can go to the shops now, you know, if you want to buy our groceries, you can go to the store or you get your Tesco app up or whatever you use and you do it that way. But it's possible that in the future, you know, let's say there's the three of us, we could all be well, Nate and I could be sitting at home in our you know separate places with our glasses on and we decide, hey, let's go to Tesco's, eSport and Tesco's or whatever, and so we're browsing the shelves of Tesco's sitting in our seat at home, and actually I can bump into Nate in the virtual world and have a chat, but Glenn's actually gone to eSport and Tesco's physically and is browsing, but he's got his glasses on and he sees us because we're in that virtual environment, and all three of us can have a chat in the aisle.
SPEAKER_06What if you do that thing where you in real life at the moment you go to the Tesco, you see someone you know, and you just buy the the bakery bit and you go, Oh hi, how are you right? Yeah, good. See, yeah, cool. And then you then you walk away, yeah, and then a bit later on you're both in the aisle for the crisps. Right, yeah, and then you're like, ah hey, hey, yeah. And then it's like, oh, someone someone needs to leave. Yeah, yeah. Because we can't just need to be on your phone.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, at that at that point, at that moment, you just need to be absorbed. You take your phone. Okay, yeah. That's how you do it.
SPEAKER_06So I sometimes hide in you know, behind aisle just going, Oh good, have they come in? That's tricky.
SPEAKER_03That's tricky for you, Nate.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, it is. At least you could say you can't hold up a box of cereal.
SPEAKER_03Sorry, I've got network problems, you know, and then just gone. But how different is that scenario from what we can already do? So like I can I can do all my shopping on an app right now while I'm having a chat with you, or and I can also have like a Zoom app open on this or WhatsApp open on this, and we can we can like zoom in friends while I do my shopping, while we're in the room, while somebody else is in you know in another part of the world.
SPEAKER_06So it there is the difference that you're turning the online shopping scrolling through to get the different things, you're turning that into a more physically oriented thing that you can walk around. Yes. And so that that's actually a sort of virtual reality or or gamified concept that you your avatar, you know. I mean, but but in the in the metaverse, are they saying that you'll you will upload a version of yourself or are you as free to decide what you want to look like in the metaverse as you would be in a game of Fortnite or something where you can just change your skin and be Spider-Man or something?
SPEAKER_02I think it's that I think longer term it's that second one because already because already we do that, don't we? On like Instagram, you have like the filters, and so that already on like something like that, Zuckerberg is saying you can make yourself look like what you want to look like. Yeah. Um but I suppose I suppose you could just go into augmented reality as you are, but why not have it that you know why slightly improve yourself? Yeah, or or even just like if you're working from home, why not sit in your tracksuit but just put the suit, the virtual suit on for everyone to see.
SPEAKER_03You know, yeah, like and it's very empowering, you know. So I've got a I've got a friend who I first knew only through Twitter, and then I went and preached at his church, had no idea when he he like comes down the church aisle in a wheelchair and he's profoundly disabled. Yeah, and I had absolutely no idea whatsoever whatsoever. And and you know, he he doesn't make a thing of it on Twitter, and it's just you know, there there is his avatar next to everyone else's avatar, and it's it's profoundly leveling and and profoundly kind of you know, he is able to present himself to the world the same as everybody else presents themselves to the world, which is which is not you know his physical reality. And and that's that's true of all kinds of people. There are there are so many introverts, for instance, who find a voice online, or you know, that there are so many people who uh because they can present themselves in a in a different way online have a voice that they otherwise didn't, you know, which is which is a positive.
SPEAKER_06Yes, and I mean the the the the amazing powerful thing that people can exceed physical limitations to some level by engaging with a world that is a play world or a or a a w world that is uh is virtual. Um I mean the the game the the game Ready Player One, which is a book and then Wood Spielberg did the film is kind of this same concept of the I think it's called the Oasis, and there is this virtual reality game that even if you live in basically a scrapyard, you can get some some kit and you put it on and then you enter into the the world. And but what's fascinating with that is that it's everyone's operating and living out their lives and buying clothes and hanging out and going out to parties and and socializing and playing all kinds of games together, but then the person who's built this world has laid into it a certain number of keys by which you can sort of win, and so everyone gets this chance to play this single game, and within that game you get to experience it, but you but weirdly even though you know that the central character is standing in his living room wearing his full VR set with gloves and everything, you couldn't do the film just showing him in his living room. Right. Yeah but in a sense that's reality w within the Ready Player One, that is the truth, and that this Oasis is a made up thing, and everything that he's doing is is fake, and same as in in The Matrix, um they choose, okay, let's try to, you know. I I'd rather live with the the lie, as it were, and know that the stake's not real than have to confront the brutal reality, which is that most of the world's population are just bodies in in baths plugged into the matrix. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02And that that's I think that's some of the discussion around the metaverse, is that is it just will it be an increasing escape from reality for people? Yeah. That actually people look around and say, well, the world is quite brutal and dark, and actually, not only can I get away from that, you know, you know, now we can do it, we can turn on the TV and watch Netflix or watch a film and we can escape into a book or whatever, but what if I can actually create my own world? So, you know, that again talking about this, Zuckerberg is obviously coming up with the metaverse, but he will not be Facebook's metaverse or Meta's metaverse, will not be the metaverse.
SPEAKER_03There will be Google's version, and there will be, you know, Apple's version, Google's version, which will be the same as Facebook's version, but white instead of blue. And very unpopular.
SPEAKER_02But there will be there will be, you know, there will be the Disney version, and there will be the you know, the Harry Potter version, and the people who who will just kind of escape into these worlds. Um and there's this sense in which it's kind of just getting away from um reality um into what they see as kind of this is the this is my best life in here, yeah, living in this space. This is what I this is what it would look like in the ideal world for me.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. That's what's helpful for you to set things up in terms of there's there's reality and there's play. Yeah. Because I think, okay, so there's the heavens and the earth. Yeah. And so God plays around, you know, and and makes us just, not because he had to, um, but he makes but then he anchors himself to that universe that he's made and kind of justifies his its existence and takes it, takes it upon himself such that God the Son becomes God our brother forevermore. And so his little world has a reality to it because it's bestowed from its maker.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_03And now here we are in our little world, and fundamentally we live before the face of God, and fundamentally we live as creatures of this god, um, and we need to figure out what that's like. We can also do a godlike thing. We can be creators of little worlds, and we can play around, and that's what creativity is, and that's what gaming is, what all this this kind of stuff is, and that's brilliant. But what we always try to do, I think, is forget about that vertical relationship with the ultimate maker, and then we're gonna be gods. And like if we're gonna be like primarily we're gonna be gods without first being a creature, yeah, then we're gonna invest in the little worlds that we make, and play will become our entire life, and we'll lose touch, I think, with that with that kind of ultimate reality.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, and and that's it's why I use the word reality when I do that that larger arc is because depending on who you're speaking to, what will they put in that place of what is real? What's real and what's the made up thing, what's the pretend thing and what's the real thing. And the challenge within Ready Player One to the example or the matrix is that the real is the cold, suffering, awful place, and the the make believe is is the escape. So what you're trying to do is to avoid suffering, to avoid the problems, to transcend your issues. By entering into a virtual world, a a secondary domain where you can be where you want to be. And the the challenge is if we think that the the outermost sphere of what's really real is suffering and horror and and bleakness, then of course we'll just retreat inside and escape and and want to stay there forever and not want to confront our real life problems because I what we're saying in the gospel is reality as it is is father, son, spirit, eternally three in one. And that's God is love. Yeah, yeah, and light and life, and and reality is good. Reality is brilliant, like it's it's it's amazing. Yeah and it it it happens that the the world that God has made is is not the final truth, right? The the the suffering that we experience in this life is not the final truth, and yet this is the glory of Christmas that into our darkness comes comes Christ. So you'll you'll often get it with I think it's in Free Guy, uh, which is the new um oh what was the guy Brian Reynolds, yeah. Um is that the the game makers join in the game, they enter into it, and that's the only way to solve the problem in the game is is to to enter into it. And at Christmas, it's Christ entering into the world that he has made, God becoming man, and the challenge is that it's flesh, he takes on so we call it carnal Christmas, he becomes meat, and most of the things we're talking about when we talk about our own little play worlds are are not fleshly, are not physically it's a virtual, there is no spoon, right? It it's all digital, it's all um zeroes and ones. Yeah, so it's that's the challenge is that the more we try to escape our physicality, retreating into a virtual world, yeah, a world of make-believe, we actually deny that Christ takes on our flesh that are that that that he's met us in the metaverse. He's made us in meets he says nice to meet you. Thanks very good.
SPEAKER_03There is a meets the nativity, yeah, exactly.
SPEAKER_02Um I guess I mean I think that idea that you say of if this is the the cold, if the outside sphere is the cold dark sphere. Um I mean some people have kind of picked up on the the C. S. Lewis quotes that we've probably all used before. You know, if I find in myself desires which have which nothing in this world can satisfy, the only logical explanation is that I was made for another world. And I suppose what this kind of metaverse thing does is perhaps in a way I hadn't seen before is you know, as Christians, we we say, well there's an there is another world, and it's out there, you know, it's it's there's another outer sphere which is the real reality, not that this isn't real, but there is a greater reality and it's a good place to go out, you know, to to Jesus, to be in him and with him. But what the metaverse does says, Yes, you have these desires, but the answer is for you to go into something else, yeah, which you are the you are God of, you are in control of, and it becomes incredibly inward looking rather than outward focused.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah. Is it worth pressing into the difference? Uh I'm I'm just um speaking out loud as I think, but freestyling. I'm just freestyling it. I like the I like the way you speak out loud. One of my favourite ways you speaking out loud, rather. So it is Ready Player One and the Matrix quite different in that Ready Player One is here's a dark here's a a terrible world, but I can escape into this sort of computer simulation. Whereas in the Matrix, the simulation kind of is the prison. And yes, it's kind of a nice prison, but it's precisely what the machines have done in order to enslave humanity, and they need to wake up to sort of reality, as opposed to going into you know the ready player one game. And I just I just wonder whether um the gospel is a lot more like the matrix than it is like ready player one, in in that um, yeah, we we we foolishly think that the steak that we have or the mud pies that we make in the slum is what's going to to get us the the satisfaction that we crave, but instead it's the one from outside that sort of breaks in. I don't know, that's just me thinking out loud.
SPEAKER_06I I so I the thing about Ready Player One is that the game, the Oasis, has been effectively taken over and twisted from its original intent. Okay. I forgot. I have I have seen it, I've forgotten the moment. So so I forget the the name of the the the characters, but he is um he's made this and and same with same with Free Guy, right? Exactly the same. There is a game designer who's built this really good game. Someone else, basically greedy and looking for money, has taken over the algorithm and has chosen to distort it and make it something that the original author never really intended. And yet the original author has built into this this fictional, this this virtual world, has built in a means for its redemption, right, which the player entering into the game, and this would be the same for for Neo, can as long as he's within that playing by the rules of the game, abiding by those, submitting to the rules of the game, but bringing about the you catastrophe, which then ripples out from the central game into the real world outside the game within the film. Yeah. Or within the book.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. So where do they get their ideas from? I don't know. Yeah, yeah. They're just telling the great story, aren't they? Um in all of that. But I I wonder whether because I I think the Matrix has returned us to talking about being a slave of ultimate reality in a way that we haven't been used to. Um so you know, Descartes did it famously, you know, back in the 17th century, and Plato talked about it. So Plato talked about we're in we're in a cave, and all we can really see our backs are to the the wall, our backs are to the mouth of the cave where reality's happening, and there's a there's a sort of a light being cast onto the the back of the cave wall, and all we get to see is shadow.
SPEAKER_05Yeah.
SPEAKER_03While the reality, and we can never leave the cave. And and he he sort of thought that philosophers probably could, because philosophers can think their way to ultimate reality. But that was kind of that was very obvious to Plato that we are we are in Neo's position. Yeah, we are we are in a pod and our eyelids are fluttering, and that's that's kind of and we're not tasting the real steak. Descartes famously goes into an oven and you know starts to doubt everything, and he can doubt all his senses. The one thing he can't doubt is that he exists, and so he says, I think therefore I am, I doubt, therefore I am, and sort of starts to build up a knowledge from that. But I think since Descartes and the triumph of science and the triumph of kind of having mastery over this world, we haven't been used to thinking that I live in a simulation. We because we've been we haven't been used to being the one who's in the play area and someone else is in charge. We've been used since the enlightenment, since the you know the scientific revolution, we've been used to being the ones who are making the world and understanding the world and being gods over the world. Um, and it's I think it's a it's a new thought for a lot of people to start thinking about the simulation, but I think it's quite a healthy thought for people to start thinking, um, maybe maybe it's not about what world you can build, maybe you're in somebody else's world. Yeah, and whatever we can do to wake people up to I don't know, maybe this is a simulation.
SPEAKER_02Um so how do we feel? How do we think that kind of Christmas plays into that? Because we're talking about have yourself a carnal little Christmas, and you know, we're we're clearly thinking there about incarnation, and I guess all of us, well probably any any Christian who hears our incarnation, we know what we're talking about when we talk about uh God becoming flesh. But what difference does that make in in this kind of discussion?
SPEAKER_03It's he comes to justify our existence like at every level. He comes to just he he comes to make it so that we're not just in a game, but he he bestows on us his ultimate reality because we are a game, we are play for him until he absolutely earths himself to us and earths himself to us forevermore. So like Jesus justifies us. Yes, he justifies us, you know, by declaring us righteous instead of sinners and all that, but he actually justifies our existence by taking flesh, by pledging his own life and being to his creation forevermore. Um, so I mean we we did last year um Let Me Go There. It's a a film about a father and a son, and there's a snow globe, and the and the son gets to see that if you go into this snow globe, it's full of dark, dangerous, you know, but also um beautiful, you know, broken glory in there. And he realizes that if he goes into this world it will cost him everything, and still he says, Let me go there. And you know, it's it's this idea of the sun has come into our worlds like that sun in the in the snow globe to turn it into God's worlds and to ground and earth our existence and to make us realize um there is a true stake, you know, and it's better than anything that we've sort of digitally uh enjoyed through the simulation. Um so it's it's everything, like the incarnation is everything. And uh I think it's it's just fascinating to me that we look at other cultures that haven't um trusted the reality of this world. You look you you go east in philosophy and they're much they're much more um likely to say that there's a veil of illusion over us and we can't really know the world, and um we find that really weird, but I think we find that weird because we've been inhabiting the Christian revolution where Jesus has kind of really earthed earth to heaven and said, No, this this world, I know your senses can deceive you and that kind of stuff, but look at me. And when you look at me, you're in touch with something that's real and deep and true. And I think the more that we have looked at him, the more have we we've been able to treat the world as a real place. And I think no wonder we've then got to be able to do science and all that kind of stuff. But then the more we've been able to do science, the more we've thought to ourselves, oh, I'm the master of this domain, I'm the one who can now play and be godlike and and make other worlds, and we've escaped off in that direction. It's us again, in the middle. Stuck in the middle with you.
SPEAKER_02Did we make that joke last time? I think we did, yeah. We should make it every time.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, just you're halfway there. Don't worry. You're halfway there. Depending on if you're a glass half full or a glass half empty person, that's either good news or bad news. It's nearly done, people.
SPEAKER_02Don't worry, don't worry. Yes, so we are kind of halfway through. And this is a good point then to remember just to remind you, or not remind you, but to say thank you, first of all, to all of you who support us um in many ways, prayerfully in particular, but also those who um give financially, and just to say that uh if you perhaps don't give but you would like to, then you can head over to speaklife.org.uk forward slash give, and there's information there for a couple of different ways you can give, and they get access to our Discord server, um, which is beginning to kind of take off now. It's getting a bit of uh traction, isn't it?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah, we've moved on from the memes, and now there's some there's some stodgy waffle going on there. Some meaty content a bit like today's podcast. There we go. It's good. Yeah. Had you ever thought about the commonality of Christmas before?
SPEAKER_02No, not really. I mean, with and and you know, as we we talk about in the in the podcast, in some sense, although we all know about the incarnation, I don't think often we do think about the ramifications of that. Um I mean I probably have quite a commonal Christmas anyway. I mean, I do just kind of eat lots of food and enjoy the feasting, but I think that's partly okay.
SPEAKER_01And if you want to feast your eyes on this episode, segue. Segue a lot. Um, you can go to youtube.com forward slash speedlifemedia and actually watch these episodes on our YouTube channel. We should probably get on with the uh probably best we hand back over.
SPEAKER_03Man, what is Christmas? Christmas is God taking the wheel of his own world and pressing home on the GPS. Taking taking the wheel of this world and and yeah, anchoring us to himself. And that he's still man in heaven.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_06And that that the cre you know, it's it's not as though he, you know, oh I'll put on, you know, I'll join the game, yeah, I'll join in for a little bit, I'll sort out the problem, and then I'm going back, and you know, it's that we have a man at the right hand of the father. Forevermore, yeah. Forever. And that that decision to take on flesh was was a decision that is not re reversible in a way. Right. Yeah, yeah. It's there's sort of no, it's not gonna it's not gonna go back on that. So that our our our humanity is is not the problem that you know we need to sort of get rid of that. And and and then the idea of of of heaven as a um well or the new heavens and the new earth being being physical. Right. And now I want to go back to the th thinking about when people present themselves online and the possibility that you can be something that you are not, right? So in Ready Player One, there's you know all sorts of of characters who choose to be completely different inside the game because you can pick whatever you want to be, and you can you can choose, and it's let's pretend open up the dressing up box and it we can put it all on. Now, the problem we have with that is because you can deceive right. So you can go online and you can meet someone, and they can because they they control what you see of them, it's a curated existence. You you can't be sure that you know the truth about this person, and so the danger of meeting people online and and particularly having kids who you know maybe play online games, and thinking, okay, we need to do a lot of safety because there's a lot of people out there who will present you one thing, but then there's something different in real life. And I loved something that you you'd said about um about Christ coming, and and your distinction was not you know in real life or in the game, the distinction you had was at work or at home. So Christ, as we see him at work in our salvation, is the same as God is at home, right? God is not different at work than he is at home, yes, and part of the challenge with any game that we play is that because it's a restricted view of someone, and we all know you can frame up your Zoom camera just to show what you want people to see, right? But if they walked into your room, they would actually see what it was like. We know that that potential for a distorted view or a restricted view, which is by its nature a distortion.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_03That's why, like the the lyric, I mean, I I hate taking apart Carol's lyrics, but the the one that I I um regularly change is in Hark the Herald Angels sing Veiled in Flesh the Godhead Sea. I I I prefer to sing now in Flesh the Godhead Sea. But just because veiled makes it sound like okay, this is his avatar. What he's like in his room gaming is totally different.
SPEAKER_06I think I've always seen the veil being torn. So the flesh, the curtain is his body, which is torn. And so that was a connection I would make. But yeah, yeah. So but I can see what you mean.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, like a mask, and behind it, he's quite a different character. Let's not get onto masks. But yeah, but yeah, he is as he is towards us and how he is in the game, yeah. How he is on earth is how he is eternally, yeah. You know, so like John 10, 17, Jesus says, The reason the father loves me is because I lay down my life. And you're like, this is this wild. He's kind of he's connecting the eternal life of God to him laying down his life on the on the cross, which is the most sort of fleshly kind of weak thing that he could do. And he and he's just like, No, the that father-son love is expressed best when I take flesh and die for the sins of the world. Um, so it's beautiful. So that the incarnation is our only hope of knowing, like, we are real, the world is real, God is real, because our maker takes all of that to himself and says, you know, here I am. And having descended to the outer depths to meet us, um, like we don't we don't have to ascend to kind of figure out what God is like, you know, down he comes all the way. It's and it really is our only hope to know that we're not in a simulation, or or okay, we're we're in a kind of kind of a simulation that has been justified, that has been anchored to something eternal and true, and and now I don't need to escape this game. I don't need to escape the earth. I don't need to escape my creatureliness, my embodied nature. Um I can, as an image bearer of God, now make little worlds, and that's quite fun as a pastime, but I don't now have to escape my physical reality and my embodied reality um in order to be the spiritual person that God has made me to be. You know.
SPEAKER_02Do you think that we do you think that we see the incarnation as that important in our circles? Because you said earlier, and you've just kind of really said the same kind of thing, the incarnation is everything. But apart from kind of Christmas time when we might give a kind of few cursory sermons on God with us, and you know, he became well, like we said the other week, oh look, he's a b he's a baby, cool, and great, let's move on. Um but he didn't stay a baby, you morons. Um do you think because it's in my mind, I I don't think we talk about incarnation that much or or or think about what the ramifications are there for further down the line. So, because at least in our circles, I don't think we do that. What do you think are some of the um the weaknesses or issues we come up against then?
SPEAKER_03I think what like one of the signs that we don't really have a theology of incarnation is like when the matrix came out, for the next ten years, every youth leader's illustration that they took from the matrix was the whole red pill-blue pill thing. And you know, if you take the red pill, then you're choosing to leave the simulation and know the truth, and if you keep on with the blue pill, you're choosing to be within the simulation. And you just think of all the things that you could make an analogy of, of all the stories you could tell based on the matrix, it's like it's screaming incarnational themes to you the whole time. And the one thing we take from it Ah, it's about being red-pilled, it's about you making an individual choice. And I just yeah, our gospel is just based on individual choice as opposed to this much richer thing. And so that like the matrix is closer to the gospel in so many of our gospel presentations. Yeah, you know, you just get played and if people watch it, just watch the matrix, and like yeah, we've we've got a real dearth of properly incarnational thinking. Like, I mean, you were you were talking about um Matthew 1 like the other day, and and like it's the typical thing, isn't it, about the names of Christ. Yeah, you know, and and one of the names is Christ, and another name is Jesus, which means savior, and then at the end of uh Matthew 1 18, or Matthew 1 from verse 18 to 25 is Emmanuel, God with us. And it always seems to me like um we we focus on Jesus the savior from our sins, which is absolutely true, but we tend to think that Jesus Emmanuel, God with us. That's a lovely warm voice that the Anglicans can get excited about for a little bit because they're they're a bit woolly and liberal, right? And is isn't it nice that God is with us? As as though it's a lovely warm hug from on heav you know from on high. Um and we but but like God with us. Like if we are really people who believe in the atonement, well, here is the at one moment, God and man together, Emmanuel is like the deepest truth about atonement.
SPEAKER_02I I think probably we have that bigger sense of like, wow. But when we have the kind of God with us in Nazareth, it's like you know, it's just a nice cozy thing. It's not this kind of groundbreaking, like incredible.
SPEAKER_06But is that because people just don't know what to do with God with us? Yeah, they don't think so. We don't have a thing. And is the fact that Christ ascends does that then feel oh well God was with us? Yeah, right? So God was one of us. Just a slug. Nobody calling on the phone except who knows. Um but is that because we say, oh, he was with us for a little bit and then he went away, and then he sent us the spirit, which you know, we we like we're all fans of the spirit. Uh we know we all like him. He's great, he's here.
SPEAKER_03Remember the spirit, he's not an it. It's a he.
SPEAKER_06He's not an it, it's a it.
SPEAKER_03Well, one of my Australian uh youth workers once said that anyway.
SPEAKER_06So, but we don't really know what to do with him. We go, well, you know, we might have some recollection of some some liturgy of of how the Holy Spirit relates to us and relates us to the to God, but it's often disconnected from what Christ does in the incarnation, right? Yeah. And so the idea that Emmanuel God is with us still, yeah, and that in fact we are with him as well, right? Yeah, right. You died, you're now seated with the Father. Right. Um that that feels to me like the the misstep is that we we love the the his name shall be Jesus, which means the Lord saves, swoops down, saves us, off he goes. Because you don't want to leave people in the misery, and the fear is that if you only have a God with us, right? So I think it's people want why they I'm assuming this is why people do it. I don't think consciously they're doing it. But the fear is if you only have an Emmanuel God with us, he doesn't solve anything, he's just here, he says, Yeah, me too. Yeah, misery loves company. Tell me about it. You know, yeah. But without that, the Saviour has no connection with you, there's no real um relationship in that sense.
SPEAKER_03And I think because we teach kind of atonement in more mechanistic terms, it's kind of Christ zapped over there, so you're blessed over here. Yeah. And I mean, uh even in our language we talk about how the cross saves us. You know, which of course the cross does not save us at all. Like, I I honestly wonder whether people think that kind of God could have zapped the wood of the cross, Jesus got in the way. Like, how does the cross the cross never saved anybody? Yeah, God incarnate, dying on the cross, saved us. Yeah, yeah. The cross, but we're so mechanistic in it. And so, what does what does Jesus need to do? I guess he needs to get in the way of the thunderbolt. And so he takes the thunderbolt, and then every but then everything else about his substitutionary work is kind of forgotten. There was this it's just this sort of one-off. He takes the thunderbolt, we are now left in the neutral state and hooray, you know, as opposed to yeah, he becomes one with us and sums us up before the Father, including on Good Friday, summing up our sin and our curse and our hell, and taking us through the fires of God's judgment. Um, that that is a salvation. And I I often think it's it's kind of w we have these debates about like the most important aspect of the cross and what to preach about the cross. And it sort of so often reminds me about it's it's almost as if like Jews would be discussing which of the goats on Yom Kippur was more important. Was it the scapegoat or was it the one for the Lord? I thought I'm not really sure. And the whole time the high priest is standing there saying, I'm the one who carries the blood into the into the heavens and and carries you on my heart, and we just don't have that sense of Christ carrying us on our on his heart into heaven. And so it's yeah, it's it's and and that then I think makes us more mechanistic, I think, in the gospel that we preach. But are we as personal as we might be if we're not talking about God with us? If it's about he saves us from our sins and there's a mechanism called the cross that gets us off the hellhook. We can be grateful for a mechanism, but where is the union with Christ kind of language? Where is the where is the person of our Saviour who has himself done it, as opposed to a what that so often gets preached when we talk about assignment.
SPEAKER_06So and with the with the incarnation as well, there is the issue that we we find it difficult to distinguish between I forget where we got this phrase from, but it was fairly recently, sinfulness and skinfulness. Oh yes, yeah. I can't remember where we got it from. Someone was right written something. Yeah, if you know, we probably mentioned it in a different episode of the speaker easy.
SPEAKER_03Did did did Joshua Ryan Butler come up with that?
SPEAKER_06I don't know.
SPEAKER_03Let's give it to him. He's a nice guy.
SPEAKER_06He's I like Joshua. He can have it. Um, but so because Christ's taking on flesh, and so much of what the Bible has to say about flesh is negative, yep, and so we then we're like, oh goodness, how would you do that? I'm I'm you know, one of one of you know one of the the the most influential preachers in my life and yours as well, Richard Bughes. I love to love to take it say, want to understand the word flesh, take the S off, take the H off and spell it backwards. Self. It's good, isn't it? It's very good. It's good. I want to say it's actually Sarks. If you take the X off, you can spell that backwards. I think it was on Doctor Who, isn't it? Yeah. But that the idea of flesh as we've you know, we wage war against the flesh, right? With the lusts of the flesh are are to be overcome. We want to overcome our passions and our and our lust and our sin. And so we don't really have a place to put the fully incarnate Christ because we're like, oh, that's not a humanity that I recognize. It's not one that I really know. Because it's sinless. Because it's sinless, because he is without sin. Yeah. And so when we're looking at him, we're thinking, well, how is it possible? How how how could that happen that someone could live a sinless life?
SPEAKER_04Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_06Because it's it's inescapable for us.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_06So that's part of the challenge. That there's so much theological nuance required to talk through what it means to be for Christ to be incarnate, that we get ourselves into all sorts of and and so therefore we avoid it, right? Yeah, because it it it it sounds difficult to parse between sinfulness and skinfulness.
SPEAKER_03It's and it's not a different problem though, to the problem of is the world a good thing or a bad thing in the Bible? You know, God so loved the world, which actually in John's gospel is mainly a system oriented against God and his Christ, and it is like this negative thing. Um and yet it is loved, and we are to live in the world, um, and yet we are not to love the world. You know, well, God loves the world, but we're not to love the world. And what does the world but we are to live in the world, and we are to love the nations, and like so, and how do we do that? Um, like I guess there's two different meanings of world in that in that sense. There there is a system that is opposed to God's that we are not to get swept up in and we are to resist, but there is a world that God so loves at the same time, and and flesh is used similarly. Sometimes it's a translation problem because I think actually the word flesh is is so negative in our understanding that certainly like the NIV will not translate flesh as flesh, it'll sometimes say body when when actually the Greek says flesh. So Galatians 2.20, um, I was crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God. So Paul is happy to say, I live I do live a life in the flesh. What do you mean? In sin and licentiousness? Like, no, you just mean I I can live a life embodied by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. So that there is like a positivity to the flesh. And the other the other thing about the humanity of Christ um being sinless, don't the gospel writers do a fantastic job of showing sinless humanity that is actually attractive and that is like like think about the artistic challenge.
SPEAKER_06Oh, absolutely, yeah. Yeah, uh was it it right swipe or something because you you don't feel you've got something to grab hold of. Yeah. But of course, when you know the only time we've ever seen sinless humanity, it you know, it's the most compelling picture of humanity it's possible to have. Yeah. And that's where you've really got to dive into the gospels to say and and and pray, show me Jesus, show me who you are, yeah, that I can get a deeper understanding of yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_03Especially because look how embodied he is, look how comfortable he is in his own skin. Yeah, yeah, you know, walks around planet earth like he owns the place and and and just you know, the way he heals people, like he never heals two people the same way, but he's always physical and interacting with people. And think about the night before his crucifixion, and they've sung a s they've you know, they've eaten a great meal, they've drunk wine, they've sung a hymn, yeah, and John the beloved disciple rests on the chest of Jesus, rests his head on the chest of Jesus, and old King James in the bosom of Jesus, who himself is in the bosom of the Father, but that comfortability with his physical embodied life, and you just think that's it, that is the life. Yeah, and it's not it's not up on a cloud in the ninth dimension having novicane bliss. Yeah it's it's the actual embodied Jesus singing a hymn, eating a meal, drinking wine, hugging a mate.
SPEAKER_06Well, that was interesting. Yesterday um the the church we were at was uh looking at in its advent passages uh Zephaniah 3 and 17 being the key one and the idea of the Lord the Lord who saves is a mighty warrior, right? Who sings over you. Wow. And you think do when you see that portrayed on screen, if you like usually like the Welsh rugby team or something like that, right? These these warrior men, just absolute kind of humongous, like you do not want to get in the way, and they're absolute giants, and they've got these fantastic beards and or sometimes massive locks of hair. Like, oh, it was the French guy showing. It's the only Welsh when you say the massive locks of hair massive luscious great hair. Um but they and then and but then they sing, yeah, and you imagine them singing over a child or a or a loved one, and you think, whoa, that that's that's uh that's uh a vision of of humanity you can get behind, which is which is engaged in in in in physical activity. Very much so, yeah. And and that's where we you know, I mean you can have a conversation about you know it what's been anthropomorphized, you know, and and what's the picture we're being given. But it's a picture we're being given by God of him acting in ways which are recognizable to us as as human activities. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, and and so maybe maybe singing is I mean singers will tell you, you you need your whole body to sing, and you know, you need to look up to sing hi. Look down, you know, look down, look down. No wonder that you know that's a that's a low note that you that you sort of strike. And and therefore, like how do we ever get to the view that's you know, singing in heaven is this ethereal thing? Yeah when actually you s you see like a a Welsh male choir and you say it's a very physical thing, yeah. It's a very earthy thing. But yeah, do do we do we live well embodied lives? Um maybe should we should we talk about like like in the church and outside the church with with three minutes to go? Yeah.
SPEAKER_06Okay, they're the two the only two possible realms. Yeah, basically. Okay that which is in and that which is in and that which is out, just those two.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. Um like are there are there ways that we are not expressing ourselves bodily in a way that we might otherwise?
SPEAKER_06Within the church.
SPEAKER_03Within the church, let's start.
SPEAKER_06I suppose I suppose when it comes to things like, oh uh, I can just listen to the service afterwards, I'll, you know, and you know, with with particular situation of the last two years, all sorts of churches which couldn't be, and then had to sort of provide online. And the fear is that people get very comfortable with that and think, well, you know, Mark Zuckerberg says I can go to work from home, so I'll go to church, the church of the living room, and then stay there, and so you get comfortable doing that, yeah, and it doesn't require your physical uh attendance. Apparently. And so you start to think, well, now there's just a few kind of ideas and and feelings that I need to get from to feel that I've I've sated my my spiritual needs for today, my my my church life can be dealt with by just what I listen to and what I watch. Yeah, yeah. Rather than when you're physically present with the body, there's all sorts of ways that you are demonstrating your fellowship with your you know other people in the church.
SPEAKER_02Do you think do you think though if technology gets to a certain stage where you know at the moment you go on YouTube, we sit in our living room, we watch YouTube, we watch the church service, and that's it, we don't see anyone with no contact. But what if it does get to the stage where we sit down on the sofa and we press the button and we look like we're all sitting in the pews, and I am sitting next to you, you know, and I got my cup of coffee afterwards, and I am showing it in the building. Here's the thing.
SPEAKER_06Right. So I was chatting with a couple of the interns today about the friendships you make online, and if you don't have physical proximity with people and physical contact with people, can you have those as friendships? Does that sort of count? What what how far can those things go? And it was very interesting because earlier on I was said I had a bit of a headache. And so very kindly I was offered some painkillers. Now you can't do that when you're living virtually. And there's probably an app for that, isn't there? Deliveroon goes to boots and enter your house. Your ailments, though, are kind of so if someone drops off a meal at your house or something like that, that's very different. So so there's the the eating, but your physical we're also talking about most of us who are incredibly healthy and who don't have physical needs in the way that people at either end of of life do. So with with infants and the elderly. And most of us manage to avoid being physically dependent on other people for a good chunk of our years. But the church is made up of people all the way through life, and with all sorts of different personal challenges that they face and who have physical needs which are met by other people.
SPEAKER_03And we're commanded to have a meal, not drop off a meal. You know, 1 Corinthians 10 17. We who are many are one body, for we all share the one bread. That's a that's a massive verse, isn't it? Like, like you can't be one body if you don't share one bread. How do you do how do you do that online? Yeah, how do you like Pete, one of the interns, was talking about like like virtual church, you can get baptized like somehow you can have a virtual experience via church of being baptized, like like with meta water, like what that's so I think like the sacraments and just show that you just can't do it. Yeah, but you know, part of the reason why we don't first think sacraments is maybe because we're not thinking incarnationally anyway, we're not thinking particularly physically. And so I yeah, I think within the church we don't take the sacraments particularly seriously or sung worship, you know, a lot of the charismatic churches was would sort of um much more exercised about well, if we can't sing, what's that all about? Whereas our our kind of churches were more like, well, it was kind of an embarrassing part of the service anyway. Good point. But yeah, so the physicality of singing, the physicality of the sacraments, that's not a massive deal for us. Sabbath is not a massive deal for us, you know, it's kind of because you know, I I take the office with me to the beach even, you know, because it's in every like and so a physical no to labour and yes to embodied rest is not really something we think is very important, you know.
SPEAKER_06Well that's the church sorta outside the church though. Outside the church. What does it look like to miss the truth of the incarnation? I mean, in one sense they miss miss it anyway, because they're denying the incarnation. But what is it, what does it look like when that's lived out?
SPEAKER_03Well, it's a it's a struggle to live an embodied life, yeah. And and and obviously you can fall off both sides of the horse and you and you can therefore worship the creation, or you can just denounce and deny the you know the creation. You can worship your body or you can not treat your body very well, and and and we're always finding it difficult, and that's and this is true of Christians as well. Um it's not it's not unique to those outside the church. We all find it difficult to live in our bodies, we all find it difficult to live with our biology, with our constraints, with our limits, with our gender, with you know, any any number of physical givens that we're always trying to transcend. I don't I don't want to be me in the body that God has given me. Yeah. And so, you know, you get body dysphoria and you get eating disorders and you get exercise addiction, or you get slotherliness and obesity, and you know, we we really struggle to live with brother ass. So um Aquinas called the body. The body is brother ass, which is quite a nice kind of it sort of talks about how the body is both like beloved and kind of base at the same time. And this there's something quite silly about our bodies, and it's the stuff of comedy, you know, and our bodies make noises and smells and they leak and they're decrepit and they fall apart, and it's actually quite, you know, it's quite base. It's you know, it's an ass, but it's brother ass. And and sort of Aquinas was sort of trying to talk about how donkey is what I mean, Paul. Right. Brother donkey. But yeah, you but it's it's just a perennial problem. How do you um how do you properly take care of your body without worshipping it or without just like hating on it?
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Um and without Christ, who assumed our body and took our punishment to rise up again and give us blessing in his body, um, we we do one of those two things, you know, just just as the the sacrifice of the old testament was kind of honored and revered and held up, and then you know, harmed, I think we we have the same problems with our bodies, you know. Without Christ, now our own body becomes the thing that we Lift up before the Lord, before the world. And some of us are more into the worshipping of our bodies, and some of us are more into the harming of our bodies, but we just we just don't know how to how to treat our bodies. So self-harm, massive thing. Body dysphoria, massive thing. Trans ideology is a massive thing, you know.
SPEAKER_06And the idea that you'd rather live in the virtual world. Yes. Because it is there's your your body isn't the issue, you're not you know uh constrained by it, yeah, and you can express who you really want to be more clearly. Um I am sort of struck by that anecdote you mentioned about meeting that guy who was severely disabled, but online he had there was this freedom to communicate and to just just talk without the challenge of that. Um and I suppose that's that sense that resurrection body, yes, right? Yes, so the incarnation and the resurrection going together, the bodily resurrection and bodily ascension being all part of one piece, yes, and that that then being the um the hope for us because it's not just that Jesus comes down and goes, yeah, I know what it's like, it sort of sucks, doesn't it? Yeah. It's like no, actually, in in the salvation, all of our life is going to be redeemed. Yes.
SPEAKER_03Um he has bestowed forever more a glory and a dignity to the human body because he's got one forever. Yeah. And it'll be a human hand that receives us into heaven, you know. It'll be the human Christ who reigns on the throne of David in this world, you know, ruling over this this earth.
SPEAKER_02So yeah. Yeah. Well, I think we probably could have kept talking about some of those things for another hour. Um, but we've kind of run out of time, so we probably have to wrap it up there. So that was the that's the uh end of this week's podcast. We hope you found it helpful. And I think you know what I would have maybe liked to talk about, and um not that I have any thoughts on it in particular, it's never stopped me saying anything before though, um, is like where where does this land for the everyday Christian? In terms of the incarnation, um, what does it mean when you're having the water cooler moments at work, you know? You know, what what does the incarnation have to say in our evangelism day by day? I'm not sure I really have the answer to that. Um, but given that we do live in a society that seems to be struggling with um the body in lots of different ways, yeah. Maybe maybe it's something we need to think about a bit more rather than just thinking evangelism is let's just get to the as I Glenn was talking about the mechanism of Jesus taking away sin on the cross, um, which obviously is important. Um, but maybe maybe the incarnation is something uh that has more to say to us than and our society than perhaps we're aware of. Look, and people are trying to come in here in the middle of our recordings, recording podcasts, and people are just wondering, aren't we? Like we're professionals, we carry on.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, absolutely and uh we just keep playing forward. We're actually in a howling gale at the moment as well on on Beachy Head.
SPEAKER_02Anyway. Good night. Take care, one and all, and to all a good night.