Strung Out 37 Around the Campfire with Drew Jacques

This episode of Strung Out centers on our spiritual wellbeing during the pandemic.  To help us we welcome Drew Jacques.  Drew is a Presbyterian Minister, as well as  spending years counseling in mental health as well as child services in the province of Ontario, Canada.  Drew became pastor of St. David's of Campbellsville, Ontario, right before the outbreak of the pandemic.  Pastor Drew uses all of his previous life experiences in healthcare as well as the ministry to help us discover what meaning and purpose there is to the pandemic, as well as offering advice on finding inner peace and dialogue with the Universe.   Pastor Drew will be a regular contributor to Strung Out.   His personal story is below as well as in the transcript of the show.

 Drew Jacques: A personal Reflection I have every reason to believe that where I am today was planned before I was born in September 1958. (Yes, I’m a Libra!) Within several weeks of my birth I was baptized by Rev. C.K. Nicol. What is important to know about him is he was the Chaplain for the 48th Highlanders and hit Juno Beach on D. Day. I was baptized by a Warrior. I always went to church. But then, those where the days when churchgoing was pretty much expected of everybody. Mine was the first generation to really walk away. That is not a condemnation, simply the truth. I remained, for the most part in. By the age of 2 I knew how to work a record player and had “The Kingston Trio - Close up”, “Camelot” and “My Fair Lady” albums completely memorized. Some foundational theology in these. At the age of four I participated in a Fashion show a ladies group put on in the church. I was modelling shorts. I don’t know if I was traumatized by it, but to this day I don’t wear shorts. The story goes I walked down the catwalk and back. When I get back to the change room I said of the experience; “I didn’t know what to say”. I hadn’t quite pieced together the path to being a preacher, but I suspect there was some inkling of the direction I was headed. Around about the same time I heard the Mother Superior sing “Climb Every Mountain” in the sound of music. It has stuck with me. Roughly then my dad bought me a crystal radio. It began a life long love of radio. Through the radio the music

Transcript

 Drew Jacques: A personal Reflection I have every reason to believe that where I am today was planned before I was born in September 1958. (Yes, I’m a Libra!) Within several weeks of my birth I was baptized by Rev. C.K. Nicol. What is important to know about him is he was the Chaplain for the 48th Highlanders and hit Juno Beach on D. Day. I was baptized by a Warrior. I always went to church. But then, those where the days when churchgoing was pretty much expected of everybody. Mine was the first generation to really walk away. That is not a condemnation, simply the truth. I remained, for the most part in. By the age of 2 I knew how to work a record player and had “The Kingston Trio - Close up”, “Camelot” and “My Fair Lady” albums completely memorized. Some foundational theology in these. At the age of four I participated in a Fashion show a ladies group put on in the church. I was modelling shorts. I don’t know if I was traumatized by it, but to this day I don’t wear shorts. The story goes I walked down the catwalk and back. When I get back to the change room I said of the experience; “I didn’t know what to say”. I hadn’t quite pieced together the path to being a preacher, but I suspect there was some inkling of the direction I was headed. Around about the same time I heard the Mother Superior sing “Climb Every Mountain” in the sound of music. It has stuck with me. Roughly then my dad bought me a crystal radio. It began a life long love of radio. Through the radio the music the songs of the sixties and early seventies became foundational to my theology. If you look closely at the Billboard Top 100 from 1968 to 1972 you will understand the impact and influence on an absorbing mind. Those four years touch all of our spirits, who were around of course. The other supreme influence was spending every summer from the last day of school to the first day in the fall at a cottage for the better part of 12 years. On a crystal clear lake in a forest of old growth Hemlock, with a canoe, a tent the freedom to explore and experience a wonderful corner of creation. In 1972 my parents moved from Oakville, essentially a quintessential small English “seaside” town on the shore of Lake Ontario to the farthest reaches of the suburbs in Toronto which I quickly began to refer to as “Scarberia”. (Revisit the opening of the Blues Brothers). It was my first sojourn into a spiritual wilderness, the first great “uprooting”. But the one constant that remained, through all the years, was music and it's transcendent power to sooth and strengthen. A quick side note. I remember the Beatles on Ed Sullivan. I remember all the kids in the neighbourhood growing our bangs long like the Fab 4. I remember us being asked by a delivery driver; “What are you, a bunch of hippies?” I have a very clear memory of Linus saying; “Fear not: for behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace, good will toward all”. I wanted to learn to play guitar. My parents world view demanded one take piano and learn theory before getting a guitar. Thus began eight years of misery: Piano Lessons It wasn’t until I left home in my early 20’s that I bought my first guitar: a 1978 mahogany F- 348 Takamine “Lawsuit” 6 string Acoustic. I still have it. Never ever sell your first guitar. In the late fall of grade 13 we were asked; “What do you want to do for the rest of your life?” It was time to apply for post-secondary education. By this time I had a pretty firm belief and experience of the power of music to be a positive force. (Although Punk and Disco were causing a dark night of the soul). I wanted to share the positive. I applied and was accepted into the Radio and Television Arts Program at Ryerson University. I just wanted to be a “disc jockey” on the radio. Preferably on F.M. Long story short: 1) I did not like the “sound” my voice on tape. 2) I found that I really didn’t have anything to say. 3) I graduated just in time for video to kill the radio star. After a year of selling screws at an industrial supply warehouse I got the “call”. Mostly the “call” was the offer of a “free” Master’s of Divinity. For various reasons the 3 year program became a 5 year program. As the fifth year dawned I realized; “I gotta get out of here” and did 19 courses in the final two terms. The senate of the college passed a bylaw after I left preventing that from every happening again. (B+ average). I have always sought out the places that nobody else wanted to go. So when it was time to “pay” for the M.Div by going to some hinterland congregation for 2 years… I went to a small “two point charge” about an eight hour drive north of Toronto, mostly because it was “north” and on the edge of the wilderness. I did okay there. Got married. Had two sons. Bought a farm. Got divorced, made a left turn onto another highway. I met Lisa within the year. Moved back to the city. Back in the 90’s fathers didn’t have the same rights in divorce as we do now. For a year I spent 24 hours in the car every other weekend just to see my kids for a day. Burned through a lot of CD’s. A year was enough of that. I convinced Lisa we should move back to the house I owned in Temagami. (Back to the Wilderness). “Just for 10 months”. The next twenty years were spent with us working in child, youth, and adult mental health with the Canadian Mental Health Association and Children’s Aid. In about the middle Switchback wandered into our neck of the woods for the first time. Seven hours of rocks and trees trees and rocks had Marty looking like a deer in the headlights when he arrived. For 17 years Lisa and I spent 6 hours every weekend driving to Sudbury to see her mom. She passed three years ago in her 104th year. With in a few weeks of Lisa mom’s death my moms alzheimers/dementia really began to kick in. I did 75,000 kilometres in a year running back and forth from North Bay to try and care for her. Eventually it dawned on me I’d be better off if I moved south. I put it out to the universe that “If I have to move back to the city, I want to live in that building”. (Next door to the senior facility where my mother was housed). Within a couple of days an apartment in that building came up on Kijiji. I phoned. It was already rented after being posted for only 3 hours. I told the landlord my sorry story, and if anything came available to let me know. He called two days later. The deal fell through. I said; “I’ll be there in four hours with the first and last”. On the way back north from dropping off a $3600 cheque I put out to the Universe; “You know I’m going to need a job”. A few days latter I received a call from a church. “Would you come and have a chat with these folks”. “Sure, I’ll talk with anybody.” St. D’s was a small congregation. Had basically been declared D.O.A. by the Presbytery (=Diocese). They asked me to try one last time to float the boat. In 2020 (18 months in) St.D’s turned from “survive” to “thrive”. Despite a pandemic. Not by me, but by the grace of God and a wonderful group of people. We got “thrown” out of the boat (the institutional church) by COVID-19. But we landed on the beach, by a campfire (see John 21:1-13), and learned how to zoom. We’re boldly going where no Presbyterian Church has gone before. We have a new ministry of music, and a commitment to respond to the mental health crisis. The mental health crisis that has been around a lot longer than Covid, and is ultimately a spiritual crisis that has come from the direction our society has taken over the course of my lifetime.



Martin McCormack: [00:00:00] [00:00:00] Welcome to Strung Out. This is our  37th podcast.  We have today person that I have met some years ago. Way up in the North of Canada and immediately hit it off with him and his wife and son.

[00:00:16] Long story short, I think we've gotten to know each other more through email over the years.  So I'd like to welcome Drew Jacques to the show, to the podcast and how you doing Drew? 

[00:00:30]Drew Jacques: [00:00:30] I'm doing well, Marty, thank you for that introduction. And you can just call me Drew.

[00:00:34]

[00:00:34] Martin McCormack: [00:00:34] That's fine.  A couple of days ago, you  a personal reflection on yourself. And  sometimes people come across people in their lifetimes that they can identify as a kindred spirit. I always liked the fact that you approached life the way I feel, I approach life, looking at the world through the lens of a a musician or an artist. And that's certainly what I'm trying to accomplish with this [00:01:00] podcast, but you have the added benefit of being an ordained minister.

[00:01:07] So you have gone that extra step of stepping into the spiritual world. Drew gave a wonderful personal reflection here that I'm going to put into the podcast with the transcript. I just thought we could even touch on that today because we're going to have Drew back in the future. We're going to listen to you talk about things from a spiritual sense during, especially with this pandemic. You reached out to me with some wonderful ideas that we actually used with the  Mr. Marty show.  I want to point out some of the things that you talked about in this reflection.

[00:01:49]You're about five years older than me. So we're in that generation.  We have a lot of listeners that are younger than us. You make a point to talk about how you were [00:02:00] baptized by the Reverend C K  Nichol. He was there on Juno beach on D-Day and you specifically say I was baptized by Warrior.

[00:02:12]What made you want to put that thought out first? 

[00:02:15] Drew Jacques: [00:02:15] In a personal reflection. I thought it was important to go back to the beginning of Drew and it has to do, as I reflect back on my life, to  where I am today. Traces back to where I began. I firmly believe that the path I've been on was planned before I was born. I start by saying I was born in 1958 in September. And I do share that I am a Libra. If you know what we're all about.   I was born in September and I was baptized by the second week of November.

[00:02:50] And CK Nichol, I, got to know, and I grew up with his grandson. We still have a close friendship and he lives in Orlando now. And CK [00:03:00] 'sdaughter Mary lives in Venice, Florida. And we stayed in touch all these years.  Where I began is, the term, the communion of saints, right? What is the communion of saints?

[00:03:11]The communion of saints is the handing down of the faith from one generation to the next. From one hand to another, from one soul to another and down through the years. Every generation has passed on something of a faith. Sometimes it's right. Sometimes it's wrong, but the spirit moves in mysterious ways, not to coin too harsh of a phrase. 

[00:03:34] He was the chaplain of  The48th Highlanders.  The48th Highlanders we're a Canadian army division. They still exist. During the second world war the 48th was made up mostly of farm boys from all over Canada. The rural young men tended to get into the army and the urban young men tended to get into the air force.

[00:03:55] He and the 48th went behind enemy lines and wreaked havoc [00:04:00] and fought. There's a certain spirit that he had enabled and it's enabled him to carry forward. I truly believe some of that spirit got passed on to me.

[00:04:16]Martin McCormack: [00:04:16] What is  capitalized is  the word Warrior. That warrior spirit, how has it served you in your life?  

[00:04:25] Drew Jacques: [00:04:25] The warrior spirit, I want to drop the imagery of army and guns and all of that. The warrior spirit, I think is one that is persistent. If you ask my son, what's your dad he would say he's persistent.  There is a battle going on. There has always been a battle going on. There will always be a battle until the end of time between the forces of good and evil between right and wrong. To quote Bob Dylan," if something's not right, it's wrong." And the warrior spirit is the one that is willing to draw a line in the sand [00:05:00] and say," that's wrong." And is willing to fight for the truth. I think everybody can have an aspect of the warrior spirit in himself. It's just, we tend to all get hypnotized or drawn away from the truth. Does that make sense? 

[00:05:20] Martin McCormack: [00:05:20] Totally makes sense. I see it even more so today. Because of the media and social media.

[00:05:27] Do  you think times are tougher now or call for more of a warrior spirit? 

[00:05:33]Drew Jacques: [00:05:33] The short answer is yes. I don't know if times are, or if these times are any tougher than the great depression or thewar. We certainly have our challenges. We certainly have to set in our minds and our hearts what we're going to do to move forward . When you're talking about social media and advertising we're coming out of a period of about seventy-five years where advertising has been [00:06:00] very dominant in all of our lives. The key factor in what you would call, successful advertising has been pushing what I call pushing the reptile brain. I don't know if you're familiar with that phrase. In psychiatry, they talk about the reptile brain. In my faith tradition, we talked about a lower self in a higher self in reptile brain in the lower self are essentially the same thing.

[00:06:24]That's the part of us that is programmed and hardwired. For fight or flight, and advertising pushes that button. For instance, if you don't buy a Cadillac, you're not going to keep up with the Jones, if you don't have this hair color, you're not going to be successful. I can go on and on, but that idea.

[00:06:47] So we're in a time when that has been pushed and COVID has accelerated it. All the talk about the virus and COVID, and the pandemic is pushing the fear and panic button and the anxiety button [00:07:00] in people.  They're coining the phrase, the new mental health crisis. The mental health crisis has been going on long before COVID One of the things we all need to address and do is  quiet that noise in our brain. The noise of anxiety, the noise of hate .Certainly in your neck of the woods, the hate button's been pushed fairly regularly . 

[00:07:23]

[00:07:23]Martin McCormack: [00:07:23] How do you term ignorance? Do you feel that ignorance is something that is deliberately chosen by a person or is it something that they just swim in?  I sense that has something to do with this primordial reptile brain that you're referencing.

[00:07:45] Drew Jacques: [00:07:45] Good question. I think,  everybody's different and there are people who, I'm struggling with the word ignorance. There's the ignorance cause you don't know, or is [00:08:00] it because you're choosing to act this way and again, I have to step back and talk to the person. Ifthey don't know, then it's an opportunity to teach.

[00:08:13] If it's deliberate I, at some point have to decide how far I'm going to engage the person. The bottom line for me is everybody unique is struggling with something . You've got your struggle today outside of this conversation, I've got my struggles today outside of this conversation.

[00:08:33]We're not going to share them, but we need to know that we all have battles internally, but our calling when somebody else crosses our path is to do what you can to be loving.

[00:08:51] Until such time that they cross a line that you just can't cross.  Then that's part of the, I get back to the [00:09:00] warrior spirit.  I worked with my wife. We were involved in child protection for 20 years, frontline authorized child protection, dealing with some very ignorant people. But when it came time to protecting children it was pretty black and white. You're breaking the wall and we're going down this path. Does that make sense? 

[00:09:25] Martin McCormack: [00:09:25] It does.  Right now we could talk for an hour just about the warrior spirit. That's why I'm going to enjoy so much talking to you.  I want to get back to your personal reflection because I'd want our podcast listeners to get to know you through what you wrote . One of the things that you wrote that jumped out at me again, being from the same generation, you wrote just a couple lines below I was baptized by a warrior. You said "mine was the first generation to really walk away." [00:10:00] Now you explain yourself "that is not a condemnation, simply the truth I remained for the most part in what did." This generation walk away from and what repercussions does it have now that we are the generation of decision-makers?

[00:10:19]Drew Jacques: [00:10:19] I was baptized in the church in 1958, and the church was still very much a very powerful institution. In so far as it was pretty much expected of the community and the society. So you attend church on Sunday mornings and participate in church. And my generation walked away from the institutional church in part with the notion," I don't need somebody standing up on Sunday morning and telling me what to do." That's not what faith is about, but that is the experience some people had with the church. The other thing that happened [00:11:00] was the music  that I grew up with. You grew up with, for sure until the mid seventies, when itbecame a big business, but the music I grew up listening to was very powerful and had a strong spiritual base.

[00:11:12] And so our generation got love through music. Our generation heard about peace through music. Our generation heard about hope. Our generation heard about joy outside of the church. But in a sense, the baby got a little thrown out with the bath water.  Walking away from the church, a structured process for spirituality got left behind in my generation. Didn't do a lot of work on their spirits. Like again, the consumers society, you know what you judge your life by what you owe what you possess, who you are on the pyramid. And our generation is struggling with mortality. Our parents are going and we are [00:12:00] next.

[00:12:01] And there's work that needs to be done in all of our spirits, if we're going to turn the big corners we have to turn. One of the things I was saying to you about your podcast and your calling in so far as we need to have these discussions and those of us in a position, not of authority, but having a voice, we need to work very hard to make sure everybody has a voice.

[00:12:25]We need to work very hard at listening. We need to work very hard at being calming and soothing and supportive and loving and not looking out for number one. 

[00:12:38]Martin McCormack: [00:12:38] How does one accomplish that sort of mindfulness? Because from what you described, we live in a society that really from the commercial, monetary side of things wants us to reside in that reptilian brain. 

[00:12:57] Drew Jacques: [00:12:57] Yep. 

[00:12:58] Martin McCormack: [00:12:58] How do you break through?

[00:12:59]Drew Jacques: [00:12:59] [00:13:00] I'm glad you used the word mindfulness. There's a lot of talk about mindfulness these days and actually mindfulness got usurped by big business. There was a similar thing in it's called cognitive behavioral therapy. And if you Google mindfulness or cognitive behavioral therapy there's a plethora of information there, but how it has to accomplish it starts with me.

[00:13:24] It starts with you, and it starts with taking the time to be still and making the effort. And it's not easy to quiet down that chattering little voice that's either fighting or fleeing and opening up the higher self to communication with God. I'm a preacher. I'm a Christian. You need that language for the thing, somebody I'm sorry, but I'm going to try and talk about it from just a basic scene perspective.

[00:13:57] We are all fears thing. [00:14:00] We are not humans having a spiritual experience. We are spirit having a human experience and the human has become predominant in the spirit has been left behind and the mental health crisis in my mind is ultimately a spiritual break. The methamphetamine crisis is as much as spiritual crisis as an addiction crisis, but we lived in North Bay. It's on the shore of a very big freshwater Lake called Lake Nippissing. And in the center of it, there's a series of islands that are actually a caldera from an ancient volcano. Outside of the city it's pine trees and rocks and lakes.  I find the wilderness in the bush, a very powerful spiritual place . 

[00:14:54] North  Bay came to power with the railroad and with the lumbering the forest North of North Bay. The [00:15:00] Tamagni area was old growth pine, and actually all that wood went to rebuild in Chicago after the great fire. And itwas at a time of glory for North Bay and the railroad, but it's disintegrating.  The businesses that were there are not there anymore. It had a very large psychiatric hospital that was originally built as a TB hospital to treat first nations people from up on the coast.

[00:15:22] They closed the psychiatric hospital and just moved everybody into community residences.  It's funny, North Bay is right now  the number one destination for U- haul trailers in Canada. People are fleeing because the COVID in the big city and moving to North Bay without realizing how dark an underbelly it is.  

[00:15:42] Of course my opinion is painted by having spent many years there in child protection. North Bay now has more meth clinics than Tim Horton's, which is a coffee shop. And it's at the crossroads of Canada. Everything moving West [00:16:00] goes through North Bay, everything moving East comes through North Bay and it's the hub of drug trafficking in Canada.

[00:16:10] That's an interesting to hear. Chicago is considered  the crossroads for the States as far as coming up from Mexico up to Canada and East West. And with North Bay I just want to say isn't that not too far from where Neil Young grew up. Just down the road, right? 

[00:16:32] It's  about a five and a half hour drive to Omemee, which is South West of Peterborough , Southeast of Lindsey.

[00:16:40]Martin McCormack: [00:16:40] Yeah, I thought he was in Northern Ontario. 

[00:16:42]Drew Jacques: [00:16:42] Yeah. So look is two of his best songs are from experiences in Northern Ontario.  He had a hearse that he traveled in with all his gear and the hearse died in Blind River and that's that's where he wrote Long May You Run. The other song actually had to do with the hearseas well. He wrote in a town unbelievably, still [00:17:00] called Swastika, which is just outside of Kirkland Lake, which is three and a half hours North of North Bay. I don't know where he was going, whether it was headed East or headed West probably coming East from Winnipeg.

[00:17:12]The car died in Swastika and there was nobody, he was marooned there for a few days. There's a lovely little Lake in the park and he went and sat on the the edge of the Lake and he penned Helpless along there. There is a town in Northern Ontario. All my changes were there. 

[00:17:32] Martin McCormack: [00:17:32] Yeah. And I associated him with Blind River because with Switchback, we played a returning community there and somebody had said, Neil Young , oh, he's from this town.  We're getting off on an interesting tangent, but I just want to tell our listeners, you're listening to Strung Out. And I would like to call you Reverend or ReverendDrew Jacques, or would you just rather go by Drew or Drew Jacques for our listeners?

[00:17:58]Drew Jacques: [00:17:58] It's always [00:18:00] just been Drew around here. The folks call me Pastor Drew  I like that. That's when I tell you one of the things, the change, and you say Reverend Drew Jacques, you probably have a picture of, when you say Reverend, you get a picture of somebody with a dog collar white collar.

[00:18:16]And that  priest with the collarand that symbol of power and authority.  I only wear the collar when I'm doing a funeral or for a wedding. But my irregular services what I'm doing is just presenting myself as Drew. I'm not any higher than anybody else. I'm struggling to work towards a much more circular vision of the church than a hierarchical, pomp, and circumstance, vision of the church. You can call me friend. 

[00:18:48]Martin McCormack: [00:18:48] I think that's something that a lot of our generation, as you indicated, they walked away from the trappings of the church. And [00:19:00] it's important to reclaim what the early church stood for. And one of the things that you just touched on before. I took you off course with NeilYoung was you talked about several times in your personal reflection about the wilderness.

[00:19:19]You've written again. You just said that the wilderness has had a great impact on you, but there's wilderness as such Multi meaningful word because everybody to some degree has a wilderness, right? Not physical wilderness, but even Christ went into the wilderness. Can you touch on that and how does that relate  as a spiritual shepherd to what everybody's going through right now with this pandemic?

[00:19:47]Drew Jacques: [00:19:47] So for wilderness my version of wilderness is very Canadian and Northern. It's rocks and trees, and rocks skies and water and river. It's also wilderness, the biblical images of the desert. But the [00:20:00] wilderness can also be a Tundra. It can be cold and white as much as it could be hot.

[00:20:05] And Sandy. But  wilderness is not just a physical place. It's also a spiritual place. And, I, when I stand in downtown Toronto and I drive around and I see miles and miles of houses and suburbs and and in the States, yeah. Draw a 75 mile circle around a Walmart. You will see, you will find devastation of small towns inside that circle. So wilderness can also be, in the cities. So it's also a spiritual experience. And if you go back to the entire Bible, the really big characters throughoutare wilderness guys. My favorite is John the Baptist, the wild man eating grasshoppers and honey and dressed in camel hair.

[00:20:56] Jesus himself, if you look through the scripture [00:21:00] regularly got up early in the morning and went away to a quiet place away from the town away from the city . And why did he do that so that he could settle down? In the in the scriptures it's usually after there's some sort of chaos or before some sort of chaos. He made a regular point was to get up early every day, calm the lower self, open up his heart to the higher self.

[00:21:28] And we're hard wired. We don't have to download an app to do this. We're hard wired for it. Or software, whatever it's just, but we got to do it. We have to have a spiritual practice and all Jesus did was get away, get alone, be still know that I am the Lord and listen in. I've been practicing this a long time and you'll have to believe me when I say it works.

[00:21:54]Martin McCormack: [00:21:54] We're talking to Pastor Drew Jacques,  he is a Presbyterian [00:22:00] minister at St. David's. And what's the town that St David's is in ?

[00:22:05]Drew Jacques: [00:22:05] Campbellsville, Ontario.

[00:22:06]Martin McCormack: [00:22:06] Which is just east of Toronto. 

[00:22:08] Drew Jacques: [00:22:08] Correct. So one of the things we all have to develop a spiritual practice . A process for settling down and the practice that basically is you get up in the morning having a coffee. There's a video of that campfire by a Lake and I put it on and it crackles and it pops and I just watch it and it just sort soothesmy soul and opens me up .A few years I'd retired out of ministry and went into child protection, adult, the children's mental health. I used to say, it's easier to negotiate with the lions than Christians.

[00:22:41] But I for many years got out of the formal institutional church, just because I didn't feel that's where I was being helpful in a couple of years ago, my mom, her Alzheimer's reading really kicked in Alzheimer's dementia, which is [00:23:00] Alzheimer's is a terrible disease. It kills you twice. And I spent.

[00:23:05] A year in 75,000 kilometers running back and forth between Northern Ontario and Southern Ontario, trying to take care of my mom and eventually got to the point where I said, I have to move South. I can't keep running back and forth. And I put it out to the universe. If I have to move South to the city, I want to live in that building right next to the, where my mom was living.

[00:23:28] And an ad came up on the classifieds for an apartment in that building two days later. And I phoned the guy, the landlord about three hours after was closed. And he said, no, it's gone. Things go in three hours down here. That's how hot the market is. And I told them my story and said, if you ever hear of anything, just give me a call.

[00:23:49] And two days later, he called and said, the deal fell through. Do you want? And I said, yeah, I'll be there in six hours. Drove down, dropped off the first and last check, the $4,000. And on the way home I was [00:24:00] talking, driving, driving is another place where you can practice mindfulness. You got to concentrate on the road, but when you're driving it just sorta, it just captures that reptile brain enough to open up on.

[00:24:10] I've spent a lot of time driving talking, and I said, I really need a job now that I'm down here and move without having work. Within a week. I had a call from the rep elder here at St. David's saying Drew, would you come down and talk to these people? I said, sure. And they were in rough shape.

[00:24:29] And they said, could you come and be with us and just help us get through this wilderness because wilderness doesn't happen just to individuals. It also happens to companies and churches, and it also happens to country. And the wilderness we're all in now. You're, we're being forced out of the bondage of Egypt and use that imagery, that commercial capitalist, I'm not against money, but just the way things are  killing the planet.

[00:24:56] And we have to spend some time thinking about how we're going to do things. [00:25:00] And what's important in my mind is the starting point where it's not coming up with the solutions it's coming up with the little details. And having simple conversations like this, the conversation you and I are having Marty you can have with others and your listeners can have with others. Where we start collectively is by just, let's just have a conversation. Let me figure out where our hearts are and stop listening to others and saying, this is where your heart should be at. 

[00:25:30]Martin McCormack: [00:25:30] Let's take a little break right here and we're gonna play some music and you are listening to strung out  [00:26:00] I am talking to pastor Drew Jacques with St. David's church in Campbellsville, Ontario. I've known Drew how many years now? It's been 10 years since we seen met each other

[00:26:38]Drew Jacques: [00:26:38] I'm thinking 12 , 2008. 

[00:26:42] Martin McCormack: [00:26:42] It's all a blur. I want to get back to something that you were talking about. We were touching on the idea of how the generation that we are in walked away from the formal church. And one of the [00:27:00] things that's been taking place here in the States, that's quite alarming is  the nationalization of Christianity. I don't know if that's happening in Canada, but certainly with our American election.

[00:27:15] We had we stepped into some scary situations. And do you have any thoughts about that? Not only as a minister, but as a mental health professional. Why are we seeing that now? And why is this all happening? 

[00:27:32]Drew Jacques: [00:27:32] That's a good question. It's not just happening now. It's always been there and in America there are wounds that have not been healed . Just a couple of Easters ago we were driving down to North Carolina. And on Easter Sunday morning, I wasn't in the church that Easter Sunday morning, [00:28:00] we drove across the Appalachians, and there are markers for the civil war. The civil war was a horrendous thing,. The North won but the attitudes were not healed. And now you're 150, some odd years down the road and that racism and that attitude is still there. And the name that will not be spoken, opened up that can of worms. And in my mind, this is a Canadian speaking" make America great again." It was actually code for making America white and it was throwing gasoline on the fire and it has to stop. There has to be a way to figure out how to get equality, not just for black people, but equality  for [00:29:00] women for immigrants, Mexicans. How do you do that? It's very difficult to do from the top down, but again, it begins with conversations like this.

[00:29:14] If I can go scriptural for just a minute for you. 

[00:29:17] Martin McCormack: [00:29:17] Sure.

[00:29:19]Drew Jacques: [00:29:19] If you go to the last chapter of John chapter 21, that entire chapter was not written by the guy who wrote the first 20 chapters. It was written by somebody else. It's a really brilliant little tack on, and in that chapter, there's a scene where the disciples are back fishing on the sea of Galilee, it's just after Easter. It's just after the crucifixion, it's just after the horror and the disciples, did we all go back to what we think is normal? We all go back to doing what we used to do. You can not to move forward. And as they were coming in, [00:30:00] after a very lousy night of fishing, they saw somebody standing on the beach.

[00:30:04] It turns out it was Jesus and he was there and he lit a fire. Yeah, he was making them breakfast. The disciples jumped out of the boat, went back in, had breakfast on the beach with Jesus and they sat and they talked. And while we don't have a recording of that discussion, we can parse the essence of that conversation.

[00:30:27] Which is Jesus telling them you can't go back. Can't go back to the way things work. You can't go back to Jerusalem. You can't go back to Egypt. You can't go back to bondage. You have to move forward. Me sitting here on the beach with you, changes everything. And that's the same message for us today in this pandemic.

[00:30:49]We've been kicked out of complacency. As much as people want to go back to normal back to whatever was he will never say you can't do that. He will [00:31:00] say you can try, but you're not going to make it. And the way forward is this way in the neat thing for me about the campfire and why I'm stuck on campfires and the days when I was practicing.

[00:31:17] Mental health care. The best sessions were always around a campfire. There's just something about a campfire that suits the soul and opens up conversation. And the truth is it's not just the Canadian experience. It's a global experience. We all go back in our human history. It's sitting by a campfire, looking at the stars and pondering existential thought.

[00:31:44] And I can sit by a campfire with anybody on the face of the year, and we can have a discussion language barriers aside. We can both get the importance of farm. We can just sit and just talk and just [00:32:00] listen and ponder. And that's I guess that's my ultimate message is we've got to get back to the beach. 

[00:32:07]Martin McCormack: [00:32:07] I want to tie this in with something else that you referenced when you talked about coming to Campbellsville and getting the apartment and putting it out there that you needed a job, you put it out there to God. You put it out there to what some people will call the universe. And you were in a state, I would say of mindfulness. Do you feel that is what this pandemic is all about? Do you feel that the universe is saying to us collectively. Wake up or be mindful?

[00:32:48]Drew Jacques: [00:32:48] I come at it a different way in so far as God, didn't wiggle his finger and causea pandemic.. And that vengeful, God notion [00:33:00] ?We mankind mucked around. And whether you follow a conspiracy theory that was formed in a lab in Hunan, China, that was financed by the United States of America, or you believe it was just something that happened in a wet market. And a snake bit a bat, doesn't matter. The virus is out there because of us. Now we have an opportunity to stop.

[00:33:32] And think. We all have to start thinking, what are we doing?  If you stop and you listen ,in my experiences, I get answers. Sometimes I don't get answers, but in my reflection, what I was pointing out to you is my life has been a journey. Down a path that was planned out for me. [00:34:00] And, the question is how do you navigate life?

[00:34:02]The short answer is I don't in so far as God has installed guardrails, either side of the path.  Have you ever driven the Beartooth?

[00:34:12]Martin McCormack: [00:34:12] Oh yeah.

[00:34:14]Drew Jacques: [00:34:14] So the thing with the Beartooth, it starts in the Montana, just west of Billings. Willie Nelson's favorite town, Red Lodge.

[00:34:21] And it runs out of Montana up through the Rockies into Wyoming and my, life. You need to look at a narrow view of the Beartooth. You'll get a pretty good example. What most people's life is like. It's full of dips and turns and you're ready? Switch backs. And opportunities and challenges and where does it go?

[00:34:44]The truth is while I've jumped the rails more than a few times, I've managed to live long enough to hear God say whenever you're ready to get back on track, we'll continue the journey, in the guard rails. I usually don't see [00:35:00] until I have hindsight and looking over my life has been filled with moments of serendipity and in somebody looking out for me and directing me to be here today.

[00:35:11]So while some people are having a really hard time in this COVID and I get it, it's not easy when you lose your job. It's not easy when somebody dies. It's not easy when you're living constantly. I certainly don't know where your next meal is coming from. But for me I'm doing what I'm supposed to be doing and that's sharing the truth. Sharing light sharing. Hope, try to bring joy to people's lives in the midst of grief and ultimately peace.

[00:35:49] You have an opportunity because everything stopped to just sit still and shut up.

[00:35:57]Martin McCormack: [00:35:57] We're talking toPastor [00:36:00] Drew Jacques . You are listening to Strung Out and we'll be right back after this short break. 

[00:36:07] [00:37:00]We're back with Pastor Drew Jacques and I'd like to ask you a question about the pandemic in particular, how have you been reaching out to your congregation during the pandemic?

[00:37:25]Drew Jacques: [00:37:25] When the pandemic hits almost a year ago on the 14th, we're going to have a joint digital church service with other churches to mark the anniversary. Some people don't think that's appropriate. I think it's very appropriate to mark such an anniversary. A year ago when we got shut down we coined the phrase" we just got tossed out of the boat "being the institutional physical church. All of a sudden the doors locked and we couldn't gather What has been going on for, hundreds of years. All of a sudden, we got to figure out a new way to do this [00:38:00] and carry the faith forward. And while we struggled at first to learn how to zoom. I figured it out and that was a lot of, and this was still winter here and the heat wasn't leading on. And I would come up and do a zoom where I need a worship by myself in the sanctuary freezing, and eventually our piano player, Doug came back and we started doing worship  in the knave, in the sanctuary.

[00:38:27] And over the year, we have developed a a digital worship service that is still growing and adapting, but is is reaching out to places that we would never have reached out before. And the congregation is actually thriving. In truth, I was brought here because St. David's was pretty much declared DOA .And in this past year, in the time of COVID, the congregation is actually thrived and grown. We sat for St. [00:39:00] David's offering records last year, every month in the better and better. And people are still growing close together. It's not about worship on Sunday morning. That's important. But it's about maintaining and growing the relationships through discussions and talking ministering and pastoring and we've developed a dynamic pastoral care team and, historically the minister was in charge and did everything and it's everybody's gotta be paddling in the same direction and we're working together well. And just having conversations,

[00:39:44]Martin McCormack: [00:39:44] It sounds to me like there's a whole other topic that I would love to pursue with you in the future, which is basically the gifts of the pandemic. Your ministry has [00:40:00] actually flourished and opened. Because you had to think outside, literally the box, the church itself .You say your entire life was prepared for this moment of thinking outside the box, working with Saint David's being there close to your mom. You had a circuitous route or you talk about driving through the Beartooths and how God has been your guardrails. And here you are. So tell me is the person that is trained in thinking not only in, in spiritual matters, but also mental health matters. Two areas that arguably a lot of human beings have a hard time with. How has thinking outside the box and having this sense of mission come to fruition for you. Is [00:41:00] this your calling?

[00:41:00]Drew Jacques: [00:41:00] Yeah. The calling thing. When I jumped out of full-time ministry into mental health and various aspects. I started to put it out there that, if you want me back in the church, Lord you're going to have to come and get me. I'm not going. There's a whole process here in the Presbyterian, and most churches it's called the call search for a candidate where they say we're vacant and people fire off resumes and videotape. And it's a bit of a feeding frenzy. And I just said, if you want me back in and you're going to have to come get me and I didn't go looking for this came looking for me.

[00:41:39] And in my experience, not just as a member of the clergy, but also as a professional mental health worker and the professional child protection worker gave me the tools to navigate the storm. Plus my years up in the bush and my closeness to God. And belief in that [00:42:00] is it's Hispower and His glory that we're celebrating and working towards.

[00:42:04] So ultimately when I was out of the ministry and into mental health, I was a very good mental health clinician because I was doing pastoral care without the Jesus language and just being caring and loving and listening and identifying the root of the pain and doing things to help soothe souls and empower people.

[00:42:33] One of, one of the, one of the key things I always did, our first sessions was to encourage people to go home and get rid of something. Did you know the average  house, four bedrooms, two bathrooms, three cars, 20 TVs, whatever, the average. House in North American has over 325,000 individual items?

[00:42:58] I don't know who counted it, but that's what the [00:43:00] spending is. We, our lives are filled with clutter and we've got to get rid of the clutter and the spiritual path, the quieting down at the mind and opening the soul is. To shut the mental clutter dab as best you can. And I'm not saying not everybody's going to need a psychiatrist and there's times for everything, but at the most fundamental level, if we can just make the effort to clear the clutter on a daily basis and sometimes getting rid of stuff in your house, not only clears up physical noise, it also opens up. It clears up spiritual psychiatric noise. I use those terms interchangeably.  

[00:43:43] Can I tell you, can I tell you one quick story? And it's a story from you that has stuck with me, but it's a pro in this time of fear and anxiety. We are called to see the glass, not just now, because the COVID [00:44:00] the, my life, my safe, my journey is always to see the glass is half full, not half empty. And in your life, people who are always glass, half empty, never hassle, right? In a long time ago, you told a story about you and Brian. We were playing in a nursing home in Tennessee.

[00:44:24] And I can't remember whether it was Nashville or Memphis and you were playing in a nursing home and during your sets, somebody wandered in to the room and danced and twirled around the room and went out of the room. Do you remember that story? 

[00:44:45] Martin McCormack: [00:44:45] Oh yeah. That's Memphis. 

[00:44:49] Drew Jacques: [00:44:49] And the person who was dancing was Elvis' chauffer, right?

[00:44:55] Martin McCormack: [00:44:55] Correct.

[00:44:57]Drew Jacques: [00:44:57] And that image of, you guys standing [00:45:00] on stage and I have a whole group of people sitting there waiting to be entertained this vision, dancing in dances around and dances out the door in, we all need to join in the dance. The dance of joy, the dance of hope, the dance of love, the dance of peace.

[00:45:23] We can't afford to just sit and wait to be entertained anymore. We have work to do. 

[00:45:29]Let's leave it at that. I was going to ask you to sum everything up and you just did, which is great.  I want to thankPastor Drew Jacques for being on Strung Out. We are going to get to read his personal reflection on his life.

[00:45:46] I think you're going to find a kindred spirit. Like I have. And I think we are going to have more conversations coming down the pike. I'm enjoying the fact that you've turned over a lot of rocks [00:46:00] today that could inspire future conversations. And I just want to thank you and keep doing what you're doing.

[00:46:10] And we are going to be back in touch as we navigate these rough waters, not only with the pandemic, but just in the world that we live in. So I want to thank you all for listening to Strung Out, and we will talk to you again next week.