Ep. 388 Lori Melton - Walking with a Spiritual Giant

In this episode, I talk with Lori G. Melton, author of Journey with a Giant, about the practice of walking with spiritual giants from history as a way of formation. We explore slowness, silence, pilgrimage, and what Lori learned by walking with Fred Rogers, including why listening is love, why presence matters more than productivity, and how paying attention to the person in front of us reshapes faith. This conversation offers a grounded, countercultural vision of discipleship rooted in companionship, attentiveness, and trust.

Lori G. Melton is an author, spiritual director, podcaster, and retreat leader with a life-long passion for walking with God and helping others grow in their relationship with Him. 

She and her husband Bryan are the founders of the Sanctuary at Bear Creek Retreat Center in Allegan, Michigan. Lori is the host of the Sanctuary Stirrings podcast.

Raised as an Episcopalian and educated in Catholic schools, Lori came to Christ through an Assembly of God youth group and has spent her adult life in non-denominational Bible churches. One of her greatest strengths is her appreciation for diverse Christian denominations.

Lori was born in Niagara Falls, New York (Yes, one of the Eight Wonders of the World!), played competitive badminton in high school (Don’t laugh, it is a sport), and is the other half of a twin-sister combination. When she’s not writing, speaking, or welcoming retreat guests, she loves spending time with her six grown children and three adorable grands. 

You can find Lori on Facebook and Instagram, and at her website, lorigmelton.com.

Lori's Book:

Journey with a Giant

Lori's Recommendation:

In Search of God's Will

Connect with Joshua: jjohnson@shiftingculturepodcast.com

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Transcript

Lori Melton: 0:00

His scars were actually the thing that made him reach out and made sure that everyone always knew that they were perfectly paid attention to. So that's that speaks volumes to all of us. Like your scars do not disqualify you. They qualify you for what God's calling is. Oh, Josh.

Joshua Johnson: 0:30

Hello and welcome to the shifting culture podcast in which we have conversations about the culture we create and the impact we can make. We long to see the body of Christ look like Jesus. I'm your host. Joshua Johnson, you know, we spend a lot of time thinking about faith as something we learn more knowledge, better answers, stronger beliefs, but formation rarely happens through information alone. So in this conversation, I sit down with Laurie G Melton, author of journey with a giant, to explore a forgotten practice of discipleship, learning how to walk with the faithful who came before us, not just as heroes to admire, but as companions who help us pay attention to God. We talk about spiritual giants, silence, pilgrimage and why slowness matters in a world that rewards speed. We explore what Laurie learns while walking with Fred Rogers and how is deliberate presence, attention to people and quiet faith challenge the way we live, we love and we listen. This is a conversation about formation instead of performance, about paying attention instead of rushing ahead, and about learning to walk faithfully, one step at a time. So join us. Here is my conversation with Laurie Melton. Laurie, welcome to shifting culture. Excited to have you on. Thanks for joining me. Yeah, thanks Josh for having me. So you're writing in your new book, journey with the Giants. You're writing about walking with a spiritual giant, your spiritual giant. You walk with us. Fred Rogers, and we're going to get into some of that, but what really first opened your eyes to this practice of walking with a spiritual giant?

Unknown: 2:08

Yeah, I was in training to become a spiritual director a few years ago. And as a little side note to our curriculum, they pulled out a list of about 50 people from history who had faithfully followed Jesus, and they said, We need each of you to pick one of these to walk with during the year. And that just means you're going to study his their life a little bit. You're going to study their relationship with God, even their strengths and weaknesses, some of their mentors, and just watch how God shapes you. And so I did it, and at the time, I was unfamiliar with anything like that, and I really felt a little bit threatened by it, that it might infringe on my relationship with Jesus. So I was resistant, but they were patient. And of course, I did choose a giant and found it to be an amazing practice.

Joshua Johnson: 2:55

Why were you resistant? At first, what did you think it was going to infringe upon your relationship with God?

Unknown: 3:01

Well, my my only orientation to spiritual giants at that point was saints and that I'm Protestant, and so in my upbringing, the only thing I knew of that I was raised in Catholic school, and so I thought they were going to require us to worship a saint or pray to a saint, and that wasn't something that I theologically felt aligned with. So I just thought, no, no. So my guard went up and I was like, not going to do that. Not going to do that. That's not what they were talking about at all.

Joshua Johnson: 3:32

So what were they talking about? What does it look like then to start to walk with a spiritual giant and learn from them? I think if you're looking at discipleship, and you're looking at Jesus apprenticeship and walking with him and companioning him is really a key aspect to discipleship. Paul is talking about Imitate me as I imitate Christ. So you're looking at these relationships that are really apprenticeship type of relationships, and what does it look like then for us,

Unknown: 4:02

yeah, it's like walking alongside, sharing a year of your life, a year of your life's path, with someone which just at in my first experience of it, it was, you know, start with some biographies, then learn about what other people said about that person. Maybe learn some of their quotes and see which ones stand out to you, because the ones that stand out to you are because God is stirring inside of you for some reason. So paying attention to their quotes, keeping a journal just of what you're drawn to about that person, about their life, about how they came to the Lord first, and how they walked out their calling, because that speaks to how we will walk out ours a lot of times. Especially it's interesting that the giant, the individual giants that each person will choose, like in that class, there were 12 of us in the class, and so we each pick someone different. And the interesting thing is that each person, the giant, they picked, was. So aligned with their callings and their strengths and their neat weaknesses and even things that maybe areas of healing that they needed that really spoke into those specifically. So then there's this mystery of when I started to notice that I started to think, God, could there be a number of people from throughout history that you have kind of ordained to specifically talk to me if I was paying attention. And it was a very real possibility because of, you know, just when you look at scripture and you look up at how God has designed us as a body he we need the other parts of the body, but we don't ordinarily think about anybody but the people that are in the Bible, like just the people in the Bible. And that was another shock. Was like, we're not, you know, like, pick a giant, and people say, Okay, I'll choose Esther, I'll I'll choose Moses, I'll choose David. And they said, no, no, we already know about them. Choose one of the 1000s the millions of other faithful followers out there, because they're meant to give us an example too and help us run our race.

Joshua Johnson: 6:10

So what does choosing look like for you? How did you figure out who you wanted to journey with for a year?

Unknown: 6:17

Yeah, I Well, the year before, I had taken a foundations class, and in that class, what they do is they teach. They taught us every month about they would feature one giant per month as a little part of that day's curriculum. And so I had gotten familiar with a few different people, and one of the people on the list, when they held up the list of 50 and passed it around, was a woman named Evelyn Underhill, and she she lived in the 1950s and she was from England. She was a professor, and she led retreats and taught the Anglican Church. She would take the members of the Anglican Church, men and women, away on retreats, and teach them that everyone could hear the voice of God for themselves. And at the time, the Lord was had given my husband and I a retreat center, a piece of land to build a little retreat center. And I was starting to take people away on retreat. So her ministry, as a little bit older woman than where I was, specifically spoke to me, because I needed to know how to do this and have the courage to do it. And I figured, if she could do it in the 1950s in England and teach men and women when women didn't really have a voice, I could do it. So I taught her, and she was Anglican, which I was raised Episcopal, so that kind of I was comfortable with that. And so I saw her on the list, and I thought, I like her. I'm going to choose her.

Joshua Johnson: 7:39

What were some of the things that you learned as somebody that wanted to lead and guide retreats. What did God teach you through that

Unknown: 7:47

she had a really strong passion for people's intimacy with God and meaning, she had a quote that said, we get caught up in all the doing verbs, and really what God wants first is our being with him, and that was exactly what we were calling people away to at our retreat center. And when I would take people on retreat, it would to be to go on a silent retreat. So we would open together, we would close together. The rest of the time, would just be alone with God. And that was so different than any kind of retreat format that people in my circle are used to, we're used to, there has to be voices, there has to be teaching, and then there's so much to do in the church and to reach the world. There's so many needs that how can we just, how can it be that important to God that we just be with him first? But really, that was my passion, and so she she encouraged that she led the same way. And from her example, I learned that when people come away and they fill up on that intimacy, it doesn't distract from their doing. Afterwards, they go out more empowered. But we have to have that first love piece in place first. So it enforced. It helped me to really ground myself. And this is a really good thing to do for people. For Christians, let's ground ourself in our first love

Joshua Johnson: 9:15

most of our Christian life, and a lot of circles in American Christianity, you're learning about God a lot of about God. You're getting a lot of input. And people are talking constantly, so it's a lot of noise. If you're moving towards a place of Silent Retreat and you're being silent with God, it is moving from this like hey, input of knowing about God to trying to figure out how to know God, to be present with him. And the only way that we could know people is to be present. Some of the deepest times I have with my wife is sitting in silence, you know, holding hands like it's a yes, a deep presence. How? Has that even concept shifted in you as you've been studying to be a spiritual director and starting to lead people to know God more than know about him.

Unknown: 10:09

Oh yes. And silence is such a missing piece in our faith. We're afraid of it. We think it's connected and grounded in Buddhism, or a different faith that than what our Christian faith and so even just that, even just going away for the first time, on my first Silent Retreat, I thought, what are we doing? We're here with 30 people. Okay, I understand we'll be silent on the other times, but when we come together for meals and stuff, why can't we talk to each other? Like, let's, let's receive from this these gift of these other people. That doesn't make any sense to me why we wouldn't, but the reason that we don't is because we need that gift of silent only for God. Time. We need all of our pretenses to fall we don't need to be entertaining anyone else. Our heart only needs and our thoughts only need to be on Jesus. So even the silence piece and the power of silence, when I went away on my first Silent Retreat, three or four days, the profound way that God interacted with me during that time, I left, and I couldn't even put it into words.

Joshua Johnson: 11:15

When you think about like walking people through and you're directing people as a spiritual director, then how do you lead people into those profound moments of God working in their soul and being with him as a director? How do you direct

Unknown: 11:33

and I mean even just opening our time together in silence, open a meeting and say, let's just take a few minutes of silence to open the meeting, or silent prayer, and you sit there for 30 seconds and you think, we're done, right? We're done. I used to think that I wasn't a prayer. I thought like, some people are gifted at prayer, you know, like, and I don't think that's me, even though I love to spend time alone with God, because I couldn't, I couldn't keep going through a list of like, okay, you pray for this on this day, and you get through all this list. I could do that for about three days, and then I was like, Okay, I can't do that anymore. But when they taught, when I learned in spiritual direction training, we would start our meetings. This was a couple years in, they started us slow, but a couple years in, we would start our class time with 25 minutes of sitting in silence, listen, but just open to God. Just open to God. So anyway, that was wonderful and a whole new concept to me and for them to say, we're going to we're going to do silent prayer. I remember saying to them, can a prayer be a prayer if it's not spoken like are we even praying? But the different thing about it is, when you look at prayer as openness to God, that's what prayer is. So then that shifted my whole life with God. Prayer time with God, where time flies with God, because I'm not the one doing the work in our time together. I'm just showing up. I'm showing up. He's doing whatever work, whatever, whatever he needs done in me, in the world. And I do pray out loud in my prayer times, but it's not just centered on that. It's a being with God. That's what prayer is

Joshua Johnson: 14:22

also in your book. You talk about pilgrimage as a metaphor, and you talk about the Camino de Santiago and using it as a metaphor as we journey with our spiritual giant, it's a pilgrimage. Why is the concept of pilgrimage and walking? And when you're walking, I mean, it's a slow, methodical like moving to the next place. Anytime I go on a walk, a lot of times I just want to win and get there fastest. But a pilgrimage is not that it is slow and methodical. So why? Why is pilgrimage as we're journeying with somebody important?

Unknown: 14:58

Yeah, I couldn't get away from the concept of pilgrimage. When I wrote the book, I kept coming back to pilgrimage metaphors, as we are sharing a year of our life's journey with another person who loved Jesus, another follower of Jesus. And so the reason that pilgrim at walking, Eugene Peterson said that walking may be the most spiritual act we ever do, just walking. Because in walking with someone, we're slow we slow down. And when you think about a pilgrimage, like we my husband and I finally got to go on the Camino this this spring, after 10 years of thinking about it. And a pilgrimage is a place where you start in one spot and you're headed to a holy destination as your final spot. But all along the way, the journey is working in you. So it's not just about the destination, it's about every day of the journey, who you're going to meet on the journey, what struggles you have on the journey, how you experience God on the journey. So that's how it it plays into the journey with a giant. Because those same things we're teaching people, I'm teaching people in journey with a giant to like, watch for these type of things, who you're meeting, what, what, what struggles you're having, what joys you're having, just to pay attention to that stirring of the Spirit. So learning about pilgrimage helps us to orient our whole life as I'm on a pilgrimage. The day I was born was the day I started my pilgrimage, and the day I passed to heaven is the day I'll finish it in that holy destination.

Joshua Johnson: 16:37

One of the people that you walk with is Fred Rogers, so you're walking with him, but he's also known for his slow and deliberate pace, and that's who he is. And he slows down. He slows down in his speech. He has some pauses and deliberate pauses. What did seeing his slowness and his deliberate pace teach you about faith and our relationship with God.

Unknown: 17:03

That was one of one of the things when you watch that movie, a beautiful day in the neighborhood that came out a few years ago, didn't that just catch everybody like how slow he was. It's just so counter cultural to how we live and but that was on purpose. He believed that that was one of the top gifts that he gave to the world. And he at a time when Sesame Street was coming on the scene and children's programming was moving really fast, and there was a lot of excitement and a lot of bright lights, he intentionally oriented his show to be slow and to be non stimulating. So what it does for our faith is it, I mean, even the fact of paying attention to other people. If we take, you know, by Fred's example, one of the busiest mans that probably ever lived with the most responsibilities, and, you know, a family and all the things, and yet he still walked through his life slow. And we know him for his love. When all is said and done, we're like he is one of the most like Christ, people that we'll ever point to, and a part of that was his slowness. And so it just it challenges me, because I try to be slow, I try to be simple, I try to maintain silence? And you know, it's one of my greatest challenges, but his life that see his example speaks to me. There's a there's a little phrase in Hebrews that says, Though dead, Enoch's life still speaks. And that's what the Giants lives do, though dead, they speak to us their lives.

Joshua Johnson: 18:43

I mean, his slow, deliberate pace, it seems like he's embodying a different time than the time of a our consumeristic like hustle culture that we have in America. It is very, it is very counter cultural and it, but it is something to, I mean, to root herself in the presence of of God is going to take something that is counter cultural, that is not moving at the speed of culture around us. Are there any practices that have helped you to then inhabit this different time?

Unknown: 19:18

Just setting a timer in the morning. You know, I spend some time with the Lord. I love it in the morning. And before I go, like my day is about to whip off, I've opened, I'm I'm getting ready to open email. I'm getting ready to walk the dog. And it was like, I set the timer. I turn off the lights for five minutes, and I just get on my knees, and I make myself sit for five minutes or kneel, and I just sit there, and in that process, what happens is you realize the world is not on your shoulders. God is in control. And I let go of any this day is perfect the way it is, and I let go of all the intensity, so we can and we can come back to that anytime during our day. But you know, if you can do it once a day, just five minutes, even sometimes, if I can't make it five minutes, I do three minutes, you know, but just that, just that momentary Stop, just stop.

Joshua Johnson: 20:15

Can you take me into your pilgrimage, journey, on the Camino? Is there a time in there that was really hard and difficult for you that you didn't want to continue, that then would help us figure out on our pilgrimage of life and faith that we could actually continue in the difficulty and

Unknown: 20:36

hard place. Oh, yes. And the thing about pilgrimage, pilgrimage is so much like life. I dreamed about pilgrimage for 10 years. I studied the pilgrim, the Camino de Santiago. I had I wrote about it. This book, with all the pilgrimage principles, was written before I even went with all this imaginary my publisher said we were like, I think the book was. Going to print. And she said, You've been on the pilgrim the Camino, right? And I'm like, No, we're going this spring. So so my imagination of the of the Camino was way, way high. So we got there and we were walking, and I'm a walker. I love walking, and I trained for this. But you know, when you get a hikers guide, be careful who writes the guidebook for like a trail guide, because supposedly, the trail was not going to be strenuous or whatever, but it was. It was quite hilly, and I had hiking poles. But a few days in, I don't know, maybe it was four or five days in, I got the worst shin splints on both of my legs. Then I could barely move. I was frustrated with that, because I had trained and I had looked forward to this, and I was like, my husband was with me, and he hadn't trained. And I was like, why not him? Like, give it, but the Lord was working in me and that so anyway, so we're walking along. He's walking with me. We're going over this really mountainous part of it. Oh my gosh. There was so much rain, so much mud. It's a perfect I think everybody needs to do it. So I'm walking along, I couldn't go on anymore, and I'm sitting on the side of the hill, and from behind us comes another guy, slight build. He wasn't dressed like a pilgrim. You can tell pilgrims, they're dirty, and they're wearing all the garb. And this guy was just in a light wind jet windbreaker jacket and slight build, probably like 50 years old. And it comes up behind us, and he's like, Oh, are you okay? Do you need any help? And I said, Oh, my goodness, I've got these shin splints. And, you know, told them a little bit of the pain I was going through, and he says, Oh, I'm a monk. I live in the there was a monastery that we passed through a mile or two back, and he just started talking with us, and I was asking him questions about the Camino, and we started walking together, and he just started expounding about the Camino and the significance of the very people who knew the Savior walking the very trail that we were on. And I mean, it was a moment where it felt like God's presence was around this man, and he felt it. He was like, I don't normally do this. I don't know what's coming on me. Well, in the meantime, our son and daughter in law were also with us, and they walked. They were ahead, because they're young and fast, and they came back to where we were talking to this guy. His name was Eduardo, and they started talking to him and my son, my husband, introduced my son, Jonathan, and all of a sudden, this this man, Eduardo, starts prophesying over Jonathan. Jonathan, your name means bringer of the gospel, lover of God, you're going to preach, and we're just sitting there and just taking it all in. My husband turned on his camera and started videotaping the whole thing a few minutes in, because we knew it was so anointed, and that was a super important point for my son, that was a life changing moment. So we walked together for a while. It turned out he was on the trail every day because he had had a heart condition, and his doctor told him he had to walk an hour a day. So he was on the trail for his hour with an ailment, to do what the doctor told him to do, I was pulled over to the side because of severe pain in my shins that I was like shaking my fist at God, going, what is going on? I'm supposed to be having a spiritual experience right now, you know, and our son got prophesied over in the meantime. So doesn't that speak about life? I mean, life is not usually that powerful, but in obvious ways, but that that that really did speak

Joshua Johnson: 24:50

in the midst of pain, you could do a couple of things. One, you could be bitter about it, or you could actually see the presence of God with you in the midst of pain, and it actually is a deeper spiritual experience when you're going through pain and you sense and know the presence of God with you. In our culture, we want to get rid of pain as fast as we can, and we don't want to actually experience it. What's a different way to envision pain and the the way that it actually helps us and grounds us in the presence of God, rather than saying it is just a horrible experience, and I want to get rid

Unknown: 25:30

of it. It's acceptance of the human condition. Pain is acceptance of the way that life is going to be. There's so many days on the Camino. I'm going to go back to the Camino because that's coming to my mind, there were so many rainy days, muddy days, so one day, we got up on the Camino, and my husband would wake up in the morning and go, like, do we have to do this today? And I'd say, Yeah, honey, well, we can take a taxi. He'd tell me, and I'm like, no, no, that's not what this is about. So we were at our lowest point, and we. Put on our ponchos, and we went outside to get on the trail. We were waiting for our son and daughter in law to meet us on the trail, and all of a sudden, down the trail from us, we see two ponchoed up beings coming towards us, and they yell out, Hey, Brian and Lori. And it was this couple that we had met near the beginning of our trail, and they were having one of their better moments, and we were having one of our worst. And they just cheered us up, and we got walking in the rain. And I think, you know, walking in the rain and the rain lasted our last like five days into Santiago, which are supposed to be from the books you never hear about walking in the rain in the final days coming into Santiago. It's always glorious. It's Always Sunny. It's, you know, but walking in the rain, in the mud, I was walking alone at one point, and all of a sudden I thought, you know, I don't usually, I don't know if I've ever walked outside in the rain, because we scurry inside, just like with a pain point when the weather gets bad outside, we go inside. I'm walking in the rain, and I'm hearing the rain coming down on the trees and on all the things around you, and you're like, This is really beautiful. If we stop for a moment, this is, this is a moment that we've never experienced before. So I think pain allows us those moments when we say, Hold on a minute. Not everything about this is bad. This is working something really deep inside of me. And, God, you're here, and I'm actually glad, like when we came into Santiago and had been raining for whatever, 16 days straight, and I had imagined it a different way. I thought, You know what, I'm glad it's raining, because that's more like real life. Real life is more like, I think more people would want to hear me write about walking in the rain into Santiago than telling them how fantastic it was. You know, let's talk about that.

Joshua Johnson: 27:58

We're talking about presence with God. God is going to companion you. But then you have people that you met on the journey that companions you in the midst of pain as well. So you have this when you're talking about journeying with a giant. Here you have somebody that is dead, but they're present, and they can be present with you. So as we find these people that we could companion on this journey of life and pain and struggle, so that we could find God in the midst of it. How do we discern that? How do you help people discern who we should start to say, Hey, this is the giant that I want to walk with for the year,

Unknown: 28:41

I take people through a discernment process in chapter one of the book, where we pay attention. We there's a list in there. So very practically, people go through the list, and I have them circle any ones that stand out to them, and then they answer questions about what things are longing to grow and what traits you might be longing to grow in. What cultures are you interested in? You know, things like this, where you're we're tuning into what God's already put inside of us, because what God has put inside of us as our desires. Like a lot of times, we're taught, don't pay too much attention to your own desires, because we were born with sin nature, and they're going to lead you down the wrong path. But when we walk with God, if we're seeking Him prayerfully for like Lord, I want to grow in my relationship with you, and I want to choose someone from history. What's going on inside of me? So as we pay attention to who, when we who do we circle on that list? Who do we jot down for those other questions, it's just a step by step process of then saying, Okay, which one is standing out to you in the end? So, yeah. So that's kind of the simple process we take people through. Who from history, has been coming across your path in the last year or two. Like for me, seeing the movie A Beautiful day in the neighborhood Tom Hanks playing Mr. Rogers had come across my path and I had jotted, I had kept a note on my phone after you walk with a giant, a lot of times, you're keeping your ears open for other giants that you might want to walk within in the future. And so I had a note on my phone that was like possible spiritual giant candidates. And after I saw that movie, I jotted down Fred Rogers on there, and that's how I picked him.

Joshua Johnson: 30:22

When you started to journey with Fred Rogers then, and you discerned that what surprised you about him, that you That was unexpected, that you didn't expect him to be like

Unknown: 30:33

he struggled with his calling, which was really interesting. He He was an Enneagram nine and so he was a professionally trained musician, piano player, and he wanted to, when he got started working for the neighborhood, he wanted to be behind the scenes. He was going to play the music, and he was going to do the puppets, because he had grown he had grown up loving puppetry, and so that's where he wanted to be. But when the directors, there was some sort. Glitch where they needed him in front of the camera for an episode, and when they saw the connection that he made with the audience, they called him out to be in front of the camera. And he was like, no, no, that's not really what I want. I'm more comfortable back there. And they said, no, they wanted him there. So he submitted to that, and he did it. That was just a little way. And then there were in his journal, he writing all those episodes of Mr. Rogers neighborhoods for like 30 years. He struggled believing that he was ever good at it, but he still showed up. He showed up as as quirky, as slow, as uncharismatic as he was, he showed up, and that's so I never would have expected him to have any doubt that he was good at what he was doing. It was so successful, but he was he was insecure, just like just like we are. And it was his, his own insecurities, that actually led him to prioritize every person that he met. So his scars he had, he had a beautiful family growing up, but he was bullied, and his scars were actually the thing that made him reach out and made sure that everyone always knew that they were perfectly paid attention to. So that's that speaks volumes to all of us. Like your scars do not disqualify you. They qualify you for what God's calling is.

Joshua Johnson: 32:25

How have you, like, taken the showing up aspect of him and applied that to your life when you just don't feel like it? Oh my gosh.

Unknown: 32:37

So so many ways. I mean, becoming a spiritual director, I would, I would have my first appointments and go like, I don't know what I'm doing. I'm supposed to be in here listening with them for the Holy Spirit, and hopefully they have an experience with God. I don't know what I'm doing, but I'm gonna go, I'm gonna God, you've called me to this. I'm gonna go in there and do it, writing the book, showing up to pitch, when not having that background and just being like he did it, I can do it. I mean his courage and his, even his, I'm gonna say nerdiness, even though I love him with all my heart, speaks to me like you don't like so many times we feel insufficient. We feel nerdy. But as long as we as long as we do whatever God's called us to with our whole heart, giving whatever we have, he can turn that into a miracle for someone. So that, that, to me, is like, I can go in the eye. He was glitchy, like I had the opportunity to record my audio book, and we were debating, like, should I have a professional do it? Should I do it myself? And as I weighed that out, I thought this book is about ordinary people, glitchy, nerdy, insufficient, whatever, doing what God's given us to do. So I need to go in and show up for that audio book, because that shows people you don't you don't have to be a polished narrator to do this. You're gonna like hearing my voice, because you're gonna be like, Oh my gosh, she's she's just like me. One of

Joshua Johnson: 34:11

the things that Fred Rogers did, he embodies childlike wonder. You have a whole season of your book as we're walking with spiritual giants all around play. Why is play part of spiritual maturity? Why is play a part of our spiritual lives? And why is it important?

Unknown: 34:31

When you look at our year, our year is divided into seasons, and there's always seasons of the natural world where they're super productive and then dormant. And we need to look at that as human beings, maybe especially Western human beings, as we are not supposed to always be on. We're supposed to have times when we're on and we're and God knows all that. I remember when I was writing the book, I was in the summer. It was, it's coming to summer. I'm diligently walking with Mr. Rogers, I'm doing all my study, I'm writing. And then my husband says, I want to go to Alaska. Our daughter was in Alaska and doing some missionary work there, and he wanted to go for like, three weeks. And I was like, Ah, how am I going to keep this, this this book going, and this walk with my giant like, I got to get how am I going to stay diligent enough? How's God going to do his work in me if I'm flitting all over the planet, you know? So, so it's like, oh, how crazy is that your husband's offering you a trip to Alaska. But isn't this the way our western mind thinks? Like, I got I'm working on something right now. We're always working on something, but God wanted me to see that he is working in our play. He's working in our play, so I threw a copy of Henry now and his book, who was a Fred Rogers mentor. I met his mentor, Henry now, and during that year, I'm like, Okay, I'm tossing this book into my suitcase. Case, that's what we're doing. So in walking with a giant, we deliberately put that when you come to the six months, you go into a season of play where you take it easy with your giant. You know, you might just study, study. Some of their do a hobby that they like doing. You know, if they were woodworkers, you would work and you let God work in you while you're doing it. So it is an important part. And maybe even, like, slowing down was an important message from Fred's life. So was play and in journey with a giant, we have people take a year to do this with with the book, and we do that, and we talked about like, that's a long time for people to commit, but it's also so important, counter cultural, exactly what we need to slow down. And same with play, when we came to that season of the book, walking with a giant it's like, let's devote a whole season to this important concept that we need help with.

Joshua Johnson: 36:58

You said you need, you need help with it because, I mean, we're actually in this, this place where, hey, I'm working on this. I'm trying to be diligent. I think we equate spiritual, being spiritual with being serious, like it's a it's serious life. How do you stay open and curious and playful with God?

Unknown: 37:20

I love adventure. I love different things. I'm not one of these people that only sees our faith one way. So, you know, like, I believe that I could take a walk and have it be my time with Jesus that day, or I sit in front of, like, one summer, I did a bunch of Vizio Divina, where I would just go and sit outside looking at like, I sat right in front of some flowers in our by our house, and I just looked at them. I just watched another day we had a sunflower patch, and I'm just like, I'm just gonna go out there and watch the bugs. I think, just deliberately spending some time in different practices and being like, this is my time with God. This day, you know? Like, let's break out of that I gotta. I gotta do it by studying a book and answering some questions.

Joshua Johnson: 38:06

I think when we're thinking about walking with a spiritual giant, it's nice that we're being companion with with somebody, and it feels like community. As the body of Christ, we need to be with one another. And it's not just individual, but this can be a lonely journey of, hey, I'm reading about this person. I'm putting in some of these practices. How can it move from personal devotion into a place of communal formation? Oh, yeah, together.

Unknown: 38:36

You know, every time that I've walked with a giant, it's been in community. I didn't realize that when I was writing the book, but I started this with others, and we would learn about our giants, and then we would share about them in class. And then the year that I got done with my class, and I found that I missed having a giant, and decided to choose Fred, and I started writing about it, friends around me, a couple of friends around me were like, What are you doing? We've watched you walk in with giant we think it's really cool, but we want to make sure it's biblical. Once I convinced them that it was biblical, they were like, Okay, we want to do it with you. So we very loosely. We didn't have any kind of plan. We didn't have a book at that point, but they just started. They picked their own giants, and then we studied on our own. I call it studied, but I don't want to make that sound like it's always with a book and a journal. It's all different things. But anyway, so we would spend time with our giant and then once a month, we would get together and talk about what God had done on our giant journey. And then I ended up other people ended popping up in my life. And so I started leading workshop groups of people walking with giants. And so yeah, to do it alone is possible, but it's hard to do alone because it's a long time to do it alone, and you get your the multiplication of the benefits that you get by sharing it with just a couple of friends, like, Hey, I've heard about this. Does this interest you at all? Maybe we you could do it too, and then we'll just share, we'll just connect once a month, however, and talk about it, and that'll keep you on the journey.

Joshua Johnson: 40:05

At the end of the year, as you walked with Fred Rogers, what changed in you?

Unknown: 40:09

It started at the beginning. It started at the beginning. The most important thing that he taught me was to pay attention to every person in front of you, and this, this, this comes into our closest relationships. He went to the gym every day and swam every morning at this gym and near him, and the locker room attendant was a colored man, and he said that Fred always stopped to pay attention to him and to talk to him on his way into the gym. Other people. You know, I heard people that stopped him along the road. He would stop and talk to them. His show producers had a hard time keeping him on track, because he had to give the person in front of him his undivided attention. Because to him, he said, listening is love. It's love. So anyway. I in the second month of my journey, I was and I'm studying Fred, and my husband's getting ready for work in the morning, and I'm out in the kitchen. I'm making him breakfast, and he's trying to tell me a story about something, and I I'm like, Oh my gosh, I don't have time for this today. I've got a lot to do. So I just kind of get up and I start doing the dishes, and he gets the message, and he comes over, gives me a kiss, heads out the driveway, and the minute that I heard the gravel under his tires crunching, I remembered Fred, and I thought, Oh my gosh. I remembered the locker room attendant. I remembered all the people on the street. And I thought, oh, Lord, forgive me, I didn't love my husband as if he was the only person in the world today, next time I'm going to and that happened all year long, like it was, pay attention. Slow down right now. This is the thing that is, it's always the person in front of you that's the most important, not the project. I mean, in that the 12th month of the book, I was in the middle of Christmas wrapping all around me. And my husband came home and said, Let's go to the small group Christmas party. And I'm like, What are you thinking? You know, but through Fred's example, it was like, Don't forget the neighbors right in front of you, no matter what you're doing, these are the most important people. That's the most important thing that is still working in me today,

Joshua Johnson: 42:22

when you're doing spiritual direction, that's part of what you do, is you listen right? And if Fred's talking about how listening is love, how has that practice of listening with somebody and being present reshaped you as a person who is loved

Unknown: 42:42

having a spiritual direction appointment. I don't know if any other hour of your whole month, you have the whole floor for someone to listen to whatever is stirring in your heart and whatever God is doing. So just that, in itself, is such a gift and such a change for most people. So just valuing the person enough to just be with them in that space and to let what happens is by them talking, God's going to unearth what they need. It's going to come to the surface. You're going to say a few things, you're going to do a few things, and they're going to walk out and say, that was the best thing ever. And you did very little. All you did was just be with them prayerfully in that time. And you know, we all want to talk, if you if you're in a conversation, we're always waiting for our opportunity to talk, and I think even more so as we get older, for some reason, we've got more wisdom. We have to expound on everyone, or we lose our patience, and we want to get right in there. But if we, if we can discipline ourselves in the practice of listening as love that that helps us and that helps the person with us, you know that is what we want to be. It is. It's a discipline, though it's a discipline,

Joshua Johnson: 43:59

if you would give some advice to people, if they want to pick a giant they want to go on this journey, besides picking up your book, which they should What advice would you give some people as they're going on this journey? What are the few things you want people to take away from this?

Unknown: 44:21

I want him to take away that this is something that we've overlooked. This is a practice of our discipleship that, as a church, we have been unaware of, that is a central piece of how God's what God's plan is for us to become what he's called us to, and to do what he's called us to do here while we're on Earth. So I want it to shift people's awareness. You know, the theme scripture for this comes from Hebrews 12, therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside the weights and the sins entangling us and fix our eyes on Jesus so that we can faithfully run our race. And we've we've never seen it that the things that we need to faithfully run that race and to get those weights off of us are those other faithful followers of Christ. So when you go through a process like this, anticipate that some of the things that you've been struggling with, some of the perspectives that you're like, I don't know how to see this any different. I've got this struggle in my spiritual life, my personal life, I haven't been able to overcome it. I'm doing all the Bible studies, I'm going on retreat. I'm meeting with a spiritual director. What else could there be? And this is something that could help people get free of some certain things that they say, Oh my gosh. I've struggled with this all my life. So I would say just be excited about, wow, this is like a treasure chest of God's provision that's been along our life path all along, and God is just waiting for us to lift the lid on what he has for us inside of there, the treasure that's in there.

Joshua Johnson: 45:59

So if people pick up. Than the book, and they go through this, what is your hope for transformation? For people, what's the transformation journey that they're about to embark on?

Unknown: 46:10

Yeah, you go from feeling like there's missing puzzle pieces. I'm in this little cul de sac of where the time and place that I live, and I know there's other things that I need, and I don't know how to get them, and so I pray. And I've seen this happen in myself and others, that when you walk with a giant, some of those missing puzzle pieces that you've longed for come into your life, and then you and then you pick another one, a different year, and something else. I mean, when you think about choosing someone from a different culture in a different century, they're going to open up your perspective in ways you never could living in the time and place that you live. You know, and their ways of knowing God say you pick someone from a Celtic faith, who they worship God very different than than we do. And that can that can be super fun, too, where you're like, oh my gosh, I never knew about this. Now I can add this to how I walk with God Lori.

Joshua Johnson: 47:09

A couple quick questions here. One, if you go back to your 21 year old self, what advice

Unknown: 47:13

would you give that's a hard one. Oh, my goodness. Maybe it would be just to pay close attention to the people that come across your life, all of them, and maybe even more, the people that you disregard. Because these are all. These are all pieces of God's plan for us and we, I think we missed that in our rush. And people are such a such a treasure from God. So I think in all my doing and having lots of kids and a busy family and all that, maybe, maybe even to slow down like we were talking about earlier more and to notice people and to value people and even common conversations, I've always been a deep thinker and a deep theological and all that. And I want every conversation to feel like it's deep, powerful. What are we taking away from this? But instead like value, the ones that don't seem like value that

Joshua Johnson: 48:13

more anything you've been reading or watching lately, you could recommend.

Unknown: 48:17

I'm reading right now with renovares book club, searching for God's will, by Trevor Hudson, which is really neat, because it talks all about discernment and how we know what God's calling us to. And as we talk about, like, Who do I pick as a giant? I just emailed one of the gals getting ready to pick or walk with a giant this year, as she shared who she's thinking of Walking With from that book. So I'm like, oh, yeah, it's all of our question, how do we know God's will? Yeah, that's great.

Joshua Johnson: 48:42

It's a fantastic book. And I have an episode with Trevor all about that earlier this year. So yeah, people should go back and listen to that one as well. It's really, really good. So it's a great book. So your book journey with a giant is available anywhere books are sold out November 11. Is there anywhere you'd like to point people to. How could I connect with you?

Unknown: 49:03

Yeah, yeah. You can go to my website, Laurie G melton.com and the book is on there. Blog is on there. And there's also a free sneak peek of the book, which is the introduction in chapter one, which actually leads you through choosing the giant, choosing a giant in chapter one. So you can download that for free. And we're also working on a spiritual giant quiz where you get your transformational 10 it you'll go through a series of questions, and it gives you 10 giants from history that could resonate strongly with you. So yeah, those are fun. Those are those are there on the website?

Joshua Johnson: 49:37

All right, and what's the website? Lori G melton.com All right, go to Laurie G melton.com, you can get that free sample at the beginning. Lori, this was a fantastic conversation. Thanks for walking with us and companioning us so that we can then choose a giant and companion with them through history, through our life. And I know that it could actually be a deep deepening for us in our spiritual life and our spiritual journey, so that we could actually then fix our eyes on Jesus and run the race that he has set before us. So thank you. It was a fantastic conversation. Thanks for having me. You