The Light in Every Thing
Deeper conversation on the mysteries of Christianity with Patrick Kennedy and Jonah Evans, directors of the Seminary of The Christian Community in North America.
In this podcast we engage the great questions of life and do this through a spiritual approach to Christianity made possible through contemplative inquiry and the science of the spirit known as Anthroposophy.
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The Light in Every Thing
Spiritual Anthropology: Male, Female, and Human Wholeness — Episode 54 in the series, “The Letter to the Ephesians”
In this next conversation, we journey through St. Paul's challenging words in Ephesians 5, discovering a spiritual anthropology that reveals why humanity exists as male and female, and how marriage serves as a healing sacrament for our divided nature.
Beginning with Genesis, we explore how humanity was fashioned to embody the divine image—yet this image requires both masculine and feminine qualities to be complete. Our physical one-sidedness as either male or female points to a cosmic division that Christ's redemptive work aims to heal. This understanding transforms Paul's words about wives submitting to husbands from patriarchal control into a revolutionary model of mutual self-giving.
Through vulnerable personal stories, we examine what it means for husbands to "love as Christ loved the church"—completely surrendering ego, overcoming the default modes of dominance or disengagement, and discovering true authority that emerges not from power but from selfless love. When Paul calls husbands "the head," he's not establishing hierarchy but challenging men to overcome their natural selfishness through Christ's example.
We venture into territory rarely discussed in mainstream Christianity: how our eternal spirits transcend our physical embodiment, perhaps explaining humanity's growing awareness that our true identity isn't limited to our biological form. This spiritual anthropology helps us understand contemporary questions around gender and identity as expressions of our longing for wholeness.
What emerges is a vision of marriage not as rigid roles but as a healing mystery where two one-sided beings collaborate, each submitting to Christ as their true authority, to create a complete image of the divine. Join us in this profound exploration that honors ancient wisdom while speaking to today's deepest questions about human identity and relationship.
The Light in Every Thing is a podcast of The Seminary of The Christian Community in North America. Learn more about the Seminary and its offerings at our website. This podcast is supported by our growing Patreon community. To learn more, go to www.patreon.com/ccseminary.
Thanks to Elliott Chamberlin who composed our theme music, “Seeking Together,” and the legacy of our original show-notes and patreon producer, Camilla Lake.
Good morning Patrick, Hi Jonah, Well, two in one week.
Patrick Kennedy:Yeah, it's like really fresh when the last pod is just a couple days ago. Yeah, it's a little different, it's nice, it's nice. I wonder how many individual people are like totally keeping up with the pod, like right, the next episode you know yeah. I find people are like wait, I'm like three months behind or I'm still back in 2024. Right. Well, for whoever is wherever in this.
Jonah Evans:Maybe there's one or two Podcast.
Patrick Kennedy:It's almost Holy Week. The year is 2025. Four, five, what? 25. April 10th. So whenever you run across this conversation in the record of history, maybe it's 10 years from now, I don't know. Hello. Hello. Welcome to our podcast called the Light in Everything where two priests discuss the mysteries of Christ. We begin each of our conversations by walking through a certain word, and this morning I'm going to stall why. Jonah tries to find his Bible. There's one right there and he's going to read from the Gospel of John in chapter 8.
Jonah Evans:Again, jesus spoke to them saying I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness but will have the light of life.
Patrick Kennedy:so we've been in this long um series of conversations, making our way through the letter to the ephesians and we are towards the end of Chapter 5, and this has led us down a deep and broad path into the questions of why the human being has been created in such a way that there are two main kinds female and male and why the biblical vision, the spiritual vision of the Christ-permeated view on the human being, sees that God, in the creative power that was fashioning the human being, was fashioning an image of its own nature, and to image its own nature it needed these two things Very clearly yeah.
Patrick Kennedy:It's male and female, and only through the two is God imaged.
Jonah Evans:I mean, we could just stay on that for a lifetime, a lifetime.
Patrick Kennedy:A lifetime, but God is also one and there's some deep experience of a kind of break in the image because we are one-sided in our embodiment and that story is explored, the spiritual consequences of that, the nature of that is explored in this amazing document called Genesis in Scripture and we've been moving around in those, as a recent podcast listener said, few paragraphs in which the secrets of humanity are contained. Yeah, I was really moving to read that recent note from Nicole, one of our listeners out in the West Coast of Canada Shout out.
Jonah Evans:Nicole.
Patrick Kennedy:I've also been in a side conversation with two dear friends one super long-time listener that probably others have heard of at this point, mary Graham, and another school friend of mine who's kind of joined our conversation, nicole, another Nicole, who's in Pennsylvania and she comes out of the Episcopal tradition, as a Christian in the Episcopal tradition but also wide-hearted and open to many different streams of Christianity, and we've been getting into it and it stirs a lot of things these topics are. It's a hot nerve in our story, in humanity right now. Who are we? What is sex and gender, what is wholeness in the middle of that experience? And what is our true identity? Who am I? And so these things, they just reverberate, and then into everything, and then that does come to expression, into this mystery of marriage.
Patrick Kennedy:That then is taken up by St Paul in this letter where he is describing the work of all of the Christians together in relationship to Christ and to one another, saying in chapter 5, as we talked about last time, verse 20, giving thanks always and for everything to God, the Father. So always practice the Eucharist, the Eucharist, that practice of prayer and communion, which is a thanks offering that brings about union. You do it in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. So you need to enter his. I am in this process of thanksgiving, as he gave thanks at the Last Supper, and that will then, in verse 21, lead to this extraordinary fact, according to this writer, that we will be submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ. That's going to be a fruit of this communion practice.
Patrick Kennedy:I've got a lot of head shaking going on with my brother over here. He's just enjoying these facts, these Christian facts, amen. And then he gets into this. Well, what does submission look like in our different relationships? Where we're in Christ's community, there is an equality. We are all equal before God and we all equally submit to one another. But in our lives we are in lots of unequal relationships. Various kinds of power dynamics exist where I am not the one with authority and power in a given situation. There's somebody above me, or I have children and I'm a parent, or I'm maybe a manager in a company, or I know something more than the person I'm talking to, or you know we're in the teacher yeah yeah, we head to the coffee shop.
Patrick Kennedy:We had to the donut shop in california with some friends from canada. You and I are in a power differential, like we know what's up at the donut shop. No, no, no, you don't want to get the cruller, you want to stay away from that guy right there you want to go either, for yeah, okay, we're not going to do the full donut shop initiation right now right right so there are all these.
Patrick Kennedy:In the middle of this equality, there is also another layer of existence where we're in an utter unequal circumstance. So what is Paul's orientation to that? And that's when he starts unfolding this Christ mystery of submission, which we've also talked about last time as actually part of the key of the salvation and redemption of the earth and humanity. Right Christ's own work to submit to the will of the Father in life has something that unlocks a flow of grace in earth experience.
Jonah Evans:Right, you said something in the very beginning which I think is really important to highlight this submission. Why does Christ submit to the Father? Well, the submission activity, the reverence, the surrender, is also actually an entering into his own I. You described that that to pray in the name of is to actually try to enter into the essence of the being of which you are praying to, to sort of shape yourself into their self. And so submitting is not just saying okay, you know more than me.
Patrick Kennedy:Like giving up, giving up Seceding.
Jonah Evans:I resign my sense of independence and inner integrity. Submitting is a way to in this sense a way to join into the essential.
Patrick Kennedy:I am of Christ, just as he is submitting to the Father and joining into the essential, I am of the Father. No one takes my life from me, jesus says in the Gospel of John, chapter 10. I lay it down of my own accord, so he's trying to show. You will see me walk this path and you will see, though, a very upright human in their inner authority. This is the challenge for our entire spirit to cognize and watch a human in their authority, submitting. It's like the prince of this world teaches us the only way you can be in authority is to submit others to you, to never submit and never submit.
Jonah Evans:Never apologize. Yeah, these things are taught in a different kind of initiation. These things are taught to kind of you could call it a dark kind of power initiation that many kind of CEO types can be married to. And I'm not demonizing CEOs, that's not what I'm saying here. But there is that way of power that is certainly powerful in the material world.
Patrick Kennedy:Yeah, and we also never see Jesus in his path. Not speaking the truth and lying as a part of submission, for example, not addressing injustice and acquiescing. See, there's subtle. There's a whole bunch of shadows around submission, which isn't true, submission Totally. And there's a whole bunch of shadows around leadership and authority, which is not true authority and leadership. And this is part of the rescue work of a Christian renewal that we feel so called to be, is part of the rescue work of, of of a christian renewal that we feel so called to be, a part of. Like, don't throw the baby out with the bath water. There are secrets in here. That has to do with true power, the way actually the divine, the highest divinity, has submitted itself in love to what we do with, for example, the earth. It's submitting to our will. It lets us do stuff with it. That means that the Godhead has poured part of its own being out to make it available for us to work with being out to make it available for us to work with.
Jonah Evans:That's profound, because I've also had the challenging question well, okay, if Christ is submitting to the Father, then who is the Father submitting to? And the answer is exactly in what you just said the Father is the leader, you could say, in the pouring himself out. Who is he submitting to? Well, he's submitting himself to humanity and the earth. He's giving his life for the life of everything, and that's what Jesus is actually then trying to reveal, because no one sees the Father except through Christ.
Patrick Kennedy:And you can feel in this there's a border territory we've been able to get to in our conceptions of God as all-powerful. Our pictures of power have come from the prince of this world, exactly, and so we actually picture a God controlling each event Exactly, yeah, and being a kind of spirit tyrant in some distant galaxy, far, far away, rather than a couple layers higher than that is a being who makes some of his power available to others, but completely stays in the experience and feels and goes through everything that happens While holding God's goals. There is this, not just letting it all. Now you all do anything you want. I'm going to keep it in a moral order so you also see the consequences and therefore, for example, the mysteries of wrath.
Jonah Evans:Exactly.
Patrick Kennedy:Or karma, indian tradition, karma, yeah, exactly so we just went karma?
Patrick Kennedy:Yeah, exactly so. We just went to some big places out there, but last time we tried to also do a whole new spiritual anthropology through Genesis, by looking at the creation of Adam out of Adam, out of the ground or, and the whole mystery of dust and water and breath that the human being made from two things, from the earth and from the breath of the creator, so already a two-foldness. Then we looked at how, then, the creation of the woman was such a different event, totally unique from that story where this created single human is put into a somnambulic sleep in chapter two of genesis, a trance sleep. Out of the side of this human, something is taken, flesh is taken and something is fashioned from the side and this becomes a woman. And then Adam is awakened and they meet and we hear about the first. He erupts in a hymn at last. This is bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh, this is the complement to my being and that's outside of me now so I can have an experience of myself.
Patrick Kennedy:I couldn't find that anywhere else. We talked about how this woman represents or is clearly a part of us that is interested in knowledge and can seek it in the garden space beyond the fiery sword that guards its threshold. It was in that divine human space, talking to serpent beings in that higher space, seeking to become like God, longing to become like God, longing to know what God knows, but not following the guidance that its own creator and caretaker and loving parental being had given it for its well-being, taking something that wasn't yet its to take for its own vision of its greatness, for its own vision of its greatness and how that then had these incredible consequences of eye-opening, the birth of shame, the birth of lack of accountability and blame and all the stuff that flows out of that. And then we looked at Adam last time, and I'm so curious what stuck with you first, just in remembering this view that we tried to develop, I tried to share with you, that you know has been birthing in our work here at the seminary the last couple of years.
Jonah Evans:Yeah, no, I really appreciated it. What stayed strongest with me was the rulership that God, then, that Yahweh Elohim ordains that Adam will rule over you To the woman.
Jonah Evans:To the woman yeah, and that this beautiful way you built that up, where you showed us that Adam is actually a dust being, meaning a death being, and that this link between the nature of Adam as dust and death, that death is going to rule over and from that perspective then, the rulership. It's not as if from that archetype, that a man is going to be your boss, but death itself is going to be the all-powerful authority in your life on earth period for all beings. So that's really what struck me.
Patrick Kennedy:That's powerful.
Jonah Evans:Stay with me.
Patrick Kennedy:That's powerful. Stay with me, yeah, and I think what I would add to that is not just death, but also the pain element that we talked about last time. You're going to have a lot of pain in your whole work and life on earth, thorns and thistles, piercings, and that one who experiences all of those things and going back to the dust, this where pain and death live, and in the earth experience the woman as the breath element from the side, the soul element embodying itself, marrying itself to its atom, its earth body embodying itself, marrying itself to its atom, its earth body, experiences that it does not have power over its earth body, but actually has to subject itself, has to experience. You rule over me. I have to go through what you put me through. You are the thing that has rulership over me in my life. So then, a bit of we didn't say this, but there's a bit of an anthropology there in.
Patrick Kennedy:Genesis of the earth atom as our body, made of this water and dust, made of this water and dust. The woman as this soul element with longings, with the desire to become like God, with the ability to know spirit things, and then Yahweh Elohim as the spirit, that is the rightful spirit, and then the snake as the unholy spirit that works into her life. So a kind of spirit, soul and body picture is there of the whole human being, the creator spirit, the knowing soul, the dust body, and that I think think is so helpful to know. Then, when we get to these images of the family and of the marriage as an image of the whole and I think many of us are really familiar with that, who grew up in Christianity or grew up around the Christmas imagery and and so, for example, one simple version of it is in Matthew 2.
Patrick Kennedy:There we have the three kings seeking the child and they come to a house. There's a star above the house. Then they go into the house and they see a mother holding the child. So this house, mother, true king, child, is a picture again of this physical body, soul and spirit of the human being, a wholeness picture, a wholeness picture. Similarly, in the paintings, for example, from Luke in his gospel description. You'll get like the cave, maybe, or the shelter.
Patrick Kennedy:But in there you'll see, like Joseph, mary and the child and people just having this experience. Look at this, the shelter with the two parents and the child and just going. This is good. I don't know what all is going on here. It's just a domestic scene, but at Christmas time you see people coming and worshiping. A domestic scene. It's something, because there's something just like and he's like dressed in brown and kind of in the background leaning on a staff.
Patrick Kennedy:He's the dust human and then you see her in reds and blues the soul forces in their two polar expressions receptive, active, the dynamics of the soul and holding the spirit child, that tender newborn gifted to humanity divine. I am Again a holistic picture. So all of this, however, gets into problems as soon as each human being becomes the house, and in every human being is a mother, and in the heart of that mother is now also the Christ child.
Patrick Kennedy:So that means every single human encounter is the full package to a degree, or that child is waiting to be born in a person, or waiting to be gifted by God, the Holy Spirit coming into that soul and impregnating that soul with the word of God so that eventually a Christ could be born in their heart. This is the Christian path and the human hope. So what happens if some of these people get married now? So this is, I think, where he's going. This is this interesting thing. That's where the equality again is totally spiritually. Now what happens when we also still live in our one-sidednesses, because we're not to the end of evolution, the human being is not made whole completely yet and human beings, for some reason, are still choosing to get married and living out a calling to try to picture the whole human being.
Jonah Evans:Yeah.
Patrick Kennedy:There's that.
Jonah Evans:There's still an actual split, yeah, down to our physical material body. Unmistakably, and that's something that people don't like to talk about, but it's true and, and I don't know, maybe it's helpful to bring in just this, this matthew 19, I think, where jesus says himself when asked will there be marriage? Yes at the end of time and he says no, I think it's matthew 19 I think it's a little later.
Patrick Kennedy:I'll just double check.
Jonah Evans:Yeah, go ahead yeah, where christ says to these questions actually there will be no need for marriage at the end of time, when the resurrection comes, because everyone will become like angel beings ie whole, humans, whole humans. No more split between, which is what happened in the beginning, with the advent of the fall.
Patrick Kennedy:That's it. It turns out it's in Matthew 22. 22. Which is amazing because Matthew 22 starts with a parable about a wedding feast. There you go, where the whole of the Christian life together is about the marriage of the son of the king with the bride, and in this case we know that the understanding was the bride is the community.
Jonah Evans:So I think that's really important to emphasize in the picture that we're building up of what marriage actually is. Its deepest roots has to do with the hope for a future healing, a future reunification, even down to the physical body of the human being becoming whole. And we're not there yet.
Patrick Kennedy:Yeah, and that's not what marriage is in our society. No, so we should also just say that marriage is a celebration of the choice to share a life and be with the person I intimately romantically, also sexually am drawn to.
Jonah Evans:And grow and develop in love in that way that every relationship offers.
Patrick Kennedy:Yeah, and it's unique way, because maybe we share a home, we share a bed and so therefore we share struggles.
Jonah Evans:Whoever?
Patrick Kennedy:you love that way, then we celebrate a kind of community ceremony to honor that and witness that and celebrate you in that.
Jonah Evans:Yeah, and we acknowledge that.
Patrick Kennedy:We practice that. That's the individual right of the human heart.
Jonah Evans:Yeah, but the marriage sacrament in our movement in the Christian community.
Patrick Kennedy:And I think also the marriage mysteries in Scripture.
Jonah Evans:In Scripture Point to at the source, point to something much deeper and much more future-orientated.
Patrick Kennedy:A healing work, not just a celebratory work, not just a blessingatory work, not just a blessing of support, yeah, but that there's something. The sacraments are interested always in something that has been broken. And he, the redeeming reconciler is and world physician, yeah, through his resurrection forces, is seeking to bring healing to a particular issue. So the sacrament of communion is the medicine for it all, it's the core medicine for all of these breaks. And then there are these specific concerns and issues in the biographical path of a human being that the other six sacraments are looking to bring a consecrating element to a healing and holing element to.
Jonah Evans:Yeah. So, the holing, healing medicine of the marriage sacrament itself is fundamentally to begin to not only show a picture of, but to begin to knit back together the actual separation between man and woman.
Patrick Kennedy:And so there we come to the end of our sacrament as we have received it from our foundings in 1922. In 1922, this unbelievable word at the end of the Sacrament, Jonah, that this be for your well-being and happiness and the well-being and happiness of all humanity. That what's happening here and there word is actually in german heil, no difference difference just because it was used in the third reich doesn't mean they own its meaning long before it was used by the third reich.
Patrick Kennedy:It's it. It's the German word for salvation, actually for healing and salvation. When you look up the Heilsgeschichte, the history, you're talking about the work of God to bring about salvation in humanity. So this has to do with salvation, and the entire marriage sacrament is under the banner of the presence of the risen Christ. That's how he's described. This is all an Easter mystery, Love it.
Patrick Kennedy:This has to do with the garden where Mary Magdalene meets him, the renewed mystery garden, the re-entry into the secrets of the garden that we've been talking about in Genesis. So it shouldn't surprise us, then that Paul, in this letter, starts talking about salvation, and that's what I want to talk about with you, Jonah. This is my long intro. We got to remember it each time almost, because it's so new. It's such a new Christian anthropology, spiritual anthropology and understanding of these mysteries. So it's probably fine to go over them again, absolutely Dear brother, absolutely Dear brother.
Patrick Kennedy:We know that it begins this section with this challenging word wives, chapter 5, verse 22,. Wives submit to your own husbands as to the Lord. So just as you submit to Christ, use that same energy in you in your relationship to your husband. And then comes where we start to get into the difficulties even more.
Patrick Kennedy:For the husband is the head of the wife. So it's a picture of a single body. You're a single human. So there he's picking that up. The two of you, enjo, joining to marry, to marry one another, are becoming one flesh. That means you're actually now imaging god, you're in that dynamic, but who's what part? And he's saying man is the head and woman is the body. And then he's going to really quickly add but pay attention, even as Christ is the head of the church. So once again, all of the men are the brides, the woman relative to Christ. So their practice of submitting to Christ is an Eve work in them. So they should know that muscle deeply too. What does that do Then? When they look at their bride, they're looking at an image of themselves.
Jonah Evans:As ones that submit to christ yes yeah, do you see?
Patrick Kennedy:I mean his, his depth work here is so profound.
Jonah Evans:But you do have to listen carefully yeah, you have to take it to heart too, like you can't just be an abstraction. It has to actually. Oh, wait a minute, I'm I'm experiencing that and now I'm looking at that. Yeah.
Patrick Kennedy:One of my favorite things that my friend said to me recently was like gosh, I would never want to be in any kind of situation like this unless I knew my husband was submitted to Christ. That was such an interesting thing that erupted out of her soul Like this has such danger in it if it's falsely understood. Totally.
Jonah Evans:So you have to read every word and every word matters. Treacherous territory.
Patrick Kennedy:But we're not done. Hang in with us people. If you've already left, I understand, but I think there's still much more to go Okay. Even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its soter savior. So there's a salvific. This is not just marriage advice, it's just not. It's just not. It's the biggest thing available for him to talk about. This is salvific.
Jonah Evans:Yeah, and we know that there's such a thing as a Savior complex? Yes, there is. So here's another danger.
Patrick Kennedy:And who wants to be a damsel in distress?
Jonah Evans:And there's some total false images over there so it can be twisted so readily and easily. And many people know, and Savior Complex isn't limited to the male. Oh, no, no, no Right.
Patrick Kennedy:So these things are massively challenging, yeah all kinds of putting ourselves into the position of Savior when it's not our job.
Jonah Evans:Exactly.
Patrick Kennedy:Has bad consequences. Yeah, so we just have to hang in with him here for a second, because I want to get to the husband piece, because that's where his christology goes. You know, this really goes off now. As the church submits to christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands. Again, we've talked about it. At the beginning it's like, oh, the husband's like, yay, phew, finally Paul's telling them they need to submit to us, and then he turns to them and says, listen up, listen up, husbands. Okay, yes, what do we do? Love your wives. I almost can't even read this. I'll start to cry. It's just, I don't, it's too big. Okay, I'll try, I'll try.
Patrick Kennedy:Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish and without blemish. In the same way, husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself, for no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body. And then he quotes Genesis again. Therefore, a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. This mystery is profound, and I'm saying that it refers to Christ and the church. How do you understand this description of salvation? The church is the bride, the blood that cleanses. How do you understand that, jonah, and can you lead us into how that has anything to do with being a husband? Okay, yeah, so take your time.
Jonah Evans:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, it's deeply moving. So take your time. Yeah, yeah, well, it's deeply moving.
Jonah Evans:I also find, if I just feel into and live into this first sentence, husbands love your wives as Christ loved the church. And how did he do that? He gave himself up for her. So for me to start with, it's just to really meditate on what that giving yourself up for gesture is. Is, I mean, in a way you could say, christ let go of all, if he even had any personal longings, which is a complicated thing in itself but he let go of all desire longing for anything that he would personally receive in return, and he fully subjected himself to a kind of cathartic offering of his thinking, feeling willing, and even his body to the cross to be literally killed so that humanity could have a new hope, a new life, a new self. So this letting go of everything that I would get in return personally and doing something that is good and true and selfless for the other, fully for the other, without any expectation of return, that's what that little part starts to speak to me.
Patrick Kennedy:Yeah, that Greek word is so beautiful there paradidomi or didomi. To give or hand over to another, to commit, to commend, to give or deliver a full gifting of himself for her, full gifting.
Jonah Evans:Of himself for her. So that, then, is quite challenging if I think about. Well, what does that really mean in my life as a husband? Because most of the time, if I'm honest about my motives for what I'm doing in my marriage and even in my parenting, but in this sense I would actually connect my children with my wife in a way. They're kind of, in a way, a symbiotic whole, even though my real concern is my wife. My wife's real concern is my children. My real concern is actually my wife, but because her concern is our children primarily, that becomes my concern too if I'm really offering myself. So if I look at my, often what I find in my motivation is that I'm trying to figure out how to get my needs met.
Patrick Kennedy:So you have a wife, so you, so she can give herself for you.
Jonah Evans:That's right. So most of the time, if I'm honest, I'm kind of thinking how do I get my own needs met so that I can live? What is my wife going to do for me? How do I get my bodily needs met? How do I get my bodily needs met? How do I get my soul needs met? How do I get it so that there's peace in my family life, so that I can do what I want to do? That's basically the default mode of my husband being I think the word default is really key.
Patrick Kennedy:So you're trying to characterize what just comes of its own, just shows up. No work needed, no work needed Just there as the default. What can you do for?
Jonah Evans:me yeah, yeah.
Patrick Kennedy:So sometimes our colleagues, also female colleagues, say to me I need a wife, I had the same thought and I just want to say all of our relationships are very different, but I remember a single colleague saying to me well, I mean, you've got a wife at home making your work possible. I need a wife Like they're this thing that does these things for you. And I remember looking around at my being going where is this thing? This person is talking about? Whatever they think I have, I don't have.
Jonah Evans:I'm not saying. I get nothing.
Patrick Kennedy:I'm just saying that construct, like the personal assistant, I don't have one and I was, like I remember just being horrifyingly shocked but also super confused. Like do I have this thing that's like I don't know, like it's like a zoomer or boomer I don't know what's the word Like one of these, like it's a vacuum cleaning?
Jonah Evans:washing machine making food. It's like this thing.
Patrick Kennedy:It's like the robot beings that people are going to have. They're going to have these versions in their homes pretty soon, yeah, so.
Jonah Evans:Well, and I and some people have them and I do right. So everyone's is slightly different. My wife happens to be incredibly capable, strong, and has a kind of natural selflessness that she takes care of a bunch of stuff.
Patrick Kennedy:That you don't have to do that. I don't have to do that, I don't have to do.
Jonah Evans:And yet, even still, my default mode is most of the time how do I get more, how do I have more peace? How do I have more of my needs met? How do I get my kids to be in line with what I'm expecting of them? This is kind of default. And then there's also complexities in that that have to do with like, how are they seeing me, how are they honoring me, how are they respecting me, and those things also play into it.
Jonah Evans:So there was an experience the other night which I think will illustrate also part of this work of the husband, where we were sitting at the dinner table and my daughter, my eldest daughter, turns to my wife and says Mom, I want to do this and this and this with my boyfriend and da-da-da-da-da, and this is going to happen there and this is going to happen there. And she's looking right at my wife and all of a sudden there rises in me a kind of anger, of feeling disrespected and thinking why is she just asking her? I should be, you should also ask the father. And starting to feel more and more irritated and thinking I'm going to say something.
Jonah Evans:Re-establish order. Re-establish my authority. Gosh darn it.
Jonah Evans:I decided to in that moment, decided to die to my need or my needs to be respected and give myself to a process to honor also my wife, trust my wife that she would hold this, and I knew that my anger and my small self-need was not going to be helpful. So, giving myself to the process and thinking there will be a point where trusting, there will be a point where I am needed, and this is what's needed right now, this letting go of my small self and dying into it. And then, at a certain point, after I did that overcoming work it was about 10 minutes later my wife said well, that's interesting, I hear you. What do you say, Jonah? So I then had the experience. I overcame my own egotism. I gave myself fully in trust to honoring the choice that my daughter made to direct herself to the mother. And then, in that full surrender, that self-giving, my wife had the feeling I need to turn to something also and ask. And then when I spoke a word, it had a different quality. Yeah, totally, it had a different quality.
Patrick Kennedy:Yeah, it's beautiful.
Jonah Evans:So I guess that just comes up for me as just a small example of what I'm starting to understand in this overcoming my desire to make it about me to get my needs met, to somehow die to that and allow the truth of what is needed to arise, truth of what is needed to arise.
Patrick Kennedy:It's a really beautiful story, Jonah, and such a simple version, but such a strong version and the word that comes after this. So you or let me just say that this way, the dark, dark shadow of the wives submit to your husbands is husbands, be as you already are. Yeah. And now you get someone who is submissive to you. Yeah, that's a horrifying image.
Jonah Evans:Oh, that's the worst. Yeah.
Patrick Kennedy:And the dark version of what headship means, and and that's this phrasing in the christian church yeah, because the turn then to the husband is to say to be a husband in this dynamic where you also have a power, imbalance physically physically yeah, you have a power and balance. Power and balance often in the voice, yeah, so that's very interesting. Your voice is deeper, stronger louder, stronger.
Jonah Evans:It's more scary if you get angry.
Patrick Kennedy:Yeah no question, there's no question. Oh my gosh, difference between my dad and my mom. Oh my goodness. Oh, I was tough, independent, super smart, like a super capable person. But if she said don't make me get your father, I was like oh, I better shape up now. Yeah, because it's a different level. It's a different level, it's of power, like actual earth power.
Patrick Kennedy:Yeah, don't make me get your father, yeah and then I was like oh, right now I'm you, and it's not sexism, that's just facts. There's a different power, an actual difference in power, so there's a difference in responsibility. So his then statement to say to be someone who's in that power imbalance, you're going to need a Christed self, not the one you've come with.
Jonah Evans:Exactly, and I think that's the key. It turns out, then, that in as much as I'm able to overcome my small self, my default mode of constantly trying to make it so that my needs are met, that turns out to be a massively challenging work that I'm managing only partially in moments. And then, if I can die to that, those selfish, more self-concerned parts of me, then I find that my word has much more objective truth to it. My word then blesses the situation and strengthens my wife and blesses my wife's. Her more natural default mode is actually more connected to a selfless um what does?
Jonah Evans:everybody need. What does everybody need? And there's other dangers that are involved with that. Yeah, that my wife struggles with, yeah, but but my work is to overcome my selfishness again and again, and again yeah, so that.
Patrick Kennedy:So then we have a picture of in a power imbalance, what can heal the person who's in power?
Jonah Evans:Exactly the person who has a kind of tyrannical power imbalance that could be active, but also has a massive temptation Because I left out one other temptation in this story when I started to feel the disrespect and the dismissal of my Right, like you're just not even at the table. Like I don't even exist. The massive temptation was for me to just get up and leave.
Patrick Kennedy:Right Check out. Yeah, oh fine, you guys run this household.
Jonah Evans:I'm going to go read my books in my room.
Patrick Kennedy:So either dominance was the first temptation or check out. What would we call that Like disassociate? You're just going to check out. What would we call that Like disassociate? You're just going to check out.
Jonah Evans:And I see this often in family dynamics Either the father is a tyrant or he's checked out. These are the extremes, but I think this is actually fundamental as temptations that are. Then, if we're to be like Christ and giving our the head is asked authentically, having overcome your inner impulses to be respected and to not check out. That's what I find as at least one way of entering this mystery. Yeah, and I really can relate to when it says give himself up for her, that he might sanctify her. You can also read that in a kind of patronizing like I'm going to make you holy.
Jonah Evans:I'm your savior, I'm your savior. But when I do overcome my selfishnesses and actually stay present with what's needed, that my wife tends to already be connected into, that my wife tends to already be connected into, it seems to give her strength and a feeling of goodness and a feeling of wholeness that I would link with the word blessing and consecrating. Yeah, but I get nothing personal from it. I just get the feeling, the perception this other is feeling, rightly met, rightly placed.
Patrick Kennedy:And it has these results that actually are a blessing for the whole, for the whole.
Jonah Evans:But my personal needs are not necessarily.
Patrick Kennedy:Those things you were starting with. Yeah, exactly, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's a beautiful example, example, and I think this is where you know I I want to also from myself say this was written 2000 years ago and I can't fully see it the same way anymore. I don't think he's doing something here that is eternal for human relationships in all of their dynamics. I think he's doing something here that's eternal for our God relationships and our church relationships and it has dynamics.
Patrick Kennedy:But, for example, the head, the head image. Who is the head in the marriage? Does that mean the one who just makes all the decisions? That used to be what it meant. It really used to be, and that's what these men felt threatened by, I think, when this letter was written, because it was this patriarchal order, the single household. I'm the head, you're the soul. I'm the boss, you feel things and you take care of the household. I do things in the world and I see how things run and.
Patrick Kennedy:I see where you can go and all that stuff. Yeah.
Jonah Evans:And I would say I think that's wrong, yeah, so I just want to say like Well, that's not how it works in my household at all, but this is so new and people don't realize how new in world history this is.
Patrick Kennedy:It's not like. Why didn't women's liberation happen 1,500 years ago? Why is it that the women only got the vote in the 20th century? Yeah, yeah. That should blow our minds. Yeah, there have been incredible women through history, but they were never seeking something that women now are. And this is because this third thing you, Jonah Evans, are not a man. You are embodied in a male body.
Jonah Evans:Right, probably last time I was a woman and you have an eternal spirit that goes through multiple incarnations.
Patrick Kennedy:And because of the one-sidedness of your maleness this time, I guarantee you, I already can predict it you will be a woman next time Woo-hoo and this what's happening, I think, in our age, in the last 200 years, is people are experiencing their identity not so much in the reflection from their body, which tells me I'm a man or a woman or something slightly in between, but actually I'm something other than that. I'm more universal than that. I'm a human, and the human is male, female, it can go this way or that way, and so that is why we get these new beautiful problems like women who want to be mothers and have children, but also want to have a career in the outer world and also want to do sport, and also they feel in their being, in their destiny, called to do these things, and it's good.
Jonah Evans:Yeah, and we also have this incredible problem of humans feeling actually my identity is both I think I'm in the wrong body, or that it feels totally off because it doesn't reflect back to me my whole self, and they're correct.
Patrick Kennedy:Right. No human actually is fully reflected in the one-sidedness of our embodied nature. Right.
Jonah Evans:And so this also points to the fact that the one guiding us, the one we're trying to imitate, christ Jesus in his risen form. There was a period of time where he was embodied in a male body, but in his risen form and in his presence in our lives now, lives now as walking in the spirit before us is not a man.
Patrick Kennedy:Not like I'm a man.
Jonah Evans:But man-woman.
Patrick Kennedy:Yeah, the whole human, the whole human, the restored image.
Jonah Evans:So it makes sense that at some point we would start to awaken to the feeling that the true human being is a unification of these two.
Patrick Kennedy:So then it's like how we make decisions then in my marriage, for example, I would never come sit down at the table and think I make them. I'm the boss, I'm interested in what you have to say, yeah, I'm going to love you as Christ loved me, but I make the decisions. Right.
Patrick Kennedy:I see in you the Lord and he's my Lord, so I'm not going to tell him I can't. I have, I am submitting also to you. And he noticed he does not say husbands also submit to your wives. He said that above because all Christians submit to each other. But he's working, I think, to try to heal this terrible tyranny in the men, the actual expression of the sickness of sin in the household. That's why all these lines about you need to become Christ-like. Yeah.
Jonah Evans:You need to overcome your inner tyrant. I think, if we really understand this, this is not a boss. This is just like Christ didn't boss people around.
Patrick Kennedy:Still doesn't.
Jonah Evans:And also, if you think about it from another perspective, who just leads their life from the head.
Patrick Kennedy:Excellent. No, seriously, seriously.
Jonah Evans:Like, if you want to go and you want to make all your decisions based on your brain, you're gonna have a pretty shitty life.
Patrick Kennedy:Well, you're definitely just not gonna do it. Nobody's doing it, so it's like wait a minute.
Jonah Evans:The head is actually in the experience that I told. In the experience that I told the head is actually the last piece. It's like checking in with the head. Does this also have a relationship with your mind and your brain? But the power source in my experience was my wife. She was the one directing things. She's the one that then rightfully came and said well, let me check in with this. Not that my word was the end-all be-all, but I was much more of an element in the decision-making as opposed to the one who has to gets to do make all the decisions.
Jonah Evans:By the way, that's also my experience of being a lanker right it's not as if I'm the big, if if I start going into the big boss mode, things start to get really sideways right, but it doesn't have right, so I I hope I was never suggesting that that's what you were doing.
Patrick Kennedy:Oh no, no, I didn't. I didn't experience that I'm just.
Jonah Evans:I'm just riffing off some of the the um pictures that you're, but it's just. It's also interesting to think about the head being not the one that makes all the decisions. If it it is, it's not a healthy life.
Patrick Kennedy:Right, but I think it means, if I understand it here in this passage, it does mean the identity and authority of what makes this a, for example, a Christian community is Christ and not the bride.
Jonah Evans:Right.
Patrick Kennedy:From him comes our identity and a commandment like task. Love one, another Love one another Right, as I have loved you and as I don't tell him Right, yeah, this is what you do, jesus, exactly.
Jonah Evans:Because it comes though out of a fully selfless self-giving place. That's it. And again, whenever I've spoken a word to my wife or in the family, that is fully selfless and really for the best interest of the whole. It has authority. It has a power whole. It has a authority, it has a power. But as soon as my, as soon as they sense anything that's self-serving, all of a sudden it loses that blessing quality. Yeah, it loses that that's it.
Patrick Kennedy:And so then, as we know, also in our wedding sacrament and um, there's a way in which, in each, so that if you imagine these spiritual individualities who've embodied themselves in this male-female one-sidedness and then choose to come together to make this whole human, to pull that off in a christened way, each of them are going to be needing to be in a unique relationship with the head, and the authority they will be following actually is Christ always, and their own self-overcoming activity that is Easter in them, their own dying to themselves and overcoming their tendencies, their defaults in sacrificial love is what's going to make this new human being possible. Amen. And that might, because of our embodiment differences, might look a little different what we need to work on, but the activity and the orientation is actually wholly of the same pattern.
Jonah Evans:Right, because what am I doing when I let go of those temptations and give myself over? I'm trying to be guided by Christ. That's it. It's not me, it's my relationship with Christ.
Patrick Kennedy:And your love for her and my love for her, those two things, which is almost the same thing, yeah, right.
Jonah Evans:Because in her I also see my love for her. Those two things, which is almost the same thing. Yeah, right, Because in her I also see my Lord. Yes, Anyway, these are deep, profound mysteries.
Patrick Kennedy:Well, thanks for your willingness to lead us into a detail in your story, for your honesty and confession.
Patrick Kennedy:It's beautiful. Thank you, Patrick. © BF-WATCH TV 2021 ¶¶. © transcript Emily Beynon.