Let's Talk About: Meditation

Can meditation heal spiritual wounds? In this episode of Freestyle Theology, Brad and Brielle unpack their journeys with depression, anxiety, meditation, and spiritual growth. They explore how mindfulness, breathwork, and even sung Scripture can help Christians reconnect with their bodies and cultivate a gentler, richer spiritual rhythm, all while healing from religious trauma. 

Whether you’re in therapy, deconstructing, or simply craving a more authentic connection with God, this conversation will invite you to explore meditation as a practice that bridges faith and nervous system healing—without the baggage of fear-based theology.

We also share how meditation helped us rediscover the beauty of prayer, embrace embodied spirituality, and let go of religious perfectionism. Plus, a hint about a resource we've created to help you bring calm, clarity, and connection back into your spiritual life.

Tune in and discover a different kind of Christian practice.

Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:00

Hey, welcome to a new episode of Freestyle Theology. Today I am with a special person, my special person. I'm here with Brielle Goheen, my wife, my I just asked her how I should introduce her and she gave me a long list of acclamations. But there are some. She's a musical genius. She's a get your shit together guru. She's all kinds of things. And as she told me, she's taught me everything I know. So we're here together. So

SPEAKER_00 0:44

if you've liked Brad's content, you have me to thank for it. I'm just joking.

SPEAKER_03 0:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 0:49

Not at all.

SPEAKER_03 0:50

No, there is a lot we've learned together.

SPEAKER_00 0:52

There's a lot we've learned together.

SPEAKER_03 0:54

No jokes about that. But there's so much that we talk about every single day. I kind of think we should probably just have a mic on when we're talking because there's some really good stuff every day. So what I wanted to do was talk with you again. And something that has been really important for both of us Something that has really transformed life for us both in a lot of ways is the practice of meditation. And we've been, it's been a couple years now that we have been talking about meditation. So I thought it might be a good idea to kind of check in again and see what new things you might have learned or be thinking about when it comes to meditation. Same for me. And so that's what I want to talk about today is meditation and all the things that go along with that. So what has meditation been for you in the last couple of years? What is it to you and what have you learned about it?

SPEAKER_00 2:07

Meditation, I think, is my most important spiritual practice. It's changed my whole life. Like there's no aspect of my life that hasn't been touched and changed from this practice of meditation. I honestly don't know where I would be right now without it because it's changed me so much. And I think it's changed me to an extent that some people find it very uncomfortable because I'm no longer the person that offers to other people the things that I used to offer to them because I've learned a lot about my boundaries and I've learned a lot about places where I was self-abandoning and places where I was just kind of going with the flow of life instead of being really intentional about which currents I was going to allow myself to be shaped by and led by.

SPEAKER_03 3:12

What was... What kind of things did you used to give to people? Like who was the person, like who did you used to be for people before you discovered meditation?

SPEAKER_00 3:24

I think I used to be annoyingly agreeable. I would just kind of see myself as the person who could support other people, the helper. I think that's something that's like really, really typical among Christian women, right? You know, the Enneagram. Somebody said to me a couple years ago, whenever they hear a Christian woman define herself as an Enneagram 2, which is the helper, that they're immediately suspicious. Not that there are no Enneagram 2s who are Christian women. Like, there are, you know, same proportion in Christian women as any other population. But... Christian women have been so socialized into being the helper that there's many people who are actually supposed to thrive in other spaces, in other roles. They have other strengths to give. And they end up trying to bend themselves and fit themselves into this role of helper. And so much so that it becomes a self-identity. And when asked, they call themselves an Enneagram 2. And that's something that I don't think I ever thought that I was an Enneagram 2 because I always felt that internal struggle. But I definitely saw myself as a helper. But the thing was that I was never a very good helper because that's not really where I thrive. So I was trying to fit myself into certain molds and certain ways of being around other people that they didn't feel genuine about. to who I was, but they were who I wanted to be because I wanted to be good. But especially in the musician community, which I'm a musician, people called bullshit on that all the time. People could tell that the way that I was being and bringing myself to situations just wasn't 100% genuine. Not because I wasn't trying to be genuine. I was trying to be genuine, but I just didn't know myself yet. And I think that's what meditation really has helped me to do is discover who it is that I am, who it is that I truly am.

SPEAKER_03 5:37

You said... You used two different words. You said that you thought you were being authentic, right? But you said that you were trying to be good.

SPEAKER_02 5:47

And

SPEAKER_03 5:47

those are very different.

SPEAKER_02 5:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 5:49

Like good is a pretty gigantic category. It includes, well, everything good that exists. And so... yes, helping people is good, but so is creating something. So is standing up for what's right.

SPEAKER_02 6:09

Like

SPEAKER_03 6:10

all of those things are good. And I guess the real issue is when, when like a culture or a subculture, let's say a Christian subculture, its definitions of good are often very quite narrow, especially for women. Right. And so it's interesting that you're, you're You've been on this journey to discover who you really are. And in a lot of ways, that is the same journey as discovering how to be good, which is to be like God, right? And so it's just these things often get – in Christian culture, we're very uncomfortable with the whole be yourself, know yourself, and all that kind of talk because there's this latent fear that that means you're going to somehow reject God. But it's probably more likely the fear is that you're going to reject God the traditional authority structures in place.

SPEAKER_00 7:04

Yeah, that definitely rings true. Because I think that when I think back on the person that I was, let's say five years ago, because five years ago was around when I started meditating in 2020 in the pandemic times. That was when I discovered meditation. So if I look back on where I was five, six years ago, What I see is a very lopsided version of me, almost like a grotesque version of my true self. So it wasn't that I was not being authentic. It wasn't that I was being fake with people. Everything that I was allowing out of myself was truly genuine, but what made it feel wrong to myself and to other people was just the fact that there was so much I was not letting out and so many areas that I wasn't letting people in as well. It's this guardedness, only letting out the things that I perceived to be good. So I never got angry with people because it was not good to be angry. And I've really discovered how good it is truly to be angry and to let your anger out. So I feel like a much more well-rounded, fleshed-out version of who I am, that I'm actually able to show all the sides of who I am with people, which I think allows freedom for other people as well to show all sides of who they are. It's better for relationships all around.

SPEAKER_03 8:54

That makes a lot more sense. It's not this simple kind of black and white binary of like you weren't being yourself and now you are being yourself. It's kind of like how much of who you are is being shown to the world. And then if you're in a certain, again, subcultural context that really praises certain aspects of a person's personality for women like they're willingness to help and sacrifice, then that gets overblown. That gets, what's the word I'm looking for?

SPEAKER_00 9:31

It's like, yeah, yeah, yeah. I know what you mean. It's like, it's like it gets like expanded, but at the expense of something else that shrinks.

SPEAKER_03 9:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 9:39

So you end up with like these like strange, grotesque proportions.

SPEAKER_03 9:42

You know, weirdly, the word that kind of is right at this moment coming to mind is it's idolizing. It idolizes a certain aspect and it puts it on a pedestal, which is what you do with an idol. And it makes it more, it makes it seem more sacred, more important than it is.

SPEAKER_00 10:00

Oh, that is so good.

SPEAKER_03 10:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 10:02

That's so good. It's like idolizing the things that are quote unquote acceptable or quote unquote good or yeah, the things that society wants from you or your culture, subculture wants from you. And it becomes an idolization of those things. manifested in your own life. So really good way of putting it.

SPEAKER_03 10:22

So prior to discovering meditation, and we will talk about why that had the impact it had. But prior to discovering meditation, you seemed to have discovered that acting in a cheerful, happy way that didn't make other people ever feel confronted or uncomfortable was you had learned at some young age, I'm assuming that that made the group feel happy?

SPEAKER_00 10:50

I remember being, on my fifth birthday, I got a card from a university student who was a friend of our family. We used to have university students over because my dad was a professor. And this university student who I saw him as just being the kindest, the most wonderful person I knew, wrote on my fifth birthday card, I can still picture it, it was a puppy and a blue balloon, And he wrote on the blue balloon, he wrote, never stop smiling. You have the best smile in the world. And I would pull that out of my little box of special things. And I would look at it probably at least once a month. I would look at that and I would read that little note. And I would be like, that's what I need to do is never stop smiling. So it's like there was this beautiful, beautiful encouragement. There's nothing wrong with that. But I kind of saw that's something that people value. Okay, I will never stop smiling. And I didn't. And that became like a huge part of my identity.

SPEAKER_03 11:52

Yeah, and that's what people knew you as, right?

SPEAKER_00 11:55

And they don't anymore, which I find that so interesting.

SPEAKER_03 12:00

So walk me through this sort of experience then. How did the practice of meditation... First, maybe describe like what was your practice of meditation before? Initially, like what, what got you into it? And how did that have this impact of, first of all, kind of rediscovering these other good parts of you? And then allow feeling empowered to allow them to come out more? How did meditation serve that goal?

SPEAKER_00 12:35

Yeah, I wouldn't say that that was the goal when I was first starting to meditate. I can't remember if we've ever talked about this before on the podcast, but I'm sure we've talked about many aspects of it before, but I was deeply unhappy. I was very, very depressed. There was a lot of external circumstances that are so many things in life that stacked up on each other that you could point to and say, that's why I was depressed. Your sickness, Having a child and experiencing antenatal depression. And then postpartum depression afterward.

SPEAKER_03 13:13

While I was

SPEAKER_00 13:14

sick. While you were sick. An extremely stressful situation working at a church that was not treating me right. All of those things kind of converged and led to me feeling really, really depressed. And so I was deeply, deeply unhappy. And it was getting to the point that it was... causing a lot of problems in life and making it really hard for me to function and I had these two little girls and you were sick and I had to I had to be able to function and so I ended up going to the doctor and the doctor told me that I needed to take medication for the acute symptoms and I also needed to look into meditation as like a longer-term way of managing my stress and my emotions and all of those things. So that was why I came to meditation for the first time. I thought it was really interesting that my medical doctor mentioned meditation. I never would have thought that. And just because of the things that you hear in Christian culture, I was also very suspicious of meditation. I thought meditation is some kind of Eastern religious thing. And so I was nervous of

SPEAKER_03 14:24

it. You were a lot less open to it. back then.

SPEAKER_00 14:28

Of course, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 14:28

To the richness, the riches out there of different spiritualities and stuff.

SPEAKER_00 14:36

Yeah. I hadn't yet started that journey of really questioning things.

SPEAKER_03 14:42

Yeah. So you were suspicious initially of meditation. It's almost hard for me to remember a time when you would have been like that.

SPEAKER_02 14:50

Me too.

SPEAKER_03 14:51

Right? But yeah, you're suspicious, but you sort of Start to dip your toes in it.

SPEAKER_00 14:57

And I would say less suspicious and more nervous if I was to describe the feeling. I was more nervous because I think that I did know that it could help, but I was nervous of like, well, what else will it do? If I like open that door, what else is behind that door? Maybe there's a solution to this problem, but maybe it's going to cause more problems.

SPEAKER_03 15:16

And I mean, for me, one of the voices in my head was there's a lot of – A lot of these like answers, quote unquote answers that come within evangelical culture to different like cultural questions. And often they're not very well thought out. So I can remember being a teenager and hearing like, here's why meditation is bad. And they would be thinking more in the Buddhist way, I think. Again, operating with purely with stereotypes. No real knowledge of what is actually happening. But it's like, I remember... youth leaders and different books that make these weird connections. Like meditation is about clearing your mind. If you clear your mind, it's going to fill with like, you're inviting dark, like you're inviting demonic powers in or something like that. And then maybe try to connect that in a strange, weird way with what Jesus talks about, about like expelling a demon and then it being cleaned and then coming in and seven more. And then, you know, you're like, is that, what are we talking about? Are we just like, making crazy stuff up because it's an eastern practice that makes us uncomfortable because that's what it really feels like it feels like a prejudice based on ignorance and then you give it some answer that sounds wise when what it really does is just inculcates some more fear

SPEAKER_00 16:38

yeah i definitely heard that argument too that you have to be careful because Yeah, what are you going to allow room for? What are you going to give space to? Assuming that the thing that's going to flood in is evil.

SPEAKER_03 16:50

Yeah, and it's not like that argument ever applied to you need to clean your room.

SPEAKER_00 16:55

Yeah, you can't clean your room because you have no idea what kind of dirt is going to just sweep in there and cover your room.

SPEAKER_03 17:03

Or just as crazy as to say you want to be careful about cleaning your room because if you get your room organized, your mind will be more clear. And so a demon could come in, right? Like it's just as, it actually makes just as little sense as that.

SPEAKER_00 17:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 17:17

Yeah. So that's an aside, but.

SPEAKER_00 17:20

Or don't clean, don't clean under your bed. Cause then monsters could go fill that space.

SPEAKER_03 17:24

Right. Exactly. But that is what happens.

SPEAKER_00 17:27

Oh yeah. Sorry. That's what we teach our kids.

SPEAKER_03 17:30

Okay. So you start dipping your toes into meditation because you need to, you're like health and life depends on it.

SPEAKER_00 17:39

Yeah. Yeah. So, um, Naturally, the first thing that I did was I went to Christian prayer resources. There's a really rich tradition in Christianity of contemplative prayer. And so I tried, there's various sites where you could listen to a daily meditation, but it's not meditation in the sense that I would talk about it now. It's more of like a... a practice of silence, a practice of prayer. And so I tried all those different resources, and I just never found that I really, it didn't feel that it was going deep, and it definitely wasn't changing any of my symptoms. The medication did change my symptoms, but nothing that I was trying really felt like it was actually something that was changing my brain chemistry, except for the medication itself. which did help quite a bit. I wouldn't have been able to, I wouldn't be able to be where I am now without having taken that medication at the time as well.

SPEAKER_03 18:44

Sure. It raises the baseline. It gets you like, you know, imagine you're like, you have vertigo or something and you keep falling over. You need some kind of intervention to just at least get you to like stay on your feet before you can start to really address like what's going on here. How can I strengthen my, I don't know, brain health so that I don't know what vertigo even is. I don't

SPEAKER_00 19:08

really know. So maybe that's not the best example to use. Yeah, maybe not the

SPEAKER_03 19:11

best.

SPEAKER_00 19:11

But I think, yeah, I think the point still stands. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So the medication really helped. And I was trying all these different things. And I was listening to a podcast one day. It was just like a business podcast. And somebody mentioned this particular style of meditation that I ended up really growing to love. And it was not... Christian.

SPEAKER_03 19:35

This one is more like transcendental almost, right? It's more in that vein.

SPEAKER_00 19:39

Exactly. And so I remember the first time I downloaded this podcast and it was a lying down meditation and I lay down and I just remember being so nervous and just praying my little heart out. Just praying so much that whatever this was, that God would protect me from it if it wasn't good. But that if it was good, that I would receive the benefits from it. But just praying, keep the devil away from this meditation. I was so nervous. It just seems really funny in retrospect, but I mention it because anybody that feels nervous around it, there's a reason why you feel nervous around it. The messaging that we get is so intense around meditation. Of course you're nervous about it.

SPEAKER_03 20:30

Because it's sort of being framed as an alternative spirituality.

SPEAKER_00 20:37

Exactly.

SPEAKER_03 20:37

And then especially within evangelical Protestantism or Reformed Protestantism, we think in terms of these competing religions, competing worldviews, which can easily lead to and does lead to stereotyping, right? And like oversimplification. And then like we look at other religions as competing systems and stories. But when you look at it in that competitive way, it becomes, I don't know, it's unhealthy. It becomes somewhat unhuman too.

SPEAKER_02 21:13

You

SPEAKER_03 21:15

don't see wisdom. You don't see God behind other traditions and things like that. You just see them as opponents, enemies to be defeated and avoided for their dangers, right? I'm so far from that now. I've found that to be so destructive to relationships that, yeah, that's a different topic.

SPEAKER_00 21:37

And it's not even just the obvious destruction. It's the subtle destruction, like the fact that I would hold myself back from a practice that is deeply healing and that I knew would help me. And yet I held myself back from it. So I lay down and I did this meditation and just got completely lost in the beauty of this meditation. I felt so connected to the divine and so loved and so held. And When I sat up, it's really hard to describe, but I knew that my brain was different when I sat up. Like I could feel that it was different and it was working differently. And maybe it was my experience with medication and feeling the difference that that made, that my brain was suddenly able to think differently. And I sat up and I just knew it was changed. And I also, because of being a musician, I had a sense that it had something to do with music. And mind you, I'd never researched any of this before. I had no idea about what I'm about to talk about at all. I just knew that I was hearing something happening in the sound of the music that felt like it was like massaging my brain. It's the only way I can describe it. It felt like it was massaging my brain. And so I looked up the meditation. I looked up the track and the composer of the track. that was underneath the meditation. And I discovered that they were using binaural beats. And binaural beats, it's a form of bilateral stimulation. So there's a lot of bilateral stimulation that's used in a lot of healing practices like EMDR, where you stimulate both sides of the brain. And that helps to produce healing effects. So what I was hearing in the music was actually, or what I was feeling actually had a basis in what they were, like the intention that they had when they created the music. So I just knew that there was something to this, just from having felt it and having heard it and experienced the power of it. And so I started doing it every day and like nothing could keep me from doing it every day because it was like, when you try to find an exercise that you like, right? If you are not a fan of running, you're never going to want to run every day. But if you love dancing, then nothing can keep you from that dance class because it just feels so good to go. It feels so good to be there. And that's what this felt like for me. It felt like discovering something that was good for me and my whole body needed it.

SPEAKER_03 24:27

No, I mean, I remember those early days and the profound experiences you would be having regularly and it would it would you know sometimes it was more the the rhythm and of the practice of doing it sometimes yeah you would i remember you would talk about this like it's like my brain's being massaged i'm feeling different and sometimes it would be a particular message within the meditation that just would be so simple but was kind of not how you had ever You'd never heard these messages in your spirituality before.

SPEAKER_00 25:04

Yeah. There's one funny story that comes to mind. This is not the most profound, but I think it's really funny. There was one time when I was meditating and I was hemming and hawing about, I don't even remember what the problem was, but it was some huge problem in my life that I was having trouble taking action one way or another. And I was like, do I do it this way or do I do it this way? And it was like, as it is when you start becoming obsessed with the problem, it's like the exact same thing. It's just like the tiniest difference between the two options. And I was getting myself into quite a state about it. And I was meditating and trying to let go of it, but also kind of praying through the meditation, because often I would receive a lot of guidance, like defined guidance as I was meditating. And so I was just in this state, not being able to really let go of this problem. And suddenly, in my mind's eye, in the black, must have been like a grid of like 100 Nike swooshes showed up and just flashed and then left. And of course, the Nike slogan is just do it. And I know that slogan very well. And I really like the Nike brand. So that was amazing. So funny, so funny to me. And I just like immediately like released into laughter that this isn't so serious. Just do it. Just get on with it. Just do it. Let it go. Let's see what happens. You know, like don't hold on to all this stuff so tightly. Just do it. And so I think the way that you put it afterwards, you were like, oh, God talked through corporate logos. That's funny.

SPEAKER_03 26:43

Yeah. It's a very, very beautiful vision.

SPEAKER_00 26:49

But then there were also more kind of serious and like really meaningful moments in meditation. Like at the end of this meditation, as it was wrapping up, it was like, you know, put your hand over your heart and take a breath and give thanks for your beautiful self, right? And that for me, you know, I heard it probably a couple hundred times by the time that this particular moment happened where I heard that. And it was just a complete release where I realized that I can be my own friend, which is something that I still struggle with. But in that moment, it was quite a release that I could be my own friend. And I could just be there in meditation, in this like kind of communion with yourself and the divine. And you can just... accept that you are loved and you can just love yourself and that that's okay. And, you know, it's not like a one and done kind of thing. It's not like I love myself now unconditionally, like you know better than anybody that I don't. But it's a step along, a step along a journey. And that was a really powerful one because I would say at that time I hated myself, you know. And so realizing that I could be a friend to myself was like just a mind-blowing revelation.

SPEAKER_03 28:06

Give thanks for your beautiful self. It's such a simple message that could easily just kind of go right over your head. But I actually really do remember that day, how deeply profound that was for you and how healing too. Because sometimes healing is like, sometimes it's more like physio rehab, like that slow, painful, getting up and trying again, right? And sometimes healing is more like a not healing. being massaged out and that moment where it just kind of

SPEAKER_02 28:38

melts,

SPEAKER_03 28:40

right? There's release and then there's also kind of building up strength and they both are essential. But I remember there would just be some, so the practice of meditating, like, you know, waking up at seven or whatever and doing it right when you wake up, that's more like the physio. That's more like stretching, exercising, which over time reaps strength. compound benefits. But then there's also the kind that's like, not immediate, but requires like targeted pressure that then causes some reaction to occur that changes everything,

SPEAKER_00 29:17

right? Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 29:19

So just, I'm actually just interested when you use the word meditation and you use the word prayer, what is different? What's operating differently there?

SPEAKER_00 29:31

I actually think that meditation and prayer are are very, very similar. And in my life, I actually think they're the same thing. But at the beginning, they were very different because I didn't understand prayer. I think I thought that prayer had to do with, I think we may have talked about this before, but being some kind of incantation, that you say the right thing, you say the right words in the right way, and then that puts pressure on God to do something. Right? To bend the world to your will.

SPEAKER_03 30:04

And it can even just be, it can, you know, there's an easy response to that being like, no, it's not just saying the right things. You have to have the right heart.

SPEAKER_02 30:12

But

SPEAKER_03 30:12

then the right heart can become the new incantation.

SPEAKER_02 30:16

Like the

SPEAKER_03 30:16

right attitude. Right? Have this honest, contrite attitude. And then that can eventually change. act the same way as incantation.

SPEAKER_00 30:27

Yeah. And I know also people say, well, it's not about bending God's will to your will. It's about you bending your will to God's will. That's something that people say as well, which I don't think that's necessarily untrue. But I wouldn't say that most people, if you're being really honest, most people aren't sitting down in prayer to be changed. You're sitting down in prayer to change. Right? To change other people or to change circumstances or situations. Or to get God to change them is what I mean. And I'm just struggling with how to say this. Because it's all very close. And so I'm trying to figure out what it is that is the heart of what's different. I think the heart of it is that what I knew of prayer was that you sit down with an agenda. Whether that agenda is to be changed or to change God or whatever. You sit down with an agenda. And You have to work through your agenda with God for your little meeting. And what I learned and what I would say is the difference between prayer in the way that I knew it then and meditation and prayer in the way that I know it now is that part of the act of meditation is just being quiet and taking the time to just observe what exists. Because we don't even know what exists within our own hearts. We don't even know. We're so good at fooling ourselves all day, every day. We think that we're doing things for these wonderful motives. And really, sometimes when you get very present to a situation and present to a feeling, it's horrifying the motivations that you're actually motivated by instead of what you have cognitively rerouted all of these feelings and actions to be motivated by this very selfless, very good kind of thing. All that is to say that right now I would view meditation and prayer as just coming to the divine in silence to gain clearer vision of what is rather than the illusion of what you think it is.

SPEAKER_03 32:44

Wow. That's good. I think how I've operated... with them, even if I haven't really thought about it, to make it as simple as possible is prayer is directed communication outward, like at God, while meditation is a look inward. But what's interesting is that that sounds like a directionally opposite practice, but God is within. Like, you know how St. Augustine said that God is closer than our breath.

SPEAKER_02 33:17

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_03 33:18

which is a really powerful line, especially in light of what we're talking about. But we have this strange thing in Christianity, this tendency where it's like we almost want to push God away, far from us. We talk about how bad we are or something like that. It's like we're trying to be like, look, it's really important that you understand that God is far, very different from us. It's like we get angry about it. I'm just thinking of what I've received over the years. Like, you know, so much, so much unexamined anger at whenever someone would say something, even to the effect of like, well, God is in all things. And just like this really strong reactive anger immediately becoming like, you know, heresy hunters or something like that. When it's like, take a second and just examine why that makes you feel the way you feel. Interestingly, that actually sounds like meditation. Meditation is about examining the honest why, which is that that touches on what you're saying, where acknowledging what is, the real motivations behind things, rather than hiding behind some kind of noble sounding motivations.

SPEAKER_00 34:36

And the only way that you can actually have the strength to do that, because that is so unbelievably painful, to do, to actually begin to take an honest look at where your motivations for things are coming from and actually look at what is in your life, so painful. But the only way that you can actually have strength to do that is if you're held in unconditional love. And that's what this container of meditation is, is just this unconditional love that you are receiving from the divine, right? And through the divine, receiving yourself and giving to yourself as well, right? Like you said, God is closer than our breath. You know, the Holy Spirit in the Christian tradition lives inside of us. And it's so scary for people. That's why, like, you know, in Dutch Calvinist traditions, they never talk about the Holy Spirit. And when they do, it's very quick. It's very rushed. That's the tradition that I grew up in. It's very quick and rushed because... That's scary territory when you start talking about how the Holy Spirit is actually in us. And if God is in us, if God is active and alive in us, then we are being changed from the inside. And we are actually being changed. We're actually able to be guided by an inner guidance that is the divine or the Holy Spirit in us. And that's the kind of thing that like, so many Christians are distrustful of that kind of language because they're like, you know, you can't be guided by like your, you know, you can't be guided by your inner guidance because you need to be guided by the Bible, what the Bible says. But it's like, okay, so if you believe the Bible is divinely inspired by the Holy Spirit and that's the Holy Spirit that lives in you, then how much closer is that spirit, that guiding spirit to you as it's inside of you and as you're actually becoming very present to it.

SPEAKER_03 36:42

Maybe that's why the language of like, you know, this passage really resonates with me right now because that's like the spirit and the spirit kind of resonating. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 36:56

Right? Yes. Yeah, exactly. It's not that you aren't being guided by scripture, right? But it's just that that is, it's like deep crying to deep, right? Like the deepest parts of you, the Holy Spirit is there wanting to communicate with you all the time. If you just listen, it is. That conversation is always happening within us. And you get present to it. And sometimes when you're interacting with like a holy text or a text that is holy, that you believe is holy, then it's like something within that is interacting with the conversation that you are having internally between you and the Spirit.

SPEAKER_03 37:36

Yeah, so... Your experience with meditation, just as an easy shorthand, seems to be more transcendental. Like you used the phrase, you had lost yourself in the music. You're encountering God or the divine. And my experience with meditation is sort of its other tradition, which is more the mindful experience. the mindfulness tradition, right? Because I'm encountering it, you know, especially I'm sick for a few years, you know, obviously you know the story very well. I'm sick for a few years, finally find the treatment that works, my physical health returns, but my mental health had been destroyed. I had lost all faith in just my body and the normalcy of things and was beginning to have panic attacks all the time, constantly. which eventually descended into a panic disorder where the very thing you're afraid of is the symptoms of a panic attack so that it's going to cause another one. And that's a terrible loop to be in. So kind of like you, I also had to go to the doctor. I also got some medication to restore my footing. And then I'm told by probably the same doctor, right, to start meditating as well. And I have seen your experience how that's been good. So I was already almost primed. I also didn't have the same reservations or nervousness about it. That's probably just more of an upbringing thing. Like I was less, that wouldn't have been like a kind of off limits thing. It would have been in like the youth group and all that, but not in my home as much. So I was open to it. I had been really, when I was a teenager, Eastern traditions were really interesting to me. The Buddhist tradition especially was really interesting to me. So I was kind of primed for it. I wasn't afraid of it. And I also knew at that time, so this is when, 2022? Yeah, that

SPEAKER_00 39:53

sounds right.

SPEAKER_03 39:54

Yeah. Late 2021, I think, is when I first went to the doctor, December. I was like, I have this constant fear of panic attacks. What's wrong with me? It wasn't the craziest thing in the world. The doctor had heard of it before.

SPEAKER_02 40:08

You think?

SPEAKER_03 40:10

And then early 2022, starting to meditate a lot. But yeah, I was drawn to the mindfulness tradition, which is all about monitoring. It's the practice of learning open monitoring. So some people might know mindfulness talks a lot about noticing what's around you what you can see or hear, taste, touch, feel, the whole five senses thing. That's one layer of it, noticing what is, like you were saying before. What is, not what should be or what could be, but what is.

SPEAKER_02 40:49

And

SPEAKER_03 40:51

then there's another level, which is becoming mindful of your own breath, which was, that's another huge thing we could talk all day about,

SPEAKER_02 40:59

breath

SPEAKER_03 41:00

and all the different things. You know, how breath and spirit are the same word in Hebrew, in Greek, in all kinds of languages. How spirit and wind or breath, chi in Mandarin, and all kinds of other languages are related to spirit. So it's just like there's so much we could talk about there. Maybe another episode on spirit

SPEAKER_00 41:23

or

SPEAKER_03 41:23

breath. I would love to do that. like aware of it, how fast, how slow, and not trying to change it initially, just noticing whatever it is. And then there's another layer, which is becoming mindful or intentionally noticing your emotional states. So when you're feeling fearful, acknowledging it, pointing at it and saying, there it is, fear. And not holding it too tightly or too loosely. Just there it is and it kind of passes. And so for me, meditation was about not, it wasn't a practice of emptying my mind. That was just a stereotype I had received. It was a practice of noticing what is already there. And then the physiological effects of that are pretty incredible. Because anxiety or panic and depression are both mental states that have you disconnected from the actual moment that is. Depression is usually somehow you're locked in the past, in a past way of looking at things. And that is actually shaping your present and future. Anxiety is more of a future-oriented, like a maladaptive future. orientation, where you're looking at what could conceivably go wrong, and you get stuck in this cloud. And so that causes so much suffering. So the way to relieve that suffering is to return to the moment that you're in. And I remember, I've talked about this before too, but I started to notice that that's actually what Jesus was doing when he was teaching about worry, which really, it was an amazing discovery for me. Maybe it jumps out to other people, but Jesus's way of helping people to stop worrying wasn't just to command them to stop. Because that usually just amounts to suppress what you're feeling and pretend you're not feeling it. That's what I used to think when Jesus said, do not worry. I thought he was saying suppress it. But then you look at the actions he takes after saying that, and it's a very mindful process. practice of returning to the moment they're in and noticing the beauty around them, the provision around them, the flowers and the birds and all that. And I was like, oh, it's like a mindful practice. That is so right. And so, yeah, my experience with meditation has been to honestly monitor what is going on inside. And I'm just wondering, when I describe meditation like that, what sort of things come up in you, in your thinking?

SPEAKER_00 44:26

Yeah. I mean, I definitely experience meditation in that way as well. And I think in different moments, there's different things that you need. And even in different seasons of life, there's different things that you need. And I think it's so beautiful that there's so many different types of meditation, right? And I even think of you, like you're talking about that your main experience of meditation is mindfulness meditation. But I would argue just from knowing you and seeing you that that was your introduction to meditation. But I know as well that you've also experienced some powerful things through the more transcendental type of meditation as well. So something can be your introduction to meditation, but... the world of meditation is very large and there's a lot to learn and there's a lot to know.

SPEAKER_03 45:23

I wonder if this, I'm just thinking this right now, if, because we have these kind of three conceptual pieces in play. We have mindfulness meditation, we have transcendental meditation, and then we have the Christian tradition of contemplative prayer, right? We have these three things intertwined. in play right now. And what I'm sort of wondering is one of the strengths of Christianity and its tradition is it's about people connecting in an intimate way with the creator, whether that was by encountering the incarnate God in Jesus, whether that's through the spirit indwelling us and resonating with the spirit elsewhere, whether that's through prayer as a you know, this phrase has kind of lost its beauty for me, but like a personal relationship with God, right? That I don't really use that language anymore because it's sort of, it represents something that I'm not, a tradition I'm not really into. But I think deep in my bones, I still, and probably always will, operate with that at some level, that I have the right to say, interact with the creator in an intimate way.

SPEAKER_00 46:45

Yeah. And I would say not only that you have the right, but you are always in conversation with the creator. You just are as like a created being, which we both believe we are, right? As beings that are created by the creator, we are in conversation. We just are inside of our bodies all day. every day whether or not we are conscious of the conversation that's going on or the little alarm bells that are going off within us alerting us to things that maybe we need to examine or areas that we need to deepen or things that we're lying to ourselves about. That conversation is always happening inside our bodies and I think that's a deeply divine thing.

SPEAKER_03 47:30

And so then what it makes me think is maybe standing in the Christian tradition wanting to meditate that's kind of the place where it needs to really focus its attention is on, I'm going to try to hold all these things together. Maybe what the Christian sort of tradition can do is becoming mindful of the transcendent, almost like uncontainable realities that we are existing in the midst of. So like the spirit is everywhere. God is at work all kinds of ways and places and people and traditions and always has been, right? And maybe this meditation can become learning to like an awareness of what is, right? And so I'm trying to bring them together, not to lose any of the differences between them, but that there's something, if what Christianity values and what it brings to the table really well is an emphasis on the intimate relationship between the creator and the human, then maybe as it incorporates mindful practices, monitoring, as well as transcendent things, it's like we are, this is where prayer and meditation overlap.

UNKNOWN 49:06

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_03 49:06

if meditation is like an inner looking, looking at your inner landscape and becoming aware of it, and transcendent is experiencing sort of the awe of all that is, letting it wash over you? I

SPEAKER_00 49:24

think Christianity has the tendency to, as an institutionalized religion, it has had a tendency to disconnect us from our bodies.

SPEAKER_02 49:38

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 49:39

And to disconnect us from our internal sense of knowing, which I think, because it's a tradition not always valuing the body, and not always valuing that Holy Spirit living inside of us, living inside of our bodies. We are filled with the Spirit, that's a physical thing.

SPEAKER_03 50:06

And not just filled with the Spirit like once you become a Christian, but filled with the Spirit because we are filled with the breath of life.

SPEAKER_00 50:14

Exactly. And

SPEAKER_03 50:14

the breath of life is the Spirit. Yes,

SPEAKER_00 50:17

that's why you recognize the Spirit when you do. So because Christianity has a tendency of disconnecting us from our bodies, And it's disconnecting us from the conversation that we are having with the divine. And that's tragic. I think it's not that Christianity must do that. It's just that institutionalized Christianity has traditionally done that. And then it sometimes tells us, well, this is the conversation that you ought to be having with the divine and gives you a script. But that script doesn't feel right. That script doesn't feel genuine because it's not a conversation. It's not the conversation that is happening inside of you. And so I just really think that within Christianity, we need to really begin rethinking what prayer even is and reconnecting like our life depends on it, reconnecting with our bodies, reconnecting to that conversation that's happening, reconnecting to our intuition. Because all of those things are divinely guided.

SPEAKER_03 51:24

Yeah, I thought it's such a huge topic, right? Like how, and it's something I've thought about too, like how our intuitive, instinctual, that aspect of the human person, how that is very closely connected with the spirit. Even though we think of those things as really far away, because we tend to think our mind Our cognitive brain is closer to spirit.

SPEAKER_02 51:53

We

SPEAKER_03 51:54

don't say this, but we have this hierarchy of primal, then intellect, then spirit. And I don't think that that is true at all. I think that that's just a total, we made that up because it seemed, I think it's like a bit of a fantasy.

SPEAKER_02 52:10

It's like

SPEAKER_03 52:10

fanfic of human life where we created this idea that the intellect was closer to spirit. And is it? Why? The spirit that I encounter in the Hebrew and Christian scriptures seems to be a lot more about instinct and like a deep knowing without being able to express it or defend it rationally sometimes,

SPEAKER_00 52:35

you know? Yeah, you think of stories of people in war times who see something horrific and their body instinct is to vomit, right? Yeah. That's a body reaction and that's a very spiritual thing.

SPEAKER_01 52:50

You

SPEAKER_00 52:51

react to this violation of the sacred human being with a bodily reaction.

SPEAKER_03 52:56

The sacred human being. That is critical because prayer is about encountering the sacred, communing with the sacred. Meditation is about looking within and you discover the sacred. Right?

SPEAKER_00 53:15

I wouldn't even make a distinction, though, between prayer and meditation. Because I think they're both... They're both... So, you know, we talk about, like, present, past, future. Right? You were talking about that earlier. Really, all that we have is, you know, the present, the generous present moment. That's all that we have. The present moment followed by the present moment, preceded by the present moment. Like, that's all we have is this present moment. And becoming... like really aware of the presence of the divine in this present moment and what exists in this present moment and what's required from you in this present moment. That to me is so much of what this is about. Like, are you bringing your true self to this present moment, right? Or did you abandon yourself in this present moment?

SPEAKER_03 54:09

Are you bringing your honest self full-bodied, multi-layered self to this moment? Or are you only letting a certain spectrum of that light shine through because that's what's acceptable?

SPEAKER_00 54:24

Exactly. So that brings the conversation full circle, doesn't it? To what I was talking about earlier, where when you are able to just be honest about what is and just bring what is to the table, life is so much better. There's so many more colors. It feels light. You're not having to keep track of anything all the time. You're not having to edit yourself and mutilate your own sacred being by cutting off the pieces that you think are unacceptable to other people, which, strangely enough, are often the things that people love most, are the things that you thought would be unacceptable. Or they're the things that actually bring healing. Like I think about like our relationship and my anger. Like my anger in our relationship actually has brought about more healing than my agreeableness ever did.

SPEAKER_03 55:22

Things have only gone, things have only moved in a direction of health and strengthening and integration when I've brought like kind of put the performing aside and just been received the anger, let's say in that case, honestly. Felt it. and kind of like just let it sit there and responding with honesty. That doesn't mean that it always gets better immediately.

SPEAKER_02 55:50

No.

SPEAKER_03 55:51

It doesn't. Sometimes it takes a while, right? You know, I think you know this, that I have, since we've been together, I have a real propensity towards wanting to fix things immediately. And I've been willing to be honest and experience a lot of pain to... get that done but that's often been it's been dishonest because it's been rushed and it hasn't allowed the full

SPEAKER_00 56:19

the full revelation of what is

SPEAKER_03 56:22

yeah

SPEAKER_00 56:22

right because if you're trying to like truncate it to get it over with then the full revelation of what what actually is in this in you know happening between us or whatever um it doesn't get to be fully exposed to the light which means that there's still parts that are festering

SPEAKER_01 56:36

I

SPEAKER_00 56:37

feel like this is a whole other podcast that we could go down that rabbit hole for a long time. And I would love to at some point.

SPEAKER_03 56:43

I would love to as well. And let's do it right now. Okay. Well, then the last thing I want to talk about is we looked at some of your journey with meditation and some of mine. Some people might not know that we, for a while, we created a bunch of meditations where we tried to blend a lot of these things together, right?

UNKNOWN 57:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 57:04

Yeah. So I was experiencing just this powerful transformation from meditation and it just felt like the answer to so many problems and so many painful things that I saw people experiencing in life. And it just felt like if people could come to love meditation and experience it, how deep this practice really can be and have their views of what prayer even is, shaped and changed, then like what a powerful thing that could be. What a powerful healing force that could be within, you know, church communities or for just, you know, not for the whole community, but for an individual, even an individual who's left a church community because the church communities are too painful. You still like, just because you've had to leave a community that is hurting you, you still carry so much of so many of the good things from that community you really miss. And like you still love God and you still want to pray and all of these things and you still revere these sacred texts, right? And so I wanted to create something that for people who are nervous of meditation, a meditation that feels prayerful, you know, a meditation that Meditations on the sacred text of the scripture. Meditations that we're talking about communing with God. It's a very, very Christian, very prayerful thing to do. So in that sense, you don't have to be afraid of it. This is what we're doing. We're here to commune with the divine. We're here to commune with God. But then at the same time, something that for those people who have found Christianity, institutionalized Christianity, to be something that's really hurt them. Like I know that I, there's songs that, you know, you and I will be in church and somebody will start playing a song and I'll just have to leave and go to the bathroom because I like, my body has a reaction to the pain that I feel hearing that music. I just think I would get emotional about that. But yeah, so like there's still, there's things that are just really deeply painful from experiences that we've had in church. And I don't want to trigger that pain for people. And so often religious language triggers that pain. And so I thought I wanted to create something that was deeply Christian, but also uses language that is surprising and fresh and hopefully as non-triggering to people as possible. So if I would write down a thought as I was creating these meditations, I would look at what I had written and say, is there any other way that I could say that? Can I just string this beautiful gift of words that we've been given, can I string words together in a way that it's like you haven't quite heard it that way before and said in those terms so it doesn't trigger some kind of painful memory for people or like a memory of a time when that phrase was used against you, weaponized against you or something like that. And I also wanted to bring in some just like really ancient and beautiful traditions like sung scripture. which a lot of us don't get to experience very often, but it's so beautiful. And words just hit differently when they're tucked into music, right? They hit differently. And also there's a sense to which they're more memorable sometimes. The sung scripture has a way of like sinking into your bones while at the same time helping you to hear things hear things differently, passages of scripture that you may be heard many times before, but you hear them a little differently.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:59

And it also is a counter to the hyper-literalism that Western Christians have lived in for the last 140 years, where we have a real inability to receive texts poetically. We our first question is always like, did this really happen? Is this literal? Like we go through that and it's tiring and exhausting and often misses the point completely. And I've noticed that when I listen to the meditations you made and it gets to the scripture part and you sing it, it doesn't hurt that you're like a trained singer. That helps. But it's done in this like really ancient medieval sounding style. And it is transcendent. It's transportative, like it transports you

SPEAKER_02 1:01:47

into

SPEAKER_03 1:01:49

a different state and scene, imaginative scene. And I found that it allowed me to hear passages and stop obsessing over the literalist view and just receive the poetry that was there.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:06

Yeah. Yeah. I'm glad to hear that you receive it that way, that you hear it and experience it that way. The beginning of the meditations, too, I included some just breathing practices, some meditative, practical breathing practices to help bring us into this present moment so that we can just be here, be present, be aware of what is, be aware of what's going on in our bodies and in our minds, and so that we can begin to just take note of the conversations that are present.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:39

So that's that incorporating of the mindful traditions through breath awareness and some of the mindful techniques, right? That is woven in to the meditations. The other thing that's woven in is one of the sort of therapeutic modalities that's been really powerful for both of us is IFS, internal family systems. And we wrote reflections, meditative reflections, which are also in these meditations.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:07

That was the joint part of this project. That was the joint

SPEAKER_03 1:03:09

part. I was part of this. So reflections, like kind of like deeply, again, Christian reflections or putting at least putting the Christian contemplative tradition and scripture into conversation with IFS, Internal Family Systems Therapy. And so that's another big aspect of these. And what we've come up with was if you know anything about IFS is IFS talks a lot about the various parts that a human is composed of, like that a person is almost a community. of parts.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:46

Yeah, I feel like it's worth saying like Richard Schwartz is a psychotherapist and he was counseling families. That was what he did. And he would notice that at times in individual sessions with individuals, he would just be asking them questions and the way that they were speaking, kind of showed that there was some kind of internal conversation happening. There's a part of me that says this and a part of me that says this. And he started noticing that they interacted, the parts within a person were interacting very much in the way that the people in a family would interact when they were in family sessions. And so he started developing this theory of parts therapy, right? Where a person is made of many parts. But over his time working with that modality parts therapy. He kind of came to a place with many of his clients where they would be talking through something and he'd be like, you know, what part is saying this? And they would be able to identify what part of them is speaking and what part is saying that. And sometimes he would ask him what part is speaking now? And they would say, oh, that one isn't a part. That one's just me. So he started noting down the characteristics of like what characteristics were present when the people would say, oh, that one's just me. And so he came up with eight characteristics of the true self. So parts in internal family systems therapy, the goal is to be self-led. So you listen to the congregation of parts that are within you, but you want the self to be leading.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:14

So Richard Schwartz, the founder of IFS therapy, noticed that when people were speaking from their true self, they always seemed to display these eight characteristics.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:30

Calm, clear, connected, compassionate, confident, courageous, creative, and curious. So they're the eight C's. So in our meditation, I like to meditate usually in the morning, sometimes in the evening. But I find that those are the most powerful times of day to meditate. in our IFS-inspired meditation series. We actually created it originally for an app because we were, we created an app because we thought that would be the best way to help people and serve people because people do meditation on apps. But we realized we're just not techy, we're just not really interested in all of the upkeep that it takes to actually run an app, but we loved creating the meditations. So this series we created was, to help people reconnect with that true self that is the self that we want to be led by. So there's actually a total of 10 morning meditations, 10 evening meditations, and they encompass the eight Cs of the IFS true self.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:43

So there's 10 morning meditations. Eight of those meditations are on one of the aspects of the true self. There's 10 evening meditations, which are a little shorter. There's eight of those focus on the eight Cs of the true self or those aspects of the true self. along with an introduction and a conclusion one for each.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:08

Yeah. And each one of them has a binaural beat that underlays the whole thing. So again, it's using bilateral stimulation to help your mind actually create new neural pathways so that you actually are able to heal quite a bit faster. So the way I like to use them is if I wake up and I know that today I'm going to have to have a really hard conversation, then so I choose the courageous meditation in the morning. And then that would just get me primed for being in my true self, having to go into this conversation, being like letting that courageous part of my true self lead. Or maybe I go to bed and I'm feeling really anxious. And so I might choose the calm meditation to just help me release fear and just remember that that process piece of me that is actually the true self that is calm, doesn't have to listen to all the other voices right now as I'm going to sleep. They might have legitimate concerns, but this true self, this true self can lead in calmness so that I can get a good sleep so that tomorrow we can tackle tomorrow's problems.

SPEAKER_03 1:08:14

And maybe one of the things that we bring to this, these IFS inspired meditations is this awareness that becoming aware of of our close intimate communion with the creator is a part of being a fully realized human self, is being in clear communion with the spirit. And so these meditations, they feature IFS inspired reflections, but they also feature mindful breath work that is very infused with like the spirit, the spirit as breath. as well as the bilateral stimulation that comes from binaural beats. So that's kind of like creating a nourishing meditative environment, sonic environment, along with sung scripture. And all those things are in every meditation.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:12

And one element that we haven't talked at all about, which is there's a lot of space.

SPEAKER_03 1:09:16

A lot of space.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:17

A lot of just like spaciousness where there's nothing happening except the binaural beats. So you're able to just really take time to check in and see what is in this present moment and what is the spirit saying to you in this moment. Because I do think that being self-led is being spirit-led, right? The self and the way that Schwartz talks about it, I believe that that is spirit-led. That's the spirit within us.

SPEAKER_03 1:09:42

Especially because the eight Cs and the fruit of the spirit are kind of the same. Unintentionally, I think. I think Schwartz was just an observant person who is noticing the patterns and the fruit. When the spirit is always present, but when the spirit is allowed to grow, when we're not hiding, when we're not trapping ourselves in shame and hiding who we really are or only letting certain pieces out, I think when we do that, the growth can happen freely. Just like if you put plants underneath a tree You shield them and hide them in the basement. They'll keep growing for a while in sort of a mutated form, anemic form. But eventually they'll get moldy and it'll just get worse and worse. So it's like in the open air, in the open light, like real healthy growth can happen.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:42

Yeah. So kind of recently, just maybe two weeks ago, like I said, we had an app for a while. We closed that down because we just couldn't – We just couldn't find the passion. Running an

SPEAKER_03 1:10:54

app just wasn't working for us.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:56

Running an app is not what we are made to do. But we had created this thing. And for the last, since we shut it down, I can't remember exactly when that was, but we've had all of these things that I still really believe in. And I think that we had this resource that we wanted to share with people, but the app format was just not working. So it was just two weeks ago. All of a sudden I was like, We need to just make these available for people

SPEAKER_02 1:11:24

so

SPEAKER_00 1:11:25

that if and when they want them, they're there. We've made them. We put so much care and attention and so much prayerful, spirit-led energy into making these. And we're keeping them from people just by not having them available. And so I remember texting Brad and saying, we need to just create a site and make them available for people.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:50

And that's what we did. So they're called Whole and Holy, the Whole and Holy Meditation Series, 20 IFS-inspired Christian meditations. So like we said, there's 10 morning, 10 evening. The morning ones are about 20 minutes apiece. The evenings are about 15. And if you want to purchase the entire library of these IFS meditations, you can do that. If you head over to my site, bradleymella.com slash meditation. So that's B-R-A-D-L-E-Y-M-E-L-L-E.com slash meditation. And you can get them there and then you can download all of them in one go.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:35

A 20 bundle, 20 meditation bundle.

SPEAKER_03 1:12:38

20 meditation bundle. It's all you need.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:40

That's what I was about to say. It's really all you need. And because it hits so many of life's moments, it addresses so many of the things that we... that we feel, that we encounter. So it runs the gamut.

SPEAKER_03 1:12:53

It does.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:54

In those 20 meditations.

SPEAKER_03 1:12:56

Yeah, so if you're interested in what we've been talking about, head over to bradleymallow.com slash meditation. Or if you want just to talk more with us, you're always welcome to email me at freestyletheology at gmail.com or follow me, freestyletheology, on Instagram, where I talk about this kind of stuff often. in addition to a lot of other things about church history.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:21

And we've struggled a lot, I feel like, over the course of this conversation, struggled a lot with how to say it and how to speak about it. At least I know I have. And there's so much more to say. So I would just encourage you, if you have any questions or anything that you, any questions that come up or clarifications of things you're wondering, like to send Brad an email because we can definitely do a follow-up conversation on this because we could talk about this for hours and hours and hours. And just knowing where your questions are at, that helps us to know how to direct our conversations too.

SPEAKER_03 1:13:58

Yeah, I felt like we were on this highway trying to go really fast.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:01

And

SPEAKER_03 1:14:01

there was all these exits to amazing conversational places that we could have taken. And I'd actually like to take some of them. Well, thankfully, you live in my room. so i can probably get you on the podcast pretty easily

SPEAKER_00 1:14:19

yeah we can probably just go down to the basement any evening and record another conversation because that's what we do in the evenings anyway

SPEAKER_03 1:14:26

yeah we talk might as well push record

SPEAKER_00 1:14:28

yeah

SPEAKER_03 1:14:28

well it's been good having you here again and um

SPEAKER_00 1:14:32

thanks for having me on the program

SPEAKER_03 1:14:34

you're welcome so