75: It's like the kingdom of heaven for me

Episode 75: Eddie shares his journey from his earliest memories of prayer, being tucked in bed by his mum, to how he prays now with an icon and a candle early in the morning. Journeys on foot, the silence of monasteries and especially sharing stories around a table; these are the things that give him a taste of the kingdom of heaven.

Find out more about Eddie's books

Looking Ahead with Hope - Stories of humanity, wonder and gratitude in a time of uncertainty

The Universe Provides - Finding miracles and inspiration in unexpected places

Another Day in Paradise - Stories of transformation from the Camino and other places

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The podcast is kindly supported by the Passionists of St Patrick's Province, Ireland & Britain and by CAFOD.

Music: Greenleaves from Audionautix.com

Transcript

You're listening to All Kinds of Catholic with me, Theresa Alessandro. My conversations with different Catholics will give you glimpses into some of ways we're living our faith today. Pope Francis used the image of a caravan for our travelling together on a sometimes chaotic journey.  And Pope Leo, quoting St Augustine, reminds us, Let us live well and the times will be good. We are the times. I hope you'll feel encouraged and affirmed and maybe challenged now and then.  I am too in these conversations. And if you're enjoying them, it helps if you rate and review on the platform where you're listening. Thank you.

We're coming towards the winter now in the garden. I'm doing quite a bit of stuff. I'm planting some new bulbs now. But at a certain point I'll just have to leave things and just have faith that come the springtime, those bulbs, they'll start to... something will happen.

Just before we get into this week’s conversation, listeners, I just wanted to let you know, if you don’t follow the podcast on social media, we’ve recently reached 10,000 downloads of this podcast. That’s a great encouragement to me to keep going with what I’m doing. And I’m really grateful that people are finding it affirming and sometimes challenging, all the things I aim for the podcast to be. So let’s get into this week’s conversation.

Listeners, thanks for joining the episode today. I'm being joined by Eddie. Eddie's got a book out, which we're going to talk about. We're also going to explore pilgrimage a little bit more because that's been part of the writing of this book. So welcome, Eddie. 

Thank you, Theresa. Great to be with you. 

Maybe we could just start with your own faith a little bit, Eddie, and think about when in your life was your faith first important to you? When did it become something that you really wanted to shape your life around? 

I'd say it's always been important for me. I grew up in an Irish Catholic family in Coventry and faith was part of the air that I breathed really from the first moment. I have a lovely first experience of prayer. My mum tucked me into bed as a young boy, and she would kneel by the bed and say a Hail Mary. When I was able to, I would join in with her.  so prayer from the first has always been associated for me with intimacy and I guess relationship as well. So I feel very blessed that I've had - my first experience of prayer was something of an incredibly intimate moment at the end of the day with my mom. When I was a bit older and started to pray on my own, I can't remember what age I would have been, maybe early teens, I'm not sure. I would add an Our Father to that at the end of the day. And I think at a certain point, a Glory Be was put on as well. So I started to introduce a bit of silence, perhaps. I went to Catholic schools and RE was part of the syllabus. Different people responded to that in different ways, but I found it really interesting. I started to read the Gospels because I just found it so fascinating. I thought, I need to read this stuff. There's some great stories. The word ‘story’ comes into the subtitle of two of my three books. I love stories. There's some great stories in the Gospels. My mom was from Northern Ireland, so a Northern Irish Catholic. I told her excitedly one day that I was reading the Bible. She was quite shocked because in the very sad, divided history of Northern Ireland, reading the Bible was something that the Protestants did. 

Wow. 

So that was an interesting little insight. It's interesting that I became very interested in ecumenism. At university, I got very involved with the Catholic Chaplaincy. I ended up as president of the Catholic Society at Sheffield University. I also got very involved in the SVP, the St. Vincent de Paul group. There was a student group that started up. That was really important as well. And it was important for me to meet Christians from other traditions. You know, I really enjoyed that. And that's possibly one of the reasons why I got interested in becoming part of the L’ Arche. Came to Canterbury in 1988 to be part of the L’ Arche community. I was part of that for 28 years. 

But I'm just interested then that as a young person you didn't - often we have people who are cradle Catholics who talk about having to claim the faith for themselves as teenagers, wobbling a bit, having very big questions and maybe even coming back to the faith later. But you seem to have just been steady, just soaking up prayer with your mom, reading the Gospels, becoming involved in SVP and chaplaincy. It sounds like you didn't have a shaky part there. 

Oh, of course. Oh there have been ups and downs as well, you know, and that's life. I don't think I know anyone who's had a completely, you know, smooth journey in terms of faith. But I'm blessed to have had that very solid start. Faith was just part of the air that we breathe, as central as eating together at the end of the day, sitting around the table. However we are, with all of our moods, good mood, bad mood, had a good day, had a bad day, we sat down around that table and shared food. And that's always been one of the most powerful images for me of what Jesus did. He sat and ate, often with the people that no one else wanted to eat with. The waifs and strays and the slightly marginal characters. Straying onto pilgrimage already, that's part of what happens on pilgrimage and that's part of what I love about pilgrimage. You end up sitting around a table at the end of the day with such an interesting bunch of characters.  It's like the kingdom of heaven for me.  

I guess because you really appreciate stories, people sharing their stories over those meals is really energising for you.

Oh, it is. It's actually wonderful. I can't get enough of that, hearing people's story and everyone has such an interesting story to tell. And just to say as well, you know, at L'Arche the mealtime was a very important, very sacred place. Sometimes there would be a good mood around the table, sometimes terrible. So there's all kinds of tensions. People would want to start throwing things at each other, but there we were day after day, faithfully sitting around the table together. People with and without learning disabilities, people from different countries, people at all kinds of different places, personally, in terms of our background. 

So your book then, we were just talking before we began recording and you were saying that you're sharing some of the stories that you heard on pilgrimage. So tell us a bit about how that all came about then. 

I was offered a job in Ireland. So as I say, I was part of L’Arche for 28 years in Canterbury. I needed a change at that point in my life. I worked for a wonderful London based charity called the Irish Chaplaincy for seven years. Then I was offered a job in Ireland and I thought, Well, why not? It's a new challenge and could be interesting. So with the blessing of my wife and our grownup children I moved to Kilkenny in November 2023 and the plan was that I would get the lie of the land and see if things were going okay and be there for six months. And then my wife, Yim Soon, would join me, which she did in May 2024. And then things took an unexpected turn and by July, it was clear that things weren't working out with the job and I effectively resigned and I left in August. But by that point, we'd let out our house in Canterbury for a year until June this year. So the day I kind of came home to our rented house and I said to Yim Soon, things aren't going to work. She said, Okay, let's walk. And it was an amazing reframing of her, quite a tough situation into a positive. Let's take this as an opportunity to walk and travel. So first up was the Camino, all 500 miles of the Camino Frances in Spain. Wow. From the start of October into November. She found this walk called the Lycian Way on the Mediterranean coast of Turkey. That would be February, March, this year. And then the way of Francis in Italy from a place called La Verna, which is between Florence and Assisi. So that was walking nine days to Assisi. And then we were due to walk on to Rome from there. My mom used to say, Well, one door closes and another one opens. It was like a few doors opened at the same time. Yim Soon was having all these ideas about pilgrimage walks. Yim Soon’s Korean, an old friend of hers from Korea, the family are now living in Georgia, bit south of Atlanta. And they said, Well, if you've got time, why don't you come and spend a few weeks over the winter? Which we did. And I thought I'd always wanted to visit a monastery called the Abbey of Gethsemane in Kentucky. So it's where Thomas Merton was a monk for many years and where he lived in a hermitage for the last three years of his life until his untimely death in the sixties. It's the next state and it was, know, ‘only 460 miles’, just a bus ride in the States, you know. So we ended up spending 10 days there. We were there for Christmas in a Trappist monastery in Kentucky. Absolutely wonderful. And because we come all the way from Ireland, we were taken to Thomas Merton's hermitage, a place in the woods that was still used as a place of retreat for people. That was incredible. I met up with a guy I'd met on the Camino in 2016 in Washington, DC. We've basically spent a year of walking. We were also part of the Pilgrimage of Hope, which many of your listeners will be familiar with. More or less the last walk and then I had a week in Mount Athos in Greece.  So the place with 20 Orthodox Greek monasteries where sadly, women are not allowed. Women have been banned for a thousand years.  I missed women, I have to say. So my fourth book, which is now complete, that was the final chapter. So it's called The Married Monk. It's basically a book about monasteries, how important they have been for me, visiting monasteries over the years and what a wonderful resource they have been for me and inspiration as well. So we've essentially had a year of walking and it's been amazing. 

And was it your plan to write a book when you set out this year? In a way, I think you've written books before, so you kind of know what you need to do. Did you set out thinking, Okay, and I'll write a book along the way or did that come to you later?

I had finished this third book, Another Day in Paradise, just before we set off for the Camino. So it was published just over a year ago and I deliberately got it finished and published. So I'd be able to tell people about it when I'm talking on the Camino and my other walks. And people were very interested because it's book partly about stories from the Camino, but also other popular places of pilgrimage. The first three chapters are dedicated to Santiago and then there are chapters called Canterbury, Rome, Jerusalem, Lourdes, Walsingham, Croagh Patrick, the holy mountain in Ireland. 

I'd like to hear a bit more about the book and I'm sure listeners will too, but I'm also quite interested in your process of writing.  How do you go about gathering your thoughts, I'm going to say on paper, although it's perhaps on the computer these days. How do you go about that process? What is it you're trying to bring out of yourself and what are you hoping that will bring for others?

My best time of writing probably is the early morning and also the monastery. That's a place where I found great inspiration, both for writing, prose and for writing songs. It’s almost like the writers shed at the end of the garden, the monastery. As I say, early morning, very fertile time to write. Early morning at the monastery, very, very, very fertile time to write. I mean, one time when I was staying at Downside Abbey where there used to be a Benedictine community near Bath, I wrote a song there in about 15 minutes. It just came, my goodness. It can take a year or two to finish a song and this one, my goodness. Who knows where the inspiration comes from? I've heard other writers, composers saying this, you know, I just, I was like a conduit for something. I just have to be there faithfully waiting to capture, to transmit, to write, to type, to put on the score that which was given from somewhere. But I think there's a kind of a faithfulness that's required. There's no substitute from sitting, in pastimes in front of that blank bit of paper, or nowadays the blank computer screen. Not knowing if anything will come at all. Like anything, the more you practise, the better you get at it. I have a little slot on BBC Radio 2's Pause for Thought on the 5.45 in the morning with Owain Wyn Evans, which I really enjoy. The script has to be 360 words long and it can be on a completely random theme. And sometimes I think, How on earth? What on earth have I got to say about that? But with time, I'm kind of thinking now, Yeah, you know, probably something will come if I sit down, if I give it enough time and space and silence. That's why partly, you know, the early morning time at the monastery, there's a lot of silence needed, I think. And then it's incredible what can emerge from that silence.  So sometimes you just need to give it time, give it silence.  We're coming towards the winter now in the garden. I'm doing quite a bit of stuff. I'm planting some new bulbs now. You know, it's lovely to be back in our house. But at a certain point I'll just have to leave things and just have faith that come the springtime, those bulbs, they'll start to... something will happen. We know because we've lived through various winters in our own life. Something will come, some new life. You know, there has to be some death and that's part of the creative process. A certain dying needs to take place, but inevitably there will be some kind of new life. A bit of faith involved. Physically I see every spring, there is. There's new life, there's new colour, there's new smells. Still it's amazing when it happens. Wow, amazing, incredible. Where did that come from? Two or three months ago, barren and dead. 

Yeah. And before it happens, we can feel quite worn out with the waiting, can't we? That we get worn down by that, the gloom sometimes of wintry days and dark mornings and things. It can feel like it's never going to happen. 

I think in terms of your original question, Theresa, where does it come from? I think I'm probably getting a little bit better at noticing. And that's been one of the gifts of pilgrimage for me. And also one of the gifts of my many visits to monasteries.  I think that they're both places where you kind of get a little bit better at noticing. I'm amazed by how many people I've spoken to who have walked on the Camino, for example, who say, I started to notice wild flowers.  In some cases, no disrespect to them, people who wouldn't have noticed any flower. It's amazing how often I've heard that. I was walking down the road and I looked down, there was a flower growing out of the pavement. You kind of start to notice. You're in another space, a kind of a liminal, an in-between kind of space. And amazing things can happen there. When I'm in the monastery, I kind of see things and hear things that I might not normally see and hear in the normal busyness and stress of life. You're in a hurry to get from somewhere or you're going out to work or it's all systems go, I've got to get the train, I've got to be on time. And we can miss such a lot. 

That resonates with me, Eddie, actually, because when my husband and me started walking in the mountains in Italy in the summer, which we're very lucky to do. As a child, I had been really interested in wild flowers and I had a really good book of wild flowers and I knew them all. Some of that knowledge has not stayed with me sadly, but I was noticing the flowers in the mountains and I wanted to kind of reconnect. I wanted to get another book of wild flowers. I wanted to know what they are. I did get a book and I started taking it with me to Italy, but actually I never really looked at it because it wasn't so much about knowing the names, which I had loved being able to do as a child, it was more about just noticing these beautiful things around us in this beautiful place. Like you say, just noticing, being amazed. And it was different from the things that I was interested in about wildflowers as a child. So it's interesting to hear you say, to connect that with other people's experiences. So tell us a bit about this book. I'll put links to all your books in the episode notes, just in case people want to follow up. But tell us a bit about what they might find if they had a look.

Another Day in Paradise. I'd heard of the Camino. I knew someone in L’Arche who for a 50th birthday had walked on Le Puy, which is one of the starting places in France and walked for three months to Santiago. Might be interesting to do that one day. I'd seen the film The Way with Martin Sheen. 

Yes. 

I have a good friend called James who's Australian and we had a very long correspondence by letter. And I got a letter from James at the start of 2014 to say, As part of a year of celebrations leading up to my 50th birthday, I'm going to walk the Camino in Spain. And I'm inviting people from different parts of my life to join me for sections.  So I wrote back and I said, James, I'll join you for 10 days on one condition that we can do the bit over the Pyrenees that Martin Sheen did in the film. James agreed. So we duly met up in Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port, the lovely French border town and spent an incredible first day of an incredible 10 days.  So firstly, we walked up 22 kilometres up a mountain and then steeply down three kilometres to Roncesvalles on the other side. It was like a big party. We kind of met and partied with the world and there was quite an energy about James and I and we laugh a lot.  One of the wonderful people we met was a Korean couple, Angela and Julio, their Catholic confirmation names. And part of my book, Another Day in Paradise, in each chapter, it’s a section called Pilgrim's Tales. So it's a little piece, a story by one of the many amazing people I've met on the way, because that's something that pilgrims have always done. They've told stories. Essentially, what was the first book in the English language? The Canterbury Tales, Geoffrey Chaucer. And it's a book of stories, the stories that people tell to each other, the amazing, the funny, the sad stories that people tell to one another through this act of putting one foot in front of the other for ridiculously long distances, carrying a bag on your back, sleeping in a big dormitory at night. That amazing experience. We kind of gathered this entourage of Koreans and Italians around us. The day before I left England to join James in France, he sent me a message to say, Bring a packet of real leaf tea. So I thought, Well, that's easy. Went to Sainsbury’s, got a packet of tea. Possibly the best bit of advice I got before walking was, travel light. James had clearly not received that advice. He had an enormous rucksack, which had amongst other things in it, a stove and a billy can. So every day we had this lovely ritual of stopping and making tea. And we developed a bit of a reputation amongst other things, being the two guys who would stop at random places to make tea. Wherever we were to stop for our tea, we would also sing some Psalms. James had prepared a list of scripture passages for us to reflect on each day. Angela and Julio would just appear. We would share tea together. We would sing Taize chants in different languages. We would pray together. It was amazing how they just appeared wherever we were, on a mountain, in the middle of a forest. And then one day about a week into the pilgrimage, a place called Najera, there's a communal albergue which is the pilgrim hostel, was full of maybe 100 bunk beds in one dormitory. Didn't get a lot of sleep, but that's okay. But we had such a wonderful evening. Julio liked to cook. A few of the other Koreans liked to cook. Because of me having a Korean wife, I became an honorary Korean and James was friend of honorary Korean. We get invited to join the Koreans.  Lovely meal. We'd got in with some Italians. They wanted to cook for us as well. There was a Spanish guy, Jeraldo. He made a big pot of paella. You know, we could have had three meals that night.  Wonderful. We were sitting out early in the morning. There was a bench outside this albergue. Sitting out there a bit bleary eyed and not having slept much. Early in the morning, the sun was just starting to rise above the trees. The birds were starting to sing. There was a lovely sound of rushing water from the river, which is right by the pilgrim hostel there. We were boiling the water for our tea, sitting there in companionable silence. And then James said suddenly, Another day in paradise. And it became - it inspired a song. So I wrote a song, it's called El Camino, the chorus of which starts in Spanish with the words, Another day in paradise. I had to return home after my 10 days. So when I went home, when I'd wake up in the morning, I'd open the curtains and I'd say to myself, Another day in paradise.  You know, I did it for a few weeks and the Camino feeling kind of wore off, but I still try and do that sometimes. And then eventually it became the title of the book. Yeah, I was delighted when it was published, just in time for me walking on the Camino with Yim Soon, my wife, in October. So I wanted to cook for my fellow pilgrims when we were back there last October. We'd met some lovely people as you do. I said, Look guys, I'm going to cook tonight, organised a bit of a team of people cooking in the kitchen. About a dozen of us sat down, people from different countries. And I told the story about what had happened nine years before. I said, I was here in 2015 with my friend James, and we'd had this amazing evening. We'd been on the receiving end of such warm hospitality from people. So I told the story at the meal table because there was a guitar in the albergue. I picked up the guitar and before I sang the song, which I'd written in 2015, I told this story.  And then it was lovely, there was a young Croatian woman and she sat there and she said, Oh, wouldn't it be cool if one of us came back here in nine years and cooked for our fellow pilgrims and kept the story going?  

It would be. Okay. That sounds great, Eddie. Along the way you've given a really good flavour of the book there. But I understand it’s actually your last but one book. Actually there's another book on its way to being published. So maybe you give us a little flavour of that. 

The title came to me about 20 years ago. The Married Monk. I thought I'd love to write a book with the title The Married Monk. And actually it was when I was doing a Pause for Thought with Owain so one morning at 5.45 on Radio 2. There's a little conversation topic runs through the show, which I'll be asked about before I do my reflection. And that day it was, what would I call my autobiography? And I said, well Owain, I'm not sure if it would be autobiographical, but I've always wanted to write a book called The Married Monk. I'm a happily married man and I love staying in monasteries. They're usually in beautiful, peaceful places. I love singing. So, you know, I love the monastic chant, the plain chant, Gregorian chant. I love the food. The food is fantastic. I mean, the Benedictines. Wow. I mean, I've had some restaurant standard meals in particularly Benedictine monasteries, but not only. Owain who I've been told isn't a particularly religious person as such, he seemed really taken by the idea. He said, Oh, I'll buy the first copy. There and then that morning, I started work. I had a lot of stories. You know, I've been a regular visitor to monasteries for over 30 years.  I first discovered monasteries, probably in the eighties when I was organising a retreat for the Catholic Society. We went to Ampleforth Abbey, you know, in Yorkshire. And again, it was the food. It was just incredible. I still remember we had this sweet and sour pork with rice. You know, I'd grown up with kind of lovely, you know, but meat and two veg, quite plain food. It was another world. Getting up at six o'clock in the morning, I wasn't used to that at the age of 19, 20 and listening to this incredible, this celestial, singing from the monks. So I'm delighted to have written a book. It's like a tribute to some of the monks and nuns that I've known, some of the amazing places where I've stayed, some of the incredible hospitality, some of the inspiration that I've found. And each chapter is named after a particular Order. There's a chapter for the Benedictines, the Franciscans, the Cistercians. So plenty of stories there. I've even got to visit Thomas Merton's hermitage now. There's a good story in the book about that. The Dominicans, the Jesuits, the Columbans who I first met - an Irish missionary Order  - who I first met in Seoul when we were spending a year there and they had a house in downtown Seoul where I used to go once a month and spend 24 hours, and drink real tea and eat with a knife and fork. Listen to the amazing stories of these guys and read back copies of the Irish times, which they had there. There's a little Korean Buddhist gets a mention as well. And then the final chapter, Mount Athos. I thought that'll make a good chapter for the book. And it has done for sure. That's kind of where the book starts as well. It’s a scene from this cliffside monastery in Mount Athos. The monasteries are just in absolutely spectacular locations. It typifies a lot of what I love about the monasteries, beautiful places, the silence, the structured ancient monastic rhythms that are very healing, very restorative and kind of bring me back to myself. There's something very centreing about the life. Especially when I was a father of young children, you know, that was when I made the decision. I had to go away once a month for 24 hours for my sanity, for the sanity of the whole family. I think it's really enriched my marriage, The Married Monk. I've mentioned it to several people who are religious, non-religious, who are kind of intrigued by the title. Is such a thing allowed? I mean, interestingly, it is in some traditions. 

Yeah, well, I thought that's what it was going to be about, actually. I thought it was going to be one of those traditions. 

But I am the married monk in this book. 

Just to be clear. I look forward to that coming out. That sounds great. 

I've had someone proofread, the proofreader of my books. He said, One of the things you do in the book, you give a human face to the monks and the nuns. I'm several times saying how struck I am. They're ordinary men and women faithfully getting up. The Trappists there in Kentucky, their day's office starts at 3.15 in the dark when most people are tucked up in bed and will be for the next several hours still. They're faithfully giving witness to this life of prayer and praise to God. Day after day, week after week, decade after decade, whatever mood they're in. When that bell rings, they're stopping whatever they're doing and they're on their way to church. 

A great witness for us, a great witness. As we're drawing to a close, Eddie, I wonder if we could just dig into your faith a little bit. I often ask people about prayers that are meaningful to them or bits of scripture, but for you, you've kind of mentioned there about music, songs. I wonder if there's a hymn rather than a prayer or both that really sustains you? 

I'll answer in two bits. The Psalms are very important to me. And again, it's the monastic in me. And there are three Psalms in particular. I sing/say, in my morning prayer early each morning. These days I'm sitting in the dark because it's dark at the moment when I'm up praying, with a candle, with an icon, singing the psalms as the monks are doing in their monasteries. And of three particular - there's one monastery which has been particularly important for me. It's in the middle of ancient woodland in Sussex and they use Psalm 63, 148 and 150 in their Lauds service every day at seven o'clock. So I've been singing those to myself for many years. And then in terms of music, Taize, I absolutely love, I love Taize as a place. I love the Taize chants.  I love to, when I'm having my breakfast, I'll play one of my many Taize CDs.  It's a place that has such special memories for me. You know, I love going there and I've been there several times over the years, sometimes on silent retreat. That's almost my favourite music. It's so simple, but it's in parts. People from different languages and faith traditions can be united in the singing of the Taize chants. 

That is lovely and it kind of brings us back to ecumenism that you were talking about earlier on, that Taize is an ecumenical place. Can I just pin you down for some words that really mean something to you? 

Psalm 63 is the first psalm I sing and I do sing it.  God, you are my God, I seek your face at dawn. For you my soul is thirsting like a dry weary land where there is no water. I love to gaze on you in the sanctuary… Lovely. My day begins with those words. 

And that's great, Eddie. I think you've given us a real glimpse of your relationship with God there, that in the dark, in the morning, with a candle and an icon, you're saying or singing those words. That's really beautiful. I think that will really connect with people. 

So I try and give thanks every day. And again, that's something that experiences like the Camino, have been exercises in thanksgiving. Part of my night prayer, the examen, looking back over the day and saying thank you. The start of my day is a bit of that. I'm tending to do a bit during the day as I go now, just saying thank you. The people I've met today, the experiences that have happened. What a gift. What wonder surrounds us if we but have eyes to see and ears to hear. One of my favourite quotes is by the German mystic Meister Eckhart, If the only prayer we ever said was thank you, it would be enough. 

Thank you, Eddie. So much of what you've said has resonated with me today. Even that last part there, gratitude, is something that - I've really come to more gratitude since I've been doing the podcast actually. Something about having a conversation with someone every week. It's really making me feel even more grateful for my life and my faith. So that really resonates with me too. So thanks ever so much for spending that time with us, Eddie. I've really enjoyed our conversation, as I say, and I think there's much there for listeners to reflect on it. And I think you've really brought to life some of the encounters you've had in your life and particularly on pilgrimage and in monasteries. And I think there's so much richness there for us all to feel part of by hearing you speak about it. So thanks ever so much for giving us that time.

Absolute pleasure Theresa, thank you so much.

Thanks so much for joining me on All Kinds of Catholic this time.  I hope today's conversation has resonated with you.  A new episode is released each Wednesday. Follow All Kinds of Catholic on the usual podcast platforms. Rate and review to help others find it. And follow our X, Twitter and Facebook accounts @KindsofCatholic. You can comment on episodes and be part of the dialogue there.  You can also text me if you're listening to the podcast on your phone, although I won't be able to reply to those texts. Until the next time.