Episode 2.6 – What Is Embodied Spirituality? A Conversation with Shelly Petz

In this episode of Science and Spirituality for the Curious, I explore an important question: What happens when we integrate our spiritual lives with our physical lives, rather than treating them as separate dimensions of human existence?

My guest is Rev. Dr. Shelly Petz, author of Meet You at Nine, which is available for purchase at Amazon.com. Shelly’s new book chronicles her journey into embodied spirituality. Through years of prayer, ministry, and personal reflection, Shelly has discovered a specific prayer practice that engages not only the mind and spirit, but also the body.

Our conversation begins with Shelly's own spiritual journey. Although she originally expected to pursue a career in medicine like her father and grandfather, a profound experience while hiking led her in a different direction. Ultimately this new direction led into ordained ministry. Along the way, Shelly developed a deeper understanding of prayer—not as a way of informing God about our needs, but as an invitation to align ourselves with God's presence and purposes.

A turning point in Shelly's spiritual life came when she sensed an invitation from God to meet each day at 9:00 a.m. What began as a daily commitment to prayer, gradually evolved into a practice she calls circle prayer. Inspired in part by Mark Batterson's book The Circle Maker and the ancient story of Honi the Circle Maker, Shelly began walking and driving in intentional circles while praying for her family, congregation, community, and others.

As Shelly explains in our conversation, this practice transformed the way she sees the world. Circle prayer helped her slow down, become more attentive to the people and places around her, and recognize opportunities for human connection that might otherwise have gone unnoticed.

One of the most intriguing aspects of our discussion is Shelly's conviction that God is always ready to meet us. The barriers that prevent us from experiencing God's presence are not God's barriers, but our own. Through her practice of circle prayer, Shelly has learned to become more attentive to that ever-present invitation from God.

During our conversation, Shelly also shared practical examples of how circle prayer can deepen one's spiritual life, and she demonstrated the practice of circle prayer for listeners of this episode.

Whether you are curious about prayer, interested in spiritual practices, or simply looking for new ways to integrate the physical and spiritual dimensions of life, I think you'll find this conversation both thought-provoking and inspiring.

To financially support this podcast series, go to www.scienceandspirituality.org/support  

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:12

Hello everyone and welcome to this episode of Science and Spirituality for the Curious. For more information on this podcast series, check out our website at www.science and spirituality.org. I am Richard Randolph, the founder and director of Science and Spirituality, and your host for this podcast series. Before we get started, I'd like to ask for your support. My goal with Science and Spirituality for the Curious is to keep these conversations open, thoughtful, and freely available to anyone interested in exploring this relationship between science, spirituality, and faith. Every contribution helps create a space where science and spirituality can meet in thoughtful, respectful conversation. A space that is increasingly needed in our culture today. Producing each episode costs about $200 for editing and production. If you find value in this podcast, I invite you to support it through a monthly contribution of $5, $10, or even $20. You can learn more about how to set up a monthly contribution by going to www.scienceandspirituality.org forward slash support. You can also sponsor an episode for $200. Sponsors are recognized at the beginning of each episode that they sponsor, and they may share a brief message with listeners. If you'd like to sponsor an episode, please email me at Richard at science and spirituality.org. And if financial support isn't possible right now, please consider sharing this podcast with a friend. Personal recommendations are one of the most important ways that podcasts grow. And your recommendation can help others discover these conversations. Thank you for listening. Thank you for sharing, and thank you for supporting science and spirituality for the curious. Today's episode focuses on two dimensions of human existence. I often describe human beings as having at least five core dimensions the physical, rational, emotional, social, and spiritual. Yet human flourishing depends upon their integration. One example is the relationship between science and spirituality. Many people have been taught that science belongs to our rational dimension, and spirituality belongs to an entirely different sphere. The mission of science and spirituality is to help people overcome this false dichotomy and to discover how these dimensions can inform and enrich one another. But science and spirituality are not the only dimensions that we tend to separate. Many of us have also learned to separate the spiritual from the physical. We often think of spirituality as something that happens primarily in our minds through prayer, meditation, study, and reflection. But what if our bodies are not separate from our spiritual lives? What if they are essential to them? What might change if we experience an embodied spirituality with our whole being? Few people have explored these questions more thoughtfully than the Reverend Dr. Shelly Petts. For many years, she has been studying and practicing embodied spirituality, and she recently distilled her insights into a new book called Meet You at Nine. Meet You at Nine is available for purchase on Amazon.com. In our conversation, Shelly shares what she has learned about how embodied spirituality has transformed her own spiritual journey. Listen to our fascinating conversation. Shelly, thanks for your willingness to be interviewed on Science and Spirituality for the Curious. Let's begin with you telling us a little bit about yourself and this spiritual journey that you've been on.

SPEAKER_01 4:51

Thank you. I'm so glad to be on this uh time with you and look forward to the conversation. I have been a person who's always loved learning and exploring and trying out new things and deepening my faith. I have always been also very curious about nature and being outside throughout my life. And so any ways that I can connect God and my faith and trying out new things has been really intriguing to me. I also have a lot of questions in life. And so I'm just very curious about things. And so any ways that I can just open my mind and my thinking and my intrigue, I'm really curious about that. And so like to do that. I also have a deep understanding that my body and my mind and my spirit are all very intertwined and very connected. And that's been a part of my journey throughout my life. And so ways that I can connect all of those are fascinating to me. And so that's kind of where I've been on my spiritual journey is finding ways that I can connect and understand my body and my mind and my spirit and how they work together, how they learn from each other, how they are at interplay together. All of that has been really important to my learning and my understanding of who I am and who I am in the world.

SPEAKER_00 6:05

So you're ordained in the United Methodist Church. So tell us a little bit about your call to the ordained ministry.

SPEAKER_01 6:11

That was not my plan to be an ordained minister. My plan was to be a physician like my father and his father before him. And so I was studying pre-med in college. And then one day I was actually out at my parents' cabin and hiking up the mountain. I had been with others, but at that point I knew that I needed to go alone. I wasn't sure why, but I knew that I needed to take a part of hike by myself. So told the others that that was my plan. And so I began hiking up the mountain. And at one point, it was uh again, depending upon who uh who hears the story, some people were like, Oh, yeah, that makes total sense. And some people are like, Oh, you're crazy. Either way is fine, but this is what happened.

SPEAKER_00 6:50

No, both both things can be true at the same time.

SPEAKER_01 6:52

Absolutely, absolutely. So as I was hiking, I literally was stopped in my tracks and where I couldn't like physically move any further, forward or backward or side to side or any way, and literally heard, as I understand that I literally heard God tell me, go to seminary and get tools for the journey. And so that was my invitation, my call as I was just out hiking in the mountains. And that kind of just shifted and changed everything for me because that was not my plan. And certainly at that point, was being a pastor was never in the plan. But I was like, all right, I'll go to seminary, I'll get tools for the journey and see where that leads. So went to seminary and had a great experience, but I was still convinced that I never wanted to be a pastor in a local church. I was, you know, hurt by the church and had difficult situations in the church, and I didn't want to be a part of that. But I said, as I was learning in seminary, that there were some things that I just wanted to continue to learn more about and find out more about. So I leaned into that. At the time, I was also very involved in camping ministry, and I thought that was great. Um, and then I also served a year as a chaplain resident in a hospital in Kansas City and to try to figure out how I can explore both my passion for medicine and my faith. And so that was really helpful for me in kind of navigating how those worlds could possibly intersect together. And then it was after that that uh I did receive a call to serve in a local church. And I said, I guess that's just another tool in my tool belt. I still don't want to be a pastor, but but here we go. So that's kind of how I got into it.

SPEAKER_00 8:21

It's a great story. Thank you so much for sharing that. Before we talk about your new book, let me ask you about prayer in general. In the gospel of Matthew, Jesus says that God knows what we need before we even ask God. If that's true, then what's the purpose of prayer in your view?

SPEAKER_01 8:41

Prayer is really um an invitation for me to sync up with God, to abide with God, to figure out, you know, if God does have it all figured out, and if God knows what we need before we even ask, for me, it's about aligning myself with what I don't understand, with what I don't know, with what I may need to ask or receive or listen for. So, but it's for me, it's really an a deep invitation for me to abide when I certainly don't have everything figured out, but it's an invitation for me to step into that, into God's knowing and understanding and presence.

SPEAKER_00 9:17

Thanks, Shelly, for that explanation of prayer. I think very reflective, and uh I appreciate you sharing that with us. In view of how you think about prayer, how did that lead to the form of prayer that you use for many years and describe in in your book, Meet You at Nine?

SPEAKER_01 9:36

Because I just have this deep understanding of prayer as abiding, um, I just had this hunger to abide more and more with God. And when God literally invited me to meet every day at nine, I was like, okay, I I wasn't sure why or what that meant for me, but I I wanted to lean into that invitation. Uh I was curious about what I might experience, and I didn't want to miss anything. And so I just said, okay, I will show up and and see what happens. And so as I began showing up every morning at nine, it just awakened me to the realization that God is always there. I just needed to be awakened to it and to God's presence and to God's spirit. And so it helped me. Well, I'm not always a person who has to have uh exact well, not well, I'm not a person who always has to have everything exactly lined up and a schedule thing always didn't always fit with who I am. The scheduled time really invited me to be intentional about my time of prayer and not as haphazard as sometimes I had been, to really cultivate the awareness that I needed God more than I ever could have imagined. Um, and I was a pastor, and so people thought, yeah, you know, I had it all figured out in terms of what prayer was, and I knew exactly what to do. And this was just really more about how I needed to grow and how I wanted to grow and how much more I had to learn about God's presence in my life. And that's really what opened me up to trying to be more intentional about my times of resting with, abiding with, wrestling with all of the above with God.

SPEAKER_00 11:15

So in your book, you describe, I think it's a new form of prayer. I wasn't familiar with it until I read your book. So it's sort of a circling prayer. Can you describe that?

SPEAKER_01 11:25

Yeah. And that was a prayer I wasn't familiar with, but I I guess goes back um actually pretty far when I began reading about it. The first time that I got introduced to it was by a book actually called The Circle Maker by Mark Batterson. But it was an invitation to pray boldly and literally move walking circles around whatever it was. And there's a um an ancient circle maker by the name of Honey that is, um, if people are interested, they could explore a little bit further as well. Honey the circle maker that um that would pray circles around various things. And so when I learned about this, it was interesting to me because it for me allowed me to get out of my head and into my body more in some of my prayers, because I could, you know, sit in silence and prayer for a long time. But sometimes I would wondered what in the world was happening or if anything would happen. And when I combined the walking and the movement and the embodiment of prayer, it helped me recognize that God was with me in my body in ways that I hadn't experienced before. And it opened me to seeing people and things and situations by just opening up new avenues of prayer for me. And that was really helpful for me.

SPEAKER_00 12:39

Screw it. Know us more about Honey.

SPEAKER_01 12:41

Yeah, it's been a while since I've studied him, but it was the one store that I remember really powerfully was there was such drought in the area where Honey was living. And he vowed to literally pray circles around where he was living until it would rain. It was absolutely days and weeks and months upon each other of which he would circle, but he was faithful until the day it rained. And so I was intrigued by someone's faithfulness that was willing to lean into a prayer in the midst of a drought that he had no idea when or if it would ever end, but was faithful in what he was invited to do. And so that for me was an invitation to when I don't know what's ahead, how can I at least be faithful in my one next step in what I'm invited to do?

SPEAKER_00 13:33

In the preference of your book, you refer to uh doing a lot of soul work and exploring orthocartic ministry. What's orthocartic ministry, Shelly?

SPEAKER_01 13:44

Yeah, so I'd love this new, for me, it was a new understanding of orthocartic meaning right heart ministry. Um, I remember uh studying in seminary about orthodoxy and um right belief and orthopraxy, right practice, and and how do we determine who's right or who's wrong, or how do we, you know, in what we're doing and believing, and how do we live into that? And so that for me, this was opened up a whole nother way of thinking about how do I get my heart right? How do I love like God loves? Um, and that was uh an invitation for me of thinking about, and actually, uh, one of the people that I was studying was or learned this from was um Reverend Dr. Jason Velindi, who talked about in this particular instance, we're talking about clergy burnout and how clergy burnout can often be a sign that traditional leadership practices fall short. And he invited us to go back to our desert fathers and mothers from many, many centuries ago, who were rooted in a form of understanding that meaningful ministry flows out of hearts oriented toward God. And that helped me wonder oh, how can I orient my heart toward God and all that I'm thinking and saying and doing? And that maybe life isn't just about relentless productivity, maybe it's also about orienting to God's presence in a way that I hadn't understood before. And that's what's what's been exciting to me in my some of my own transformation is looking at what is what is my orientation to God look like today.

SPEAKER_00 15:26

Let's talk about this process. You set aside this time at nine o'clock every morning to meet God, to be with God. And then you adopted this circling prayer process. And for you, the way you practiced it, you you walked in or drove, depending upon the context, in seven circles. So talk to us a little bit about how how you did that and and why seven.

SPEAKER_01 15:52

Yeah, um, I'll start with that. The why seven. Um, the why seven for me began because my understanding in of biblical wisdom and understanding is that seven is often known as a number uh of of perfection or completion. And so that's kind of what was a driving force for me in that awareness was recognizing that for me, seven is a is often a very holy number. Um, and so that's why why I often do seven. It doesn't always happen, but that's a lot of my the basis of a lot of my circling times have been um seven times and seeking, seeking for that. But yeah, my my circling looked uh different depending upon what was going on and and what what happened. And and it it literally began by trying circles around my own home. And I think I was at a time where I wasn't sure what was happening in at work or I wasn't sure what was happening in my house. And I felt like there was just a lot of chaos everywhere. And so I was like, well, where do I spend a lot of my time? It was at the home. And so I said, if I can begin thinking about abiding with God even here in my home, what could that look like? And so began just literally walking circles around my house. That's how it began. And then it kind of grew from there, circles of different, different ways of walking, also various avenues of circling. And it's it's just been a great adventure to see where the circles might lead me.

SPEAKER_00 17:12

Tell us about some of the different places and ways that you've tried circle praying.

SPEAKER_01 17:16

Yeah. So I've experienced circle praying around my home, my place of work, my community, and also different situations. Sometimes I found myself like at nine where I couldn't physically walk, but I was in a certain situation. So I would find ways to pray around those situations wherever I found myself. So I've really discovered that when I'm open to it, I've tried to have fun where circling wherever I am has been a great uh opportunity for me.

SPEAKER_00 17:42

Yeah. So one of the ways uh that you have done circling prayer just for our audience is you actually got in your car and drove around in circles. So can you talk a little bit about that, Rustinz?

SPEAKER_01 17:54

Yeah. And I've done it a few different times. One time that I remember was I was in a hurry because I had to get to my next thing. And I was like, how am I supposed to, you know, get in my walking today? And so I had light bulb came. I was like, oh, well, you can you can drive this instead of walk it. And so that invitation to do that then allowed me to think, you know, sometimes we're we feel like we're we may be going in circles and maybe going nowhere in our life or that it may be random. And yet in that driving around in circles, I noticed things that I hadn't noticed before. And it opened me to saying, oh, what is right here right around me that that God might help me pay attention to? And uh, so that was really, really great invitation for me when when I don't know where I'm going to pay attention.

SPEAKER_00 18:36

Yeah, you know, as I was reading a book, so towards the middle of the book, I made this note. I said, I read down prayer seems to open Shelly's awareness to all types of ministries going on around her, meaning perhaps previously not always noticed by people in her community. So does that resonate with you? Is that it absolutely does.

SPEAKER_01 18:57

It absolutely does. And I think some of the repetition of of the circles when it's with the seven times, it allowed me to go beyond what I would just see on the surface to see what's the next layer, what's the next layer, what's the thing I'm missing? And it's really helped me to dive deeper into whatever is right before me. And I think that's a great, I appreciate your insight on that and what you notice. That's I think a lot of what happens as I'm circling.

SPEAKER_00 19:23

Yeah. So could you give us sort of a an illustration of how the circling helped you get deeper and deeper in the particular context?

SPEAKER_01 19:31

Yeah. Just do one example. As I was circling one time around a in my community, I was driving and circling, and I recognized how many times I had passed by the exact same places or people and never never paid attention. And it allowed me to see pain more intimately of those whom I'm whom I had missed by driving by so fast. It allowed me to see the humanity around me that um that was an invitation for me to connect human to human more fully, which is really beautiful for me. Um, it also allowed me to recognize that sometimes my regular routines keep me from seeing what is beyond those routines. So that's been really, really helpful for me to make connections, to make invitations, and to to see beyond the blinders that sometimes I can have on when I'm just trying to make it to the to my one next thing or my next, you know, whatever's on the agenda or the calendar. I gotta just get there. Circling has allowed me to slow down and recognize, um, really recognize what has always been there that I just couldn't see.

SPEAKER_00 20:52

During this time in your book, you're involved in ministry. And one of the things that I thought was really interesting is that you were very clear and open, first of all, with your own family, but also with the church that you were pastoring, that you were doing this spiritual practice of circle praying. So then you invited people to join you as a community at certain times. Could you share some experiences of circle praying in community with others?

SPEAKER_01 21:26

Yeah. One time we literally took our church staff that we were working with and loaded up in our church van to circle around our community. And that was another one of just the things that was helpful for me of getting out of our church building and into the places where we wanted to serve. And it just helped our staff look at things differently too, look at the people in our community. It was an invitation to not just expect that um we're gonna reach folks when we stay in our building, but that really we were invited out into the world. In a new way. And so that was a really helpful experience to do that together, to pray together and to think about our ministry together that helped change our work together as a staff. Some other times, um, when I invited this circling with another church, invited them to think about how they might do this in their own places of work or in their family, and had one teacher who was also a coach practiced it in his own classroom, not when people were there. Um, and how it just shaped him and his work as a teacher by thinking about inviting God into those places for him was just really powerful to see what happens on a Sunday morning being lived out in people's lives where they are throughout the week was really incredible to see.

SPEAKER_00 22:46

I found that story really inspiring about the school coach. Shelley, can you summarize how circle praying has transformed you as a person? What have you learned about God through this prayer approach and what have you learned about yourself?

SPEAKER_01 23:01

Probably one of the key things I've learned. Well, two key things. One is that God is always ready to meet me and anyone. That was the first key thing that I learned is that God is always ready. And the second key thing was an invitation for me to remove any barriers of why I couldn't or didn't want to or wasn't able to meet with God. And so those are the the two key things that have been takeaways for me is that anything that I think is a barrier, it's it's on my side. And so it was an invitation to to really look at that um and to set some of those down to draw nearer and abide better and differently, maybe not better, to abide differently.

SPEAKER_00 23:43

I want to encourage all my listeners to buy your book because it's it's really inspiring. And in the book, you really lay out this pattern of prayer in a really helpful way. But what advice would you give to someone who wants to try circle praying?

SPEAKER_01 23:57

Be careful, it might change your life. And also an invitation to this was hard for me, but I continue to to work on it, is is to think about making sure that you're listening to God and not your own or someone else's thinking. And so some of my own discernment has been around tapping into what is God, what is it that I'm hearing from God, and what is it that are other voices that may not be. And so that's an invitation I continue to lean into and don't have it all figured out yet, but really trying to be intentional about listening for God's invitation on my life.

SPEAKER_00 24:37

How do you discern that it's genuinely God, or how do you discern that it's authentically God who's speaking?

SPEAKER_01 24:45

So I think this is an excellent question, and one that I continue to wrestle with myself, and I don't have it all figured out. What I do know is that always, but sometimes when I am abiding with God, I get into what I call sometimes like a flow state, in that it is things that I wouldn't normally understand or say or think or do um happen in a way that I cannot otherwise describe. And I'm still working on it, I'm still working it out. And it's been such an exciting journey when I recognize that there is something outside of me that is acting that I can lean into for good. Why it's exciting to me is that I I don't have it all figured out. I appreciate the opportunity that I can be curious about it, I can learn about it, and I can learn from my encounters to see where it leads me next.

SPEAKER_00 25:41

So, do you continue to do circle praying?

SPEAKER_01 25:44

I do. In fact, even just this morning, I uh went out and circled my neighborhood um before we joined on uh for the podcast, partly because it was a beautiful morning and partly because it's always a reminder to me to embody the moment. And so it helps me to get outside of just my head and my thinking and into my body and my spirit and my mind together to sync up. And so I did it even just this morning around my neighborhood before we came on today.

SPEAKER_00 26:14

In this episode, we've been exploring embodied spirituality with Shelly Petz, a Christian clergywoman who has just published a book on circle praying, which is a form of embodied spirituality that also involves movement during prayer. Her new book is called Meet You at Nine. And again, it's available at Amazon Books. Now, as our conversation drew to a close, I ask Shelley to demonstrate her method of circle praying by offering a circle prayer for everyone who listens to this podcast episode. Here's what she said.

SPEAKER_01 26:51

Yeah, that's a great question. Um, and I'm thinking, again, it may or may not work for different people depending on where they are. Uh, I'm I'm open to trying this together here today, since I can't easily get up and walk around as we're doing this. One of the things that I also like to do uh at a more place where I'm sitting and can't get up is combining maybe circle prayer and also something that I've learned about, which is bilateral stimulation. And I don't know if you've done that much or if your listeners have, but is this is also really changed my prayer time and my encountering. But it's anything that you can do to cross your midline of your body by um with the opposite, like the opposite arm to the opposite side of your body. For example, your right arm crossing over to the left part of your body and your left arm uh crossing over to your right part of your body. And again, this has been fascinating to me. And if someone who you may want to, you know, bring in someone who can knows about brain chemistry and brain uh working for one of your podcasts. But what I've learned from one of a dear psychologist friend of mine was that anytime you can cross over, it allows the two hemispheres of your brain, your um analytical and thinking brain side and your creative and curious brain to cross over and work together instead of always just being separate. And that has helped me in my prayer life, in my moments of anxiety, in my moments of wondering um, how do I tap into my body? So I'm wondering, maybe some of my prayer circle together here today might combine uh the crossing over. Well, since I'm just sitting here and praying, the crossing over of the two sides of the hemispheres to pray for those who might be listening today. So I'm just gonna invite those who are listening into a spirit of prayer, whatever that means for you, as we join together in a moment of circling prayer for those who are listening. As I begin, I'm going to cross over my right arm over into the the side of my left side of my head, and my left arm over to the right side of my head. Oh God, for all who are thinking people, who are listening, who have ears to hear, minds to explore, words to think about, expand our thinking, our creativity, our opportunity to know more, to be curious deeper, and to open ourselves to that which we do not yet understand. As I move down to my shoulders, to cross my shoulders with each hand. Oh God, for those who feel the weight of the world upon their shoulders, we pray. For those who are listening who are exhausted, who carry heavy burdens, who don't know which way to go, oh God, take their yoke off of their shoulders so that it may be lighter, so that they may follow you. Lord, as I move my hands across my heart. Today I pray for all those who seek right heart work to be loving and kind to neighbors and strangers and even enemies, for those that we don't understand, for those who are seeking, for those with broken hearts. Oh Lord, we pray as I cross my hands over my gut, oh Lord, for those who know that just something isn't right in the world, or in their community, or in their family, or within themselves. Help them to listen to their inner understanding, that their gut work may be turned over to you. Lord, as I cross my hands behind my back, I pray for all those who will come after us, for those that we can't see, those that we may never see, those we may never know, for their journey, for their questions, for the possibilities that they will bring to the table that aren't even yet known to the world. Lord, as I place my hands across my lap, holding tenderly all that which is in our care, for children, for children to the seventh generation beyond us and even beyond, for the elderly who sit tenderly, for the books we may hold in our lap, for those who may be differently abled that it's hard to see or know, or know how to connect, for the people who are listening, who are wondering how do I make sense of today? Oh Lord, I pray. And as I cross my hands across each leg at the feet, I pray for those who have gone before us, who have laid a foundation, who have marched into places they would rather have not marched and made a difference. I pray for those who have opened pathways of understanding, of knowing, of exploring. I pray for the saints who have given us what we needed for today, who call us to go forward and where we are, and that we may plant a firm foundation for those who will come after us. Always we pray in your most holy name. Amen.

SPEAKER_00 33:20

Amen. Thank you, Shelly, for your prayer and for this very powerful and enlightening discussion. I really appreciate your willingness to be a part of uh science and spirituality for the Curious Podcast. Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 33:36

My pleasure to be here. Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_00 33:38

I hope that you've enjoyed my conversation with Shelly Petz on embodied spirituality. Once again, if you'd like to purchase your new book, meet you at nine. It's available through Amazon Books, and you can access it through the Amazon website. Thanks for listening to this episode of Science and Spirituality for the Curious, the podcast series of the Science and Spirituality Institute. To find out more about SSI, check out our website at www.scienceandspirituality.org. I hope that this episode has stimulated your thinking and perhaps raised some new and interesting questions to think about further. Please send your comments, questions, and suggestions to me using the comment link. Also, I really want to hear what subjects you'd be interested in for future episodes. If you have a suggestion for a future podcast topic, please put that in the comment link as well. Please share this podcast with people who would be interested in the science and spirituality interface. You can significantly help grow our audience by simply sharing this podcast through your network of friends and acquaintances. Thanks again for listening. This is Richard Randolph, the founder and director of SSI, and your host for this podcast. So long for now, let's continue to explore the interface between science and spirituality together.