Story Matters Podcast
In the Story Matters Podcast, Hosts Ryan and Emily Baker discuss the intersection between theology and psychology helping listeners to better grasp how their particular stories have shaped them.
Story Matters Podcast
44. I Believe, Help My Unbelief pt.4
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This is an updated and edited episode replacing the one we accidentally published two weeks ago. In it we discuss how your mind can say “I trust God” while your body quietly braces for abandonment. That tension is not a character flaw, it’s often a story. We sit with the hard reality of a divided self: the logical part of us reaches for faith, while the limbic system carries old alarms that flare up right at the moment we try to get close to God, a spouse, or a friend.
We walk through Psalm 27 as a trauma-informed guide to Christian healing and spiritual formation. David names safety (“He will hide me”), belonging (“joy”), and then the risk that follows intimacy: “Do not turn your servant away.” We talk about why vulnerability can feel like stepping across a threshold, how fear of rejection shapes prayer and relationships, and why “teach me your way… lead me on a level path” sounds like rewiring well-worn neuropathways through embodied trust and practice.
Then we ask a question that hits at the core of hope: “Is there a balm in Gilead?” We contrast Edgar Allan Poe’s despair in The Raven with David’s insistence on “the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living,” and we connect it to the cross as the center that gathers the disordered fragments of our being. If you’re tired of quick fixes and spiritual platitudes, this conversation offers a steadier path: tell the truth, bring it into the light, and let Jesus meet you where you actually are.
Subscribe for more conversations like this, share this with a friend who’s doing the hard work of healing, and leave a review so more people can find the show. What feels like the biggest “threshold” for you right now?
Welcome And Why Stories Matter
SPEAKER_00Welcome to the Story Matters Podcast. I'm Ryan Baker.
SPEAKER_01And I'm Emily Baker.
SPEAKER_00We believe people grow and heal through understanding how our stories are rooted in God's redemptive story.
SPEAKER_01We hope our conversations encourage you to engage your story and the world around you with a new lens.
The Hidden Barrier To Growth
SPEAKER_00We're glad you're here. In this series, we've been discussing the verse, I believe, helped my unbelief in the context of the reality of a divided self that we have our conscious, we know what we're thinking, but then we have this place that neurologists refer to as the limbic system that's doing a lot underneath the surface. But we often use words like my heart are a part of me. But the reality is there's a lot of times what we feel deep down or what's driving us doesn't necessarily match what we're thinking. You've heard us say, you know, there will be blood, or it is painful. If you think back to our first season, we had a series going through the shalom arc, and we talked about how the way up is the way down. So you go down into hard things, pain, suffering, you face these, and that's the way God has designed us to grow. And in this episode, we want to build on that by showing that there's this almost imperceptible barrier membrane to growth. Like it's you can get right up to the edge, but to step toward the cross, to step across that membrane, to go into that place, can be so unsettling that often we resort to spiritual language or jargon, or we just don't do it at all. But in this episode and in story work in general, we're always saying let's step right up to the edge, and specifically right up into the arms of the great physician.
Psalm 27 And Feeling Safe
SPEAKER_01We've also been talking about not only our limbic system and our logical mind thinking different things, but also there's a conflict in our feelings that we could feel simultaneously that we want something and we don't want something. And that ambivalence is confusing, but story work and really unpacking the memory, the long-term memory that our body holds is so helpful because it helps us understand what's coming up for us. For example, when we might want to open up to a friend and then our body goes into panic, I don't want to open up. I'm fearful of being vulnerable. So one of my favorite psalms is Psalm 27 for many reasons. There's several parts of it that I love. But you, Ryan, mentioned to me this morning that a particular sentence stood out to you that really illustrates what we've been talking about in this series.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, we we know this psalm. We've talked about it before, you know, where David says, One thing I have asked of the Lord, that which I will seek after, that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and to inquire in his temple.
SPEAKER_01Yes, that's the one you referenced when we were talking about the embodied gospel of feeling safe and loved in our bodies, and that allows us to inquire, which is meditation, learning, vulnerability, creativity in the Lord.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and what's interesting about that is we've in our training have learned the importance of understanding the brain to a degree. You know, there's only so much we are going to understand it. But Dan Siegel does the fists and you fold it over. And you're the one that really reminded me of the importance of safety. You know, am I safe? Am I loved? Can I learn? So I've begun using that. Like it's a real helpful tool to help us understand if we don't feel safe and if I don't feel loved, the next things that we need to be doing aren't going to happen. And that's really, in some ways, the essence of this entire series is most of us like start inquiring, start meditating, start thinking, get your mind straight, get it fixed. But I don't feel safe and I don't feel loved.
SPEAKER_01And if you haven't listened to our embodied gospel episode and this feels new to you, we would recommend you go listen to it because it's not just loved. The portions of the brain need to know I'm safe and I belong. Because that belonging is just as strong in the limbic system that if we feel unwanted or abandoned, rejected, or forsaken, our body reacts.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. You can go back to the embodied gospel. We talk about shame, belonging. There's so many things that intertwine here. What we want to talk about that just stood out to me this morning. And again, this is where I think having a trauma-informed view, all of a sudden certain verses can jump. A lot of times when people aren't aware of certain things, they just glaze over. And I think this is one that I've glazed over, and this morning it caught me. And it's not that long, it's just a few verses. But after the verses we just quoted, David says, four. So he's now going to illustrate practically what this looks like. For he, God, who will hide me in his shelter in the day of trouble. He will conceal me under the cover of his tent. He will lift me high upon a rock, i.e., I am safe, right? And now my head will be lifted up above my enemies, and I will offer in his tent sacrifices with shouts of joy. I'm loved, I belong. And then in verse seven, hear, O Lord, when I cry aloud, be gracious to me and answer me. You have said, Seek my face. My heart says to you, Your face, Lord, do I seek. And here we go. So here's David now putting into practice the boldness of prayer, followed with, hide not your face from me, turn not your servant away in anger. O you who have been my help, cast me not off. Forsake me not, O God of my salvation. He feels the risk. He's moved right up to that membrane. He's coming right up to that threshold. And anytime we do that, we are right at that place of is am I going to be rejected? Is this going to work? And then he says, For my father and mother have forsaken me, but the Lord will take me in. So that's more of a promise. The Lord will take me in. But isn't that what he's naming there? And we don't know David's life. We have obviously the biography, we find it in 1st and 2nd Samuel and Kings. But we find that yes, we know the story that maybe he was overlooked to be chosen as king, if that's how we understand that passage, etc. We don't really know. But what he writes in Psalm 51, Behold, in sin was I conceived. Are these biographical statements, or is he just giving us a general view? But however you read it, I think David's aware when he comes up to the glory and the reality of who God is, everything else pales. And he's naming, I have felt rejection. Whether he has the particular memory or story in mind, or if it's a series of little T events where they all add up, he is aware of what it means to be rejected by family, by loved ones, by parents. And here he is casting all of his hope on God. But after saying all these things, he said so beautifully, please don't turn away from me. Please don't leave me. And I think what we want to name as we look at that is are you feeling that in your return home and your repentance? When we are identifying the places in our life that seek to protect us, that seek to keep us safe, and we're going to turn to God with these places, we will fear rejection. I think often in our lives, when we avoid intimacy, it's a fear of being seen and exposed and rejected. And I think that's true and especially true in our relationship to God.
SPEAKER_01There's one verse, Ryan, that I would love for us to include in this discussion. The next thing he says is, Teach me your way, O Lord, and lead me on a level path. And I think studying neuropathways and understanding neuroplasticity that Kurt Thompson talks about and how the ways we think is very much like pathways within our body. And now I read that thinking, oh, I've thought a certain way. I feel abandoned right now. I feel nervous. Teach me how to relate to you, teach me your path. Um, but I I love to go back real quick before we move on and just talk about the progression. And by the way, men listen to King David. He was a fierce warrior, he's a manly man, and he's understanding his own ambivalence around his desire for God and fear that comes up immediately, like you you pointed out, Ryan. So he says, Hear, O Lord, when I cry aloud, be gracious to me and answer me. You have said, Seek my face, and my heart says to you, Your face, Lord, do I seek. Hide not your face from me. Turn not your servant away in anger. O you who have been my help, cast me not off. Forsake me not, O God of my salvation. For my father and my mother have forsaken me, but the Lord will take me in. So not only is he recognizing that fear came up, he knew where it came from. So, like you said, we don't know his story in the particulars of how. Is this autobiographical or is this figurative? But he is remembering I've had abandonment. I've been forsaken. And that's coming up for me as I move towards you, Lord. That fear is coming up for me. And then he says, But teach me your ways.
SPEAKER_00Well, it's interesting because he says, Teach me your ways and lead me on a level path because of my enemies. And I think most of us know what he refers to as enemies, our outward opponents. Some are other kingdoms and some are internal. We know from scripture there's Absalom and others. But theologically, we have to include the fact that we know the flesh and our enemies within. And dare I even say our limbic system, when it's not firing correctly, it feels like an enemy. You know, when when a normal thing triggers an unusual response, that feels like something in me is off. So as you say, level path, which is a regulated neuropathway, like rewire my brain, oh Lord. I'm coming right up to the edge, I'm coming into your presence. I'm needing your safety versus my normal means. I'm not going to turn to my normal escapes, my normal processes, my normal quote unquote protectors, these styles of relating, whatever. I'm going to go into you. I'm going to trust in you. I'm going to inquire with you. Turn not away from me, but then teach me your way, O Lord, lead me on a level path because of my enemies. Like these, I think that's very important that we don't want to overdo that and forget there are people against us in this world.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, he specifically says, false witnesses have risen up against me and they breathe out violence. That's real.
SPEAKER_00100% real. And then you run into Romans 12, 8, into the courtroom of the soul. The Holy Spirit says to my spirit, He is a son, he's an heir. So my own spirit's testifying against me. Like I have a part of me that's going, We got this Jesus. We're good. And when I say no to that part, we're going to actually follow Yahweh's plan. We're going to follow our Lord's way. My part, that part in us is going to go, Well, we'll see about that.
SPEAKER_01Well, right, because our own enemies often keep us from the flourishing, the shalom restored that we so want in relationship. For example, when we're wanting to grow close to our spouse, a best friend, restore a relationship, but we have an enemy within saying, Don't do it. You're going to get abandoned. You're going to get hurt again. In that moment, that is an enemy keeping us from flourishing.
SPEAKER_00There are enemies outside of us, and there's the enemy within. But let's also not forget the enemies within often developed by the ways we were treated. Absolutely. You know, the voices in our head, the teacher, the snarl of a parent, the critique, the passive aggressive being ignored, all sorts of people have contributed to how our own bodies developed protection. So there is that connection that the way our own body is trying to keep us safe when in reality it's not is usually because of the ways we were treated in our story.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. For example, if you had a mother that was invasive to your space ask you how you're doing, but it's in such a way that you are almost forced to tell her things you don't want to tell her. Later in life, when someone that you love desperately and you want connection with says, How are you? or how was that particular thing today? You may notice I want to share my heart with this person I love. I don't want to share because my long-term memory remembers my mother was always telling me I was doing something wrong. I don't have agency. This is actually consuming me. I feel shame. This is going to open me up for criticism. And so her treatment of you, it was an enemy because it thwarted your ability to thrive.
SPEAKER_00And let me say I love that example. And that example assumes a lot of work. Yeah. Oh, yeah. We don't think that way until we've done some real story or real engagement because it's like water to the fish. It's just the way we feel. And then eventually we start to notice some things with the help of a counselor or a friend or work, maybe a podcast. You start to go, wait a minute, this is what's going on.
SPEAKER_01Right. And I do want to say when I agreed with you, like, oh yeah, it took tons of work. Like you'll hear someone writing a memoir, and you're like, well, they've clearly done tons of work to be able to put language to what they were feeling as a child. It's not always time. It's not like, hey, listener, if you want to start working with us, it's going to take you two years to get to one of these core stories. It could be one of the first stories you write that you think, and I don't really know what's here, but let me see. And the light bulbs just click on, and it's like, oh, this is finally making sense as to why I feel these ways. It's and that's hard work, but it's not like it's going to take you a lot of time.
SPEAKER_00I love that. I agree. In fact, in so many ways, a person that comes into this process, this journey, the works in a way, it's like the spirit's already moving. Oh, yeah. And it's it's just a few steps and it's like there, that's what we were looking for.
SPEAKER_01Yes. And you referenced our shalom arc series that we did in our first season. The whole concept is we want goodness. We want shalom. We want things to be right. So this verse that ends Psalm 27, the way David ends this is he says, I believe that I shall look upon the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. And that phrase is on earth, not just we're waiting for heaven, but right now in the land, the earth, the current life I'm living, I will see the goodness of the Lord. And that is shalom restored, not just future heaven, but I will experience shalom in my relationships. So I think he's illustrating, recognizing damage has been done to me by my own parents. I feel it in my body. When I come to the Lord, it comes up.
Is There A Balm In Gilead
SPEAKER_00He's really laying that out so well in this psalm. And let's also be honest, it's not always our parents, but it is our story. It's our life on earth. You know, where was shalom marred? It can be systems, it can be other people. But when we think of the term enemy, it's really anyone that's not following the ways of God. They're not out for our good. They're not out for flourishing. These are curses or things that repeat. And again, just to be clear, when we're receiving harm to survive that, our own body has to develop processes, right? To keep us safe. These are vows, these are agreements we make, loyalty structures, and they appear to keep us safe for a season, but at some point they don't. This is the whole point of the series is okay, so we come up against that and we really do want something of healing in some place. And then we hear the words of Jesus, do you believe? And we're like, I do believe. And then we also are aware. But if I'm really honest, and deeply inside of me, I also have unbelief. The question I think we're asking Jesus, whether outwardly or we're carrying inwardly, is can I trust you? And are you capable? And is this what you want from me? Like, are you going to heal? And I came across this morning some words that jumped out at me about the cross, where the author says the cross forms the center, and in so doing it draws together the disordered fragments of our being. The cross unites our heart, meaning when we say cross, we mean Jesus. We don't want to ever separate Christ from his benefits or his works. The resurrected Jesus longs to be the center, but the reason the author is talking about the cross is our flesh, the flesh can be crucified, and it was done so already if you're a Christian. But in our unbelief, these places are still trying to follow the ways of the world. And one of our jobs in sanctification is to find these places that are outliers, if you will, these fragmented places, and ask Jesus to heal them as well. But when you do that, you're going to ask the question that we see in Jeremiah 8.22 famously, is there no bomb in Gilead? Is there no physician there? So I just was looking up a little bit of the details on Gilead. And interestingly, it's a mountainous region east of the Jordan. It was known for rich pastures. So here, think of David's Psalms, leave me not reading pastures. Strategic elevation in our psalm we just looked at, our head, he's lifting us high up, natural boundaries. But the point is, it's when it's mentioned, it's a place for healing. And what Jeremiah is asking is, is there a healer? Is there a balm? And in other words, am I going to trek to this location and have wasted my time? Will I be at risk?
SPEAKER_01Is there goodness in the land of the living? Don't we all ask that? Is there any? I mean, do we just have to wait for heaven? Is life just going to be really hard and that's it? Is there healing this side of heaven?
When False Hope Trains Distrust
SPEAKER_00And I love that question because the assumption is, well, let's go check it out. You know, let's just go see. One of my stories, if I may, is my father loved network marketing and he would join a network marketing thing like every third week. And then he'd always be like, Hey, I'm going to enter you and your brother, okay? And there's no risk, I'm going to pay for it. And eventually I was like, there is a risk. I'm getting my hopes up here. Like, I'm told what's going to happen, and then it doesn't happen. If I go to Gilead and there's no balm, what does that do? I'd rather stay here and pretend that there is a Gilead or find a false one than actually go up and it not be there.
SPEAKER_01Can I just name that he kept you in a fantasy world? Because none of those ever panned out. And he would promise you that you were going to get rich and then you wouldn't. And so it was absolutely damaging to the idea of hope in anything that would rescue you from the hard realities of life. And he didn't even live with you. So he would just pop in, pop out. The next time you would see him, he would offer you this false hope, which as a child you don't know it's false. But how hard it would that be for you to now hear there is a balm in Gilead.
SPEAKER_00Yes. It's sort of like, hey, what's the cost? And the cost is great. Whenever you and I remember years ago hearing R.C. Sproul read The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe, and here's the words that he was pointing out.
The Raven Nevermore Versus David
SPEAKER_01Can you read it like him?
SPEAKER_00I wish I could.
SPEAKER_01He didn't he have a cigarette in his head.
SPEAKER_00No, he did not, but he had the the remnants of one in his voice. Prophet, said I, thing of evil, profit still, if bird or devil. By the heaven that bends above us, by that god we both adore, is there balm in Gilead? Tell me, I implore, quote, the raven nevermore. What is happening in that poem is um the person who's speaking to this raven is asking about his long lost love Lenore, and he asks, Is there balm in Gilead? Like, is there resurrection? Is there hope? And the answer of the raven is nevermore. And what that reveals is what we're saying for Poe, what he's landing on is what use is there to live without hope? And so I would say for our purposes, what that means is why risk being vulnerable? Why risk intimacy with our Heavenly Father, with our spouse? Why open up? Why try a new pathway if our body is telling us run, freeze, fight, be super kind and amicable, whatever your limbic response of choice is, often feels so much safer than the risk of rejection or being made fun of or eye rolled or being harmed in any way. And so that's what we're talking about here is when we want to heal, when we want to see these places brought on level paths, new neuropathways, like Romans 12.1 says, he could have said, by view of God's mercy, renew your minds, seek the renewal of your minds. But he says, offer our bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God. This is our spiritual act of worship. We've unpacked that, but it's also every time I think of it, I'm like, oh, it's so weird and so hard to get my mind around. And I just know this, it's uncomfortable, and there's doubt in what you're doing in those moments is saying, God, are you real? Do you love me? Am I safe? Can I follow you?
SPEAKER_01Okay. Well, so um, when I listen to you paraphrasing Edgar Allan Poe and saying things like, quote, The Raven Nevermore, I don't really understand Poe. I don't know that his poetry lands for me.
SPEAKER_00Poe doesn't understand Poe.
SPEAKER_01He feels like a dark character, but he was. Okay. So I'll be honest. My favorite kind. When I hear that poem read, I felt myself pulling out and away from the hardness of understanding what this existential questioning made me feel like, gosh, let's just go get a latte. Like, I don't know what I don't know. Like, I hope this podcast finds the deep thinkers and a little bit more of the simple-minded both. We we are asking hard questions. It doesn't have to be on the level of Edgar Allan Poe.
SPEAKER_00We heard this, I think, as we played a video from RC Sproul for like the junior high or the senior high years ago. And and someone else chose it, by the way. They're like, there's a video on on evangelism by R.C. Sproul. We played it. So it may seem lofty, but the bottom line is Ho, who probably wasn't a Christian, though in an era where everyone knew scripture and he knew believers, and maybe he was. I'm not going to speak to his salvation, but he's right because poetry speaks truth, he's writing truth. That is, to find out there is no future, there is no hope, there is no balm, it's crushing. And so what we're trying to simply say is why mess with it? You just said it. I'll got I'll go grab a latte. Yeah, but if you just got a cancer diagnosis, that's not what you're doing. You know, that's what you're doing. If it's like, do I want to go mend with that coworker who kind of said that thing? I'll get a latte. But if it's something that crushes your soul, and that's how this work usually works, is that people got the lattes for years. And then one day those quit working and they're going, What do I do now? And we say, Well, let's talk about it. And what happens when we look into the past or we look into a story or we look into a particular area of our own heart that's Seems super fragile, super protected, screams at us, get away, it's gonna be painful. And I think that's what we're learning is Jesus is saying there is resurrection, there is shalom restored, but it comes through the going down of the shalom arc.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it got into like the stratosphere, and I don't know how to bring it back to earth. Quote the raven nevermore. What does that even mean?
SPEAKER_00You're doing your Bill O'Reilly. What? Quote the raven, what is it? Do it live. We'll do it live.
SPEAKER_01I don't even know what that means, but I want to hang with you.
SPEAKER_00Okay, I don't mean I'm not an expert on this poem, but let me just tell you what I remember from both. I think high school, and then like later, my mom read it to me once, and then also this raven lands on this guy's thing and he's like speaking nevermore. And so the man who's apparently Poe or whoever the reader or speaker is, is asking questions, trying to figure things out, what's going on. And eventually we find is wondering will he see his love, his long-lost love who has died, Lenore. And then he gets very upset and he's trying to pepper it with, like, hey, whether devil or bird, like whatever you are, the God we both adore, kind of like, you know, we're both in this together, right? We believe in God, right? Is there bomb in Gilead? Is there hope? Is there resurrection? Is there truth? And Edgar Allan Poe, who could have said, quote, the Raven, of course there is, rightly, because of what he's doing in this poem, delivers that gut punch of nevermore. We don't believe that, but it highlights the fact that if there is no hope, this is why it's much easier to drink the latte.
SPEAKER_01Because if I go to my dad And that's just my version of dissociation, I understand what you mean. I know what you mean.
SPEAKER_00Okay. Well, and so if it becomes costly for the young boy to find out that the the next network marketing ploy doesn't work, it's easier to say, sure, sign me up. I'm afraid, I'm afraid of the truth, which is there is no bomb in Gilead. There is no fountain of money. There is no put a coin in the slot and you get three people's money, and then they get nine people's money, and then they get a hundred people's money, and you're rich and you've done nothing, and it's amazing, and it's around the coin that wanna find out that doesn't exist. So sign me up. Go ahead, dad.
SPEAKER_01How is signing you up for it easier? You would just say, I don't want to be a part of that. I'm out.
SPEAKER_00Because I might run the risk of not getting it. I'm not convinced. Because I have a dad telling me it's true. I as a 50-year-old, or maybe even when I started to learn this as a 20-year-old plus, when I began to go with this is crazy. But as a child who's like 13 or 14, I want it. I want this. I want to know that there's rescue and help. And this is the man whom I'm longing to see rescue me. So to say, nope, we're not doing it is a risk.
SPEAKER_01So, how does that risk have anything to do with what we're talking about with the limbic system and logic system of I believe, help my unbelief, tie that in for me.
SPEAKER_00Because one day, someday I woke up and realized that though I had a father, I'm not sure I had a dad, and I had become a Christian and walked with Jesus. And I had to realize that riches and easy money weren't the way, but it came at a cost. A lot of dreams, a lot of connection to him. And so to get to that place where you can name this is not going to work. And our relationship is not going to work like this, and maybe at all. As hard as that is, as devastating as that is, as countercultural as that may sound, brought healing. Because then I could turn toward the Lord and toward real healing and real growth and spiritual fathers whom he brought in our relationship and so many other things. But had I just consistently said no, I'm going to just trust him and sign up for the next thing, I would have not been a good ending.
SPEAKER_01So you replaced your dad's false balm with your new heavenly father's true balm of Gilead. But what comes up for you then, if that's in your long-term memory, how does that come up for you in terms of trusting that there is healing in the land of the living that David talks about at the end of his poetry? He's hopeful. He's saying, I do believe in the goodness of the Lord and I will see it.
SPEAKER_00I don't think we anticipated this whole episode being about me, but I will be glad to say the remnants of that worldview live on and were ensconced deeply in my being to where anything that looks really hard must be wrong. Anything that looks like it's going to have a lot of work, probably not the best way.
SPEAKER_01Because you were taught by him that it should be easy money. You just sign up, and if this one works, it's like the lottery, you'll get all the money you need.
SPEAKER_00And I don't want to tie all of it to that one or two or even a dozen moments because there's other ways he transposed it to me in our relationship. But yes, I mean, even like introducing me to the power of positive thinking as a young man, and then Anthony Robbins and neurolinguistic programming, and really just so many things around if you can get your mind formed, you're good. And I'll be honest, we've talked about this before, but so often, if we're not careful, our theology will mesh. And it's sort of this theology of if you just believe correctly, get it fixed, the fruit will just flow. And that that's the gospel it sounds like, except, oh, there's just one piece missing suffering. Suffer. Show us the brokenness, be vulnerable. Oh, wait a minute. That's not that wasn't in the plan.
SPEAKER_01The cross of Christ has no place in a in a worldview like that. So we kind of have two poems that are on the table. We have David's poem and prayer of his wrestling with the heaviness of life and the enemies in his own mind and true enemies that are saying false things about him. And then you have Edgar Allan Poe, who's writing a poem about speaking with a raven, and he's asking, Is there goodness in the lane of the living? Is there hope? Is there bomb in Gilead? And so Edgar Allan Poe's questioning ends with despair, where King David's questioning of like, Are you gonna leave me? Are you gonna forsake me? Do not turn away your servant, because my father and my mother forsaken me, but the Lord will take me in his ends in hope.
SPEAKER_00So the way the poem ends is with the speaker realizing that the raven will never leave, and that his grief will never lift. And so he's in despair. And that's the setup, that's the tragedy for which the gospel comes and says, or you're right, death the way it was done before the cross, you'll never lift. And so Jesus' death answers this poem, and his resurrection changes. So we find a new prophet, we find a new bird, we find a new voice.
SPEAKER_01I just wonder how many of us live with the mentality of that poem, of the raven. And so we just dissociate and we just find ways to cope with the fact that there is no hope.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Oh, look at that cute black bird that just says nevermore all the time. How cute. That's my pet nevermore. No, you're right. It's like that's a that's one way we just escape. We just pretend it's great.
SPEAKER_01Like lipstick on a pig. Well, this is just how it's gonna be. But yet the hard work of asking what's coming up for me when I do hope, like David does, leads us to the hope that there is a balm in Gilead. There is goodness in the lane of the living.
SPEAKER_00And that truth is why we we are able to grieve because we believe. That's the beauty. Like I think to live without that beauty is to say, this is you know the circle of life, time will heal all wounds. The gospel says, no, this is never the way it was supposed to be. You are to grieve, but as one with hope.
SPEAKER_01So we've mentioned this in many different ways, but if you were living in the mentality of Poe despair of there is not a bomb in Gilead, you may just change that you don't even like Lenore, the lover, you know, like, will I see her again? Oh, I didn't really even like her anyway.
Own Your Story And Tell It
SPEAKER_00You just change the story, and I don't feel so earlier when I was thinking about how enemies can be voices, the name that came to my mind in the book was Bird by Bird. So we're doing tons of birds in this episode. But Anne Lamont, she talks about you'll be sitting at your typewriter, it's for writers, you know, you're writing, and all of a sudden that second grade teacher snarling over her shoulder, or that critical parent or whatever. And that's kind of what we're talking about with enemies.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Anne Lamont says, and this is my encouragement to every listener you own everything that happened to you. Tell your stories. If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better.
SPEAKER_00Amen. Not promoting libel or slander.
Bringing Darkness Into The Light
SPEAKER_01But we're talking about our stories that have shaped the way we show up to life. And they need to be told. And, you know, we pray our own kids tell the stories and that we're there to say, Oh, you're so right. I'm very sorry for the way I harmed you and I didn't realize it, or maybe I did realize it, but there's repair. But we've got to tell our stories and not live in this dark world of Poe that we just despair and any kind of healing.
SPEAKER_00I'm fascinated by the fact that every Christian can quote Jesus saying, I am not I give you, but I am the way, the truth, and the life. Everyone knows first John talks about you know bringing it into the light. And yet, how committed the church or people that call themselves Christians are committed to hiding lies, darkness. But here's the killer: we are too. We don't want to open up those parts of our own souls that are clinging to these other ways of life because of the fear that they induce, you will die. Those are the little ravens, nevermore. And yet, when we go to the absolute beautiful physician that is Jesus, the true balm of Gilead, it's painful and it's beautiful. We all know this, but yet we come up against it in these ways that when intimacy is required, when vulnerability is required, that's when we start to go, whoa, I don't know if I like this stuff.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. I don't know that David's parents were thrilled that he wrote a poem that said, My mother and my father have forsaken me. But again, like Anne Lamont says, if people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better.