Episode 4 - Narcissus at the Pool: Is God Looking a Little Too Much Like You?

In our first episode of 2025, Ricardo and Joanne are joined by Rev. Tony Snow - Indigenous Minister, Traditional Knowledge Keeper, and Day School Survivor - to discuss the rise of Christian Nationalism in our society, and how we might endure through the chaos that seems to be swirling around us.

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Chapters

• 0:00 Navigating Challenging Times with Love
• 4:59 Christian Nationalism and Political Identity
• 16:23 Legacy of Government and Indigenous Relations
• 28:26 Political Leadership and Societal Shifts
• 34:36 Systemic Norms and Religious Influence
• 48:15 Indigenous Rights in Canada and the US
• 56:35 Finding Identity and Hope Amid Oppression
• 1:05:23 Exploring Identity through Faith and Experience
• 1:13:55 God's Infinite Mystery and Human Evolution
• 1:19:56 Modern Spirituality and Ecstatic Experiences
• 1:33:36 Connection, Hope, and Collective Action

Transcript

Bill

Hey out there to all of you as we come to our first podcast of 2025. We're gathering here today in the midst of a great deal of uncertainty, and I want to acknowledge that uncertainty that many of us are feeling. In just a week, trump is going to take office once again. Meanwhile, los Angeles is still engulfed in flames, the violence around the world seems to be escalating, even in the midst of failed talks of ceasefire, and the rollback that we are seeing in our society for diversity and inclusion policies and checks for hate speech on social media has left a lot of people feeling very afraid and very unsafe and very unsure about the future, and that is understandable, to say the least. So I want to be clear that it is always our goal here on, prepared to Drown, to have meaningful conversation in a way that balances depth with levity. But before we go there tonight, I want you to know that if you are coming into this year, if you're coming into this month, if you're coming into this time of listening to this podcast, afraid or feeling alone or just having a really hard time with the state of the world or where you're at in the midst of all of this chaos, I want you to know that you are not alone, but I also want you to know that you are not alone. But I also want you to know that you are not alone, because there are countless, countless courageous and compassionate individuals who are tirelessly working to create safe spaces and places for victims of hate and violence and cruelty. The funny thing about love is that it often manages to do what the psalmist Coburn writes kick at the darkness until it bleeds daylight. And that is what I come to expect of tough love in tough times that love will kick at the darkness until it bleeds daylight, until this darkness that constantly seeks to undermine the love and grace of God in our world will one day recede and we can see anew the divine spark of all of creation. So, together, I hope that we can find some hope and some strength in the efforts of all of those who are fighting for justice in our world. And until that hope is realized, I just want you to know that you are held in grace and you are loved so deeply and you are perfect, just as you are. All of us here at Prepared to Drown, love you, and God, who made you and calls you beloved, loves you as well. You are never alone. And so, with that, while all of us here in Canada continue to hold space for defying gravity, and and while we also wait to see whether or not we're about to become the 51st state or whether we're going to have to impose some pretty massive tariffs on our hockey pucks, let's take a long walk off a short pier and see what kind of depth we can find. 

Here at Prepared to Drown, we turn on the microphones and leave them on until we're finished talking. No editing, no do-overs. It's all about good, meaningful dialogue recorded in front of a live studio audience, to keep us honest. So, in this space, we're going to talk about God and this messed up, backwards, upside-down world that God loves so much. Let's dive on in, have some real conversations and navigate these challenging times together. I'm Bill Weaver and this is Prepared to Drown times together. I'm Bill Weaver and this is Prepared to Drown. 

And so here we are on a cold January 2025 night here in Calgary, Alberta, and with me, as always, I have Ricardo de Menezes on the far right and Reverend Joanne Anquist next to him, and our guest this evening is the Reverend Tony Snow, who is a member of the Stony Nakoda First Nation. 

He grew up in Treaty 7 territory at Mînî Thnî, Alberta, and he is the son of Dr. Reverend Chief John Snow Sr., who attended the Morley Indian Residential School. Tony himself is a Day School Survivor. He's an Indigenous Minister of Chinook Winds Region, and a Traditional Knowledge Keeper as well. He's worked for decades in public engagement and government relations and working non-stop tireless efforts to bring awareness and healing to communities of faith and indigenous peoples. That's been the life work of the Snow family, stretching back through Tony's father and grandfather for generations. Tony carries on that legacy today in his ministry and his public speaking and opportunities like this to come and bring communities together and seek to learn and grow and share and truly understand each other. Is there anything that I missed in that introduction that you'd like me to lift up or that you'd like to lift up? 

Tony

No, thank you for that introduction, though. 

Bill

So we're going to jump right into it tonight, because we are really glad to have you here, tony, and this is going to be a fun conversation. So I want to sort of set the stage, I guess, for our conversation tonight. January of 2016,. We all had the opportunity to watch, as God's chosen stood on a stage in Iowa and he boasted about the size of his crowds and he warned all of us about the danger of immigrants. And he talked about building a wall and how the people he was going to displace were going to pay for it. And he claimed that Christianity was under siege and he urged all of the Christians in the area to band together and assert their power and dominance and dominion. He promised to lead them in this fight. He praised the loyalty of true Christians and patriots and he said, and I quote I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn't lose any voters. 

Ricardo

Didn't try that, but he came close, he did everything. But, yeah, everything but. 

Bill

What we're here to talk about tonight, though, is the reality that, even at that initial 2016 stage in Iowa, reverend Robert Jeffress was one of the many church leaders, pastors, ministers that stood in support of Donald Trump at the time, stood up and actually declared him, not only you know, a good candidate, but declared that he will make a great president, and I would not be here if that was not the case, and it came to be known, really, as sort of the start of the newest Christian nationalist movement that we have seen sort of in my lifetime. At that point in time that we have seen sort of in my lifetime. At that point in time, 60% of white evangelical Protestants supported him. That number has since grown, even in recent years. Church leaders were praising him. There were artists that were immortalizing him with pictures of Jesus with his arms wrapped around him, flags were proudly flown in church buildings and on Sunday morning worships. 

Joanne

It was quite the you don't mind if I retch now, do you? Can we start this off right? 

Bill

So I'm actually going to start with our guest tonight, Tony, and I'm going to say, like you watched all of this unfold as well as all of us did. And what did you see happening in all of this, this first round of Trump? We'll get into where we're at now, but I mean, we've had eight years since that, but the world has changed a lot in that time, right? So what do you remember about sort of that initial Donald Trump candidacy run? 

Tony

I think the thing that sort of stands out is the expectation and the idea that this couldn't happen, that it is beyond our goodwill and beyond our character to allow this to happen. 

And yet, when it came to be, a lot of sort of doubt, a lot of hand-wringing and not a lot of acceptance and understanding around it, but a pointing of fingers toward each other and the blame that kind of ensued. 

When I think of that, when I think of those times, there was a book written in the past couple of years by Stephen Charleston, entitled we Survived the End of the World, and it talks about that brink of apocalypse, that brink of a world-ending event, and it talks a lot about the experiences of Indigenous groups that had faced annihilation, displacement, extermination, genocide, and the willpower of those that had gone through that to find, on the other side, a deepening of their faith, a deepening of their purpose, a deepening of their call. 

And it's interesting to me because, on the one hand, it's polar opposites. It is two forces acting against each other, to each other, and in this environment that we have in 2016 and what we've seen recently, it seems to be the monster is on the inside and we're fighting ourselves. And this, to me, is a critical point, that it is something that requires us to change, that requires us to become different and to act in a different way if we want a different outcome. And so that idea of apocalypse, the idea of change and the revelation that comes from apocalypse, the purposefulness that is gained from seeing the end point of where we are going and having the willpower to turn to a different direction, that takes a great deal of our ingenuity, our prophecy, our integrity and moves us in a different space, and we have to be willing to rise up to be part of that you know what I find really interesting about that, because I do agree with that. 

Joanne

But I think the people, uh, the you know what we call now MAGA people would say the very same thing and with just as much intensity. Right, you know, it's like you have to give yourself to this new world that we're creating and you know, know, trust and believe and fight for. And that is what is really compelling around this time is that you have. I mean, there was a time in Canada and the United States where it didn't really matter which party was in power. You know, like things were a little bit different. Like in Canada, the conservatives were a little more sort of free market people, business people, and the liberals were also business people I mean, that's the problem with politics, business gets in there anyways but you know, a little bit more towards social programs, especially if the New Democrats were in a position to be part of a minority government. 

But things are really much different now. You know, there are two visions of the world that are of the world that are um. They're in conflict and jostling for dominance in the world and I think, like right now, obviously the kind of Donald Trump more authoritarian kind of right-wing um group is, is becoming more dominant and that and those of us who are, you know the more egalitarian, communitarian we're in, this together kind of thing, surviving the apocalypse together are receding and that's sort of the place that we're at now, but that I I see that it's a real battle where both sides believe they're righteous. 

Ricardo

You know, and that's uh, and that's a hard thing, especially if you bring god into that that your righteousness somehow comes from your belief in god, which is also very much in the mix it perplexes me how um, um, which is also very much in the mix it perplexes me how, in the day and age that we live now, where the price of a carton of eggs has risen so much, that people don't see that nexus between government policy and the cost of living and how the government you elect should and could help you. But what interests me more is that you know, the Marxist in me always says like nothing else matters unless people's material conditions are met and fully satisfied. Do they care about even things like religion or politics? Right, if you can't put food on the table, then really nothing else matters. You're going to work three jobs. Whatever it is is whatever it takes. 

But people are in that situation right now and believing in a message that that donald trump um was giving. And I find it funny that during his campaign he said he's going to lower the price of groceries. Groceries are too expensive. He's going to go after the groceries and it's like 48 hours after he won he's like, yeah, that, yeah, that's going to be a lot harder than I thought it was going to be. So it's just not going to happen. 

Joanne

But there's no People can't really do that. 

Ricardo

We can't really do that, yeah we can't really do that as a government, but there's no buyer's remorse, like not one person has said well, let's go back to the poll or something there's no revolt Over 50% for the first time since he was first elected. 

Bill

Yeah, since he's been elected the second time that is amazing to me. 

Ricardo

Yeah. 

Bill

It's not even that there's no buyer's remorse, there's almost a doubling down. 

Joanne

Yeah, yes, absolutely yeah. 

Ricardo

And I guess the question is going to be like what do the Democrats get so wrong in their messaging? Because maybe they said all the right things, maybe they didn't. What do the Democrats get so wrong in their messaging? Because maybe they said all the right things, maybe they didn't. But I was listening to a CNN documentary and how the person had said, like you know, he was a card-carrying Democrat and he voted for Donald Trump because they're focused on like his messaging and stuff like that. Like well, you know, he said he's going to end the war in Ukraine. Okay, but what does that actually have to do with you?

Joanne

Yeah, exactly, well, but also he's going to let Russia win the war in Ukraine. Yeah, right, right. 

Ricardo

So coming back home to Canada, where, I mean, our prime minister has stepped down and he's resigned and it looks to be that, no matter what we say or do, the Conservatives are going to win not just a majority, but most likely a sweeping majority across this country. And how is that going to look in our electoral system where, invariably, the government in power holds more power over the people and their lives than the president of the United States? 

Bill

So that's what's scary for me right, yeah, and even more importantly for me is I mean, I still kind of believe that you know, whatever party is in power. The romantic in me almost believes that, hey, maybe there's still some kind of way of you know, whatever party is in power. The romantic in me almost believes that, hey, maybe there's still some kind of way of you know Canadian politics playing out the way it did as I remember it when I was in school. But what you hear now is the same kind of rhetoric starting to play out in our society, in Canadian society, that we've heard south of the border so much right. So again the idea, like we can say, like you know, it seems like the enemy is kind of within, but this is the same thing they've been saying. 

You know for at least eight years, if not longer. Right, that the enemy that we need to fight is right here in our communities, in our borders, and it's going to take true patriotism, you know, to stand up and fight and root it out. But like we're looking at a message that really says like neighbor against neighbor, you know, strong dominating the weak, and so a lot of what becomes concerning in all of this, even for those who don't know listening in podcast land. We even had this week a meeting of the premiers of the different provinces of Canada with the now stepped down but still present prime minister to talk about some of the rhetoric that is coming from the US and what Canada's response should be, and we couldn't even manage to get consensus between our premiers and it couldn't even manage to get consensus you know, between our premiers, and it couldn't even just be disagreement, it had to be traitor or patriot language. 

Joanne

Right, but there was only one premier who did not sign it, and that was ours. But, it's ours. It's ours yes. 

Ricardo

Not just three or four days after being in Mar-a-Lago with Donald Trump, yeah, right, yeah, being taken down to Mar and you know if you look at you know, of course I follow Nenshi's Instagram page he puts a video up. You know, thank God, you know, good on you for getting that audience. Like you know, I saw Fox News interview Doug Ford and they took offense to Doug Ford's rhetoric of Canada first and he's a conservative premier too but you know there's Danielle Smith with Jordan Peterson and Donald Trump posing together, with Jordan Peterson and Donald Trump posing together, and then she says what are you going to do? You have this power, you have this audience. How will you help Alberta, how will you help Canada? 

Tony

But the first thing you've done is fight everyone else in the country. When we think about sort of in the larger sort of practice of this, they're not that different and we've always known that, from an Indigenous perspective, to have a Liberal government versus a PC government, there's not much difference in how they are treating or how they are enacting legislation against Indigenous interests. And so we've seen this. We know that there's very little differentiation, especially when we talk about sort of the economic and financial underpinnings of these moves, of these interests, of these values. We don't have a system where we're doing actual truth-telling, where we're doing actual evolution of our thinking into where we are now in terms of environmental catastrophe and what are the extremists of these actions or of our actions, of our governance. And yet we're not changing behavior, we're not moving towards something that is encompassing a new view or a new understanding. 

Think about here in Calgary last year. Or a new understanding. Think about here in Calgary last year we lost a lot of our water resource through the system that is in place and had to shut down water and put in restrictions for a number of months. And yet when it came time to sort of evaluate that in some of our work around environmental understanding, especially in terms of our spiritual connection. What have we learned? How have we changed? How have we developed that into a strategy that will actually be put into practice? Do we know what that looks like? We haven't done a lot of that work. We've only approached the problem with the toolkit that we have in large part the toolkit of legislation, of blaming government. We're not going after the CEOs, we're not going after the vulture and predatory nature of our capitalist system. We're going after sort of the trappings behind that and what we can do to motivate in a direction that may work in the future. But there's nothing to address the problem now. 

Joanne

I want your perspective on something in this whole Justin Trudeau stepping down and people you know the news media has been going after. Well, what would his legacy be? Because you know, with any government whether Trump was in or Biden or Trudeau or, you know, polyev eventually gets in. They'll be good and bad in what they do, and one of the legacy things that has come up in more than one article that I've read is that Trudeau really committed to right relations with indigenous people. That's part of his legacy, but it sounds like you don't think that he was any different than anyone before him. 

Tony

No, and I think it's probably in a situation where we have the rearranging of the deck chairs on the Titanic. We have a different sort of paradigm set on the issues and the trappings, but we still had the deployment of very many programs and interests that were parlayed to chief and councils to motivate them to sign away a lot of their rights, the rights of their future generations, and this move of divestiture coming from in terms of that sort of governance from the federal government, continued. It didn't change the overall scheme and the people involved the long-term bureaucrats and the people who are in the legal environment have not changed that process. We haven't become a more accepting and inclusive process for Indigenous people. 

One of the things when I went to Spain for the COP I think it was COP25 in 2019, and we met with the general secretary for the COP parties and we had all the faith people there One of the things I brought up was that we are not following in UNDRIP in the COP proceedings. We are not foregrounding Indigenous rights and the importance of that. Even though it has been agreed to by the body of the UN, it's not being implemented in something like COP and so if we are having this disconnect between what we say we're doing and how we are actually acting. There again is a value that we're not listening to ourselves, we're just talking. 

Joanne

I wonder if one of the problems we're having in this great battle between visions of our country and, you know, countries all over the world, is that we're trying to make changes within a system that is inflexible. You know what I'm saying. So my kids are in a very different place than me, but they're like late-stage capitalism. Capitalism has to go. The parties are all the same. Ultimately they're beholden to money interests, which is all really true, especially looking in the US. Major donors for both those parties control what they can do, and Canada's becoming more and more like that. Like to join the liberal leadership. What did they have to have? $350,000. $350,000 just to get in. And it's like so you and I maybe you, ricardo, because you watch your money. 

Ricardo

I watch my money on Temu. 

Joanne

I was going to say how does that Marxist ideology go with your Temu addiction? But anyway, that's you know, I wasn't going to say that out loud, but since you brought it up, materials circumstances are being made. 

Yeah, there you go. But you know my kids will always remind me that. You know both systems are corrupt, like we're corrupted by money interests, and you can see this with the, the way it's so easy in the us right now to, you know, trans transform from democracy into an oligarchy. You know, like it's happening so effortlessly by just putting billionaires in charge of government now, which never used to happen in the same way. So it's like that's working within a system that we already had. Viktor Orban took a democratic country and made it authoritarian by working within the system that was already in place. Now I read an article this week that his government is really unpopular and there's a new opposition and maybe the end of it will come. Except that he made voting so difficult that they don't know if he will ever be able to lose an election again. So these are all these things. We're within a system. 

Tony

It's the way that the systems are designed, though I mean, when I think about where the US has come out of the House of Lords and that corrupt aristocracy, that system that has allowed for this fracture of the people who were in the New World, and how they had to develop a system. They basically mimicked, in the end, what they had tried to extract themselves from and have reimposed that to the extent that they're doing it even worse to each other it's interesting because you know, in the american revolution is we don't want a king telling us what to do. 

Joanne

And now it's like we want Donald Trump to be our king, and that's what I that's what I think happened in the election. 

Ricardo

So I mean, if we think about the word establishment and it's what I think happened in the election so I mean, if we think about the word establishment and it's used quite a lot in political spheres the liberal establishment, the conservative establishment, the Democrat and Republican establishment, the Republican establishment still exists. I mean, you don't get, you don't make Elon Musk the secretary of government efficiencies and not have an establishment in power there. But I think Donald Trump's messaging resonated with people who were sick of the establishment not just controlling the political sphere, because that's that's going to happen, no matter what business interests are going to be there to try and make their lives more profitable but the fact that these establishments and this is probably what the liberals downfall is now and I think we're going to see a situation with the Liberal Party in Canada much like the Liberal Party in Ontario, where Kathleen Wynne had her sweeping majority and then all of a sudden, they don't even have party status in the Ontario provincial legislature anymore. They just forget the people and they forget the issues at hand and they're so focused on what's needed to keep business going and profitable that they forget the businesses are run by the people doing the work and on the shop floor. And you know, over the the course of the past two months, and you know, I, I I said um about. 

You know the person like why do you care about the ukraine war? Or the war in ukraine? I should say sorry, um, because people, you know, there are people drowning in student debts in both sides of the border. There are people who can't afford groceries, can't afford rent, but there's a hundred billion dollars that joe biden got approved to send over to those two countries for their wars. Right, and I, and I heard on the news this morning and I only listen to the news once a day now, god help me, because, because that's all I can handle the figure in Gaza is almost 200,000 people have died and we're still giving Israel weapons. Right, for what? What more can they bomb? Right, and this is what. 

And you know when Donald Trump, all he has to say is I'll end that war in 24 hours, every single news agency, including Fox, is like we don't actually know how he's going to do that, but he said he's going to do it. That's enough hope for people, because all Joe Biden has said, the Democratic people have said we support Israel unequivocally, even if people have said well, you know, do you see? Any way we won't support Israel. He just completely ignores the questions. Right, it's that messaging and this is, I think, the messaging on this side of the board of the Pierre. They're calling him PP now you know, I know. 

I've seen these Instagram videos yeah well, when Pierre Polyev I think that's what's happening here right is that they had said on a different podcast that I was going to that. You know, Justin Trudeau, he came into government with a very sweeping majority himself and came in saying all the right things I want gender parity, I want in my cabinet, I want all these things and freedoms and protect the rights of minorities. All these things and freedoms and protect the rights of minorities. And they said, as soon as he broke one of his promises, one of his major campaign promises, which was electoral reform, Right, it was, you could just see the downhill. 

Joanne

And, interestingly, when he has his end of year interview, I think it was and they said you know what do you regret not getting done? 

And he said electoral reform. Wasn't that wild? Like you were there, you had a mandate. That's what it was about. And now it's like oh, I regret that I didn't do that, probably because now his party's going to have, like you know, if the polls continue to go, and me being, you know, ever hopeful, I think that there's a possibility. Of course, you know, Kim Campbell went down to two seats in the house, if you remember that, and they were ahead for a while. 

Ricardo

I don't specifically. I don't think Justin Trudeau did everything badly. I think that compared to the US during COVID and I'm putting my musician's hat on now because the artists the art industry and musicians. 

They were decimated during COVID. But if it wasn't for the serb, a lot of musicians would have lost everything and but a lot of my friends in the us, and all they got throughout the whole two-year period was like three or four, fifteen hundred dollar payments from the government, um, where everyone here got 500 bucks a week right at least to keep them float. He did stuff right and but it's so. There's so much rhetoric about negativity on him that he just he'll never come out of it. And another, and I was listening to the Economist morning podcast and I'll be brief so I don't take up too much time in that sense but they said like when is too late? Too late to step down, because they say Justin Trudeau's like well past his best before date right so was, biden right so was. 

Biden right and they look at the story of New Zealand with Jacinda Ardern and the Labour Party in New Zealand and they said even she stayed too long even though she went like halfway through or a third of the way through her second mandate with a sweeping majority, but look what happened. 

Or a third of the way through her second mandate with a sweeping majority, but look what happened. Now they have a nationalist right-wing party there who are attacking the Maori population through legislation as well. So when is too much to like? What's the best before date on politics? Seems like everyone creeps towards a 10-year mark, like Harper, almost got to 10 years, oh yeah, in Canada it's 10 years. 

Bill

So we had Gian Carlo Carra here in December, right? And one of the things that he said is it is a tough time to be a politician in this world, right? And he didn't say it as sort of like oh the poor politicians, right, it's like the nature of politics has changed completely, right? So you used to say, like end on a high right, whether you're in ministry or politics or sports or whatever right, end on the high when you get to the peak. Leave while you're at the peak. 

Now, let's just end high don't be well but I don't think there's any way of knowing anymore when, when you've hit the peak and like the the, the downhill just happens so quickly. Now, right, it's, yeah, so like. 

Joanne

I would agree, except if your last name is Trump and you seem to be able to slide through anything. 

Bill

Yeah, and again, like there's just something very fascinating about again the double down right. It's not even eight out of ten white evangelicals voted for this guy this time. Not six, eight, but you know to be fair. 

Joanne

He came through for them. They overturned Roe v Wade, which is a big issue for them, right? Yep, Immigration like when he talks about deporting everyone, it's not white people he's talking about. They're not deporting Canadians who are in there, who have overheld on visas. That's not their target market. There is racism and religious. What's the word? Religious supremacy? That's what I'm looking for Christian, religious, Christian supremacy embedded in those immigration things too. 

Bill

Oh, absolutely, and so yeah, they totally. 

Joanne

He totally came through for them. He put judges on the supreme court that would overturn roe v wade, all that thing. So why wouldn't they I mean vote for him again when he did exactly what they wanted him to? 

Bill

yeah, and so again like to talk about, like when, when Trudeau came in, right, like it was. Like he, he came in on a platform, a number of things, not just electoral reform. Right, he looked a lot at gender equality, enshrining as much as possible more and more rights for marginalized communities, like all that kind of stuff. Right, and in all honesty, if you look at the language and the rhetoric and the talking points of Christian nationalism, it's all about. We're going to eradicate these things from the discourse altogether. Right, we're not going to talk about gender equality anymore because there isn't gender equality. There is a patriarchal figure and subservient everybody else underneath it. Right, we're not going to be talking about reproductive rights because, well, I mean because, hey, young guys, you know ages 20 to 30, their body, your choice, right. So, like all of this, like this is a 180 in a lot of ways from you know the sunny days. 

Tony

I don't think it's so much a 180 as it is a 360, right back to where we began. Because when we think about and here in alberta my father used to talk about, uh, the social credit party and how at one point we had uh, the makings of a, an opportunity for someone from the blackfoot reserve in siksika to become a member of the legislature, and what did they do? They? He said they redrew all the boundaries, so they cut that in half and they totally disseminated that vote or decimated that vote so that we weren't able to sort of make any movement forward. 

I heard more recently a lot of reference back to a book by Naomi Klein on the shock doctrine, and one of the things that at the end of the shock doctrine she talks about is that if we don't have workable paradigms, if we're not working through some of these issues in a way that transforms the system to be a response and something that we can easily deploy within this complicated sort of milieu of stuff, that we will always fall back to what is most convenient or where we've been. And so falling back in terms of the shock doctrine, to the IMF, to the disaster capitalism that will take advantage of a system and undermine that system, the rights of the people, in order to reassert what the oligarchy, what the system wants, what the power, the supremacy, is designed for, and so we're not seeing so much a bastardization of the system. We're seeing the system doing what it was designed to do, and so we haven't really moved beyond that in terms of understanding. We have a lot of conversations that go around and talk about the importance of Indigenous perspectives on the environment and trying to implement some of that and trying to learn from that. We don't see it in action. So a lot of these things that we are finding in terms of the gaps of the system are there naturally, because that's the way they were formed, and in order to revamp and understand, we need to do a lot more work in terms of finding those solutions, workable solutions, things that will actually help us in the future. 

And I think what we sort of neglect to see is that in one presidency, biden managed to turn the entire thing around within less than four years, and so there is potential in what was what was done, but we don't know any of that. We don't know sort of what the, the uh workings of that turned out to be. We are sort of stuck with the idea that there's a black box, things happen, we don't understand it, we don't ask questions and we sort of live within the confines of our own ignorance, trying to maintain a status quo where we don't have to be in charge. It reminds me a lot of people who follow in sort of the church doctrine idea, where they'll come to church, they'll be observant and they'll expect sort of God to give them favor, but we're not sort of really changing in a way that accepts the gospel and puts it into practice and gives us a sort of different society to move into. 

Joanne

The woke gospel yeah. 

Tony

The woke gospel. 

Joanne

Yeah, it's interesting. I came across this it was in a film in, I think, 2016, but this word called hyper-normalization and it was on one of those reels that you watch and this woman said, like everyone has this feeling like things aren't quite right, but they can't put their finger on what's exactly wrong. Right, they can't do that. And so she she explained like really briefly that it's this system of hyper normalization, that that actually things the old world is gone already, it's gone, but the people in power, or the people who who have an interest in making sure that this, this world, remains, they hyper normalize everything. They say no, no, this is the way the system works. Everything is fine, we're within the norms, everything's going on, don't worry, it's all okay. 

And it says um, so, looking at the definition, it can refer to the process of creating a fake world to replace the complete real world, so the acceptance of a simplified or distorted version of reality, and that is, I think, something that is happening a lot of where there's this hyper-normalization. No, everything's fine, everything's fine, we can survive this, it's all good. And I think I don't really think everything's fine, and that goes very much against my live in hope. But, as someone said to me this week, hope is not a strategy, and I think that's really true Hope is not a strategy. 

My faith says that if we can find a way where we work as one and together with the interests of the community instead of the individual I think is really key to this at play where we can say that my life as a Canadian white woman is no more valuable than the life of a refugee, a climate refugee, in one of those countries where the rising water is going to displace many people at the very same time that Western countries are saying no more immigration. 

You know, there has to be this sense of we are all valuable children of God. To put it in the language of our sort of mythology, we're all equal. And if that's not, our system is not built for that. It's not built for it. And so all the people who tell you that it is hyper-normalize it and like oh, oh, you know it's not equal because they failed, they don't have enough education or they don't have this or they don't have that. It's their fault, not our fault. Um, that that is, without the paradigm shift, um, we, I don't think our system will ever be flexible enough to create a place where all people are truly equal. 

Bill

So a book Jesus and John Wayne written by Kristen Covey-Demesne. She actually talks about Billy Sunday, baseball player and preacher back in 1917, backdrop of the First World War gets up on a Sunday morning and preaches, and preaches, and preaches. Quite loudly and quite emphatically I think she describes it as no patience for nuance in his preaching and says that he has no time for pacifists or for draft dodgers they're all godforsaken mutts. In these days, all of you are either patriots or traitors, not just to your country but also to the cause of Jesus Christ. Then gets into his pulpit and starts waving his American flag proudly until the service is done right. So when we talk about the system and the recognition that the performance may have changed a bit although I would argue not that much in 100 years- he probably owned a red hat, yeah, right. 

But the system, the flexibility of the system. This is like classic kind of Heifetz right, this myth of the broken system. Right, the system isn't broken, it's doing exactly what it's designed to do. 

Right, exactly, it's doing exactly what it's designed to do right, and any kind of attempt to change the system is actually considered by the system. You know where your place is, and to try to move out of it or even change the nature of it is going to deploy forces that are going to pull you back into check right. So, interestingly enough, I don't think hope is a strategy. Sounds like choosing hymns on Sunday morning. Well, and again, like let's be honest, right. 

Ricardo

Tanya do you have any input on that there? 

Bill

is no room for the new hymns, but I mean realistically. The struggle right now for me in all of this is we talk about white Christian nationalism in our tradition, in our worldview, in our kind of corner of the world, as being almost this imposter to Christianity, right, this fake Christianity, this like certainly not aligning with Jesus or the way of Jesus that we are called to follow, and yet it is the dominant strain in at least white Protestantism now in the US and certainly encroaching more and more into Canada as well. It becomes very difficult to consider it or to call it the imposter in the the midst of of this, and yet it's all. 

Joanne

It's all kind of rooted in this, like we've been here before, we've been here a number of times well, let's just remember that in alberta, william abrahart, who was the premier, had a radio show called back to the bible hour, and so did uh, ernest manning, who was preston manning's father. This was alberta under the social credit party, while they were in power were also very religious. Do you remember like bars had to shut at a certain time? So it's not that um this idea. 

Ricardo

Oh well, our united church of canada you know, even lauren calvert, the saskatchewan premier, was a minister. He was Lorne Calvert, yeah. 

Joanne

Yes, but the United Church of Canada was founded as they wanted to have a Protestant denomination that was national, so that they could take on the Roman Catholic, you know, slash French people that were predominant in Canada, or the religious thing. So our own denomination that's so. You know, everybody's welcome and we really want to open our doors to, you know, intercultural worship. And all that started with a very sort of white Protestant backdrop. So, yes, it definitely has been part of um our culture too, right, yep, and I think one of the differences that has happened here, which did not happen in the us, is we made a commitment when we repatriated the constitution about the british north america act home in the chart of rights and freedoms. It says, right in, canada is a multicultural country, which is a statement that's been made as sort of grounding. So even pierre poiliev goes and meets with people from different um cultural traditions. I think that has helped us at least to say, okay, whiteness is not the only or is not the most important thing about this country. 

Now there's a backlash to that, definitely even here in canada, and people don't want a multicultural uh country, or they feel like we spend too much time on that, too much effort in making canada a multicultural country. There's a big sort of thing to say we don't like identity politics and Canada is a. Was it Jordan Peterson who said racism was imported into Canada? Didn't he say that recently that we weren't racist and American racism was imported into Canada? Like that's crazy. That's crazy talk. Yep, it's definitely here. But you know, for all the virtue signaling, we say that Trudeau did right you know why do you have a 50 50 cabinet? 

because at that time, because it's 2015, right, virtue signaling everywhere. I like to say what's wrong with virtue, what's wrong with virtue? 

So maybe it's just an echo of what could be, but at least it's in the conversation. Like, if you take out, you know, the idea of a multicultural Canada out of the conversation, we're not going to end up with a more welcoming and diverse country. We're not, we're not. And if you take the idea of rights for you know, know, queer folk out of the conversation because everyone's equal, now we're not going to end up with a more egalitarian, um, diverse, you know, queer people, welcome everywhere. Place like virtue signaling is okay, because at least it's in the conversation, like there's a possibility we could move beyond our own self interests and the way we gather to a place that's more diverse sounding a lot like hope. 

Ricardo

Tony I have a question for you. Actually, the indigenous story in the US in many ways is far more violent and brutal than it was in Canada, but a lot of people in the US think that the indigenous challenge is like that that's done, like it's a done issue. Right they? I think in many ways. No, we don't have the same problems canada does, which is definitely not true. So but what I haven't seen in the news, which is prominent when we have any issues what's the indigenous community going to be like what? What was it like under the first Trump? What are their challenges now? What are they saying with this news? 

Tony

That's a confusing thing, because you have a lot of Native Americans who voted for Trump. 

Ricardo

Yeah, that's what I heard, too right. 

Tony

And so it's baffling, but they have a very different approach. This, it's baffling, but they have a very different approach. They're much more patriotic than we are in Canada to the crown, to the system. You have in that realm, this idea of the way in which we battle, the way in which we fight for our rights, very different. In Canada, the residential school system problem was taken to court and because of the apologies by the very Reverend Bill Phipps and his legacy that it was an admission and therefore could be identified with responsibility to claimants, and by doing that, by bringing forward a case, having that adjudication, having that transparency with the colonial, british colonial system, that said, okay, we have to apply these rights equally, fairly and whatever we've said within our juridical system, that we want to apply this to those who have been harmed by what. 

What happened with the federal government? Then there was some resolution. If you look at what happened with Deb Haaland in the apology that came forward last year with the Biden administration, a lot of it was administrative. The different tribunals and things that they held were not these legally binding processes, and so when the apology came out it wasn't to the same effect that this will change the nature of the relationship and bring some other force to bear when there's non-compliance or when there's other issues that need to be resolved that expound from this. So when we start to think about the ways in which the two communities, from the US and from Canada, have approached oppression, have approached governance, have approached autonomy and the States, is a very different prospect and almost a giving up, I would say, of an approach that would be as adversarial as we have been in Canada. But that's come through in the same way a lot of fighting, a lot of death, a lot of confrontation. In Canada that's always been sort of the jarring toward the against the British system. 

In the States you have a system that has subsumed that in other ways, has assumed conquering the indigenous nations, has taken land and never did anything to resolve that so it's like it's more of a crapshoot when I see it and now when we have these steady steps that have built on some of the confrontations and from that into the political realm, the legislative realm, the fact that a Truth and Reconciliation Commission was enacted and they didn't want it. So to make that happen from the survivors, from the claimants in the Indian Residential School Settlement Agreement, to make the TRC happen, was a monumental thing that we haven't seen in terms of the advocacy, in terms of what the people want and how they're participating in this process. So there's a lot more of that sort of sovereign individual being enacted and from the perspective of treaty rights, indigenous rights, indigenous heritage into that conversation than we see in the United States. 

Joanne

I read an article on this the difference between residential schools in Canada and the US, which you know it could be obsolete now, but both of our governments had it was actually the law that you could not sue the government. Right, you can't sue the government. So in Canada we had residential schools that were run by churches and all the churches were in the legislation. Right, they did not sue the government, they sued the churches and the churches joined the government. But we do have legislation in our country where you can sue the government so it was possible In the States, it's still very strongly you can't sue the government, and so that has made it much more difficult to start a court case as Indigenous groups in the US than it is here in. 

Tony

Canada, yeah, specifically in 1950s, when you could actually retain a lawyer, when you could actually put forward a lawsuit. That's where all the land claims have come out of and it's taken 50 years, 60 years, to get resolution of that. And that sort of time frame of working through and of these small incremental battles, these things that are going on that take generations to resolve, are part of the way that we cut our teeth with the system and try to make the system the way we want it to be. And that autonomy when we talk about the United Church, we talk about the Indigenous Church wanting to have its own autonomy within that. And this is part of that process, part of that idea of identifying how you will belong. And that's what the calls to the church from the Indigenous Elders Caretaker Circle was about. 

Bill

So I am very sensitive to time. We have gone way over and I feel like if I don't rein us in, we're never leaving. 

So we are going to take a break right now and and we will be back for the second half of our conversation here tonight,

Intermission

looking at well a number of things, but really kind of looking at the idea of God in a model of church and support that really seems to exemplify a lot more of the nationalistic and kind of dirtier, kind of messier parts of church. And so I want to kind of bring us back a little bit in the conversation and kind of look at this idea that we've identified that there is a lot wrong with the messaging and the positioning and the actions of a system that is steeped in Christian nationalism, and I want us to at least be able to end with the hope that that may not be a strategy but it's still very much important for the world that we live in today, because there are going to be a lot of people who are going to recognize what exactly is at stake here in ways that, I will fully admit, I don't have to worry about in the same way, right. So there are going to be people who are going to hear the language of scaling back gender equality and see that as a threat to their safety and their freedom to actually live their love authentically and truly. There are going to be people who are going to recognize the rhetoric of the racism that undergirds all of this and the fear of reprisals for nothing other than the color of their skin, and so part of what I want us to be able to do is to look at you know what is the faithful response to this right? Because nationalism Christian nationalism, at its core, thrives on us and them, and so our response can't simply be let's draw the lines and kind of build up the defenses and kind of, you know, fight in the same way of us and them, because it serves the narrative of enemies within the borders to really push these divides. 

So I was really taken with a sermon that I heard online by Reverend Dr John Howard Wesley out of Alfred Street Baptist Church that I believe he preached in November of last year and it was entitled Disputable Matters and you can certainly find it online where he was talking about this idea of Christianity and this Christianity that's under threat in the US, and he was wondering aloud and very charismatically he's a very charismatic preacher, you know. Maybe they're talking about the Christianity of slavery, and is that the Christianity that we're trying to preserve right now? Maybe it's the Christianity of the colonizer, and is that the Christianity that we're trying to protect right now? When we talk about Christianity being under threat? Is it the Christianity of the misogynist that right now already is trying to scale back reproductive rights? Is it the Christianity of hate that says that there's only man and wife and nothing else, and condones violence? 

So in all of this and, Tony, I'm going to put it to you again first, so in response to all of this, we still believe that the way of Jesus calls us to live and be better, and live together and survive the apocalypse together and to truly pick each other up and build each other up and support one another and journey together to something that is better than this right here. So what do you say to somebody who hears the rhetoric that's kind of coming out of the church right now, as much as anywhere? What word of hope would you offer in response to this that isn't just a us, you know us and them kind of response, something that leans more heavily into the way of Jesus and what we would want people to understand about Christianity and the Christ that we follow? 

Tony

Yeah, I won't give like a complete answer to this. One of the things that I did in the last year was to travel to Ottawa to work with a group that were from an international body who were talking about anti-Christian hate, who wanted to talk about anti-Christian hate for Indigenous people kind of the reason I was there and that they were being subject to persecution within their communities and this type of thing and a lot of the people that they had. They were very right-wing people who talked and the reason why I went I was invited and then from head office they directed them to talk to me and the reason why I went was to add that voice in there of an Indigenous person who wasn't going to say what they wanted to hear. And for me, when I think about this question, when I think about how do we, within our teachings and within our scripture, within our seminary and however we come to faith, are we merely hearing the words, following the teaching and assuming it will apply to us at some point, or are we coming to it with an actual perspective? Are we coming to this grounded in who we are? 

When we talked about earlier, that idea of hope is not a strategy. In Stephen Charleston's book we Survived the End of the World. He talks about how one of the underpinnings of the Indigenous survivance was based on hope, and that jarred me in the same way that hearing that as not a strategy really makes sense, because it's not a whole, complete thought. But they weren't just designing this around hope. To me, what it was was designed around faith, and so this idea that we are grounded in faith, in belief in what we understand of ourselves, how we are grounded, how we are founded upon a set of beliefs that we are passed down from our ancestors, from others, in an indigenous context, it makes a lot of sense. In a Western sort of paradigm it doesn't, because there's often and movement to erase the past and to erase our connections to that past. Because we're moving ahead, we're we're not bringing these trappings forward. By ignoring them, we are not doing any service to the struggle that it took to bring us to where we are, and so that foundation is very important when we talk about reconciliation, and for those that come to this country of North America, the teaching is often to look back to where you came from, to where your people came from and how they were connected to that land. 

I always bring up the moderator, past moderator Richard Bott. When he was installed in the office of moderator for the United Church of Canada he said he was given a lot of gifts from the Indigenous people, from the Indigenous church and others. He was given a pipe, he was given several sweetgrass and other medicines. He didn't know what to do with them so he kind of accepted them graciously and put them in his office. Then he started to analyze and understand where does this tradition sit within my history? So then he started to go back and look at in Scotland how they would use medicinal plants and herbs and he identified those plants and herbs that were important to those people and then started to find relation, connection between the belief that he was encountering and what his people had believed, how they have been part of this system of grounding and of nurturing and of building up from, and how we take those lessons and deploy them in this environment. 

So when we come to these issues around annihilation and genocide and this erasure, a lot of what our people have turned back to is those foundational beliefs, the children who went through the residential school system, who were admonished for speaking their language, who could not follow in their prayers or in their observances, in their rituals that they would need to be doing at the time of their youth, these observances that would help them to form into healthy, whole human beings. 

They still carried some of the stories, some of the teachings, some of the memories, and held on to that through this system of atrocities, where they could hold a core of themselves that was not being destroyed. 

And so to me, that's the advice is that know who you are. The advice is that know who you are, know what you believe, know what you come from, and protect that, because this will help you to regain a sense of yourself. When they did the Truth and Reconciliation Commissions in South Africa, a lot of this truth and reconciliation component was about waking up from this trauma, from taking generational trauma and the effects of that to move it into something that can actually be useful for the people that exist now and not live in the plight and the trauma of where they were. That's been very difficult because it's often been negating in North America with the systems that we have and the oppression that continues. So it's a way of looking at where we're at right now and trying to move this forward in a way that's going to be productive for us, but also something that will give us a hope or a framework that we will move into in the future. 

Bill

Because you know we don't turn off the recording at all. 

So you get to hear Ricardo's phone and the feedback from all of it, right? So if anybody out there in podcast land doubts the live recording, we do not edit. So I will say that I appreciate hearing that really deeply, but also can imagine that there will be folks who are going to struggle with where do I even start to know who I am? And so I mean my first response would be if you honestly are wondering where do you begin the work of? Who am I, and you're struggling with that when you hear it, if nothing else, I would say if there's nowhere else that you feel like you can start, at least start with the understanding that you are a child of God and build from there. But perhaps you would have an alternative. 

Tony

I think one of the things that we try to teach in terms of experience and this is all about experience because a lot of our theology, a lot of our understanding comes from learning from books, from speeches, sermons and on all this sort of ways that we are passively moving through these words, these ideas, these feelings, these understandings, and for many Indigenous people, it's all about this experiential side. It's about connecting to these ways that are meaningful. What Vine Deloria, theologian from the States, episcopal priest, who passed away a year after my dad, did, and he talked about sort of this notion that if you are experiencing something, that you turn back to your teachings to apply where this forms or where this makes sense. And for many non-Indigenous people these are fairly random occurrences of knowledge, bits of knowledge, bits of understanding, that sort of form, a framework that is grounded in the individual. 

When we think about this in terms of an Indigenous experience and going out to some of the sacred sites, going out to some of the holy sites, we are connecting not to ourselves. 

We are connecting to all that has been there and we are trying to find a relationship within creation that informs us from creation about itself and our place within it. 

Not that we are trying to assert our identity within it, but that it is telling us and it is bringing us to this understanding of child of God. It is bringing us into the fold and we have to have a mindset to accept that, a mindset to feel that embrace of creation and that will help to center and ground us, much like their scientific sort of study around vibrations of the earth and being out in the land and having a reattunement, spiritual core and what that spiritual stability looks like, even beyond what we hear around us and what we experience in the world today. Because that is not the permanent world. The permanent world is that which has existed for eons and has perfected in itself ways of understanding that we can tap into and through our faith, through our experience of that, we begin to see a world that is not limited by human action or human interaction, but try to find a higher purpose behind that. 

Joanne

I found it interesting when you're talking, you were saying that even in the residential schools, when they, when Indigenous children, were not allowed to enact their spirituality, that they remembered the stories. Most non-indigenous folks who are in Canada don't come from those kinds of traditions. That, where back to nature, is how you find yourself. We come from mythologies and stories that have grounded us right, and one of the problems with our culture now is that we have lost the thread of story. I think it was Camille Paglia, I was listening to her. She's an atheist but she thinks there should be religious studies programs in schools and everything, because even art always has these references to biblical story and people now don't know them. So they've lost the meaning behind art because they don't know the biblical story. 

Um, and I, I, I was thinking and and often do think about, you know, the question that we had, which was did we make god in our images or did god make us in in God's image? And I think that humanity, even within our, our Christian tradition or the Christian and Hebrew scriptures, that at different times in the people's life, god took on a different character, right, so we have god who is like a mother or a hen. You know who will gather all the chicks under their wings. And then we have the god who is the commander of the heavenly armies. Right, we have the god who struck down 10 000 assyrians, just like that, and and and. So there is this very broad, uh, perspective on god and what it means to be a follower of god and how god uses god's power for the benefit of god's people. 

And who are those people who are those people, right, because if you take I think it's ezra nehemiah they're very much nationalists, right? Anybody who married someone who is not jew, your wife and kids are gone. You know, or they weren't, the Hebrew people I don't know whether I would use the word Jewish at that point, but um, and then you had in Isaiah welcome the foreigners within you. You know, and God is, and and we're every, every follower of God, of god. You know, member of the covenant, is going to bring 10 gentiles with them to the temple and god will be one of all. 

Um, so it seems to me that even then there was, because that battle was happening at the very same time, right, that people, some were saying, no, god is only for us. You know the hebrew people, the people of is. No, god is only for us. You know the Hebrew people, the people of Israel, god is for Israel. And then there were people saying, no, our, you know, god's path should be followed by all nations. Jesus was for Jewish people. I mean, he stayed within the Jewish tradition. He did not go talk to Gentiles or preach to Gentiles. Right, that's Paul who did that, you know. 

So I think about how we view God as kind of like pan and scan. I've said this a lot, maybe I've said it on this before is that you have to be old enough to remember the 4-3 television set. You know that was kind of like a box, and so if they had a movie that had been made for the theater, like letterbox, um, they couldn't show it like that on a, on a screen, because, remember, they were small too, like they were. You had a 25 inch television. Wow, that was a big tv. Um, so they had a technology that would pan and scan the picture and fixate on what they thought was the most important thing, and that would be what you would see on your four three television set and you miss all the stuff that's around it. 

And I kind of think that God is like that, that God is so much bigger than we could ever imagine, that God is eternal mystery, and I like I forget who who said it, but the idea that it's not that God is unknowable, it's God is eternal mystery, and I like I forget who said it, but the idea that it's not that God is unknowable, it's God is infinitely knowable. Infinitely knowable. You can never get to the end of God. But at different times in our lives and I like to think of it as our history with each other as opposed to me as an individual different times in our history, what we see from this God that is bigger than we can ever know is what brings us hope and brings us together. So in our history right now, we really concentrate on the God, who is God for all, all we concentrate on you know paul's preaching that says 

there's not no jew or gentile, you know, slave or free, male or female. We are all one in god's world. Those are the things that are we need now, um, in our this time and place in our history, and that's what we need god to be. You know, um, the white christian nationalist does not need that same god. They need the god, you know, who smites the enemies, and they need the god that is above all other gods, and so they create an image of God which comes from scripture and can be seen in our scriptures too. They create an image of God that helps them in what they think is their. What they need in this time and place and this is the real difficulty with claiming god is on your side always, because we can construct a god that is in our image. That helps us. I mean, there's a great thing that says if god hates all the same people you do, you created god, I think it's Anne Lamott. 

Bill

Anne Lamott said that, yeah.

Joanne

So I think we have to be careful when we say they don't believe in god or that's not god, right, you have to be careful about that, because we construct the god we need as much as they do. And I think the challenge for all of us who are people of faith is to ground ourselves in the story enough, and the many stories enough that we can see the nuance in what it means to follow in the way of jesus, you know next topic for a podcast god, the four, three television set. 

Ricardo

There you go um, I remember god yeah, god I I remember uh I remember. 

Bill

I remember a prof in seminary actually saying that even the idea of the Trinity is merely our best, failed attempt at describing God. 

God is always, metaphor, right, always, and again, one of the stories that I always appreciated as a young person growing up in the church was actually the story that I then got to dive into in my Gospel of Mark class – shout out, Sister Joan – the story of Jesus and the Syrophoenician woman. 

And this idea that even in this story we get a very kind of complex portrayal of Jesus himself, who is in Hebrew territory and feeds 5,000 people and teaches and heals, and then ends up at this shack on the border where he has this very racist altercation with a woman in the shack and, purely through that relational connection that happens in that space, leaves the shack, goes into Gentile territory and does everything that he has just done in Hebrew territory all over again Feeds 4,000 people, heals, teaches, does all these things people heals, teaches, does all these things and comes to his own kind of realization that even this notion of God's calling to him is so much bigger and more vast than he walked into that building believing, you know, moments before. 

So I mean, certainly there's this constant ebb and flow of the understanding of exactly what God is and the tension, the challenge always seems to be how do you resist the pinnacle of human evolution being the individual right, the pinnacle of human evolution being the individual right, and that God does nothing more than serve you in the process. Right it's interesting. 

Ricardo

You know I was listening to a story about how people are exploring new age I guess spirituality is what the term is and you know they're turning inwards to find their spirit and stuff because the concept of the all-powerful, all-knowing, all-everywhere God is so unrealistic for them, if that's the word I could use. You just talked about Jesus, how he fed those thousands of people and came and did it again. And then people say to themselves today there are still thousands of people that need to be fed and without god we have enough money in the world to feed them. So what are we doing? And why is the answer? Um, a concert church, like a rock star church, right, these bit like I went to. Um, I was in san antonio, texas, a few weeks ago and I was driving around and there are these mega churches in Texas. I thought it was a stadium, but it was a church, right. 

And so the point that I come to is that people find and seek spirituality in many different ways and in non-denominational ways, but it's not just because they want to leave the church. They want to make sense of the message of Christianity in a modern-day context and they want to be able to understand why the very rigid systems that exist in the different Protestant denominations exist? How are they going to exist? And if they don't exist for me, then I need to. I need to rediscover myself to find out where I fit, which is sort of like the path I went on when I, before I, joined McDougal when do I fit? And that's also, you know, coming back full circle to what we were talking about before the break. That's sort of where Trump's message came from. Right Was you know Christianity Like? I've never known Trump to be a staunch like. What church is he from? He says he's Baptist Sunday morning attender. Yeah, yeah. 

Ricardo

He's not a Presbyterian. He says he's a Presbyterian, but he followed. 

Joanne

What's his name? The positivity, the Church of Positivity. I mean, he could be a reptilian for all I know. 

Ricardo

What was his name? Like he just, you know, yeah, like, oh, the Center for Positive Living or whatever. What was his name? 

Anyway yeah, like you see, people who have very strong influence in modern-day pop culture, like Justin Bieber, like religiously going to Hillsong, right. 

And then, of course, the big scandal at Hillsong came out right over the sex abuse scandal that occurred there and people, I can see why they turn to just finding yourself going back to nature, like Tony was talking about, and why indigenous practices make a lot of sense and why it's so important that we recognize and understand that we need to bring that back and recover that and break down the and either learn about and destroy the systems, the, the uh, either learn about and destroy the systems that created um, the basic, the genocide of the indigenous people here, right, they wanted to kill that connection to nature and our connection to our past and follow a rigid system of how you're supposed to behave in a church. 

And so I, I can see, like you said, 360, I don't, I just get a random spinning wheel, like I don't even know where it's going anymore. But I think the point I'm trying to make is that people don't want to leave. I think people still want spirituality, they want I don't know if they want liturgy, but I think. I think they still want structure, but they want to focus their beliefs somewhere and there's a, there's a scatter scatter somewhere, and they're turning to spirituality just as a general term to try and find where they fit, and I mean, maybe it's I kind of think that there has always been in. 

Joanne

Like john cross would say, we're hardwired for religion like human beings. Yeah yeah and there has always been an experience of God. That is what we say is ineffable. In other words, we can't describe it, it's not intellectual. When Paul writes, he says those who want to worship must worship in spirit and in truth. And so I think that the our culture emphasized way too much learning about, about god, learning the bible, learning um stuff and not, and so worshiping in truth but not worshiping in spirit. 

Ricardo

Exactly yeah. 

Joanne

So Paul was. He was an ecstatic believer. In other words, they would have, like in indigenous cultures, in sweat lodges and stuff like that. They would have experiences that were spiritual, where you're kind of outside everyday existence and you have experiences in your body and in your mind and and in your spirit that are other, they are um, something that is not every day and you have an experience of the divine, the sacred, the holy. That is can transform. Some people say it's like taking lsd actually that people who have taken um psychedelics get the same sort of feeling and it transforms not just that moment where they're in it, but also how they view the world and how they live in the world thereafter, because there has been a shift in in their body, mind and spirit in such a way that they are new. 

So when Paul talks about be transformed by the renewal of your mind and all those things, there were lots of practices in Jewish tradition too that were ecstatic. We have these mystics Christian mystics who had ecstatic experiences all the time, christian mystics who had ecstatic experiences all the time. I think the real pull of the kind of modern evangelical church is that they return to the idea of the ecstatic experience. They became much more charismatic than they were when I was a child, right. So the music that, if you think about the music, it's very repetitive, repetitive. 

The theology is horrible, you know the storyline is lost, like, if you think about it, that's, that's what it is. If you immerse yourself in it, it's like you lose yourself. Yeah, and that is very appealing to our culture. The same thing with the spirituality which is where can I find a way to experience nature where I lose myself? Not gain myself, but I lose myself in some way? 

Tony

And so I when I think about this, this idea when you said we're hardwired for religion, I'm more of the opinion that we're hardwired for answers in the Western sort of tradition that it is more about being able to compartmentalize and to set aside certain attributes, feelings, ideas, identities, into these convenient sort of boxes, and so that we can have some discreteness to them and we have more control over the environment that we're living in and how we respond to that environment. So we can have different registers for this, we have different contexts that we can build on, and so we're we're continuously walking around wondering sort of what scenario am I in and how do I best respond? Because I'm here because of survival and I need to get through this moment with this person and kind of move on to the next thing. I don't want to engage, I don't want to be here. Whereas the idea of the Indigenous God, the Indigenous idea of creator in everything all around you, it is immersion in a world and engagement and very much like what you said about that ecstatic experience. It is like going into a different modality and seeing the world from a different perspective and to build on that, to build on your encounter, your unique encounter with God, but that it's not yours alone. This, you share this. You bring about a different understanding of your place within creation and your place, your understanding of one another, and these gifts that are passed along are part of that legacy of belief, of faith, of rounding out what these experiences are, that they're coming from people that you trust, people that you are born with, people that have nurtured and have your interest at heart, and there's a foundation around that. 

When we look at a lot of biblical scholarship, a lot of it is contesting understanding. Contesting belief, contesting the ways in which we come to our understanding is a very logical and mental exercise versus what faith is actually about. And when we come to issues of faith, when we experience some of these things, we don't have a convenient box to put that in and so we set it aside, we never revisit it, we don't build into it an understanding that, oh, we were just touched by God, we were just encountering something that is wholly connected to the world around us, and if we don't acknowledge, we don't understand. If we move through that, we continue to act in a blind way, we continue to act in a way that is very surface and childlike to the world around us until we start to understand the world and our place in it, which is why I keep going back to that. It is foundational to that connection and to building on a whole human being, a maturing human being that we don't otherwise have the opportunity to build up. 

Joanne

Yeah, that idea that God is in and through all life. And even as we walk on the, you know, gently, on the earth, we are experiencing that In a culture that has blocked spirit and opted for intellect, there is a deficit of mystery and a deficit of sacred, not just space, but of sacred experience. And if we I believe it's foundational and if we I I believe it's foundational, you know, most people who have had a spiritual experience of the sacred, expansive experience of the sacred, do not turn around and put on white hoods, let's put it that way, do you know, what I mean. 

Um, when you talk to people who've had an expansive experience of the sacredness of life and god in and through all things, suddenly what I think, what I believe, is not as important as connecting with each other, connecting with the earth, connecting with the divine, and that connection is like the drug. 

I guess that just expands about who we are and who we can be. We spend a lot of time in our churches intellectually I'm like a preacher who is always trying to do that but there have to be ways for our culture to expand our spiritual experiences without doubting them because we don't understand them. 

Tony

I think one of the things that we talk about in terms of the land-based teachings, and one of the things that, again, vine Deloria talks about, is that after a certain amount of time you've been here five, six generations you would think that you would have learned some way to connect to the land, to appreciate the fast and famine sort of environment, the harshness of the ecosystem and how to adapt into that system, to realize what creation is telling you about your limits. And this idea of being integral and connected and whole within that system is part of that way that we are differentiating ourselves from one another, but it's also how we are finding that sort of sacred center of where we can be and what we can potentially become within this land. 

Joanne

It's a movement from. You know, like in literature they always talk about, there's some kind of battle. It's man against man, man against himself, man against nature, and I remember reading that you know there's always been this idea that nature is immutable. That's one thing we can never conquer until the Avon and we suddenly became a-bomb, yeah, I thought you said avon. I was like but uh, yeah, the idea that all of a sudden it's like, oh wait a second. Yes, we can alter nature. 

We can destroy ourselves we could destroy the world, and how that shifted our understanding, so that, in the climate crisis, what do we think? Oh, technology will find a way, we will find a way to fix all this, because we believe our brains are so powerful that someone, when we get together and think hard enough, all our problems will be over. And really we need to start from the space. If, instead of thinking, we can conquer nature, or we have conquered nature, we need to get to a place where we dwell on the earth gently and recognize that we are just part of the system not above it. 

Ricardo

And really, like all we've done with technology over the years, has made a more destructive and powerful A-bomb right. 

Joanne

Yeah, yeah. 

Ricardo

Like we've advanced our assertion of dominance over nature and other people. And now space? Like just this morning or last yesterday, jeff Bezos launched his rocket into space to compete with SpaceX. Right didn't. 

Joanne

Elon Musk's rocket explode in space. Jeff Bezos launched his rocket into space to compete with SpaceX, didn't Elon? 

Ricardo

Musk's rocket explode in space. This massive race to the nothingness is what it is. Do they hope to create the United Federation of Planets or whatever they have in Star Trek within our lifetime?

Bill

That's the thing, right time, but that's the yeah, that's the the thing. Right is, you know, it's the distraction, the distraction from the stuff that actually matters. Um, that might one day be how you escape the fact that you did nothing with what you were supposed to be, a steward of right. Um. So I want to be sensitive to time as well, um and uh, and knowing that we could go on forever on this one. So I'm gonna go, I'm gonna move down the line. Final thoughts from Ricardo, then Joanne, and then we'll close with Tony. 

Ricardo

You know it's going to be what. I thought 2024 was hard. I'm looking forward to 2026. I think I think 2026 will really be our year, because 2025 is going to be a challenge for everybody on this continent and around the world. I can feel a breaking point and a boiling point for a lot of people around us, lot of people around us, but I also feel that people are desperately and whether or not they're successfully trying to find alternative ways to find peace gives me a bit of hope. They're using the technology that we have to try and find that peace, whether it's artificial intelligence or connections outside spirituality, or going back to our roots or going back to our past again to combat the systems that are in place, that have been in place for years and years. It's happening and it'll be an interesting time in the next few years, I think. 

Joanne

Well, if hope is not a strategy, connection is, and I can't help but think that, if we think of the connections we have with each other and the connections we have with the earth and the connections we have with what is sacred, if we center those in our lives instead of what we think about all these things, we have the opportunity to expand and grow and become the people of god. Really, um, I went in trump's first uh iteration. Um, like the I, I was enraged for four years, like, really honestly, everything that that he did, you know, was just like this is crazy. How can these people listen to this? That? Why is this happening? 

You know, um, and this time around, I've made a pact with myself that I cannot live in the rage machine and that what is going to get us through this struggle here in Canada, too, if we have a shift to the right, that is, more along MAGA lines, is the connections that we can make in local communities, the connections we can make in our churches with each other to carry each other, the connections we can make with people who believe that we as humanity can be better, those who are struggling against poverty and those who are struggling against oppression. Those are the connections that are going to fight the rage machine. That's the strategy, and hope is the fuel. 

Tony

So the idea of connection to me is amplified through the work of coalition. When we had the mining issue that came up in Alberta and the work that needed to be done from the different activist communities, a lot of that came from the various groups that were involved and working together helped to stop what that movement was. And so to me, that idea of like-mindedness, purposefulness, coalition and working in a place of empowerment was part of that key. When I think about how fractured we are, how we have been isolated from one another in terms of our communities, and the attacks that have gone on for the LGBTQ community, for the Indigenous women in other areas that have seen this polarization and contempt that we have from our leadership, contempt that we have from our leaderships, that when we start to move in a way that is bringing to light the humanity of one another and I always come back to the lesson of the Good Samaritan that the person who takes that opportunity to reach out to another, to reach out to another to humanize that person, to look after that person, to help in their struggle and to try to make right something that has occurred, it's not about individual grandiosity, it's not about making magnanimous gestures, it is about belief and foundation in what we want to see the world as and how we want to be in the world. And to find a grace and a balance between that vision and our action is, to me, how we enable a different view of this reality, how we step into that new Eden, given the teachings that we have been given through our Christ figure, through our gospels, through our teachings, through our scripture. 

These things that we select to lift up and to amplify for the sake of one another is important Because, as you said, it's happening on the other side to condemn and to belittle and to make small the others, that the other beliefs that will ultimately, to me, win this trial of how do we become a better world, and if we can step into that with a vision, with a purpose, with a calling. 

That's a different calculus than to be subject to the negation, subject to the isolation, subject to the ostracization that seeks to keep us in a way disabled from ourselves and from one another. So for me, it is always about finding not just the better angels but the helpers, the ones who are there to do the work, and so when we find and support that, I think that we can influence, change, and that means voting, that means helping to campaign, that means putting our lives in the mix, because they matter, and the things that we do will ultimately matter for the long term, and maybe it's something that we will never see, but we can't give up so, in closing, my thanks to Ricardo and to Joanne, as always, for your tireless presence and willingness to engage in this stuff. 

Bill

A special thanks to you, Tony, for being here tonight. It was a privilege to have you here and we're really glad that you were able to be with us, to share and to be a part of this conversation. Thanks to our live audience that joined us here this evening and to all of you that are listening to us online. Thanks, as always, to the United Church Foundation for their support of this podcast as well. We will be back here in one month's time. 

My words of closing simply this If you are listening to this tonight from a place where you are feeling alone or isolated or threatened or scared of everything that is to come, take some wisdom from Tony's words. Tonight. It's like remember who you are and, if nothing else, remember whose you are and the great beauty and calling to connectivity and community that comes with being a child of God. Because, well, because maybe this too won't pass in our lifetime, but, as the mystics would say, all shall be well in time. And so, until that time comes, know that you are not alone, that the isolation and the noise and the distraction that the world may try to force upon you is not the sum total of who you are in your createdness or in your belovedness. So take care of yourselves and each other and we will see you. I think that might be Jerry Springer. Was that Jerry Springer? Did I just quote Jerry Springer to close this thing? 

Ricardo

God rest his soul. 

Bill

But however it is, you do it ideally, not with a chair

Joanne

Oh, you went deep. 

Bill

I know, yeah, but take care of yourselves and know that you are not alone and you are loved and with that, we are out until next month. 

And there you have it, folks. The first of the 2025 episodes is now in the books. Thanks for listening. Every one of our discussions is recorded in front of a live studio audience at McDougall United Church in Calgary, Alberta. You can listen to all of our past podcasts wherever you get your podcasts, and you can stay connected with us and keep the conversation going by hopping on over to Patreon and signing up for free at Prepared to Drown. I'm Bill Weaver. This is Prepared to Drown, and we'll see you next month. Take care of yourself.