SPEAKER_07: Okay, comparable question like I always start with.
SPEAKER_07: What does what what did this do for you this week?
SPEAKER_01: Scared two years off my life.
SPEAKER_01: Did it really better be?
SPEAKER_01: It really did.
SPEAKER_01: Well, I read the first couple of books of the Left Pine series and that spared two years off my life until I realized it probably wasn't accurate in terms of actual history.
SPEAKER_07: Best selling fiction series ever.
SPEAKER_07: Uh-huh.
SPEAKER_07: Tamila Hayes' contribution, he wrote it on a cocktail napkin.
SPEAKER_07: Who said that?
SPEAKER_05: I can't believe it.
SPEAKER_07: It's crazy.
SPEAKER_07: You know, my one of my friends in Coronado, her ex-husband owned a publishing company that published it.
SPEAKER_07: Tiny little thing, you know, and uh boy, they made a lot of money.
SPEAKER_07: You know, I mean, who knew it was gonna be so wildly successful?
SPEAKER_07: So it took them from being like doing okay to like, because I think the publisher got like 50% of the sales.
SPEAKER_07: You know, that's pretty normal.
SPEAKER_07: Um yeah, anyway.
unknown: Wow.
SPEAKER_02: My impression for because I knew you were gonna ask this question.
SPEAKER_02: I ask it every week, it's terrible.
SPEAKER_02: So I thought uh, and I thought there was a whole lot more Rome and not a whole lot of Jesus.
SPEAKER_04: Yeah, it's very anti-Rome.
SPEAKER_07: Well, is it anti-Rome or is it anti-empire?
SPEAKER_04: I think it's in its time.
SPEAKER_04: I think it was specifically anti-Rome, and it generalizes quite beautifully into anti-empire of every kind.
SPEAKER_07: I mean, I think that's right.
SPEAKER_07: And I think that's why it's helpful.
SPEAKER_07: It doesn't just say Rome, it talks about Babylon the Great, which was no more, but it is here now.
unknown: Yeah.
SPEAKER_04: Very anti-woman.
SPEAKER_07: Yeah, women can only be useful for childbirth, or that's what we saw again.
SPEAKER_07: You know.
SPEAKER_04: Yeah, so is this guy writing after the temple's destroyed and clearly, yeah, clearly.
SPEAKER_04: And really about the world.
SPEAKER_04: And the the apocalyptic idea that justice is coming later.
unknown: Yeah.
SPEAKER_07: I mean, maybe later and now, it's all like really, really confused, I think, right?
SPEAKER_07: I mean, again, God's gonna dwell on earth, and when is it fully gonna be realized, I think, is still what we struggle with.
SPEAKER_07: You know, when is it fully gonna be realized?
SPEAKER_07: I you know, like I grew up, and I think we still hear this in any kind of denomination, is like the second coming of Jesus, all this is gonna be fixed, right?
SPEAKER_07: But I sort of think the second coming of Jesus happens anytime we engage in justice.
SPEAKER_07: You know what I mean?
SPEAKER_07: Like, I don't know that it's a once-for-all deal.
SPEAKER_07: I mean, I don't know about that.
SPEAKER_07: It just seems very unlike God to come and like fix all our problems.
SPEAKER_07: I don't know if that makes sense.
SPEAKER_04: I mean, it's not I don't think it's like God to do that.
SPEAKER_04: I mean, that's what I mean.
SPEAKER_07: So I grew up in church where Jesus is gonna come back in a cloud and there's gonna be this judgment, and all the evil is gonna go away.
SPEAKER_07: And see, people, that's the day of the Lord that we read about in Joel.
SPEAKER_07: You know, that's what people want with the millennium and the rapture, all of that sort of stuff.
SPEAKER_07: But you know, I don't know.
SPEAKER_07: Again, like God has never done that.
SPEAKER_04: God has never done that.
SPEAKER_07: So it makes me wonder whether that's like those are moments we get to enter into.
SPEAKER_07: I mean, the truth is at a certain point, humanity's gonna be gone.
SPEAKER_07: We're gonna, the stars, the sun's gonna get out, or we're gonna kill ourselves through something, or a meteor is gonna hit the earth.
SPEAKER_07: I mean, whatever.
SPEAKER_07: At a certain point, we're not gonna do what we do, and then it'll all be settled.
SPEAKER_07: You know, I mean, that's that'll be the end of human time.
SPEAKER_07: Um, whether it's the end of time itself, I don't know.
SPEAKER_07: But um, so I I'm having a hard time, you know.
SPEAKER_07: So much of my faith life is predicated on God coming back and like fixing it all.
SPEAKER_07: But I wonder if that is the wrong thing to look forward to.
SPEAKER_07: I mean, I think God is gonna fix it all when we die, and in that sense, I think what I'm really trying to build into is that reconciliation is gonna happen when I die.
SPEAKER_07: God's going to take care of that.
SPEAKER_07: Um but I don't know that God's gonna force me to do it while I'm alive.
SPEAKER_07: I don't know if that makes sense what I'm saying.
SPEAKER_02: Do what?
SPEAKER_07: Force me, force reconcile.
SPEAKER_07: And there's people I cannot be reconciled with.
SPEAKER_07: Not fully, because they don't want to, or I don't want to, or we just can't.
SPEAKER_07: But I think what I kind of believe, what I'm trying to at least come to believe, is that whether I do it or not in this lifetime, God is going to do it after I die.
SPEAKER_07: God's going to do it for me if I can't do it with God.
SPEAKER_06: This was a couple years ago, the Orthodox Church, the leader of the Orthodox Church, and uh I liked him.
SPEAKER_06: He was a called Bible sort of thing.
SPEAKER_06: But here's the thing with that um that uh that in a way the world was awakening we had to come closer to the healing ourselves before anything you know would happen.
SPEAKER_06: I thought that was a nice thing.
SPEAKER_07: I think every every religion and permutation therein, denominations, well, I mean we're really only major world religion with denominations, honestly.
SPEAKER_07: But you know, like in in Judaism, there's Kabbalah.
SPEAKER_07: And um, you know Kabbalah has has influenced conservative Jews and Reformed Jews and Orthodox Jews.
SPEAKER_07: I mean, you you can be into the Kabbalah in any of those divisions, right?
SPEAKER_07: And the Kabbalah says that there's this essential oneness that gets fractured, and then our job essentially is to repair the world, which in Hebrew is like the tekuno laam, is to like repair the world.
SPEAKER_07: So when you when you do that, you're kind of putting God's pieces back together, if that makes sense.
SPEAKER_07: They're called the Sephirot, and it's very, like, very Eastern looking.
SPEAKER_07: It's sort of like chakras, anyway.
SPEAKER_08: Umpty gumpty.
SPEAKER_07: A little bit, a little bit, yeah.
SPEAKER_07: So repairing the world in some ways is like repairing God.
SPEAKER_07: It's just like it's interesting.
SPEAKER_02: Well, what that implies, though, is that something was whole to begin with.
SPEAKER_07: It does imply that, it does, yeah.
SPEAKER_07: Which I don't know if I totally want to go there or not, but it's but it's an interesting thing, and and in some ways I think we have, you know, there's these images in here about sort of bringing the new Jerusalem to earth.
SPEAKER_07: It's just a different way of saying it in some ways, right?
SPEAKER_07: It's like hastening the coming of God's family.
SPEAKER_07: I think what we often get is, oh, like God's gonna come and bring that about, instead of we are invited to bring that about.
SPEAKER_07: We spend so much time that God's gonna do it.
SPEAKER_07: And by the way, I do think God's gonna do it maybe after we're dead, though.
SPEAKER_07: I mean, this is this, I think it's the hard thing to think through.
SPEAKER_07: I don't know if that's helpful what I'm saying.
SPEAKER_06: I like that phrase in the Bible in all creation waits.
SPEAKER_07: Yeah, you know, there's an interesting thing about this time and this waiting, though.
SPEAKER_07: Um you know what a dunce cap is?
SPEAKER_07: It's that cone hat, right?
SPEAKER_07: Well, you know, it actually um comes from like a genius.
SPEAKER_07: Uh his name was Duns Scotus.
SPEAKER_07: So he's a medieval theologian who who actually was like considered to be, in his own day, like really, really sharp.
SPEAKER_07: And then people started to make making fun of the Dunce position, and because he wore this cone hat, it was a Dunce cap, right?
SPEAKER_07: So there's this big word, there's this word called Oh man, I'm gonna get this wrong.
SPEAKER_07: Lapsarianism, lapse meaning fall.
SPEAKER_07: So it's like this idea about the fall and the fall of humanity.
SPEAKER_07: And um there's some other words in there.
SPEAKER_07: Well, anyway, um Dun Scotus is a soup a super lapsarianist.
SPEAKER_07: In Revelation 13, 8, this is one verse, um, the book says, Um, all inhabitants of the earth will worship the beast, all whose names have not been written in the book of life, belonging to the lamb.
SPEAKER_07: Here's the key the lamb that was slain from the creation of the world.
SPEAKER_07: So Dun Scotius decided that the cross was not God's solution to Adam and Eve messing it up, that the incarnation and the cross was God's plan from the beginning.
SPEAKER_07: So this is interesting.
SPEAKER_07: In general, what I've heard is Adam and Eve screwed up God's plans, and God had to come up with plan B, and that was Jesus.
SPEAKER_07: Dunskotus says the cross was plan A.
SPEAKER_07: Based on this one verse.
SPEAKER_04: Based on this verse?
SPEAKER_07: The one I just read you.
SPEAKER_07: The lamb who was slain from the creation of the world.
SPEAKER_07: That is, this is interesting to think about time-wise.
SPEAKER_07: So listen, I mean, I got a math degree, and none of this makes any sense to me, except time is not infinite because it has a starting point.
SPEAKER_07: So in so time doesn't parallel infinity, it happens inside of infinity, which means there was something before time, and there'd probably be something after time.
SPEAKER_07: But even if there isn't something after time, timelessness is bigger than time because time began and infinity doesn't begin.
SPEAKER_07: Does that here's a diagram?
SPEAKER_02: No, no, no.
SPEAKER_02: I I hear what you're saying, I'm not sure it's true.
SPEAKER_07: Well, it doesn't matter whether you agree, it's right.
SPEAKER_07: So I mean, geometrically, here's time, it's a ray.
SPEAKER_07: It's a ray.
SPEAKER_07: And uh before time is something, and after time is something, so why isn't it just more time?
SPEAKER_07: Well, because time has a beginning.
SPEAKER_02: For us.
SPEAKER_07: Well, no, it don't, it just does.
SPEAKER_07: I mean, this is what Stephen Hawking says too, right?
SPEAKER_07: Like the first thing that happens in the universe is time.
SPEAKER_02: If it's if if if the universe is if if infinity is real, then there is no time doesn't exist.
SPEAKER_07: Well, exactly right.
SPEAKER_07: So this is even better.
SPEAKER_07: What you're saying is even better.
SPEAKER_07: So the idea, I think, is that God doesn't happen in time.
SPEAKER_07: Time happens inside of God.
SPEAKER_07: See, time is a blip in in infinity.
SPEAKER_07: If that makes sense.
SPEAKER_02: So did God start somewhere?
SPEAKER_02: Well, does God have a beginning?
SPEAKER_07: I think our faith says no, but I don't know the answer to that.
SPEAKER_07: I mean, actually, I think the idea is like everything that is, sort of doesn't just come from God.
SPEAKER_07: I think the idea, and this is Kabbalah, everything that is happens inside of God.
SPEAKER_07: It's a really interesting thing.
SPEAKER_07: So we say Holy Spirit in whom we live and move and have our being.
SPEAKER_07: Is Kabbalah sort of says God, like a pregnant woman, makes space in God's self for us to be.
SPEAKER_04: And didn't SCOTUS say that also?
SPEAKER_07: Well, it comes from Kabbalah, though.
SPEAKER_07: It comes from the Bal Shantov.
SPEAKER_07: He predates Dun SCOTUS.
SPEAKER_07: But sort of.
SPEAKER_07: So kind of what Dun Scotaus says, this really interesting idea, is here's our timeline, and look, here's 30 AD, and here's Jesus.
SPEAKER_07: Happens in time, but Dun SCOTUS says actually, it's a moment in our time, but it's an infinite event.
SPEAKER_07: So the cross was before time, and the cross will be after time.
SPEAKER_07: It happened discreetly in a moment, but it happened forever.
SPEAKER_07: I don't know if that makes sense.
SPEAKER_07: The cross being the incarnation, the death and resurrection of Jesus are infinite events, even though they happened in time.
SPEAKER_07: So it's this moment in which infinity intersects finity.
SPEAKER_02: That's interesting.
SPEAKER_07: I don't know what I'm talking about, except it seems right to me.
SPEAKER_07: So I think the idea is that any, if if Jesus is God, right, and he's the revelation of God and he's fully present, anything Jesus does reveals the eternal character of God.
SPEAKER_07: So the eternal character of God is the cross and resurrection.
SPEAKER_07: Happens in time, but always was and always will be.
SPEAKER_07: That's the dunskotus argument.
SPEAKER_02: If we're going to go into this realm of displaying, one of the thoughts that I've had is that is that that's kind of two-dimensional.
SPEAKER_07: It is two-dimensional.
SPEAKER_02: But I wonder if there's not a third dimension.
SPEAKER_02: Can that mean that if you take if you take that dimension and then you start adding an infinite number of dimensions?
SPEAKER_02: In other words, the next dimension is an infinite distance, or an infinitely small distance between where we are now and the next, whatever that is.
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
SPEAKER_02: And then the next and the next and the next.
SPEAKER_02: So it's not only infinitely this way, but it's infinitely this way as well.
SPEAKER_07: I think it's a great idea.
SPEAKER_07: And I think it's more than three-dimensional.
SPEAKER_07: I mean, you know how it's.
SPEAKER_02: What do I meant by?
SPEAKER_02: Well, what is the fourth dimension?
SPEAKER_07: Well, some people could see it.
SPEAKER_07: Do you know about this?
SPEAKER_07: Okay, so you know, I've got a three-dimensional object, and the light comes this way and it makes a shadow, and a shadow is two dimensions, right?
SPEAKER_07: So that means that the third dimension is essentially just a shadow of the fourth.
SPEAKER_05: What?
SPEAKER_07: This is right.
SPEAKER_07: See, the second dimension is a shadow of a third dimension.
SPEAKER_07: You're a third-dimensional being.
SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
SPEAKER_07: And when the light comes, it makes a 2D shadow.
SPEAKER_07: It's flat.
SPEAKER_07: It has no volume.
SPEAKER_07: It's flat.
SPEAKER_07: Right?
SPEAKER_07: So three-dimensionality is a shadow of the fourth dimension.
SPEAKER_04: This is um like if you take a pencil which is 2D and look at it on its end, pencil point, which is one-dimensional.
SPEAKER_07: Correct.
SPEAKER_07: One, two, three dimensions, right?
SPEAKER_07: Now listen, mathematically, I learned how to solve nth-dimensional equations.
SPEAKER_07: Fourth and fifth dimension, but how do you conceive it?
SPEAKER_07: So my professor told me, he was one of these NASA people, um, that that there's a few people who have claimed to be able to like image the fourth dimension.
SPEAKER_07: Einstein being one of them apparently made that claim.
SPEAKER_02: I hear what you're saying.
SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
SPEAKER_02: But I, as you said, I can't image it.
SPEAKER_07: So it's fine, and the other thing you can't image, frankly, is like a a billion anything.
SPEAKER_07: So, like you, you, you know, you can read these like scales of numbers.
SPEAKER_07: Like our brain, I don't know if you know this, in most languages, it's like one and two, and then like the word stem changes when you get to three, four, five.
SPEAKER_07: So, like, we two is very basic for us.
SPEAKER_07: But when you get to three or more, we had to make up a new word conceptually for like three or more.
SPEAKER_07: In the Bible, look, there's a lot of numbers like seven, ten, twelve, forty.
SPEAKER_07: Anything more than forty, good god, like what is that?
SPEAKER_07: Uh, our brains just haven't evolved to do scale.
SPEAKER_07: So if I told you, look, I made a million dollars or there's a million ants, and I told you there's a billion, well, geez, they're just big numbers, but like to understand what a billion dollars buys or what it does, our brains are not are hardwired to not understand that.
SPEAKER_07: So we haven't evolved to get quantity on mass scale.
SPEAKER_07: I mean, you have to really, really focus to understand how much volume a million golf balls would occupy versus a billion golf balls.
SPEAKER_07: Same with dimensionality.
SPEAKER_07: And in general, like this is to go back to philosophy and I think to Revelation, if it's okay, right?
SPEAKER_07: Plato's key argument is that we are in a cave looking at shadows on a wall.
SPEAKER_07: We live in a two-dimensional reality, which in fact is multi-dimensional in the sense that it's 3D.
SPEAKER_07: But what we often do is we flatten things and we live in a flat world.
SPEAKER_07: Now, if you don't mind me saying this, this is what I find to be the case in politics and on social media.
SPEAKER_07: Donald Trump is a liar.
SPEAKER_07: That's a flat piece.
SPEAKER_02: Just because it succeeded a thousand lies.
SPEAKER_07: Yeah, well, but the truth is, uh liar means only tells lies.
SPEAKER_07: And it can't be true.
SPEAKER_07: I'm sure he tells the truth sometimes.
SPEAKER_07: So when we use a flattening word, we're settling into the second dimension instead of a multi-dimensional way of living.
SPEAKER_07: The people who are most vitriolic about this guy have never met him.
SPEAKER_07: So I don't know how they can judge his character.
SPEAKER_07: I mean, they don't know him at all.
SPEAKER_07: I don't know him.
SPEAKER_07: Do I think he tells lies?
SPEAKER_07: Yes, I do too.
SPEAKER_07: Is he worse than I am?
SPEAKER_07: Well, he has more power than I do.
SPEAKER_07: I disagree with many of his decisions, but see, that's a very different way of like thinking and framing than he's evil, he's a liar, he's a blah blah blah.
SPEAKER_07: Those kinds of phrases are us settling into two-dimensional living instead of living in a multidimensional bit.
SPEAKER_07: It was this huge thing when I was living in Germany.
SPEAKER_07: A movie came out about Adolf Hitler that showed him being kind to his secretary, and the Germans were like foaming at the mouth because it was important to depict Adolf Hitler as like the incarnation of evil, right?
SPEAKER_04: Extremes.
SPEAKER_04: You're talking about extremes.
SPEAKER_07: We're talking about extremes, and in some ways we lose, I think, multidimensional living very frequently because honestly, our brains have evolved to live in a binary way of existence, even though we're trinary ourselves.
SPEAKER_07: And we're three-dimensional, right?
SPEAKER_07: We have depth, but in general, we live flat and our brains want two choices, right and wrong.
SPEAKER_02: Well, we see in two dimensions.
SPEAKER_07: That's that's well I know we see in three dimensions.
SPEAKER_07: If you've got two eyeballs.
SPEAKER_07: Now, if you've only got one eyeball, you you see in two dimensions.
SPEAKER_02: I I I I I I believe I see in two dimensions with two eyeballs.
SPEAKER_02: I but my mind.
SPEAKER_02: Oh, fair.
SPEAKER_07: Okay, your mind conceives the third dimension.
SPEAKER_07: Correct.
SPEAKER_02: I mean, the the the the actual vision is two dimensions.
SPEAKER_02: It's the best we can do.
SPEAKER_02: But as I as you third dimension is something that your mind makes.
SPEAKER_02: I mean, I know that between you and I is about five feet, but I don't see that.
SPEAKER_07: So here's an interesting bit, right?
SPEAKER_07: Our spirit, whatever you consider that to be, or our mind's eye, or our third eye, right, in Hinduism, does it see in two dimensions, or does it see in three or four?
SPEAKER_07: When we look at one another, do we see flat or do we allow expansion?
unknown: Wow, it's interesting.
SPEAKER_07: I'm not a philosopher, and I'm not really even a mathematician, but I think what Dunskotus is challenging us to do is to think outside of time and within time at this at all at once.
SPEAKER_07: So we usually think of things being so linear, but but if you think about God holding time and intersecting with it at every second, I think that's what he's trying to get us to do here.
SPEAKER_04: The revelation book?
SPEAKER_07: Dunskotus.
SPEAKER_07: And I think that ties into revelation because again, when you hear next week that God's home is on earth, the New Jerusalem is here, I think, coming way back to how I started, my religious training says God will do that one day instead of we do that in moments now.
SPEAKER_07: We do that in moments now.
SPEAKER_07: So, like I would tell you, when the tank stops in TNMN square, when it stops, is when God comes to dwell on earth.
SPEAKER_07: Now listen, something happens after that.
SPEAKER_07: But in these moments is when the infinite intersects the finite.
SPEAKER_07: And I think in some ways it's up to us how long those moments last.
SPEAKER_01: Something, I don't know whether this relates at all to what you're saying.
SPEAKER_01: It's probably too weird to bring up, but I was snorkeling in Jamaica last summer.
SPEAKER_01: And we we got off the ship.
SPEAKER_01: It was a little bit choppy that day, and he really, I mean, it certainly was not one of those clear water days, you know, it was a little choppy.
SPEAKER_01: And I swam off, put on my stuff, and I had never been snorkeling before.
SPEAKER_01: And when I dipped below the water, If you've ever snorkeled, you're in a different world.
SPEAKER_01: Instantly, that fast.
SPEAKER_01: You're in a different world.
SPEAKER_01: It's quiet.
SPEAKER_01: There's a different movement.
SPEAKER_01: It's perfectly clear.
SPEAKER_01: It's.
SPEAKER_01: You see all this stuff, there's no way you can see from the surface.
SPEAKER_01: And for a moment I thought, what if this is like, what if heaven is this close to us all the time, we just don't see?
SPEAKER_01: If there's always that, I don't want to use the word dimension because I'm not using it correctly, but you know, what if that world is always there?
SPEAKER_01: Always that close to us, but we just never are aware of.
SPEAKER_07: Yeah, I mean I think I think this is, I think you're doing much more eloquently and concisely than what I want, what I'm trying to get us to think about.
SPEAKER_07: There's this phrase we're taught as kids, and we say it, seeing is believing, but I think this book is actually saying believing is seeing.
SPEAKER_07: And that is that what we believe determines what we will see.
SPEAKER_07: So if we're if so if we believe that the infinite is constantly intercepting the finite, we might just see it.
SPEAKER_07: If we don't believe that, we never will, even if it's right in front of our face.
SPEAKER_07: And that's the theory of relativity, anyway, right?
SPEAKER_07: I mean that's that's it.
SPEAKER_07: It's relative to the observer.
SPEAKER_04: We all have filters, right?
SPEAKER_04: So if we're not expecting a black kid and a hoodie to be pleasantly selling those type bookies, then we might see something menacing.
SPEAKER_07: And this, I think, is what the book is doing.
SPEAKER_07: The book, the whole purpose of this book is for is to change what we believe so we can see it in front of us.
SPEAKER_07: Heaven is not out there later when we die.
SPEAKER_07: God is constantly bringing a new Jerusalem to earth.
SPEAKER_07: If we believe it, we might just see it.
SPEAKER_07: If we believe it and we see it, we might take part in it.
SPEAKER_07: I think.
SPEAKER_07: And that's why I think this is motivating people who are persecuted or whatever you want to say is listen, it's very easy to get tunnel vision on woe is me, but you're not, but you need to expand your vision so you can see what's really going on.
SPEAKER_04: God is bringing the new Jerusalem continually.
SPEAKER_07: Doesn't that have to be right?
SPEAKER_04: I think it has to be right.
SPEAKER_07: But I think coming back to this, and I know this is like a little confusing.
SPEAKER_07: Like I said, I don't really quite understand it, is if God acts discreetly in time, and those actions are infinite, then they're always available in time.
SPEAKER_07: So if God's going to do it one day, then God can do it also today.
SPEAKER_04: Because that's what God does.
SPEAKER_07: I hope that makes sense.
SPEAKER_04: I mean, I know I that makes not a lot of sense, but what you're saying now makes more sense to me.
SPEAKER_07: With that, with the infinite intersection, the finite, right?
SPEAKER_07: If God is reconciliation, if that's who God is, then it's not just one day, it's today.
SPEAKER_07: And one day.
SPEAKER_07: And tomorrow.
SPEAKER_07: And five minutes from now.
SPEAKER_03: I mean, it's And it's happened in the past, too.
SPEAKER_07: In the past, too.
SPEAKER_07: So, like, you know, there's this weird bit in quantum mechanics.
SPEAKER_07: Lila's working with this, right?
SPEAKER_07: That that um experience.
SPEAKER_07: Well, the time is like the past and present are and future are all sort of wormholes to each other, right?
SPEAKER_07: I mean, they like fold on top of each other.
SPEAKER_04: Theory is out there.
SPEAKER_07: All right, she didn't like it.
SPEAKER_07: But anyway, I'm not gonna spend time.
SPEAKER_04: You know, there's quantum mechanics works on really tiny scales.
SPEAKER_04: Sometimes you can use it as a nice metaphor for for our scale of size, and I just don't find that particularly helpful.
SPEAKER_07: So let's not think about time.
SPEAKER_04: That the the lunch I eat tomorrow can give me a stomachache today, but that's what it's saying.
SPEAKER_07: Yeah, well, let's not think about it in time, because let's think about the edgy one that you've that you that we've talked about that is more comforting on the small scale and a large scale.
SPEAKER_07: Well, I think it is, right?
SPEAKER_07: At the quantum level, everything's entangled.
SPEAKER_04: Everything is entangled on the quantum level.
SPEAKER_04: We are all one thing.
SPEAKER_04: So I think we're all with nature.
SPEAKER_04: Yeah, God was incarnate in the way.
SPEAKER_04: So God is incarnate in everything in every moment.
SPEAKER_04: Circumscribed by anything, not contained by anything.
SPEAKER_04: Infinity is just kind of hard to understand.
SPEAKER_04: Like there is no center in the universe because there's no energy.
SPEAKER_02: Right.
SPEAKER_04: There's a center to the part of the universe that we can't see.
SPEAKER_07: Right, but that's definitely expanding faster than we thought anyway.
SPEAKER_04: Expanding faster than we thought.
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
SPEAKER_04: Energy on energy.
SPEAKER_04: What what did Neil Neil's Boris credit was saying?
SPEAKER_04: And I don't think he was originally physics.
SPEAKER_04: It's stranger than we can come.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, to be looking at a lot of people know myself.
SPEAKER_00: We make our own honor individually.
SPEAKER_00: Um that we're responsible for what happens with us.
SPEAKER_00: And I think a lot of people are waiting for the big event.
SPEAKER_00: And they forget to live now.
SPEAKER_00: Right.
SPEAKER_00: And forget to bring all that and live that a certain way.
SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
SPEAKER_07: And I think going back to quantum time, which I don't really understand, in that sense.
SPEAKER_07: But in the sense that pr that the future can be in the present if we live into it.
SPEAKER_04: The future can be in the present.
SPEAKER_04: Everything that has ever is ever going to happen has already happened.
SPEAKER_07: Yeah, and I think there's this other thought having parented, which or whatever, it doesn't matter whether you're parent or not, having taught.
SPEAKER_07: If you knew that you were going to rub off on your kid or your student the way you wanted to.
SPEAKER_07: If you knew it was gonna work, you could do it, no matter what it was.
SPEAKER_07: Our problem is, I think, we don't know it's going to work.
SPEAKER_07: And sometimes that makes us stop trying.
SPEAKER_07: Because we say, I'm putting all this in and it's not working.
SPEAKER_07: This book says it's gonna work.
SPEAKER_07: So I think in some ways it's saying, you know, I mean, again, as a parent, my mistake, I think, is that I'm looking for a discrete outcome now, and I think the book is saying God's outcome will prevail, whether you get to see it or not.
SPEAKER_07: So there's no such thing as wasting your time and an act of kindness.
SPEAKER_07: It's not a waste, it's effectual, and if we could live with that conviction, we would not grow faint in doing what's right.
SPEAKER_07: If we trusted it's going to work, we would not go faint grow faint in doing what's right.
SPEAKER_07: The book is saying it's going to work.
SPEAKER_04: Well, I saw I think it's what Morton was saying, what you're saying, is that in the moment we choose to bring that, we're not waiting for the big event.
SPEAKER_04: It's in the moment we we create.
SPEAKER_07: And that's where I think this is a timeless book anchored in time.
SPEAKER_07: It's about Rome, but it's also about the Holy Roman Empire.
SPEAKER_07: It's about, you know, the rise of fundamentalism and the Inquisition and all of this sort of stuff.
SPEAKER_07: It's Babylon and it's Rome, but it's also the Soviet Union.
SPEAKER_07: I mean, it's all of this stuff.
SPEAKER_07: That's what it is.
SPEAKER_07: It's the United States.
SPEAKER_07: Yep.
SPEAKER_04: Spending more money on defense than all the other countries in the world put together.
SPEAKER_04: Something like Empire.
unknown: Okay.
SPEAKER_08: I just Isn't this a great book?
SPEAKER_08: It's a great book, don't you think?
SPEAKER_08: I mean, it's visionary.
SPEAKER_04: I just want to be more comfortable saying something like there is so much life and life force in our world that it is a it's a truly beneficial place.
SPEAKER_04: There's truly more good in the world than bad, than evil.
SPEAKER_08: But I just I think the book's saying that.
SPEAKER_04: Is the book saying that?
SPEAKER_07: I think it's saying that because God's home is on earth in the New Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_07: It's not up in the sky.
SPEAKER_07: It wants to come down here, and God dwells among human beings.
SPEAKER_04: Amen.
SPEAKER_04: And God's here.
SPEAKER_07: That's what the angels keep saying.
SPEAKER_07: Amen.
SPEAKER_07: Hallelujah, right?
SPEAKER_07: I mean, that's it.
SPEAKER_07: So the so why doesn't it say it simply?
SPEAKER_07: Because, quite frankly, I think um I think that's why we have poetry, and I mean, because there's there's depth to simplicity.
SPEAKER_07: And there's images to return to over and over again.
SPEAKER_04: Well, I think for me, definitely I do better with a particular story and understanding a specific story, and then understanding how it brought.
SPEAKER_07: Yeah, I I think it's fair, and then I think what this book also does well is it it describes the intermediate, right?
SPEAKER_07: It describes things like the beastliness of empire.
SPEAKER_04: Mm-hmm.
SPEAKER_04: War, famine, conflict.
SPEAKER_07: We we sort of see all these cataclysmic things, and people still don't repent.
SPEAKER_07: I mean, it's really interesting.
SPEAKER_03: See, and that's I don't necessarily see it as God's revenge on the world as much as, you know, again, the consequences of choices.
SPEAKER_03: Like, you know, like you said, they still don't repent.
SPEAKER_03: They still don't repent.
SPEAKER_07: God, look at the climate change stuff, and we'd rather debate that than just do then just change the way we live.
SPEAKER_07: As if it would hurt us to change the way we live.
SPEAKER_07: Right.
SPEAKER_07: We we'd rather just, you know, be all mad instead of just recycling.
SPEAKER_08: I mean, which is like the easiest thing there is to do.
SPEAKER_08: Yeah.
SPEAKER_07: Or, you know, I can't believe they're banning inefficient light bulbs.
SPEAKER_07: I'll show them.
SPEAKER_07: I mean, like, I just don't understand that position at all.
SPEAKER_07: They can't tell me what to do.
SPEAKER_07: I'm gonna use energy inefficient light bulbs and run up my light bill, and that'll what?
SPEAKER_07: It's the strangest thing.
SPEAKER_07: I didn't understand the Second Amendment.
SPEAKER_07: I'd sorry, I didn't understand it.
SPEAKER_07: Because, like, Clive Bundy or whatever wants to have assault rifles to defend himself against the tyranny of the military that has atomic weapons! I mean, have your little linky dink assault rifle.
SPEAKER_07: The army's got atomic weapons! What are you gonna do?
SPEAKER_07: You gotta overthrow the atomic weapon?
SPEAKER_07: Are you out of your mind?
SPEAKER_07: I mean, there's no way we're supposed to individually have atomic weapons! So, all of the business about we need guns to protect ourselves from the big bad government that's got the freaking hydrogen bomb, it's crazy.
SPEAKER_07: I mean, I could not think it's not the whole argument.
SPEAKER_07: It's crazy.
SPEAKER_07: And the fucking problem.
SPEAKER_07: But don't worry, we're bringing back the measles because we all know vaccines give you autism, and autism is to be preferred over the measles.
SPEAKER_07: I mean, it's just crazy.
SPEAKER_07: It's just tunnel vision thinking because what do you know?
SPEAKER_07: Believing is seeing.
SPEAKER_07: And we believe what we see.
SPEAKER_07: I believe what we see, and we see what we believe.
SPEAKER_03: We believe what we hear, you know.
SPEAKER_07: And of course, what we do is we look in the mirror, it depends who you are, and what we see is not what's in front of us.
SPEAKER_07: We see what we believe about ourselves.
SPEAKER_07: For 90% of women, that's my body is ugly, I'm flawed, I need a facelift, I should be embarrassed about my age.
SPEAKER_07: It's not proper to be more than 29 and a woman, which of course sets back all women.
SPEAKER_02: I guess I'm a woman.
SPEAKER_07: No.
SPEAKER_07: Supposedly, I mean, I think the 90% is a low, I think it's a low number, and I think the research says it's climbing in men, and you can see it in these.
SPEAKER_07: I mean, particularly 10 years ago, it was um Abercrombie ads that show depict men as like frankly sex objects, and that your worthiness has to do with like a six-pack and a beauty mole, and like you know, low rider pants or whatever.
SPEAKER_07: And I I do believe that affects men.
SPEAKER_07: Now, some men it doesn't seem to affect, but but it I think it does.
SPEAKER_07: I think it affects all of us.
SPEAKER_07: I don't think anybody in general, I mean, I like the if the question came to you, if you could change anything about your body, what would you change?
SPEAKER_07: The right answer is nothing.
SPEAKER_07: How many of you would say nothing?
SPEAKER_07: More efficient mitochondria.
SPEAKER_07: And then and and then why do you need that?
SPEAKER_07: I mean, even if like you cut your finger off, would you change the loss of your finger?
SPEAKER_07: Because if you did, you're not onions.
SPEAKER_07: But then you wouldn't be you anymore.
SPEAKER_07: I mean, that's that's sort of the thing.
SPEAKER_07: If you would change anything about yourself, you wouldn't be you.
SPEAKER_07: So why do you want to be somebody that you're not?
SPEAKER_07: I've got arthritis and I wish I didn't have it.
SPEAKER_07: But why?
SPEAKER_00: Would you change it if you could if you could get rid of your yes, and that's the wrong answer.
unknown: Okay.
SPEAKER_07: Because there's nothing wrong with having arthritis.
SPEAKER_07: Pain isn't wrong.
SPEAKER_00: I don't think I understand what you're saying.
SPEAKER_08: It's not wrong, period.
SPEAKER_08: It just is.
SPEAKER_04: It just is, yeah.
SPEAKER_04: Can you go back to the binary part?
SPEAKER_07: Well, you already took us back to the binary part, but I think this comes back to our fundamental thing about shame and guilt and fear and what we look at in the mirror and who we are, right?
SPEAKER_07: And I just had this great lecture that I was part of that say this last week, that most of pretty much all of our judgment is just projection.
SPEAKER_07: When I look at somebody, a millennial, who's not working, and I say, you're lazy, well, not working as much as I do and lazy are totally different things.
SPEAKER_07: There's just a description, not working more than 40 hours a week.
SPEAKER_07: But to imply that that's lazy is me, not them.
SPEAKER_07: And most of our judgment is just projection.
SPEAKER_04: Which is maybe why we shouldn't do it.
SPEAKER_07: We look in the thing and we say, we say ugly, or you know, gray hair, or whatever it is, and that's judgment, and it's projection.
SPEAKER_02: You know, I wonder though, if one looks in the mirror and one doesn't like what they see, you know, whatever physical characteristic it is.
SPEAKER_02: If it's really the physical characteristic.
SPEAKER_07: It's not, it's projection.
SPEAKER_07: It's projection.
SPEAKER_07: So this is my thing, right?
SPEAKER_07: Like I have, you know, this is the release hard thing about marriage.
SPEAKER_07: My spouse apparently sees me differently from how I see myself.
SPEAKER_07: And I think this is the hard thing about getting a compliment.
SPEAKER_07: Somebody can see something in you, you don't see yourself, and they say, hey, that was really this wonderful thing you did.
SPEAKER_07: And often, if you're like me, your thought is if you knew why I did it, you really wouldn't think it was that wonderful.
SPEAKER_07: Or I just did that thing, but you don't know what I did yesterday.
SPEAKER_07: These are sort of things that we do.
SPEAKER_07: So other people see us differently than we see ourselves.
SPEAKER_07: This is very Kantian and philosophical, right?
SPEAKER_07: Um there's this interesting bit, right?
SPEAKER_07: Like you say, when when we look in the mirror or when somebody gives us a reflection of ourselves, what we do with it.
SPEAKER_07: And it's it's all about projection and judgment.
SPEAKER_07: So what if we could really stare ourselves down and say, you're not, you're not, you're not.
SPEAKER_07: And well, okay, you are.
SPEAKER_07: Like what would it take for us to do that?
SPEAKER_04: So we're talking about self-acceptance, self-love?
SPEAKER_04: Yeah, because if you can't acknowledge the shadow in yourself and start having to project the shit.
SPEAKER_07: That you'll just hate everybody else too.
SPEAKER_04: Yep, this is just then you're also mad again.
SPEAKER_07: And all I'm doing is coming back to the idea that believing is seeing.
SPEAKER_07: It's not about getting around it, I just think it's how you're present in it.
SPEAKER_07: If you, I mean, I I really think this is right.
SPEAKER_07: If you cannot see the gifts that you have, then when you see them in other people, you'll never celebrate them, you'll just be jealous.
SPEAKER_07: Or threatened.
SPEAKER_07: If we can't love ourselves, we can't love our neighbors.
SPEAKER_07: I mean, Jesus says, you'll love your neighbor as yourself.
SPEAKER_07: I don't think he's saying, hey, you love yourself a lot, so love your neighbor.
SPEAKER_07: I think he's saying, you can only love your neighbor as much as you love yourself.
SPEAKER_06: You know, what do you see is what you get.
SPEAKER_06: What do you have the capacity to see is then what you have the capacity to enjoy in your life or live in your life.
SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
SPEAKER_07: There's this interesting thing about Mother Teresa, because she drives me crazy.
SPEAKER_07: She was very, very okay with people suffering.
SPEAKER_07: She was very okay with it.
SPEAKER_07: Sometimes I think too okay with it.
SPEAKER_07: There's this other thing, these these smile train ads, you know, these smile train things.
SPEAKER_07: It's the kids with the cleft palette, and they're in magazines and they're big.
SPEAKER_07: And I I'm just gonna go ahead and tell you my story with those, is I would see them, like, ah, turn the page quick! Because it was disturbing to me to see disfigured children.
SPEAKER_07: It only like drove me to this awful spot, you know.
SPEAKER_07: And I don't know what they're thinking when they would run those ads.
SPEAKER_07: I don't know if they're thinking like, oh god, it's ugly, send money, make it go away.
SPEAKER_07: I don't know.
SPEAKER_07: For me, I had to like stare those kids down.
SPEAKER_07: Had to stare them down.
SPEAKER_07: And it's not like I've completely resolved this, but to look at them and say, there is nothing wrong with that child.
SPEAKER_07: Which is exactly why I should help them drink out of a cup.
SPEAKER_07: Because it costs five dollars.
SPEAKER_07: Now, listen, I don't give money to smile train, I'm gonna tell you, I don't.
SPEAKER_07: But I think it's sort of like, oh god, you'll be human when I fix you, is the wrong approach.
SPEAKER_07: God's fully present in there, so why shouldn't I help?
SPEAKER_07: I mean, I think that's like the the the difference.
SPEAKER_07: One of the things that's really funny is the smile train thing drives me nuts, but going to the hospital and seeing people with like tubes and stuff, it doesn't bother me.
SPEAKER_07: I don't know why that's the case, but it doesn't bother me.
SPEAKER_07: I don't like to watch somebody get pricked with a needle, including myself.
SPEAKER_07: I just can't handle that.
SPEAKER_04: Um tattoos.
SPEAKER_07: Yeah, but they don't go through the skin.
SPEAKER_07: They don't go through the skin completely, they just go, you know, under like the fifth layer, not the seventh.
SPEAKER_07: So anyway, I you know it's all weird, you know.
SPEAKER_07: Um but it doesn't bother me to see that, but there's other things that do bother me, like missing fingers or like like this and this may be just so shallow and getting on.
SPEAKER_07: No, it's okay.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, so you look at the little children, and I ha I have the same reaction.
SPEAKER_00: It hurts me so bad to see those that I turn away just because I know that other people are looking at 'em and and they may be self conscious and and you know, so it hurts.
SPEAKER_00: But and then you talk about they're perfect and you want to teach them how to drink out of a cup.
SPEAKER_00: But then God gave us the knowledge and the ability to help repair this so that they don't have the discomfort of of drinking out of a cup, or it's so difficult for them to actually swallow the water.
SPEAKER_00: And so I don't see anything wrong with that in helping them out.
SPEAKER_00: Not necessarily because we think they're ugly and we don't want to, but to help them have comfort in this life by that.
SPEAKER_07: That's exactly the turn I'm saying.
SPEAKER_07: I think there's a difference in, and of course, you might do the same thing.
SPEAKER_07: You give money either way, but I think the opportunity is do we fix them to make them human, or we see them completely human, so why wouldn't we want to help them live ordinary lives?
SPEAKER_07: I don't know if that makes sense.
SPEAKER_07: Instead of there's beauty right there and dwelling in that, and then okay, when I've got a bridge to our common humanity, then I can have compassion instead of pity.
SPEAKER_07: What difference does it make?
SPEAKER_07: It makes a difference in how what I see.
SPEAKER_07: And if I can see that in a kid with a cleft palate, can I see it in somebody who's a sociopath or has schizophrenia?
SPEAKER_07: Where the fix is less clear.
SPEAKER_07: A cleft palate, the fix is really clear.
SPEAKER_07: You have this$10 surgery fixed.
SPEAKER_07: Somebody who's got PTSD, I don't know what the fix is.
SPEAKER_07: They don't either.
SPEAKER_07: It's every day.
SPEAKER_07: Work hard, right?
SPEAKER_04: We can get a lot better.
SPEAKER_07: We can get better, but there's not a silver bullet.
SPEAKER_07: And I think this is why we don't invest in mental health, because we don't know how to fix it.
SPEAKER_07: I don't know if that makes sense.
SPEAKER_03: I agree with that totally.
SPEAKER_03: I agree with that.
SPEAKER_03: Just I having experienced doctors telling me, you know, when I would get somebody I'd deal with on a pretty much daily basis, having doctors tell me as things were getting better, this is the best it's gonna get, you know, that we can do.
SPEAKER_03: And I was like, I was looking for total restoration in this person.
SPEAKER_03: And having to accept that that wasn't that wasn't gonna happen was was really, really difficult for me because a mental health issue I'm talking about.
SPEAKER_03: You know, to know that um and and after that it was almost like we had to do everything ourselves because once the doctors had reached the this isn't gonna get any better part, they were done with us.
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, you know, um, there was no any kind of referral but how to resources or help or you know, anything like that.
SPEAKER_03: It was this is it.
SPEAKER_03: And I I think mental health is definitely not addressed well in this country at all.
SPEAKER_03: At all.
SPEAKER_03: I mean we attack everything else, we attack cancer, we you know, we attack all this stuff, and I think part of it is just that, because very often in severe situations, there is no, it's gonna go back to the exactly the way it was before.
SPEAKER_03: You know, when you when you you break your leg or even you know other things, you can get back to where you were before.
SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
SPEAKER_03: Other medical issues, but with mental health, it's and it's very, there's still to me so much stigma around, you know, people with mental health issues.
SPEAKER_03: Um people don't want to take the time to find out what's going on.
SPEAKER_03: Um because they're scared.
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
SPEAKER_03: They're scared.
SPEAKER_03: You know, it's it's and then you know, they'll look at at you like so choosing to live with a crazy person.
SPEAKER_03: Well, you know, your definition of crazy and my definition of crazy are gonna be very different things.
SPEAKER_03: Very different things.
SPEAKER_03: You know, I met some crazy people who were absolutely delightful, the happiest I knew for a long time, a woman who every single day for her was Christmas.
SPEAKER_03: And she was constantly giving and giving, and you know, but technically she was crazy, you know.
SPEAKER_03: Um so I think it's really hard when and I like the the whole what we believe is what we see.
SPEAKER_03: You really do have to search sometimes, you really do have to seek, you have to find the beauty in the crazy people.
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, um, and there's a lot of it there.
SPEAKER_07: And trust it.
SPEAKER_03: And trust it, and trust that it's genuine.
SPEAKER_03: Just because they're crazy doesn't mean, you know, and I'm not calling them crazy, I'm saying they've been called crazy, doesn't mean there isn't, and and remembering, remember.
SPEAKER_03: When I'm out on the playground and little whoever, for whatever reasons, decides to punch somebody in the head, I have to remember God is present in that child, both children.
SPEAKER_03: Yes, and deal with that accordingly.
SPEAKER_03: You know, um that's a real tough one when I was teaching.
SPEAKER_03: It would absolutely blow the kids away to know that the people they thought should never be allowed into heaven would be just as eligible that God loved them as much as they love these children.
SPEAKER_03: We know He doesn't.
SPEAKER_03: Yes, yes, yes, we delight in that.
SPEAKER_07: Well, and I think we also have this binary.
SPEAKER_07: I mean, just I don't want to take us totally off the rails.
SPEAKER_07: Maybe last thought on this, and then let's look at some of the specific imagery.
SPEAKER_07: Or you tell me what.
SPEAKER_07: But you know, like I think we have this conviction that Alzheimer's is a terrible thing.
SPEAKER_07: I'm just gonna say that.
SPEAKER_07: And you know what?
SPEAKER_07: I think to be Alzheimer's is a terrible thing, it's awful.
SPEAKER_07: I think we have that fundamental conviction, it's awful.
SPEAKER_07: And that's probably true for people who are caregivers.
SPEAKER_07: But interestingly enough, um, I knew a man in my last parish who, by all the counts, was an angry, terrible jerk his whole life, and then he got Alzheimer's, and he was like a young child.
SPEAKER_07: And boy, he was so much more enjoyable to be around.
SPEAKER_07: Now, look, that's convenient for me to say because I wasn't a caretaker.
SPEAKER_07: But I will say that I've got a family member with Alzheimer's who I don't know what you say, was basically formed to be verbally abusive, and that's all he knew how to do is be verbally abusive.
SPEAKER_07: And boy, I did not know how there'd be any reconciliation with that guy.
SPEAKER_07: And oddly enough, um he's changed his tune.
SPEAKER_07: Now he says like interesting things to people, like, you're so perfect, and what a wonderful looking person you are.
SPEAKER_07: And having been verbally abused by a family member, it's sort of like now that you've got this thing, like what's going on, and so there's this opportunity to say, oh my god, now you're able to tell the truth you've always believed and never knew how to say, or you're just crazy.
SPEAKER_07: Because I don't get to punish you for punishing me.
SPEAKER_07: So we see what we believe.
SPEAKER_07: Now listen, is Alzheimer's terrible for the caregivers?
SPEAKER_07: I think it's really hard.
SPEAKER_07: I don't know if it's terrible, I just think it's hard.
SPEAKER_07: And pain is an interesting thing, right?
SPEAKER_07: Because if I hurt my wrist, my wrist doesn't actually hurt.
SPEAKER_07: My brain gets a message to pay attention.
SPEAKER_07: It's a sharp message.
SPEAKER_07: But there's no real pain in my wrist.
SPEAKER_07: Pain is a perception of my brain.
SPEAKER_07: Your finger doesn't actually feel anything.
SPEAKER_07: That's so weird, isn't it?
SPEAKER_07: But it's true.
SPEAKER_07: And sometimes I think it depends on what do we believe about these signals.
SPEAKER_07: What do we believe?
SPEAKER_07: Changing the diaper of my baby, well, I've made peace with that.
SPEAKER_07: That's what you do.
SPEAKER_07: Changing the diaper of my parents, oh, it's so awful.
SPEAKER_07: But is it really?
SPEAKER_07: Or is it just what I perceive it to be?
SPEAKER_07: So I think believing is C.
SPEAKER_07: That's what I want to say.
SPEAKER_07: And I think Alzheimer's is still really rough.
SPEAKER_07: But I but I do think there's these moments like if somebody says, like, you're beautiful and you're perfect and you're exactly who I wish you were, we can say, Oh, that's a function of the crazy, or we can say, like, thank God you're telling me what I wished I'd always been able to hear from you.
SPEAKER_07: And sometimes I think we'd like to poison that message that's harder to hear than you're a piece of shit.
SPEAKER_07: I mean, we that's so much easier to accept from people than the truth.
SPEAKER_07: So, um into this, if it's okay, uh, I just want to make sure we do a little bit more decoding.
SPEAKER_07: Um, I mentioned to you Kabbalah, and part of Kabbalah is Kabbalah K-A-B-B-A-L-A-H.
SPEAKER_04: Mike, I really like that you wear earrings.
SPEAKER_07: I appreciate that.
SPEAKER_07: I want to tell you actually, because okay, I'm gonna I want to tell you a really interesting thing that happened last year.
SPEAKER_07: Uh I I I mentioned this in a sermon.
SPEAKER_07: Somebody gave me like verbal vomit on the phone for an hour and a half, but it's I I don't know why I didn't hang it up.
SPEAKER_07: Anyways, it was awful.
SPEAKER_07: And one of the things they ended up saying was that I was a really terrible priest because I had tattoos.
SPEAKER_07: And um a parishioner told me, you know, I don't care that you have the tattoo.
SPEAKER_07: And another parishioner said, I'm really glad you do, because it's who you are.
SPEAKER_07: It's so interesting.
SPEAKER_07: And I thought that was the whole movement.
SPEAKER_07: I don't care that you dye your hair, or I don't care that you got this, and I'm glad you choose to do that, because that's an expression of you.
SPEAKER_07: And we're different, and I would never want one of those, and you do, and you have it, and I'm glad that's you.
SPEAKER_07: such a progression.
SPEAKER_07: I'm not threatened by you, I'm glad for you, even though I would never do that.
SPEAKER_07: I mean, it was just sort of an interesting thing.
SPEAKER_07: Okay, back to Kabbalah, and that's the thing.
SPEAKER_07: Thank you.
SPEAKER_07: Um, you know, in Hebrew, the number one is the same word for the first letter of the alphabet.
SPEAKER_07: So aleph is the first letter and it's one.
SPEAKER_07: And bait is the number two, and it's like the B V sound, right?
SPEAKER_07: So what and maybe you've seen this in a book called the Bible Code, every word in Hebrew has a numeric value.
SPEAKER_07: You add up the consonants and it gives you numbers, and then you get like new words.
SPEAKER_07: It's this sort of interesting thing, and Kabbalah does this.
SPEAKER_07: And um, anyway, uh I hope you're interested to know that the the um numeric value of Nero is 619.
SPEAKER_07: Uh the number 666 is actually 619.
SPEAKER_07: This is a bad translation.
SPEAKER_07: Interestingly enough, the primary area code in San Diego is 619.
SPEAKER_07: Okay, anyway.
SPEAKER_07: Nero adds up to 619, and the number of the beast is 619, and it's symbolic because maybe you know that uh Nero, um, a couple things about him.
SPEAKER_07: He burns down Rome.
SPEAKER_07: There's very little doubt he does that, and then he blames it on Christians because they're the weakest group.
SPEAKER_07: He doesn't persecute Christians, he blames them for arson.
SPEAKER_07: So he preys upon the weakest people in the social community to cover up his own moral failures or whatever.
SPEAKER_07: And that's the number of the beast.
SPEAKER_07: Oh, that happened just with Nero.
SPEAKER_07: No, that continues to happen.
SPEAKER_05: Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER_07: It's called scapegoating, or it's called um tribalism.
SPEAKER_04: Tribalism.
SPEAKER_07: It's called witch hunting.
SPEAKER_07: It's all of these things.
SPEAKER_07: So yes, it's a discrete reality, but in some ways what this book does is it unveils the character of beastliness.
SPEAKER_07: Now, listen, six, there's nothing wrong with six, it's two threes.
SPEAKER_07: So six is the number of humanity, like in the in the numerology world, but it's not bad or evil, it's just short of seven.
SPEAKER_07: Seven's great because it's two threes joined in the middle.
SPEAKER_07: So it's like this double stability, whatever.
SPEAKER_07: I mean, human beings are made on the sixth day, the Sabbath is the seventh day.
SPEAKER_07: It doesn't mean six is bad.
SPEAKER_07: It's just short of seven.
SPEAKER_07: And just short could be just short, or it could be really short, depending on whether or not we're tribalist and scapegoat and sort of, you know, blame and punish people for our own stuff, project whatever.
SPEAKER_07: Again, I think this book is trying to unveil the inner nature of beastliness, whether it's an empire or everyday people.
SPEAKER_07: I hope that makes sense what I'm saying.
SPEAKER_07: Nero also got really, really sick and like miraculously recovers, apparently.
SPEAKER_07: And what you know, there's somebody who's on the verge of death and recovers, so so there you have it.
SPEAKER_07: When you hear that God's name is on the forehead of 144,000 people, please don't think that they've got a tattoo on their forehead of like the tetragrammaton.
SPEAKER_07: Of course, what that means is that, you know, you're in the Bible, your name is who you are.
SPEAKER_07: And so who are these 144,000 people?
SPEAKER_07: They're gods.
SPEAKER_07: I mean, this is all just symbols speak.
SPEAKER_07: Why doesn't it just say that?
SPEAKER_07: Because poetically, it's saying that and more.
SPEAKER_07: I don't know if that makes sense.
SPEAKER_07: We're, you know, the great works.
SPEAKER_07: The great works.
SPEAKER_02: 144,000 people are gods.
SPEAKER_07: Oh gods, and they bear that's who they are.
SPEAKER_07: So it just comes really deep.
SPEAKER_07: One way to say it is, oh, that's strictly it.
SPEAKER_07: So if you're Jehovah's Witness, only 144,000 people are going to heaven after whatever's all gone.
SPEAKER_04: Yeah, but we know that that's all kinds of thousands.
SPEAKER_07: So it's a big, huge number.
SPEAKER_07: And what does it mean to be God?
SPEAKER_07: So I mean I think it really comes down to what's it mean to be a saint?
SPEAKER_07: Saints are people who point other people to God.
SPEAKER_07: I mean, in Renaissance art, John the Baptist is always doing this.
SPEAKER_07: He's always pointing at Jesus.
SPEAKER_07: He's got a Halo and he's pointing at Jesus.
SPEAKER_07: Right?
SPEAKER_07: Saints means holy ones or holy people.
SPEAKER_07: All of the letters in the New Testament are written to the saints.
SPEAKER_07: The saints in Ephesus, the saints in Korah.
SPEAKER_07: They're not dead or it wouldn't work.
SPEAKER_07: Right?
SPEAKER_07: Saints are people who point other people to God.
SPEAKER_07: That's it.
SPEAKER_07: So, what does it mean to be gods?
SPEAKER_07: You bring the New Jerusalem to earth with what you do and what you say.
SPEAKER_06: What is it?
SPEAKER_06: 42 months, what does that mean?
SPEAKER_07: So you remember the book actually said this.
SPEAKER_07: Um, there's the abomination that causes desolation in Daniel, and that's Antiochus Epiphanes IV, who sacrifices the pig to Zeus and the holy of holies, and 42 months later the Maccabees retake it.
SPEAKER_07: So it's this literal image, but it's also this figurative image.
SPEAKER_07: The temple's been destroyed, the Romans have sullied this business.
SPEAKER_02: So that's in 7080.
SPEAKER_07: Yeah, 70 is when the temple gets destroyed.
SPEAKER_07: Now listen, we know the temple hasn't been rebuilt yet.
SPEAKER_07: It's been more than 42 months, but it's it's this basic image, I think, that that this desolation and sacrilege don't last forever.
SPEAKER_07: It will have an end.
SPEAKER_04: And what brings about that end?
SPEAKER_07: We choose to bring the center.
SPEAKER_07: We choose.
SPEAKER_07: Listen, is God really going to build a new temple in Jerusalem?
SPEAKER_07: I don't know because you know we get other we get other thoughts in the New Testament that you all, y'all, are the temple of the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_06: There's some stuff blatantly about the third temple that somebody is saying they will be.
SPEAKER_06: Is it Netanyahu?
SPEAKER_06: It is Netanyahu.
SPEAKER_07: It sure will be the end of any hope of peace.
SPEAKER_02: He just said that to garner a few more votes.
SPEAKER_02: That's that's what he said for.
SPEAKER_07: And what's really interesting, right, is that again, uh by a fair count, more than 90% of Jewish people are atheists.
SPEAKER_07: I mean, they didn't even believe in that stuff.
SPEAKER_07: But it's this cultural mythology that we also buy into, which is why we will partner with Israel to the detriment of I mean, I sorry.
SPEAKER_07: I'm not anti-Semitic.
SPEAKER_07: I'm not.
SPEAKER_07: I but I just Raven was like that.
SPEAKER_07: It's crazy because we've got this, you know, this what's what's weird about fundamentalist Christians is they blame Jews for killing Jesus, but but then they'll kill all these Arabs to help Jewish people who they judge as having killed Jesus.
SPEAKER_03: Right.
SPEAKER_07: It's a strange it's just strange.
SPEAKER_07: It's this cultural mythology.
SPEAKER_07: I probably shouldn't be recording this.
SPEAKER_07: Like I say, I I I I didn't believe I'm anti-Semitic.
SPEAKER_07: I don't believe that.
SPEAKER_02: Delete about what is it, 18 minutes?
SPEAKER_07: Yeah, probably.
SPEAKER_07: So I think that's the 42 months.
SPEAKER_07: I think that's it.
SPEAKER_07: It referred to a discrete bit.
SPEAKER_07: And then the name on the foreheads is that other bit, right?
SPEAKER_07: It's it's a it's an image.
SPEAKER_07: Um the number seven everywhere, right?
SPEAKER_07: There's seven bowls and seals and trumpets and lampstands and seven spirits of God.
SPEAKER_07: And remember, the seven spirits of God are the churches, they're the lamps.
SPEAKER_07: We're the people who breathe God's breath in the world, or we don't.
SPEAKER_07: What do we choose to do?
SPEAKER_07: I mean, this is what I told the kids this morning, and I think this is right, you know.
SPEAKER_07: We we breathe in air and we breathe out a mixture of that same air and poison, right?
SPEAKER_07: I mean, we breathe in oxygen and nitrogen and carbon dioxide, and we breathe out some oxygen and some nitrogen and carbon dioxide, more carbon dioxide than we breathe in, right?
SPEAKER_07: So I think the question is there's this really interesting thing, right?
SPEAKER_07: We keep hearing about spirit and Holy Spirit and God breathing life into the human being.
SPEAKER_07: When Jesus shows up on Easter, he breathes on the disciples and says, receive the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_07: So I think we just have this very basic opportunity here at a poetic and biological level.
SPEAKER_07: What kind of air are we breathing in?
SPEAKER_07: Are we breathing in God's air?
SPEAKER_07: And then what are we breathing out?
SPEAKER_07: Literally, to talk, you have to be able to breathe.
SPEAKER_07: And I look at what is being said publicly, and um God, it's a lot of poison.
SPEAKER_07: We choose to breathe in a whole lot of carbon dioxide.
SPEAKER_03: You know, and and that happens again on the playground sometimes.
SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
SPEAKER_03: And a lot of times when you ask a child, or when I ask a child, why?
SPEAKER_03: You know, why did you say that?
SPEAKER_03: The number one answer is I don't know.
SPEAKER_03: You know?
SPEAKER_03: Well, I think they don't want to recognize that they consciously chose to hurt somebody else.
SPEAKER_03: You know, it's like the words just fall out of their mouths without even thinking about it.
SPEAKER_07: Without reflection.
SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
SPEAKER_03: Um, and there's a couple of kids we're really working hard with to rehabilitate.
SPEAKER_03: Well, to to what what will help you stop and think before you open your mouth?
SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
SPEAKER_03: You know, because here you are yet again in trouble.
SPEAKER_03: You know, that's just a real small scale of what we do.
SPEAKER_03: But I'm saying.
SPEAKER_03: At that young of an age, kids are already, you know, um spewing stuff without either thinking about it or under and the amount of stuff kids say these days that they don't even understand that you know came directly from the parents or an older sibling or you know they're watching a show they're watching.
SPEAKER_03: We had sex come up last week, and it was really difficult to talk to the one little boy that was sharing what he thought were the facts of life.
SPEAKER_03: Um because at the same well, okay, but you gotta be real careful too because you don't necessarily want him to get the message that sex is a bad thing.
SPEAKER_03: Right?
SPEAKER_03: You don't want him growing up thinking, but yet he's only eight.
SPEAKER_03: So there is a certain appropriate inappropriate, it's it's a very tricky dance, you know.
SPEAKER_03: Um but I'm not surprised that adults do it all the time because I see it, you know, if if it already is happening at a younger age, um and it's not corrected at all.
SPEAKER_03: Not corrected as in your term, but people aren't learning how to think before they speak, you know.
SPEAKER_07: But I think we also, I mean, I I I'm indicting myself here, but I I'd invite you to consider what we consider to be entertaining.
SPEAKER_07: So there's this new blockbuster movie, The Avengers, right?
SPEAKER_07: And the fundamental myth is that violence is redemptive.
SPEAKER_07: And we buy that completely.
SPEAKER_05: We love violence.
SPEAKER_07: We love it.
SPEAKER_07: We love violence.
SPEAKER_07: We love it.
SPEAKER_07: We're entertained, we're entertained by violence.
SPEAKER_01: That's brilliant.
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
SPEAKER_07: I just think there's something really interesting about that.
SPEAKER_07: So so we in that sense, we draw happiness, amusement, from violence, and we wonder why people we get mad when people are violent, but we're entertained by it.
SPEAKER_07: Yep.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, look at the video games.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, that's most of the big video games are killing.
SPEAKER_07: I I I think the book is actually about some of that.
SPEAKER_07: Now, there's this other bit here, coming back to women, uh, you know, there's these images of adultery and reminder, totally different context.
SPEAKER_07: Women are property, you go to the temple to have sex, to bring the gods together.
SPEAKER_07: So adultery, I didn't think is like for them like it is for us.
SPEAKER_07: It really, it really means like infidelity, worshiping other gods.
SPEAKER_07: Look, and I just used that word infidelity.
SPEAKER_07: I mean, that's what the scriptures do to talk about a lack of fundamental trust in God, is that we trust other things, and that's infidelity.
SPEAKER_07: And that's become this linguistic thing that we that we do.
SPEAKER_07: The whore of Babylon has adultery with the kings of the earth, and they get drunk on the blood of the saints.
SPEAKER_07: I mean, these are this, these are sort of some of these images.
SPEAKER_07: So, so remember, like this image of adultery, uh, which I think is very dangerous for women ultimately, and and is played out in this book, is is not that, oh, you know, the king of Crete has sex with Rome.
SPEAKER_07: It is it really is about it's yeah.
SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
SPEAKER_07: It's a religious image here, though, and it gets played out.
SPEAKER_07: Um, I think we've got to figure out some better ways to talk about this.
SPEAKER_07: It occurred to me recently that this language, I think part of what's hard about this for women, more so than men, and this is anthropologically true, right?
SPEAKER_07: Is that women can be just as good as hunters and gatherers when they don't have children.
SPEAKER_07: But when you're caring for an infant, you really can't hunt and gather.
SPEAKER_07: Because you've got baggage.
SPEAKER_07: So there's some anthropological anthropological studies that sort of say this is how couples happened, is because, well, women can't do hunter and gathering when they're raising kids.
SPEAKER_07: Not as fully as men who don't have kids.
SPEAKER_07: So women are the ones who promote agriculture, essentially, which allows you to not have to go hunt and gather.
SPEAKER_07: You can be an agriculturalist with infants, but it's much harder to chase caribou who are constantly on the move.
SPEAKER_07: I don't know if this sort of makes sense at all.
SPEAKER_07: You have to have an agreement about who's going to raise children, which is where coupling comes from evolutionarily.
SPEAKER_07: And uh interestingly enough, you can read this in the red tent.
SPEAKER_07: Before there was penis envy, there's womb envy, because it was thought that women reproduced asexually.
SPEAKER_07: And then there was this other thought, no, no, no, no, the man puts a little man in the womb, so a woman is just a vessel and contributes nothing.
SPEAKER_07: I don't know if you know this, which is interesting to think about with the virgin birth.
SPEAKER_07: Mary is the vessel of God.
SPEAKER_07: She contributed zero.
SPEAKER_07: That actually would have been the idea at the time.
SPEAKER_07: Mary gave nothing to Jesus.
SPEAKER_07: That whole bit about um original sin and the Immaculate Conception comes after we figured out women contribute something.
SPEAKER_07: So we women so Mary needed to contribute good stuff and not just bad stuff, you know.
SPEAKER_07: So we sort of have figured out that there's like like two people involved, and and I think that this is part of what underlies women being bad.
SPEAKER_07: This theory sort of says men were threatened by women reproducing without them, and then they came up with a theory that men do it all and women are the vessels, and so that's how this sort of gets played out.
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
SPEAKER_07: I think there's something to that theory.
SPEAKER_04: I think that's the theory.
SPEAKER_04: I think that's a pretty good theory.
SPEAKER_07: And we're still trying to figure all that out.
SPEAKER_07: I mean, we still are.
SPEAKER_07: Um and that's where I think we read a and you know, a time sensitive bit, and it's helpful to know what it means, but then we also have to, I think, be able to transcend some of these symbols.
SPEAKER_04: So this author just he he did not like women.
SPEAKER_04: The misogynist tried to be too strong a word.
SPEAKER_07: I didn't I I think it's too strong a word because I think he was a product of his day, as we are.
SPEAKER_04: But wasn't Paul also?
SPEAKER_07: And Paul put women and Paul spoke out of both sides of his mouth.
SPEAKER_07: And I think the truth is so did Martin Luther King Jr., right?
SPEAKER_07: I mean, I think this is important to remember.
SPEAKER_07: Martin Luther King Jr.
SPEAKER_07: was a chronic philanderer.
SPEAKER_07: And quite honestly, I think he used Rosa Parks.
SPEAKER_07: And diminished her at the same time.
SPEAKER_07: And and this is true of everything, right?
SPEAKER_07: And in and uh Max Weber and Ernst Trolls come up with this thing that we start with a movement, which is like radical and evolutionary, and then we institutionalize it, which means we've just changed a few bits in the end.
SPEAKER_07: We start by changing a lot, and then we just change a few bits because it it's too radical to sustain itself.
SPEAKER_07: I mean, think about the shakers.
SPEAKER_07: What they decided was for a woman to be really equal to men, they can't have children.
SPEAKER_07: And and at a biological level, I think that's true.
SPEAKER_07: So how do you solve that?
SPEAKER_07: Well, you you never have sex.
SPEAKER_05: That's not true, though.
SPEAKER_07: At a thinking about the hunter-gatherer a bit, if women never have kids, they're not weighed down by childcare.
SPEAKER_07: So in that sense, they're equal.
SPEAKER_04: Women are all are always superior to males because we can make a copy of ourselves and males cannot.
SPEAKER_04: But you but you can't without men.
SPEAKER_04: But the way to make- in that scenario, the way to make men equal would be to give them a kid carry around.
SPEAKER_04: Maybe so.
SPEAKER_04: That's a different point of view.
SPEAKER_07: But the but the problem is, and now we've done this with formula, we can do it, right?
SPEAKER_07: But men can't raise.
SPEAKER_07: And I will tell you, I've observed this.
SPEAKER_07: Boy, I do the bulk of the child care.
SPEAKER_04: No mystery.
SPEAKER_04: In the literal career.
SPEAKER_07: However, my wife has a bond with my daughter I will never have.
SPEAKER_07: Because I didn't nurse her and I didn't bear her.
SPEAKER_07: And I sometimes that vexes me, but it should, you know what I mean?
SPEAKER_07: It's different.
SPEAKER_07: So it's not better or worse, but it's different.
SPEAKER_07: And that's why the shakers said, hey, we're gonna be celibate.
SPEAKER_07: Because we're not, we're not gonna be, we're not gonna have to juggle difference, we're gonna be the same.
SPEAKER_04: Sounds like denial to me.
SPEAKER_02: Well, it's one way they completely live separately.
SPEAKER_02: They didn't live together.
SPEAKER_07: And that's why there's only two of them left.
SPEAKER_02: Because it's not sustainable.
SPEAKER_02: Do you know when the Shakers uh population really expanded?
SPEAKER_02: Literally exploded.
SPEAKER_07: It was like the the late 1800s.
SPEAKER_07: No.
SPEAKER_02: It was the late after 1865.
SPEAKER_07: After the Civil War.
SPEAKER_02: There were a lot of women whose husbands didn't come home from the war and they needed to be married for they couldn't run the farm by themselves.
SPEAKER_02: They had children, so children actually went to Shakerville.
SPEAKER_02: But they weren't.
SPEAKER_02: But beyond that, yes, there was women lived separately completely separately, and the men live completely separately.
SPEAKER_02: Same building, different islands.
SPEAKER_02: If you've been to Pittsburgh, Pittsfield, uh Massachusetts, fascinating to go up there because they did a lot of really good things.
SPEAKER_02: Inventions.
SPEAKER_07: Yeah, their legacy is really interesting, not just furniture and rooms.
SPEAKER_07: Yeah, and the music is pretty interesting.
SPEAKER_07: Okay, I I love doing this with you.
SPEAKER_07: I hope it's fun.
SPEAKER_07: Um here's