Episode 399 - Ken Shigematsu, "How To Become Yourself"

Shame doesn't only live in the dark corners of a broken life. It lives just as quietly in the person everyone else envies — the one who has achieved everything and still wakes up feeling like it isn't enough.

Ken Shigematsu grew up moving between Japan, England, and Canada, carrying the weight of a shame-and-honor culture that most Western theology never addresses. In this conversation, he and Michael explore why deep grace is different from knowing grace is true, what it means to grow our capacity to actually receive love rather than deflect it, and why beauty and joy aren't spiritual extras — they are among the most direct routes out of shame and into the self God made.

Ken also shares the simple daily practice that, over 30 days, can literally rewire the neural networks that make it hard to feel loved by God — even when you believe it.

Ken Shigematsu is a pastor in Vancouver, Canada, and author of Now I Become Myself: How Deep Grace Heals Our Shame and Restores Our True Self.

Transcript

Introduction to Deep Grace and Shame

Michael John Cusick 0:00

Hi, everybody. Welcome back to the Restoring the Soul podcast. I'm Michael Kusick, and today Ken Shigematsu, author of Now I Become Myself. For those of you on YouTube are seeing the book, and I'm going to read the subtitle. Now I become myself. How Deep Grace Heals Our Shame and Restores Our True Self. Ken, welcome to the podcast. Thank you, Michael.

Ken Shigematsu 0:25

It's uh great to be with you and with your friends.

Michael John Cusick 0:29

I received your book and all the promotional materials from Zondervan when it first came out. Um, I was in a season where I couldn't get to it because uh for books, especially of people that I know or that I've met, and you and I interacted uh during the pandemic uh from a distance, and then we finally got to meet about a year ago. I like to actually read the book and take the time to go deep into it. So I started it about a month ago, and I've decided that I'm working my way through it slowly, as opposed to doing what I'm uh what I'll call the journalist skim, where I'm looking for big ideas. So, what I'd love to do is to talk about the ideas of the book and to reference back to the book. But let me just start with this. Uh, you're a pastor, you're a communicator, uh, you're a networker, uh, you're a creative. The book is really lovely in how it's written. I haven't read a book for a long time that I'm actually uh intentionally going through that is so compelling. You're a great storyteller, uh just really, really, really descriptive in how you write, but all wrapped around with real grace. So I just want to call attention to that and say thank you for that. Thank you. This uh book was not just, oh, what should I write a book about? It's obvious to me that you've done your work, so to speak, and that all of this book emerged from something inside of you and your own process of uh being transformed by God's grace. So talk about how that came into being.

Ken Shigematsu 2:10

Yeah, I um have observed as a pastor and uh as I look into my own soul that uh it's not just uh people who go through abusive situations or um terrible tragedy that can feel a sense of shame, but uh you know people who seem to be successful in the eyes of the world may even be the object of envy uh because of that success can have a sense that uh they're they're not quite enough. Um I uh was uh listening to the interview of a famous actor recently who said uh, you know, he was uh a person who was interested in theater in high school, headed off to New York City, and became more wildly successful than he had ever dreamed was possible. And yet

Cultural Perspectives on Shame and Honor

Ken Shigematsu 3:08

he was miserable. It wasn't enough. He was constantly comparing himself to people who had even more success. And so he bore a lot of shame. And so whether we feel like we're successful or not, whether we feel like we've had an idyllic, uh enviable childhood or not, all of us can carry a sense that we're not quite enough, which is uh at the heart of shame.

Michael John Cusick 3:33

Can you talk a little bit, Ken, about how as a Japanese man, I think you were born in Japan and have spent most of your life in America, but I know you talked about how in your 20s you worked in Tokyo in the corporate world, or not in Tokyo, but in Japan. Can you talk about the shame and honor culture and how that perspective uh gives you a lens biblically of understanding this that somebody who's not from a shame and honor culture may not have?

Ken Shigematsu 4:04

Yeah. So um I'm originally from Japan, uh born in Tokyo, but moved uh to the United States briefly when I was young, spent some time in England, and then eventually ended up in uh Vancouver, Canada, is uh where I now live. And I grew up um mostly viewing myself as a Canadian person, but uh something uh shifted inside me when I was a teenager in experience. Uh I described this in the book. Um I was in the um bad habit of stealing, of shoplifting, and uh just wanted to get free stuff, love the adventure, got caught. And uh the um authorities at the uh store, it was at Kmart uh in Metro Vancouver, contacted my parents, and uh I remember them sitting me down in my my room and having me kneel Asian style, which is very uncomfortable. And uh they explained to me that I had not only brought shame on myself through my stealing, but I had brought shame on them. And it struck me that uh what I did not only uh lowered myself uh in in the eyes of others, uh my my my stealing uh had that effect, uh, but it also lowered my my parents. And so I think that as North Americans, we tend to think of guilt and shame as as very um individualistic experiences. Whereas having come from Japan and having been reintroduced to the culture of my heritage through my parents as a teenager after being caught

Experiencing Deep Grace

Ken Shigematsu 5:51

shoplifting and then working there as an adult, I also realize that um what happens to me uh for better or for worse will bring honor or shame on those around me. And so that's part of the perspective.

Michael John Cusick 6:06

And that's in contrast to, I guess, what could be called a guilt and innocence perspective. What are the and I'm just roofing here, so this is not a question where I have the answer and I'm wanting you to validate it. What are the implications for understanding grace and especially deep grace, as you talk about, when you have a shame and honor culture versus uh uh a non-Asian or non-shame and honor culture that's around guilt and innocence? And I guess I'm asking because the current generations, the the younger generations, and this has been true probably for a couple decades now, the idea of guilt is not so much a felt experience, but this fee the the experience of shame is very much uh a sense of experience because even in the secular world, uh, counseling and the destigmatization of counseling has allowed people to begin to talk about their shame. So, what are your thoughts about that?

Ken Shigematsu 7:06

Yeah, in terms of the um uh experience of of grace and shame, uh it's very important to um uh have some understanding of this and ideally an experience of how grace heals shame. And so, again, from an Asian-Japanese perspective, um uh shame uh includes the idea that we are uh uh being lowered in in someone's eyes because of something that we did or something about us. And and so uh shame is a profoundly social emotion. In uh North America, uh while um this may not be as true, in the social media age, people are more conscious of how they're viewed by others. And so we have this uh relationally driven shame as well. And so uh when we experience God's grace and we recognize that uh despite what we've done or haven't done or what's been done to us, um, we may feel shame, but when we realize that uh we are not only accepted in the eyes of the one who matters most, but deeply loved and honored, there's something about that that that heals shame. The opposite of shame from a Japanese Asian perspective would be honor. And when we are honored by God through an experience of his uh grace and mercy toward us, uh that can lift us up out of our shame.

Michael John Cusick 8:39

I love the imagery of God honoring us. It seems so counterintuitive, yes? Yeah.

Ken Shigematsu 8:47

Uh most

Spiritual Practices for Healing Shame

Ken Shigematsu 8:49

of us, if we would think about it logically, would feel that we're just unworthy of the honor of the greatest being in the universe. And uh it's just staggering and breathtaking that God would um honor us by becoming one of us and then literally laying down his life on a cross, absorbing our sin and shame uh so that uh we could be healed of these things, so that these things could be removed, so that we could enter into an intimate relationship with God. And this is something that God initiated because of his love for us and his desire to include and honor us. It's it's just amazing.

Michael John Cusick 9:29

So where along the line did your experience of grace, and I'm gonna use this phrase again because it's it's the subtitle of your book, and I I like the distinction between grace and deep grace. Deep grace, this idea that it's internalized, that it's this external reality that is a part of God's nature, uh, but that deep grace is something that's saturated in us, and that God's grace externally goes to deep places within us. But how did you go from this fear of not being enough and these experiences of shame that could feel so defining to begin to get that on the inside of you?

Ken Shigematsu 10:11

Yeah, uh so uh I think we all experience uh some level of grace, uh favor from God that we may not even be aware of. And so grace is everywhere. Uh but uh deep grace, as I uh define it, is not just having a head knowledge of God's kindness to us, but deeply experiencing a sense of his love. And it goes from head to heart, so to speak. Um as we engage in spiritual practices. Every once in a while that sense of God's grace will come to us out of the blue. I remember uh being in a very low state after a romantic relationship came to a sudden end back when I was um in my 20s. And uh I remember just feeling very low, depressed, sitting in my apartment. It was a small space, it was uh literally dark in the in the apartment. I wasn't praying, and just sort of out of the blue, there was a presence that came into the room, a sweetness that it's hard to uh describe. And um the uh the sweetness of God's presence seemed to eclipse even the high points of this up and down romance that had just ended. Uh, and so every once in a while, um, a person might experience God's grace or a sense of God's presence coming to them out of the blue. That's rare. But we can also engage in spiritual practices, as you know, Michael, that can open us up so that we have a deeper awareness of God's loving presence in our lives.

The Role of Practices in Spiritual Formation

Ken Shigematsu 11:52

So, for example, uh, I'm a very easily distracted kind of person. At any given time, I can feel like there are 138 monkeys junking around in my head. And so I like to spend some time in the morning just sitting and breathing deeply, becoming aware of God's presence in silence. And after a period of silence, maybe 15 or 20 minutes, I will imagine God the Father saying over me what he said over Jesus at his baptism. I imagine God saying, Can you are, I did this this morning, you are my beloved son in whom I delight. Just take a deep breath, let it sink in. And then repeat. I imagine God saying, Can you are my beloved son in whom I delight? Take a deep breath, let it sink in. And then a third time, can you are my beloved son in whom I delight? Let it sink in. Uh, take a deep breath. And Michael, you could do that. Maybe you do something like that. And um, if you it sounds really simple, but if you uh engage in that kind of simple spiritual exercise for 30 days, it will rewire the neural networks in your brain, making it easier to access a sense that you were loved by God, even when you're not formally praying. And I describe uh some of these practices in in the book.

Michael John Cusick 13:11

Yeah, I appreciate how you bring all of your uh pastoral and theological biblical wisdom and knowledge, but also a lot of great neuroscience in there. Um I love that passage because as I wrote about in Sacred Attachment, and let's just explore this a little bit, um, that the timing and the way that that story unfolds is Jesus has that moment with the Father as he's being baptized. And then the very next thing that you read in the narrative, if you will, you flip the page and he's in the desert being tempted for 40 days. And it's as if God's love and intimacy and attentiveness was Jesus, you're absolutely absolutely going to need to be established and locked in. And if you have any questions as to whether you're loved and delighted in uh and that there's the secure attachment, now will be the time. So he goes from that place of that that belovedness, that blessing, that being seen to then into this desert experience. And um how how did you get into the practices that you just described? Because I I do that something very similar to that. And sometimes I do it in the morning, sometimes I do it throughout the day. But it's so um for anybody who's not done that, uh, you know, you said let it sink in. It really does begin to settle into the body and into the nervous system so that one can actually begin to experience that reality. How did you step into that stream, if you

Becoming Our True Self

Michael John Cusick 14:50

will?

Ken Shigematsu 14:51

Yeah, so um, back when I was in my 20s, I was working actually in in Tokyo, Japan, in the corporate world, and I was what they called a 7-Eleven man. It had nothing to do with the convenience store chain I was working for, uh the company Sony, and uh uh but my work hours went from about seven in the morning to eleven at night, including the commute time, but it was a very long day. And I eventually became a pastor here in Vancouver, Canada, and I thought, oh, things are going to settle down for me, but things uh kept almost as busy. Uh I felt like I was constantly treading water. And my mentor, Leighton Ford, a Christian leader originally from Toronto, the brother-in-law to the late Billy Graham, uh, invited me on a pilgrimage to some of the holy places of Ireland. And we ended up uh visiting some of the monasteries and uh learning from the monks about a way of life that they described as a quote, rule of life that enabled them to experience God as alive and real, not just when they were praying in a chapel, but when they were out in the fields working, when they were studying in the library, when they were in a kitchen preparing a meal. And I was hungry to experience God as alive and real in every part of my life. And so I began to put into practice some of the simple habits and spiritual practices I learned from the monks. And these practices went on to change my life. And so that sort of put me on the path of exploring spiritual practices. I write about that more in my book, God in my everything, but it comes out also in Now I Become Myself, this uh book that you've referenced.

Michael John Cusick 16:26

Yeah, and I just want to call out that in Now I Become Myself at the end of every chapter, and I think there are 10 uh primary chapters and then an epilogue, you actually have an exercise that you take people through. But can we talk about practices for a minute? Because I uh again, I I I don't want to be self-serving, but in uh my book, Sacred Attachment, the last chapter is about practice and how it's just that. It's practice as opposed to that it's performance. Um but this is something I feel is so important, not just this topic of us becoming ourselves and understanding that the gospel is not just there to take away our sin, but to take away our shame. Um, and I want to call out Romans 10. You know, if you get a group of good college discipled Christians and you say, What's a what's a verse that you can give somebody for how to lead somebody to Jesus? They'll turn to Romans 10, that if you confess with your mouth and believe in your heart that Jesus is Lord, and then we all stop there. But if you read the next verse, it says, For anyone who believes in him will never be put to shame. And I like to think that the effect of the gospel is that we can live naked and unashamed and without shame. So it's so important in our world right now because I think so much of what we experience with the turmoil is driven

The Importance of Receiving Grace

Michael John Cusick 17:47

by shame and driven by the fear that comes from that, driven by the fear that you addressed that somehow we're not enough, that we're not secure enough, etc. And so what are the what's the solution to that? The Sunday school answer is Jesus, but not just left brain Jesus, but the experiential right brain part of it and practice is so important. So uh again, I'm I'm riffing here just because of the, I want to have a conversation with a brother, but as a pastor, and I know a little bit about your church, that it's very dynamic, that there's a lot of spiritual formation that comes from your heart and from the pulpit and through your leaders. How do you talk to the people in your church about practices?

Ken Shigematsu 18:32

Yeah, well, one of the things I say is uh start simply. Uh the irony is while practice can uh foster an experience of God's love that heals us of our shame, people can also feel like a failure in their practices. And so it can compound shame. So uh I say, you know, start simply if you're new to this, uh, maybe pick one practice that will um really fill you up and connect you with God. And uh I also explained that if you're engaged in uh spiritual practices or a set of them through what the monks call the rule of life, and your life starts to feel so much more heavy or under underweight of a some kind of burden, it's probably uh a self-constructed routine, not a spirit-inspired rhythm, because if it's a spirit-inspired practice or rhythm, your life will feel lighter and and and freer. So I would say uh yeah, start simply and uh and slowly build. And and don't, as you mentioned earlier, Michael, don't see it as a performance. Just see it as an opportunity to create space to deepen a relationship with someone who um profoundly loves you.

Michael John Cusick 19:49

It reminds me of the uh the Eugene Peterson passage in the message in uh Matthew 11, where Jesus says, I won't lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. And sometimes I feel a little bit not quite like a heretic, that would be too strong, but like like people aren't believing that this is actually biblical when I say if it feels heavy, if it feels ill-fitting, it's not Jesus. Now, sometimes it might be our own baggage or our own trauma or something like that, but God is not about loading us down with practices and things that are gonna make us feel disconnected from ourselves. Exactly. You know, I I thought it was so interesting and and do think it's interesting as I'm reading through the book and I'm I'm um making notes in the margin for this story we'll preach and then use this story here. So many, so many great stories. Uh but how the title is not how to how to get away from shame or you know, how to become 10% less covered in shame, but now I become myself. And that you chose that, you know, you you quoted Merton a couple of different times, but that we're moving towards something, we're moving into something that already exists and something that God's already doing, versus putting our emphasis on battling the shame and trying to, you know, uncover that. Talk about if that was intentional that way.

Ken Shigematsu 21:19

Yeah, yeah, it was. Um of the things people uh sometimes ask, how do you know you carry shame? Because a lot of shame is unconscious. Uh shame causes us, uh, if we feel at a conscious or unconscious level that we're not quite enough, it it causes us to either want to shrink back and go small, or to try and be big and do something in order to validate ourselves. And so either way, we're not living from our truest self if we're uh either shrinking away or trying to be someone we're we're really not. But when we uh experience deeply the love of God, uh, we can become who we really are and express the unique way that God has made us. We can reflect his image, which is stamped on every human being. And um, I borrowed the uh the title with with permission from uh the poet May Sartan, who has written a poem called Now I Become Myself. Um, it's taken taken time and years, and I've worn other people's faces, but now I I become myself. And so um, yeah, when we experience deeply the grace of God, uh we will be who we are in the best sense.

Michael John Cusick 22:42

And I want to read a quote from uh your chapter covered by grace, and it's from Merton. I think you lift, you I almost said you lifted this. Sorry, that would that would imply theft, that you took this from uh New Seeds of Contemplation. But he says there is only one problem on which all my existence, my peace, and my happiness depend. To discover myself in discovering God. If I find him, I will find myself, and if I find my true self, I will find him. That's just beautiful. I was very familiar with that, but I I love how you unpack that. And this idea of finding ourselves and becoming ourself is not this uh Abraham Maslow self-actualization idea. It's not just self-improvement, that our life in God really consists of only our true self can experience this union with God. God doesn't know or in in one sense, he doesn't love the false self, I think Merton also said, because he doesn't know the false self, right? It's an illusion. Um, but just comment on how this is this is utterly biblical and utterly within the historic Christian tradition, and as Merton says, so essential, this union that's there. And if that we're if we are somehow held back from discovering our true self, we will fall short of living in the depth of the ocean of God's love experientially.

Ken Shigematsu 24:14

Yeah. Um, speaking of Martin, uh I also uh cite him and and and this particular image, which is very related. He says that uh if uh also from new seats of contemplation, that we human beings feel invisible by nature. And so we we will wrap ourselves in bandages to feel visible, bandages of achievement, bandages of material possessions to feel visible, uh, bandages of pleasure, bandages of trying to build a reputation that will make us feel seen as special so we feel visible. But Merton also points out that when we try and build an identity based on what we do, what we achieve, what we have, how others view us, we're living from our false self, a kind of illusory self. But it's as we experience deeply the love of God that we can, you know, drop those props and ways of building an identity and emerge in the love of God as our truest made in the image of God's self. We can become who we are as we discover God. And as we discover who we are, um, we also discover God as well.

Michael John Cusick 25:33

This question and the direction I want to go now uh as we move toward landing the plane, I don't want to finish right away, but it's let's pretend the captain is saying prepare for descent. You had a section uh in this chapter called Seeing God's Face in Others. And I had never heard this phrase before, and I'm I'm pretty well versed in neuroscience, but the way that it was written, and it was called growing our receptive effect. And I understood the concept, but I'd never heard it put that way. And it was a conversation you had with Dr. Hillary McBride, who writes about our somatic self and the spirituality of embodiment. But this idea that we actually have to learn how to receive. And that most of us, because of our stories, whatever may have happened to us or whatever didn't happen to us that needed to, that we're not very good

Building the Receptive Muscle

Michael John Cusick 26:26

at receiving. So talk about this idea of growing our receptive affect, that it's almost like a muscle.

Ken Shigematsu 26:33

Yeah. Uh speaking of Hillary McBride, she's a psychologist. Psychologists tell us that we have uh what they describe as a negativity bias. And so um, you know, if we're being evaluated by a supervisor and the supervisor lists four things we're doing well and one thing that we can do better, we'll focus on the one thing we we can do better and experience shame over that. And uh as uh the psychiatrist uh Kurt Thompson points out, shame only takes two or three seconds to form in our brain, whereas affirmation takes 60 to 90 seconds. And so um because shame is is more salient, has more uh of a velcro-like quality to it, um, when we receive affirmation, whether it's through the loving countenance of a human being, their words, their action, or uh a grace that we feel has come to us from God, say through the beauty of nature or some um very fortunate circumstance, we do well to dwell on that and uh to gaze into the person's face, whether it's uh a situation where that person is in front of us or whether it's in our imagination, maybe journal about it. But yeah, uh learning to receive is a capacity that we build much like um we build our um strength uh in our muscles by by uh lifting a weight.

Michael John Cusick 28:07

Yeah. And so the the story that you shared there, and I think this is uh instructive for listeners, is that uh Dr. McBride talked about how she would want to speak uh affirmation and encouragement into her clients, and she'd say, I want you to hold my gaze for just a little bit longer than normal. So to receive the encouragement with eye contact and being gazed upon, which is obviously a biblical concept, right? Oh God, may you shine your face upon me. That's that idea of may your gaze look upon me with favor. And that people had to learn to build up to that, essentially, that oftentimes they couldn't immediately take in the gaze and the positivity. And it's so interesting to me because my experience has been that it's easier uh in a line along the line with what you're saying, like it's easier for men in men's groups that I've worked with to confess their sins to one another than for men to be able to take in and own the glory and the goodness and the depth and the richness and all those kinds of things. There's something almost more vulnerable about being seen and loved than there is about being seen and judged, which then connects me to the idea that you later unpacked Romans 2.4 that it's his kindness that leads us to repentance.

Ken Shigematsu 29:28

Yeah, exactly. Um it makes me think of Henry Nowen uh who uh said in in one of his books, uh the greatest temptation isn't sex, money, or power, but the greatest temptation is self-rejection because it it contradicts the voice that calls us the beloved. And so uh we tend to think of you know temptation as doing some obvious kind of evil, uh, theft, uh, you know, adultery, um, you know, slandering someone, but our greatest temptation might be to reject the voice uh that calls us his beloved. And uh that's a great temptation. And it's one by the grace of God that we can we can overcome and through practice as well, learning to receive as you've talked about, Michael.

Michael John Cusick 30:23

Yeah, and that practice that you described uh at the start of our conversation about the visualization of seeing the Father pronouncing like he did over Jesus, you are loved, and I delight in you, that that's actually strengthening the receptive muscle or that receptive capacity of receiving God's words over you so that's not just information in your head, but that, as you said, over a period of time like 30 days, that it actually is embodied and experienced and then eventually internalized.

Ken Shigematsu 30:53

Yeah, and you can do the same with so I do that practice, and we have a golden retriever uh here. Uh she's actually uh uh downstairs, I'm uh upstairs in our home here. And uh each morning I take her on a walk, and as I'm walking her, I'll bring to mind uh the faces of a handful of people who've loved me into being, just sort of uh in my imagination, uh gaze upon them and imagine their uh countenance toward me. And uh that also opens me up to a sense of God's love for me. Uh, and and then I'll also pray for them and thank God for them.

Michael John Cusick 31:30

And that is uh an exact example of experiencing God's grace in the faces of others, all those people that are the living cloud of witnesses around us. You know, one of the chapters that took me by complete surprise was the chapter called Overcoming Envy. Uh, I'm an Enneagram two with a three wing, so a helper giver uh with an achiever wing, and I'm not a four like some of my friends, where envy is the primary thing they struggle with. But wow, was I convicted and just seeing how much envy is a part of my internal world. But here's what I was surprised by. I, you know, third therapist, 32 years, couple graduate degrees. I I specialize in this area of shame in some respects. And I never made the connection between shame and envy. And like, oh, I've got to have what they're having, or they get something that I don't, and how that's rooted in shame. So talk about why you included that chapter and why envy is something that we need to allow God's love to begin to dissolve as well.

The Connection Between Shame and Envy

Ken Shigematsu 32:40

Yeah, thanks, Michael, for for bringing that up. You just also mentioned uh your Enneagram numbers uh that you said you're a two with a three wing, so your helper with an uh achiever's wing. So I'm a I'm a three, probably with a two-wing. So we have some similarities. I'm a an achiever competitor. So this morning I was at the pool. I'm not a particularly fast swimmer, but um I could see sort of from my uh side vision that someone was about to pass me in another lane, and so I just sort of sped up and tried to get to the wall first. Now I know it's pretty pathetic, but I figure um if I can just get to the wall first, I'll feel a little bit better about myself. And I can have a tendency uh to make unfavorable comparisons with people who are faster than me, literally or you know, metaphorically. And um yeah, it can just make me feel uh miserable. And and so I have found that uh experiencing God's love, as I write about in that chapter, it's is probably the most helpful chapter for me personally on uh how we can overcome envy and then experience feeling of shame. That uh as I experience God's goodness toward me, um, I'm I'm less likely to present, as someone has said, God's goodness toward someone else. And I've also found that if I can become a channel of God's grace to someone who I might see as a rival, if I don't know them, I can pray for them. I remember um uh comparing myself to a pastor who seemed very uh productive uh in his ministry um and uh in his uh speaking and writing. And uh I didn't really uh know uh this person, but I I read a book that he'd written and then uh wrote a review and uh gave uh uh uh this author and pastor a five-star um rating. And it wasn't gratuitous, it was a really great book. And it's when I hit send, I just felt the sense of joy and just a sense of, I just it was just surprised to me. And so if you can deeply experience God's love for you and God's goodness to you, you'll be less likely to resent uh God's goodness to others, you'll feel less shame. And if you can become a channel of God's grace to someone um, might be in your family or at your workplace or in your neighborhood that you see as a kind of rival in some way, uh, that that um envy will tend to be overcome as well.

Michael John Cusick 35:11

I love the phrase too that you're using. And again, it's it's very pastoral, but it's psychologically very accurate and astute that envy is resenting God's goodness to others. And here's something funny. I immediately resonate with that. Like there's five scenes in my mind right now, and then I can feel shame about that. Like that's that's the most ugly of them all right now, it feels. And you know, back to Peterson, um in Galatians 5, he does this brilliant poetic unpacking of the fruit of the flesh and the fruit of the spirit. And in the fruit of the flesh, he has this phrase that when you live your way versus God's way, it says that we have the vicious habit of depersonalizing everyone into a rival. And I never connected that with the word envy. And uh at one level, and now I say this shame free to myself, there's something cancerous about that when I think of that inside of me or inside of the soul, and that rather than bow to shame or allow shame to come in, there's a trusting love. Wait a minute, I have everything I need, and I have this father that is constantly parting the skies, declaring over me that I am loved and delighted in. And so I do not need to personalize everyone into a rival. And there's something about that that then is profoundly healing. And to come back to your book title, I get to actually be Michael instead of have to live this life that I think if I had the blessing that this other person had, then I could really be me, and then I'd really know goodness. It's all beautiful how this fits together.

Ken Shigematsu 37:02

Absolutely. Yeah, as you uh you know, the tendency is to focus because of our negativity bias as human beings on what we don't have rather than what we have and what we've been given. But if we can uh do the latter, um not only will we be freer from envy, which of the seven or eight deadly sins, depending on how you count them, is is the only one that doesn't make us feel good at least short term, you know? Um and uh and and then we become who we were made to be, who we really are, are made in the image of God.

Michael John Cusick 37:36

So I want to talk about three more things. We can touch on them briefly, uh, but if you have time, I'm gonna just keep talking because I'm loving the conversation. Uh I want to talk about limits, beauty, and joy. I first heard the term from Pete Schizero probably 20 years ago about living with the gift of limits. And the way that you talked about it, it was kind of seamless that even though you didn't directly say it to my recollection,

Embracing Limits as a Spiritual Practice

Michael John Cusick 38:01

that embracing limits is a form of spiritual practice in and of itself. So it's not like, okay, at the end of this chapter, here's the spiritual practice, do a limit. But having this humility of I have limits. I need to get eight hours of sleep a night. Uh, I need to eat healthy food. I can't work 60 hours a week regularly without that impacting my relationships and my health, et cetera, et cetera. So talk about why you integrated that in this conversation about shame and becoming myself. Because initially it feels peripheral, but it was very central.

Ken Shigematsu 38:38

I I tend to be a a driven person and um you know a lot of my quest for achievement has been out of a desire to somehow prove to myself, uh maybe to others, uh that that I'm enough. And when we experience deeply the love of God, uh not only uh do we experience uh a deeper joy and less shame, but we also feel less compelled to uh to do things that we're not called to do. And and and so part of that is um is uh embracing, it includes embracing our limits uh and realizing that even though we don't do everything, even if we don't say yes to every obligation, uh uh that uh we're we're loved uh and that we're received by God. And hopefully that can that can be freeing. Uh in that chapter, I quote uh Thomas Kelly, who says uh uh and there may be uh exceptions to this, but as a general rule, he says, unless uh a request rises with a sense of energy and life and joy, you know, say no or you'll tend to get too busy.

Michael John Cusick 39:56

Yeah, yeah. I I've discovered turning 62 in a few months that there's fewer and fewer things I can say yes to. And it becomes more and more clear that everything I say yes to is a no to something else. And so that that really has I mean, the ultimate limit upon us is our mortal is our mortality, right? Yeah, and we can live very unaware of that. Beauty, you talk about awakening

The Transformative Power of Beauty

Michael John Cusick 40:23

to beauty, and for some, the idea of beauty is something that they have to awaken to, and for others, it seems like it's something they have to immerse themselves in. But it feels like beauty is something that is so close to God and so much of what God is that you can't say it's just a single characteristic of God. But it's uh it's very difficult to encounter beauty and to not have it somehow move us spiritually. Has that been your experience?

Ken Shigematsu 40:54

I I think few people think of uh the experience of beauty as uh as a spiritual practice, but but it really can be. A study was done at Stanford that showed that if you walk long enough in a place of natural beauty, uh the part of your brain associated with anxiety and depression actually goes offline, it goes quiet. And and shame is uh an experience of self-analysis, self-critique, self-condemnation, which are primarily left brain activities. When we experience beauty, it lights up the right side of our brain, literally leaving less room for shame to work. And so uh I encourage people as uh part of their rule of life to put themselves in a kind of pathway of beauty, literally or metaphorically, every day if they can. And so um earlier this morning I was walking with our uh golden retriever, Sasha, down a favorite um street in our neighborhood here in Vancouver. There are uh just some gorgeous trees, and the sun was breaking in, um, some of the uh tulips were in bloom. And uh it may not seem very quote explicitly religious or spiritual, but there's something about being exposed to beauty and the sense of wonder that beauty evokes that can draw us closer to God. I will have people um imagine uh a beautiful place that they may have experienced in nature, maybe um imagining a time when they were uh by the ocean or on the ocean or in the mountains or in the forest or at the mouth of a grand uh vast canyon, maybe maybe it was the Grand Canyon. And uh to remember the awe that they felt in that moment of beauty. You're in Colorado, Michael? Yeah, yeah.

Michael John Cusick 42:41

Yeah, right.

Ken Shigematsu 42:42

So you're you're you're surrounded by a lot of beauty in your in your um immediate environment in your state. But I have people say um to themselves, what did I feel in in uh that place of great, stunning beauty? And if they can recall some of the awe and some of the wonder that they experienced, they get a small window into how God feels when God sees them. Because when God sees you, Michael, when God sees a human being, God feels awe. And so beauty can be a window into the awe that God feels over us.

Michael John Cusick 43:18

Well, can we play a quick game? I'll share my most powerful moment of physical beauty encountered in nature, and then you can share one of yours. Does that sound true? Okay, sounds great. Okay. So as you're talking about this, and even as you were talking about walking down the street in Vancouver, and that this rose up within me, I was uh with my wife in Maui. It's the first and only time that I've been to Hawaii, and we went to one of the national parks, and I just thought, oh, this is this is going to be a nice little hike. And I think eventually the promise was to get to a waterfall with a pool that you could swim in. But about 20 minutes in, it said bamboo forest to the left. And so we went to the left, and you Walked around and it took you back to the same path that was going to take you to the waterfall. But there was an elevated wooden pathway. And as you walked farther into this bamboo forest, it got darker and darker. And if you looked straight ahead or to your left and right at the horizontal level, it would be dark. But then you would look up. And I swear these it probably wasn't a hundred feet tall, but it felt like these trees, these bamboo trees, were a hundred feet tall. And if you looked up, you saw light coming in and it looked like heaven just descending. And then there's something about the density of the bamboo trees where there was a fragrance and just a hyper saturation of oxygen. And my wife kept saying, like, yeah, this is nice. Let's go, let's go. And I just wanted to stand there and take it in. And I there was literally something in me, I thought, I never want to leave this place. It just felt so tranquil. Um, and I can I can go back to that in a heartbeat. Like I can go back there and I'm there. And I made it a point when I was there, like I want to get a what I now call a somatic imprint into my body, into my brain, so that I don't forget this. And that's one of those places when I uh I think about that, it has a powerful spiritual effect that that that is a manifestation of God's presence in the world and his connection to my own body, the oneness. So it's just really beautiful.

Ken Shigematsu 45:37

That's sounds amazing.

Michael John Cusick 45:38

And how about you?

Ken Shigematsu 45:40

Yeah, so uh one experience that uh stands out for me was uh some years ago uh canoeing on the Sunshine Coast, which is uh on the west coast of our province of British Columbia here in Canada. And uh I was uh canoeing in the middle of the night with uh my uh longtime friend Elizabeth, who is like a sister to me. And uh, as we looked up above, we we saw the the the it was a clear night, and so the stars were sparkling. And each time we lowered our paddles into the water because of a phenomenon known as phosphorescence, uh the water would uh light up like the northern lights or like uh fireworks. And so it's just it was just amazing. And in a moment of spontaneous exuberance, my friend Elizabeth from the front of the canoe said, This is the greatest moment of my life. But it really was uh very special and magical. The stars above and uh the the phosphorescence, the fireworks below.

Michael John Cusick 46:40

Oh, there on the sunshine for the post. I I hope I get to see that someday. And to think that that that our Lord at one point said uh all this just for you. Just just for you. I put you here just for this moment. Um at least that's the part of me that wants to have the faith like a child believes that, and I believe that that's true. Well, thank you. Uh uh about talking about beauty, and again, just for listeners, um, as we wrap up, the book by Ken Shigematsu is Now I Become Myself, how deep grace heals our shame and restores our true self. And as we talk about things like beauty and the phosphorescence that comes off the water with your ore and the bamboo trees that I saw in Hawaii, that that's the deep grace that God gives us. It's not all just this religious stuff, it's being immersed in and saturated in life itself, and that's where God meets us. We just have to pay attention and sometimes to position ourselves so that we can receive it.

Ken Shigematsu 47:39

Simon Vay, the French mystic, said she said, uh, the beauty of the world is Christ's tender smile coming to us through matter. And uh sometimes we we're just uh oblivious to it, and it sometimes it's about simply uh paying attention and and receiving.

Michael John Cusick 47:56

Yeah. Yeah. It's fitting, Ken, to end with joy, because as we're talking about the beauty and as we're talking about uh God's love and and that pronouncement over us as beloved sons and daughters and his delight in us, the result of that is joy, but your chapter title is called Choosing Joy. So what's the what's uh central about joy that relates to us becoming ourself and why must we choose it as opposed to wait for the planets to line

Choosing Joy Over Shame

Michael John Cusick 48:25

up?

Ken Shigematsu 48:26

Shame uh steals our joy, uh, but when we experience uh joy uh and uh we allow ourselves to really feel it, uh and um I think Mary Oliver says uh if you experience joy, uh yeah, you know, um to give into it. I'm sort of uh not quoting her correctly, but um just surrender to joy. Uh life is not a crumb. Um but joy like oil and water, or joy and shame like oil and water are fundamentally incompatible. And so if you're experiencing deep joy, it's virtually impossible at the same moment uh to experience a sense of shame. And then um we can choose joy, even though um we may be facing difficult circumstances. Uh I'm a I'm I'm a pastor, as you've pointed out, and in my uh line of work I face crisis after crisis in people's lives, uh all kinds of um uh difficulties. Um and uh every once in a while, it hasn't happened real often, but um uh my wife uh will say to me in our kitchen, uh, which is uh downstairs, uh, she'll look at me and she'll say, Ken, um I think you're the happiest pastor I know. Uh she doesn't know many pastors. Uh and she didn't say it uh during the pandemic, and there have been some rough times um uh in in recent years that have uh threatened to really steal my joy. Uh but if I experience joy, um part of it is because I've been blessed with uh an amazing family and some just incredible friends. Uh, but it's also because of these um, and and I really mean it simple practices that awaken me again and again to how wide and long and high and deep is God's love for me. And uh it's in an experience of God's love that we experience the the deepest joy. And when we experience the deepest joy, um uh shame uh uh cannot cannot remain. Shame will be driven out. Um perfect love uh casts out fear, including the fear of rejection, which is at the heart of shame. And so uh love and joy and shame are uh incompatible.

Michael John Cusick 50:50

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