OUT of the POOL and INTO the OCEAN: UNCORKED with BARRY LONG

Are you just swimming in a chlorinated pool when you were born for the vastness and wonder of the ocean? 

That’s the challenge Tim Windsor and Barry Long UNCORK in this conversation. The pool—with its clean lines, warm water, and predictable depth—feels safe, but it’s sterile. It tricks us into thinking we’re moving forward while, in truth, we’re going nowhere. The ocean, on the other hand, is untamed, dangerous, and full of mystery—but it’s also where life truly lives. Together, Barry and Tim wrestle with what it means to leave the pool behind and plunge into waters that stir courage, risk, and genuine growth.

This episode encourages you to question where you have settled for safe, chlorinated comfort instead of embracing risky wonder. Whether it’s your work, relationships, leadership, or spiritual path, Tim and Barry examine how we all can become domesticated—comfortable, contained, and ultimately exhausted. They then challenge each other, and you, to step into deeper currents where wonder and risk intertwine. Throughout, they discuss the price of comfort, the unexpected ego-loss when leaving the “centre stage,” and the beauty of finding connection in places that feel vast and unpredictable.

If you’re tired of paddling in the pool and are ready to dive into the unpredictable ocean—this episode is your invitation. Listen with courage, sip your drink slowly, and ask yourself: where in your life have you been settling for a pool, when you were meant for the ocean?
 
Tim Windsor
the UNCOMMODiFiED Podcast – Host & Guide
tim@uncommodified.com
https://uncommodified.com/
  
PRODUCERS: Alyne Gagne & Kris MacQueen 
MUSIC BY: https://themacqueens.ca/

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Transcript

PLEASE NOTE: UNCOMMODiFiED Podcast episode transcriptions are raw text files and have not been proofed or edited. They are what they are … Happy Reading.

© UNCOMMODiFiED & TIM WINDSOR

[00:00:00] 

What if the safety that you clinging to is actually a weight that will ultimately drown you? What if that pristine pool you paddle in with its smooth sides, its warm water and clean lines is a deceptive container that makes you feel like you're moving forward and deeper when you really are not.

Here's the truth. Sterile waters don't stir the soul. They don't awaken courage. They don't grow. You. Pools are great for control and temperature control, but their death to wonder. For me and my guest, and maybe even you tonight, it's time to swim beyond the painted lines in the pool and explore the difference between being a pool paddler and an ocean swimmer.

This will all make sense to you in a few minutes. One stays in the no one. The pool stays in the no one. I. The other, it stays in another place. It wades into uncertainty where the waves can swallow you or carry you into wonder or awe at [00:01:00] any moment. The ocean is wild. It's full of currents, creatures, and chaos.

And yes, a bit of danger, but it's also where life lives. If you're tired of artificial environments and aching for deep mystery and meaning, this conversation is your call into. Deeper waters. Hey my friends. Welcome back to the Unmodified podcast. I'm Tim WinDor, and today my guest on the show is my amazing friend, Barry Long Barry, welcome to the show.

Thanks, Tim. Good to be here.

Uh, it's gonna be so fun. So I'm gonna introduce you to Barry, along the way, sort of as we go listeners. But just let me start with this. So Barry is my friend. He's been a partner of mine in work that we've done together in foreign countries, which is kind of exciting. He is also a wonderfully patient, provocateur.

And he's like me. He's a provocateur and a in a kinder, gentler way most days, but he's a patient provocateur, and he's been provoking me towards goodness and greatness in my life for, for a long, long time. And I believe that that's gonna happen in the conversation tonight. And so, of course, Barry, this is an [00:02:00] uncorked conversation and I always like Uncorking to drink with you when we get together.

So what are you drinking tonight?

This is a Pinot Noir, Tim, and I don't know the label. My wife bought it at Costco.

There you go. It's a Costco Pinot Noir. I love it. By the way, they get actually pretty good wine. I'm drinking a Robert Mondavi, California Cab Sav, and I love this wine, so cheers to you, sir.

And cheer to you as well.

Hmm. That's good stuff. Okay. So as you could tell listeners from that intro, we're gonna be having an interesting conversation tonight, and it's it's gonna be a little different than the average conversation that I usually have on the Unmodified podcast. So Barry's has a worldview.

That may not be your worldview in this conversation. And so my encouragement to you is to just, just hang tight. Just listen and enter into the conversation and hear what Barry's saying, because Barry's gonna be talking from his perspective and from a perspective of someone who's had a, an amazing experience as a leader in a church.

I have a lot of respect for that. Barry and I have a lot of connections historically. We'll talk about that throughout the podcast. But [00:03:00] again, if you're listening in and that isn't your jam, that's okay. , I'm gonna ask you to look for ways that you can apply this conversation to your circumstance, to your life if you happen to be a person of faith.

I'm gonna ask you to challenge yourself as to what doesn't mean for you if you apply that to your world. But I just wanna make sure that you understand that today's conversation is going to have content that I typically don't talk about because we don't often talk about spiritual or religious.

Things at all. Although I wouldn't even use the word religious to describe Barry. That's for sure. But in a more sort of colloquial way of looking at it, we don't typically tuck into some of these ideas, but this is a big part of Barry's experience and it's a big part of my experience as well , although you wouldn't know that maybe from listening to the unmodified podcast most days, uh, but it's important conversation because.

I value Barry as a friend, as a provocateur, as someone who speaks into my life and encourages me, and I have a lot of respect, Barry, for you and the journey you've gone on. You challenged yourself, and I love that about you.[00:04:00] 

But again, if you're listening, I always say you're listening in for a reason. And so hang tight. This conversation might be right down the center of the plate for you, or it might be a little bit off the plate for you. It's okay. Just stay at the plate. See what ball you can hit out of the park. And I say that because Barry is a Cincinnati Reds fan.

How are the red, what's going on with the reds this year?

They've won five in a row.

Look at that Five in a row. Is Joey. Is Joey Voto retired?

Oh yeah. And he's a Canadian.

I know, I know. Is he gone though?

Yeah, but they want him back in the organization is some kind of a coach. I think I happen, but he's a Cincinnati guy.

Yeah. Good. Good old. Good old Canadian boy. So that's good.

Barry, what I wanna do start off, is. I'd like you to tell the story and the experience that really codified this idea for you. And of course, it led to you on a journey writing some books, which we'll talk about.

But what was that experience that you had in the pool one day in your condo building in Fort Lauderdale, Florida that led you into a different way of looking at things?

You know, I, I [00:05:00] guess I have to start with my friend Ezekiel, lovingly called Hessel. That's for short. He's an Iranian Jewish man and he and I have had many conversations about Jews, about Christians, about Jesus, about Moses, and on and on and on. And, , you gotta understand who this guy is. He is boisterous, but not, Irritating. He, he really is always laughing. He's always joshing with you. You never know when he is serious, that kind of guy. So, that has to be a background for what I'm gonna say next. I was, I. In our pool, swimming my laps at Plaza South in Fort Lauderdale, , where my father bought a condo back way back in 1971 when such a thing was affordable.

And, after I got done exercising, I was in a lounge chair and I was just minding my own business. And you know that wonderful feeling you have when you exercise hard and you're just kind of [00:06:00] relaxed. And Hess School comes up to me. And he, he says, Barry in his normal loud voice, he said, why do you always swim in the pool?

Because he always swims in the ocean

Hmm.

and he only swims in the pool when the ocean, the Atlantic is really, really rough. So, , I thought, well, here's Hessel again. He's messing with me. You know, so I got right back into his face and I said, well. There's several reasons I don't swim in the ocean. I said, shark bait is one.

I said, that's salt and sand in your trunks and the salt in your eyes. And I went through a, a, a sort of a litany of things that, uh, ocean swimming can produce in a human being. And, um, I said, by the way, big boy, I said, why do you always swim in the ocean and rarely in the pool? And he looked at me, he had a quizzical look on his face.

Like it, the answer should be obvious. And he just smiled and said, [00:07:00] life.

Hmm.

There's life in the ocean. And it hit me right in the solar plexus because I've been a believer in Jesus for a long time, and I love the Old Testament, and Ezekiel is the prophetic name of a prophet in the Old Testament, and that is his name as well.

He just walked away. But I staggered away from that conversation because it hit me in a place where I saw myself swimming in a sterile. Chlorinated pool. It's gonna take a little background as well. I've been a pastor for 30 years. Our church was over a thousand. I'd kind of like. Arrived, if you will. I was comfortable.

I hadn't taken risks in a long time, and so the Holy Spirit was just kind of shaking me with Heschel's comment. Again, he didn't know it. He knows it now, by the way he's mentioned in the book. But, I got to thinking about that and it led me to [00:08:00] begin to say, Lord, what risks are you actually calling me to take?

How are you calling? Mean out of a chlorinated pool, which really is deceptive because it feels like you're swimming, you actually are getting wet, you're exercising hard and you're tired when you're done. In fact, you're so tired. You get burnt out if you continue to swim in that sterile pool, which is probably later in our conversation.

We'll talk about that. But, I made some decisions after that, I decided to go back to Africa with you. And that was a little bit risky. I decided ultimately to leave my pastorate and begin to write work with recovery ministries and do other risky things. And those things have proven wonderful to me, and I highly recommend the practice of getting out of the sterile pool of your life and going where life actually is.

It's dangerous. There are sharks out there, but you're not gonna find life in a [00:09:00] chlorinated pool.

So you have this experience. You get, you get, I'm gonna, we're not gonna turn it. You get Hess. Okay. You get, you get Hess at the pool and you have this epiphany and you start realizing, man, I'm clean it safe. I'm in the sterile waters.

I'm where it's comfortable. It feels like I swimming, which I am, but . I'm not swimming where there's life. And so you start on this journey. So I'm interested to know, as you go on this journey, Barry, you know, you're having new experiences, but. Even more importantly to me is what are you learning about yourself in those early days when you get out of, metaphorically, out of the sterile pool in your life and you start moving into risky waters where it's a little more dangerous?

Um, what do you, what do you start learning about yourself?

Well, I learned that starting over because I didn't start in the pool. When we planted the church, we did so in a middle school gymnasium [00:10:00] and everything was risky. I mean, there was no heat, there was no cool in the summer, and we didn't know if anybody would want to come. We had a weird name. People thought we were a cult.

I had write-ups about it, you know, who are these people? And the group I was with is called The Vineyard and Who, what was a vineyard and, and you know, 1980, you know, what was that?

Oh, that was Robert Mondavi, I think.

It could be. So I started out risky and then got domesticated

Hmm.

into church life, and when Hesco hit me in the solar plexus, one of the things I figured out was this whole notion of following Jesus is getting out of the pool and swimming in the ocean.

For me, the ocean is God.

Hmm.

His risky way of living. And I believe if you read Jesus carefully, you'll see, just see how radical he is. [00:11:00] And that did not define my life, nor my discipleship journey at all. So I found out that maybe I really wasn't a disciple. Maybe I was something different. Now that translates in different ways to different people in the business world and so forth.

But for me, in my world, that was what it was like.

That's interesting. You, you chose a really interesting word. You said that you were domesticated and that is fascinating to me. And again, I want to just park on that for a second because. You know, I think this tucks in for me about this I idea of un commodification. When we become domesticated, we learn to sit down, shut up, fit in for the sake of being accepted, for the sake of maybe even being successful, because we feel that's the pathway to success.

But in fact, being domesticated. Takes us into this environment where we, where we become rather frankly, impotent, where we cannot produce life in ourselves or others. There's a lot of cost to that. And again, [00:12:00] whether you know, whether you're in a church world or whether you're in a business world, or whether it's your family, I.

My challenge to you is to think about, again, are in what ways have you become domesticated and how is that truncating your ability to live a full and beautiful life for the benefit of yourself and others? Because this seems to be part of the journey that you go on of learning. So I'm interested, Barry, so does everybody love this journey that you go on?

Like everybody just is like, this is awesome, or do some people go, I don't know, that's getting a little, that's getting a little risky out there in the waters, Barry.

Most people in church world don't want it. And one of the reasons they don't want it is people like me didn't explain to them that this whole. Idea of following Jesus is risky. And, and people have low tolerance for that. And so they vote with their feet. They don't come back to your church. And so there's that.

And so we always like to think in our church that we weren't doing that, but after Hess School's, I. [00:13:00] The experience with hesco, I realized that yeah, we kind of were doing that and, and so my teaching changed. A lot of things changed and people did vote with their feet. Some didn't want to go there and, and they didn't.

Um, but as I said before, it eventually. Put me into retirement from that ministry and into several other, I think more risky ministries like the Recovery Ministry, for example. You're working with people on the margins and it's messy, but that's precisely where Jesus would be. Now, don't hear me putting down church world. In general, a lot of churches are doing this really, really well, and even mega churches are doing it really, really well. But they have radical leaders

Yeah.

who understand the dichotomy of ocean swimming versus pool swimming.

Yeah, and it's a, it's a challenge, and again, depending on your background coming into this conversation, [00:14:00] you know, you might be looking at this and this, this resonates with you because maybe you have a, a Christian tradition in your background. Maybe, maybe this idea of Jesus is very familiar to you. For some of you listening, it's a very unfamiliar idea.

But it is interesting because I think if we're really honest about the, about this, if we look at. The state of Christianity in the world today, Barry, whether it's in North America or around the world, it, it, it has shades of Jesus in it. But it is often not a, not a wonderful reflection of times of actually this person described in, in, in the documents that one would read and you've studied for many years, to your point, he, he seems to be counter.

Pool. He, he's not a pool, he's not a lifeguard at

Not a pool guy.

He's not a pool guy.

He was the lifeguard that pulled me out of the pool before I drown.

Yeah. And then he pulls you into deep waters [00:15:00] and you know, and you can see that. I mean, some of you, again, if you're listening in, you might be familiar with the, with the television show The Chosen, which has become quite popular. Which, I've watched a couple of episodes. My wife has watched many of them.

But it, you know, when you watch that, you get a clearer sense, maybe of the radical nature of this, of this, this historic person that we've really. Have I had trouble at times maybe in our culture and society and over the millennia of understanding who he really was, because we'd have to go back and read those original stories.

To see his nature was very counterintuitive to much of what is, is religious in our thinking today.

Yeah, and part of it is just because of how different cultures affect the church, because the church becomes enculturated. Just like any business or any kind of endeavor one does, and you either conform to that or you, or you swim against. The current of that, and I was with a group that I thought was doing just [00:16:00] that swimming against the current of that the vineyard was a non-traditional church from the beginning, as you know.

And, and so I think once you've been enculturated, you develop what's called some authors call a civil religion. In other words this is the way you behave. You know, you don't have, you don't have multicolored hair. You, you don't, you know, have tattoos. In the early days, that was a big deal when we opened the church.

Those are the kinds of people who came to us. Uh, you remember, and, and, and the other churches kinda looked down their nose on us and said, uh, I don't know if I want to expose my children to that. And I'm thinking, wait a second. Jesus hung around with horrors. He hung around with tax collectors. He hung around with lepers and he invited them to dinner.

And so that is what we tried to do and unfortunately, like any other institution, we became enculturated and it began to be more important about how many people showed up on a weekend. Then it did [00:17:00] becoming like Jesus and, and so again, let me just emphasize this very clearly for church folk who may be listening to this and thinking, I'm coming down on the church, I am not, I am committed to the church.

For me, there's no plan B, it's the church, it's the called out ones, it's the Ecclesia, and those are called out to what to give good news. So that's my frame of reference, but you can again apply it to many things.

Absolutely. So it's interesting 'cause your journey sort of in a sense. You, you, your journey starts swimming in the ocean at some

I, I think so. Yeah.

Then over time you go, you start actually you, you're, you're in the water, but the water is now contained in a way that it becomes a pool. And now you have this, this, this, um, this hesco prophet who comes to you and calls you back out somehow into the ocean.

And I would say that that sick, that journey, that cycle that [00:18:00] you went on Barry, is probably true for a lot of people. I think a lot of us. You know, when we're younger, particularly, or maybe in our teens, we, maybe we live more in with ocean thinking, ocean ideas. And then we get into, we settle into our life and it starts coming along and it feels similar, but it becomes very, very calculated, very controlled.

Lots of things happen, and then we may have an epiphany. And for some people it's a hesco experience. For some people it's, you know, maybe it's a midlife crisis. For some people it's a, the death of a dream or a death of somebody near them, they start to contemplate their life differently and they begin to realize that, man, I'm still in the water, but I'm not in the ocean anymore.

And it, it's a subtle thing that maybe happens in, in some ways, maybe we don't even realize it because we're in water. There's a familiarity. I. Then all of a sudden we have this epiphany that, man, this is contained in a concrete box.

And it, it is deceptive. It's [00:19:00] a horrible deception because as I said earlier, you're wet, you're swimming, and you're getting more tired than you should.

Hmm.

That leads to burnout. That's what the sterile pool leads to.

Interesting.

It leads to burnout, and until you get out of it, until the lifeguard comes, whoever that is for you, until the lifeguard comes and pulls you out, you're doomed.

Yeah. So I want you to think back to the first time you, so, so I'm interested to know, so you have this conversation with Hesco. So like in, in my movie mind right now, I see like you, I don't know, the, like the res sun comes off the ocean and you immediately start jogging towards the ocean right away. Or do you have to contemplate this for a while?

And what is it like getting into the ocean and swimming when you've been swimming in the pool for so long?

Um, it is a shock [00:20:00] and I did contemplate it for a while, several months before I made some major career decisions and, um, I. You know what it's like if you've been in California, the Pacific Ocean is extremely cold. The Atlantic Ocean's got the Gulf Stream and it's a little warmer, but the Pacific Ocean is a, a better metaphor because it, it hits you in the face and then you usually pull back.

I did, I pulled back and said, wait a second. I got pretty good here. What am I thinking? You know, so for me, maybe not for others, but for me it took some contemplation and some thinking and rereading Jesus and going through all that in my mind and figuring out the best version of me in this next season of my life.

And what I mean by that is not that I'm all that, but I need to portray the best version that God made me to be. [00:21:00] And, and, um, it, that wasn't it. What I was doing was not it.

So it's taking you some deeper waters. You, uh, went from maybe the little bit of safety of a church environment. You started to stir up some waters in that church. Make them a little bit deeper, darker, dangerous, which is kind of cool. And then you get a sense though, that that's, that's not the container that you need to swim in.

You, need to figure out different ways. you end up now, and you're involved in this, ministry where you're connecting with people who are in recovery. You're helping them, you're looking at world differently. You get into a world of book writing, and you start to articulate this.

This becomes a massive metaphor that shapes the books that you eventually write along the way. And so you've now, taken , I mean, you've always been a skillful communicator Barry, and a skillful or, um, and you we're able to write in relationship to creating mostly for speaking, but you wrote for other things.

I'm interested to know. So now you go out of the [00:22:00] safety of the pool of communicating with your voice. 'cause you've done this again, for those of you who understand, you know, Barry's world, Barry's in a church world that. In, in Canada, we don't have a lot of context for Barry, to be honest. We're, so you had multiple services on a Sunday, you had a large congregation, you were, you were delivering, you know, message after message after message, for weeks on end.

So we're talking probably, you know, you probably spoke 150, 200 plus times a year, if not more every year.

Mm-hmm.

so that was your great, one of your great strengths, of course, and, and that, but it also was a safe place where you understood your craft and could do that. Now you get out into the deep in a little darker ocean of writing. Which is a different way of expressing yourself. And again, if you're listening sometimes think about this. Sometimes you're doing something and you're doing it. You can do it with your hands tied behind your back. It's what learning psychologists suggest is that you're in quadrant three, where, where you're [00:23:00] unconsciously competent, you can do it with your hands tied behind your back, don't think about it.

And then you wanna learn something new. And where the, by the way, where the ocean is, is back in what behavioral learning psychology was called. Conscious incompetency, you know, you that you know you can't do it. So you give up the safe water of the safe pool water of the, of the world you've been in, where you're speaking all the time and not using communication, and now you're moving into a little bit more dangerous waters of beginning to write.

So does that go swimmingly in the beginning?

No, it doesn't. I had to learn to do it. , It, you know, writing is different than speaking. My son pointed that out to me. He said, dad, I'm reading your manuscript here. It sounds just like when you speak, I. And I says, is that bad? And he said, I don't know. What do you think? And it wasn't good. I mean, you know, I had to adjust everything.

Here's one thing I came into the contact with after I left the big church and the comfort of the pool that, may be germane to your question. May not, you can tell me. [00:24:00] Uh, I began to miss being on center stage,

Hmm.

so it was an ego thing for me. I didn't know it was in me. But boy was it ever in me. I began to miss people coming to me and saying, good job, preacher.

That was awesome. Right in the pocket, you know, stuff like that. And I didn't know how much I missed it until I got into the ocean when the fish didn't care. You know, and the life there was so different, and it wasn't about me at all. It was more about the life that I was beginning to delve into. And with respect to the writing, I had to teach myself.

I'm trying to write a fantasy novel right now, so I'm having to teach myself how to do dialogue and how to develop characters and all kinds of things like that. And it's like I'm teaching myself, which is probably dumb. I probably need to get some instruction on that. Maybe that's a tip for somebody.

It's like if you're gonna go in the ocean, go to somebody who's done it and see what you can learn from them. I [00:25:00] haven't done that very well, but that self regard, was something that the Holy Spirit kept poking me with and say, Hey, you don't have that anymore. Well, who are you now?

Well, as you say that, Barry, I get this picture in my mind. It's kind of interesting. So when you, so if I think about, 'cause I, I've been, you know, I've been to, Barry and Francis, , the condo there that their family has owned for a long time. I've been with my wife, my Pam have been there, and you have to get this sort of scene.

So you come out the. You know, their condo happens to be on the level, you know, right there, right at the pool. It's sort of cool. You come out, you go down to the pool, it's right there, and the pool is on this terrace, and then it, and then literally drops down like in front of you with concrete wall and there's the ocean.

So you literally can stand on the edge of the pool and look at the pool and then look right out to the ocean. So there's this deep connection, and as you're talking, I'm thinking about this. So you think about this, you look at the area size of that pool, and when you're in it. You figure by volume, how much space you're taking up and [00:26:00] how big your presence is in that pool, how much water you displace, and then all of a sudden you take your body and you put it out into this vastness and it does it, it it's nothing.

But in the pool, you're a center of attention. You're taking up space. People are looking at you and they're going, man, look at that guy swim. Then you take that same, you walk out just from where that picture is on that pool and you walk out and now you are a, you're just a speck in the vastness of the ocean.

And it does speak to the challenge, Barry, of us setting aside the things that make us feel more significant for the sake of something actually. More significant, which is the impact that we can have and the impact that the vastness of the ocean can have on us, and the effect that we can have when we swim in that wider ocean.

Because whether it's in a [00:27:00] business setting or a family context, or a community or even a church or however you're gonna look at it, it's a small ecosystem. And if we're not careful, we start thinking it's the, it's the real deal. It's, it's the ocean when it's just the pool. And so I love this metaphor 'cause it's so powerful.

And again, if you're listening in, you are listening for a reason. I always say that, and for some of you, it's gonna stir some thoughts around faith and spirituality and your understanding of God and the divine and all the things of these things in our life. For some of others of you, it's gonna remind you that in your business, you're swimming in the pool, you're playing it safe.

And part of it is because you, you know, you're the big man or the big woman in that little pool. And then you get out into something bigger and it feels dangerous, but it's the place you need to be in the end. So Barry, I love this journey and I love the conversation. So you get this idea, now you're gonna take this idea.

Uh, I, by the way, I hope Hesco got royalties for these things.

No, no, I'm, I'm giving him nothing.

We're giving him nothing. We're giving him a little shout out. So Hess, you have the Hess, you get Hesed, and then you have all this thing doing, and then you decide you're [00:28:00] gonna, you're gonna, you're gonna start writing some books on here.

And so you write a couple of books now that you've written, and both of them are tucked into this area. So the first book that you write, I believe, is called, uh, ocean Swimming.

swimming in the

Swimming in the ocean. So, tell me , what takes you to a point where you say, this is such a powerful metaphor.

I wanna write a book now around this, and I want everybody to understand this story and hear this challenge. How does that start forming and what's that journey been like with you? Let's talk about book one first to

Yeah. Book one was you, I love the church. It may not sound like it from some of the things I've said, but I mean, that's what the church needs. It needs critics and it needs critics who love the church. And that might be, uh, uh. Very, very good for a, a, a Muslim to, to say a Hindu or anybody else who loves their tradition.

And that's why I wrote this book. So this is. 52 [00:29:00] devotionals. The first book for people who want to be ocean swimmers, and this is how I screwed up as an ocean swimmer. Maybe the subject of one of the devotionals. The next one might be, have you ever thought of Jesus this way? And, you know, all these kinds of challenges to go a little deeper in your discipleship with Jesus.

And, and so there are 52 devotions based around this new. Invitation for people in the church who may be caught in the chlorinated pool, but they would like to swim in the life of God.

Yeah.

this is to be a little cattle prod like Hess was to me. So that's, that's the first book.

Well, and the other thing is, is that, you know, what I, I like is we've got this thing and it's sort of the way the world works over millennia. So what. We think is new, is actually ancient. So in fact, you know, you're bringing back an ancient way of understanding actually Jesus's [00:30:00] provocation to the people of his day, which was what actually.

Got him offside most days with the religious people of his day. What got him offside with political rulers that got, got him offside with lots of people except for, you know, people, you know, people with tattoos, scraggly hair and a lot of, lot of, lot of awesome crazy stuff in their life.

But it, it's so ancient. It's understanding, it's almost sad in some ways that it seems new. 'cause it's, it's actually the way, it, way it started and the way maybe it should have been maintained. But we move away from things over time and we have to rediscover 'em. That's part of the human journey. So it's a great book.

Again, if you are interested in that book, you can pick it up on Amazon. It's an excellent book. And again, you, I would say, whether you're a person of faith or not, you're gonna find some provocation in that book that would be of interest to you. And so, ocean swimming.

Swimming in the ocean.

I get this wrong all the time.

Swimming in [00:31:00] the ocean. I know why, because it was always ocean swimmer and then we had to change or something. For the name of the book,

Well, you're one of the alpha readers for

I was an alpha reader, and I was also an original funder of the website.

That's right. You

what I, I, I got, I got some skin in this game, but I don't, no, I don't make any money.

So we're all

you. For you listeners who don't know who Tim is, this is what he does. He promotes other people's dreams and in doing so, he furthers his own.

Barry, that's very complimentary. Thank you. That's very flattering. I appreciate that. And, , you know what I love about you as a person, Barry, and these books and all these things, is you are just, you are such a genuine expression of what you believe. About who God is and who Jesus is and what that mandate looks like.

You have always challenged yourself to live genuinely, to live authentically, to live a real life and have real impact in people's lives, and I will always have respect for that. [00:32:00] For those of you who have ever read my book. You know, I actually talk about Barry in one of my chapters and I talk about how unforgettable people are, are, are, you know, so unrelenting that they can almost be annoying.

That's the chapter, and, you know, unrelenting is very different than relentless. That that's a very negative thing, and Barry is unrelenting. And he has been unrelenting in my life in that when he, he will consistently call me to something bigger and better but what Barry will never do is call someone to someplace he's never been. That, by the way, I think has just smells of hypocrisy when we call people into something or ask them to do something that we're not willing to do or haven't demonstrated a capacity to do or desire to do. There's a lot of disingenuousness in that. And Barry, you've always gone first. Got in the deep end.

Ask questions, and then you've invited people to come in with you, and I have a lot of tremendous respect for you as you've lived that journey. [00:33:00] And obviously your wife, France, who's an amazing woman, your kids, I mean, just a really awesome experience that you guys have had. And of course. You know, absolutely.

You know, we won't get into telling your story, but you know, you were one of those people that, needed recovery a long time ago, and then you had an encounter that led you in a different direction.

Yeah.

So let's go to book two now. So book one, book two. So now you're exploring book two. What's book two all about?

Well, uh, there's a famous prayer that Jesus gave the only prayer he ever gave to his people verbatim. And that's the Lord's Prayer. And, at the end of every Alcoholic's Anonymous meeting, people join hands and they say the Lord's Prayer. That's just part of the recovery community and about. Well, I would say 95% of 'em don't know what they're saying.

It's like the Pledge of Allegiance to the American flag. And you know, when I was a kid I didn't know what it meant, nor did I care. I just knew the words. Well, that's what people do with the only prayer that Jesus ever gave the church his people. And so what I [00:34:00] decided to do was try to write a book and tease out what each of those petitions mean so people could actually get their.

Claws into it and figure out how to pray. Because each petition in the Lord's Prayer just happens to be a, a placeholder for 50 other petitions that you pray, right, right underneath it. Because I mean, when you learn how to pray the Lord's Prayer like that, what you end up doing is, you look up at the clock and two hours have gone by. For example, when you pray, the Lord's prayers are all in plural. So you're not just praying for you when you, when you ask God to feed the hungry in the Lord's prayer and you know, give us this day our daily bread, it's us. So you're praying for people in Vietnam that have no food, and you're not only doing that, but you're joining millions of other people who are praying the very same words, possibly at the very same time.

There's such power. In that, that I wanted the church to know [00:35:00] about that. Again, I love the church, so I wanted people not to waste this prayer anymore. So that's what that book's about.

Hmm. And the title of that book is,

It's, the ocean swimmer's prayer. If

there you go. We got a theme.

swim in the ocean, you better have the same lifeline Jesus did.

And Jesus' lifeline was to his father through what we call prayer.

Yeah. And, and again, if you're listening in and that that's your history or background, you're gonna relate to that in another, some way. For those of you who don't, you might relate to another way. I think the interesting thing for me, Barry, that I, I wanna speak a little bit about and, and I'd like to talk about, so it's interesting because. I think that part of this metaphor for me as we talk about it, and maybe it's connected to this idea of the Lord's Prayer here, is, you know, it's about connection and relationship. And so in the pool you have connection to water, but no relationship to life. And in the ocean you have connection to the water.

You have [00:36:00] relationship to life, you relate to some of the things around you. And it would seem to me that even the way that the Lord's Prayer starts as we understand it, and as we have it, is an interesting relational term that is the framework. I mean, growing up in Canada, we said the Lord's Prayer every day in school.

Every day. And I, you know, so I probably have recited the Lord's Prayer, you know, thousands of times without. Ever really understanding what I was saying. To your point, it's sort of this rote thing that we do, and so really getting people to consider that. But it is interesting because, you know, most people's belief about the Divine or a God, or however we might describe this thing that is this, this thing or person that seems

hard to get our hands around, which I guess that's good. 'cause if we could get our hands around everything, I guess we would sort of be, God, we can't get our hands around all of it. But Jesus has this interesting way [00:37:00] of framing everything in this relational context from the very beginning. You know, and I think the challenge of course for some people is that some of us maybe don't have the best father rules in our life, and we can get all messed up in this and that we ought not to.

But the reality is, is there's this sense that we are in relationship to your point with one another, but we're in relationship. To, to this, to this divine being. For some of you, again, listening in, you think that's cock Amy crap. Fair enough. And for others of you listening in, that resonates with you.

But it's, it's a relationship experience that we have in the environments we're in that seems to be transformational.

Yeah, I, I would totally agree with that. In the plural nature of the Lord's Prayer affirms what you just said, not just. People, you're not asking just for daily bread for people who are Christian,

Right.

you're asking for people who need food.

Yeah.

And so that relationship is, [00:38:00] is built into it. The other thing relationally in the Lord's Prayer is Jesus doesn't use this word in Matthew's version or Luke's the, the word for father is Peter.

But Jesus actually had a relationship with God where he called him papa.

Hmm.

Abba means papa or Daddy. And in the most. Stressful part of his life. If you know the New Testament story is when Jesus is in the garden of the Gethsemane and he's saying, could there be another way to do this? God, could you help me understand this?

I does it have to be this way? And then finally Jesus says, not my will, but your will be done. And in that very stressful time of his life, he calls him, daddy, daddy, can we do this another way?

Huh, interesting.

about as relational as it gets.

about as relational it gets, and, you know, and so there's a lot of different sub-themes in this conversation that,

Yeah, there is.

choose to sort of find as you listen. And again, I, I always say you listen for a reason. And, [00:39:00] and by the way, if you're still listening, then you're listening for a reason.

For sure. And, and, and you know, one of the things I wanna say to my listeners, you know, one thing about, for me about the Unmodified podcast is the Unmodified podcast has to be for me, this eclectic soup of. Everything in all things. And so, you know, we've explored so many different subjects. I've had conversations with so many different people over the years, and I will be honest, , you know, this is part of my history, the conversation that Barry and I are having, and I.

Barry and I have a lot of history together in these circles we're talking about and work, doing great work together in foreign countries and, and together in places. And, and so, you know, over time, , for a, for a long time I shied away from some of these conversations actually in my podcast. It wasn't something I wanted to have a lot of conversation about.

I've come to a, belief in my own journey, Barry, and it's one of the reasons why I wanted to have you on the show is. One, I have deep respect for you and the credibility of your journey [00:40:00] over a long time, a life well lived. I mean, for those of you on the YouTube channel, you won't believe this, but Barry is 75 years old.

I mean, he, you know, you should get some of what he's got. 'cause if that's, look, that's 75. I want, I want 75 looking like that for me. But Barry's been on a journey. His family and his wonderful wife, friend's been on journey for a long time and they're the real deal. They're the real deal in this journey.

They, you know, that doesn't make them perfect, but they are always asking themselves a different question about what does it like to live well not just for themselves, but for others, and to make a contribution in their community, whether it's in the recovery community or wherever Barry and friends are investing in, their families investing.

And you know, now Joe Barry's son is doing a similar thing, different, it's new. But bringing back ancient ideas and making them new again in the community he's in. It's a really awesome thing. But, you know, I, I don't need to shy away from these conversations from the sense of, this is, these are important conversations.

This is about. Actually swimming in the ocean. And whether it's [00:41:00] swimming in the ocean, in your business, in your community, in your family, or in your spiritual journey, regardless of your religious affiliation, all of us can get stuck in the pool. And you know, I always wanna try to find myself out, out into deeper dangerous waters.

That's led me in lots of crazy places in my life. But at the end of the day, you know, this is part of my journey and part of what shaped me and informed me is, is some of the beliefs that we're talking about today. I might hold them in different ways and in varying degrees I. I can't deny that they've shaped my thinking and they've shaped my thinking a little bit about moving out from that sterile environment and moving out where it is a bit more dark and dangerous.

And that I think is where the divine lives. I think the divine God, you know, again, people describe it in different ways, Barry, as you know, but I think the essence of that, which is much more, powerful and much more. Wise than we are [00:42:00] lives in a place where everything isn't buttoned up and certain.

Yeah. Well, and I think that's one of the things I like about Unmodified is that, you know, at first when you started this, I thought, what's he doing now? You know? And, and, and I see that one of the things you always add is for others to what, however, you're, encouraging business folk or whatever, writers, artists, whatever, it's like.

For others is always added onto that. And that's very Jesus, because he said, you're not gonna find out what life's really about until you lose yours and when you give your life away. He said, you find out, wow, this is life. That's life in the ocean.

Yeah.

It's giving your life away. And I see you doing that with this broadcast.

And again, however, you know my frame of reference, you said I could be myself, so I, I wa I

I [00:43:00] like it. This is why you gotta be yourself or you're not un commodify. You'd just be a

that's right. Well, I couldn't come on here and not be unmodified, I'll tell you that. But that I think is a very important thing for your listeners to hear no matter what their religious persuasion is or if they have none at all. And that is, there's something wonderful about giving your life away that can't be reproduced by hoarding

Yeah. And it, and again, it's interesting because it, it just fights against this, against the spirit of independency that has just crept into, well, north America, probably in particular, but course globally. But, you know, we become so independent. We don't wanna be codependent obviously, but the idea of community and interdependency is a really, it's a hard.

Thing for us. And again, this is kind of an interesting thing, you know, oftentimes, you know, you, you, you can swim in a pool by yourself, but you'll never be in the ocean by yourself. 'cause there's always gonna be somebody else in that ocean. And so it's a communal experience. And so listen Barry, [00:44:00] I what a great conversation and thanks so much for sharing a little bit about your journey and what's important to you and how you've gotten here.

And, and, and again, I just, the irony of this is, is. Is like in ancient times, it took a Jewish man to speak into a system that was stuck in the pool

That's right.

and call it into something much bigger, much more dangerous, much more. Wonderful that it actually, your experience is similar in that a. Rather boisterous, but wonderfully wise Jewish man heskes you one day and says, man, get your sore ass out of the pool and take it in the ocean, brother.

That's

he didn't say that to you, but

He didn't even know what he was saying

No, exactly, because that's the what best thing is that sometimes we're speaking something that we don't even really understand and it's bringing truth and provocation to others. And [00:45:00] so, Barry, appreciate the conversation. Again, if you're interested in Barry's books, you can find them.

You can find 'em, online. I think you can find 'em on Amazon. Are they, are they available anywhere else or Amazon primarily.

Amazon primarily, and all the books you're selling. For me up in Canada, I what's, what's that latest royalty for? From Canada?

Absolutely nothing. It's just a bottle of wine when we see you next time.

okay.

what it is. Yes. I hope so too. Well, listen guys, again, thanks for listening in. You listen in for a reason. I always say that to you. And so here's my challenge to you. As we finish up, just like we uncork this bottle of wine together tonight and we, we drank of something, I'm just gonna ask you to just sip this conversation a little bit, okay?

And just take it in. And for those of you who it resonates really well with, that's amazing. For those of you who are not sure where you wanna process this, that's okay too. Regardless of that, my challenge to you is ask yourself, what can you do with this conversation for your benefit, the positive benefit of others?

And as you do that and you work it out, as you get it outta the pool and into a deeper ocean in your [00:46:00] life, do me a favor, DM me or email me at tim@unccommodified.com and let me know how you're uncorking this thing and pushing it outta your life and how you're stepping out of the sterile pool and into something where real life lives and happens and is wondrous.

Thanks for listening. Cheers.