Note: Can I Say This at Church is produced for audio listening. If able, I strongly encourage you to listen to the audio, which has inflection, emotion, sarcasm where applicable, and emphasis for points that may not come across well in written word. This transcript is generated using a combination of my ears and software, and may contain errors. Please check the episode for clarity before quoting in print.

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Mike 0:00

You know, sometimes mystics are improperly pigeonholed as being pie in the sky, impractical people. But for me mysticism is actually about loving what is, it's about embracing what is, the fullness of reality, which, at a bare minimum has to include my idea of God. Like if God isn't at bare minimum reality, then then God is not worthy of the name. And it's an art of union as opposed to a science of union because a science of Union would imply that we're not already one with this reality that we're not already a part of this reality. And frankly, I think that is the curse of the civilizational mind to see ourselves as separate.

Seth Price 1:06

Welcome back to the Can I Say This At Church podcast. I'm still Seth, you're still you. I'm excited. December is about done. 2018 is about done. I had so much growth and met so many new people and talk to so many different people this year. It's been amazing. So thank you to every single one of you that support the show in any way, whether you've rated and reviewed on iTunes and if you haven't done that shame on you go do that. You know, you've wanted to for a while, it's like 26 characters, let's make it happen.

Specifically, though, to each and every single one of you that support the show financially on Patreon. It is a privilege and a blessing to engage with you. It is a privilege and a blessing to partner with you in this way. I'm continually humbled by your generosity, and I'm so encouraged by it. Can't wait to see what 2019 brings. If you've not yet done that, please just visit the website at Can I Say This At Church.com there's a support the show button in the top right? Or patreon.com/CanISayThisAtChurch and do that consider in any way shape or form whatever you're comfortable with. support the show, I'd love to throw you some things that other people don't hear. Every once in a while get to see what I look like, which is it's dangerous, but it is what it is.

This week's episode was both one of the hardest ones that I've ever done. And it's also some of the most fun I've had in a while in a conversation. I mean, Mike Morrell was the guest this week, as you've seen if you downloaded the episode, and we talked about the future of the church, we talked about creation, we talked about mysticism, we talked about Mythicism, the Enneagram, a little bit of Donald Trump, but don't let that scare you. But we we talked about so many things, and overarching Lee, it's about intention with the way that we treat each other relationally and what That relationship then means for how I interact with God. And then that's then going to inform how I treat you and others around you and me, intentionally, and it's cyclical and the work is hard, and it's worth it.

Before we dive in, one of my favorite quotes is from Karl Rahner, who basically said,

the Christian of the future will be a mystic or won't exist at all.

I find there's so much truth in that. And I also find it disconcerting and uncomfortable, and I think that's the point. And so here it is. Roll the tape on the conversation with Mike Morrell.

Seth Price 4:00

Mike Morrell, welcome to the Can I Say This At Church podcast! I know we've tried to do this often on for months and because you're busy and because I'm busy, it's been unable to happen until now. And so I'm thankful for your time today and welcome to the show.

Mike 4:14

Thank you, Seth. Yeah, I'm glad to be here. We are some busy humans, but here we are.

Seth Price 4:18

I think all humans are busy. That's probably our problem. We should learn to let go of one thing and not replace it with something else. But that's not why…that's not why I brought you on for those listening. I'm sure they've seen your name either on a book with Richard Rohr, or your name gets thrown around and quoted a lot I've seen in at least the groups that I'm in on Facebook and or Twitter. But can you tell those unfamiliar with you kind of a little bit about yourself, kind of your upbringing and then what impacted your life to get you where you're at now in the way that you do you?

Mike 4:48

Sure, yeah.

So I am a writer, blogger, and I love working with authors and publishers and events to create really beautiful experiences for folks in writing that moves the needle forward in terms of living a wholehearted, open-handed life with God and each other. It's because I suck at having a day job. I've kind of made that up for most of my adult life. And it seeming to work so far.

My upbringing, I grew up in the bible belt in Georgia, suburban metro Atlanta area, Georgia, and was kind of a denominational mutt. I came to faith in a Southern Baptist context and then we'll add a born again experience when I was four years old, you know, said that sinners prayer and repented from my life of debauchery up to that point.

Seth Price 5:47

Not to cut you off? What does that look like from zero to four? What does debauchery look like for a three year and 11 month (old) person?

Mike 5:55

I was being somewhat tongue in cheek.

Seth Price 5:57

Oh yes, I’m aware.

Mike 5:59

Im sure I felt guilty about something But no, it was actually, it was a conscious choice. I still remember it and it seemed to have an impact on me. You know, my parents were sort of cultural Christians, Catholic and Southern Baptists respectively, and they were from further up north. My dad was from Appalachian West Virginia, my mom from Connecticut. And so coming to the south moving to Georgia, they had this inevitable confrontation with faith both through television at the time, Pat Robertson-700 Club, as well as through friends I think and so, you know, started bringing me to church and they have their own, born again, experiences, you know, they were seekers in the early 80s.

And by the late 80s, we we turned up the dial a little bit, got involved with Pentecostal folks. I had a baptism in the Holy Spirit experience, which, if your listeners don't know what that means, there are some things branches of Christianity that believe that not only do you enter into a sort of salvific covenant through belief and or baptism in water, but there's this sort of extra dose of divinity that you can get by just being more receptive, more open to the power of God to come inside of you and work on you.

And for my parents that looked like having a 30 plus year smoking addiction, and wanting deliverance from that, and they had this baptism in the Holy Spirit experience at our kitchen table with a couple of friends who are praying with them, and they quit smoking cold turkey that day and never smoked again. It was really powerful for them.

And I saw that and I was moved by that and had my own experience with speaking in tongues, sort of ecstatic speech, which became a reliable feature within a few years. You know, some people in the Pentecostal world, you get kind of one and done with your baptism experience and the spirit, but others can do it on the regular. And that was a value in the churches that we were in. And yeah, I don't know that was a really experiential time for me and my faith, also very volatile in certain ways. And there were different church scandals and things of that nature.

And my parents left that movement after about, oh, I don't know, five, six years. And then I went to the Presbyterian Church, which is like the exact opposite, conservative Presbyterian, PCA environment, which I appreciated at the time for encouraging more of a life of the mind than the Pentecostal church did. You know it was okay to read books was also okay to drink alcohol. Maybe not quite okay as a teenager but you know, I still did.

Seth Price 8:56

(laughs)

I’m pretty sure it’s legal in your house with your parents though. So you're good.

Mike 8:59

Yeah. It's legal in my house with my parents but maybe not legal in the pastor's house with my best friend's parents. I don't know.

Seth Price 9:08

They were parents and it's still a house. So we’ll allow it.

Mike 9:11

That’s true; yeah, we'll go with that. We are past the statute of limitations anyway. But, yeah, I kind of grew up in this composted environment, the Bible Belt, where everyone took faith really seriously. You know, Baptists were really big on evangelism and Pentecostals were really big on living in the power of the Spirit. Presbyterians were really big on theology and their own particular ideas of you know, predestination, etc. and it had an interesting impact on me. On the one hand, I really appreciated the various distinctives you know, much like if you were shopping for wine or cars, you could be like, Oh, this is an interesting feature!

On the other hand, the sort of odious sectarianism really got to me. This feeling that these folks have the corner market and actually everyone else was, if not, you know, condemned to hell, certainly highly mistaken and will have to, you know, face a serious reckoning with the Almighty, sooner or later. And I don't know that had a practical effect of relativizing me, to a certain extent, at a relatively young age by the time you know, I was in high senior in high school. Whereas all these movements taught absolute truth, the idea of absolute truth and that they held the corner market on it, I saw that there were multiple competing truth claims, and rather than choosing between one of them, I sort of saw them all as being partially correct and partially incorrect.

And so, entering into college, which was, you know, the advent of the Internet, at least in popular use, like late 90s. I was impacted by two movements in my faith formation. One was the house church movement, the sort of decentralized and in my case egalitarian, open, participatory, network of community based neighborhood based house churches that changed how I saw ecclesiology and a lot of ways and also introduced me to the mystics.

This was a very eclectic stream that really enjoyed Brother Lawrence, Jean Dion, François Fénelon and Michael Molina in particular. And also with the coalescence of the internet the very early birth pangs of what became known as the emerging church conversation.

And if I could maybe add a third stream in there. It was like the new monasticism these other folks who were living in community and creating vows. And they had more of an outward focus than our inwardly focused house church movement, or the focus on being a witness-being a witness for justice and equality in neighborhoods that were quote at the margins of empire as they put it. And also 9/11 happened, you know, a few years, a few short years later, and with 9/11 happening that really led to me having a reckoning in my politics. Which before that were by default, conservative Republican. And really, by the time I was in high school republicans weren't conservative enough for me. So I hung out with John Birch Society types and libertarians. And I found them to be more intellectually satisfying than the sort of wishy washy Republicans.

And so, but 9/11 happens and, you know, there's all this saber rattling about going to war with Iraq, and I knew from what I read, Iraq didn't really have anything to do with 9/11. And so seeing the sort of reflexive, patriotic, saber rattling was disturbing to me. And that was when I discovered anabaptists, Christian anarchists, with like, Jesus radicals com which is still around. And there was this group of Vineyard pastors that created this statement called Kingdom Now 95 theses against the nationalist idolatry of the United States.

Seth Price 13:10

I've not read that how well does it hold up, if you remember any of the thesis…because some things were written really to that time?

Mike 13:16

Yeah, it's been a while since I've looked at it. The website was Kingdomnow.org, which is not around anymore, but if you went on archive.org I'm sure you’d pull it up. Christian Smith, who runs the Englewood Review of Books now he was one of the main writers of that. I'm imagining it probably feels a lot like clueless, white, pacifism these days if I were to read elements of it, and at the same time, it was perfect for where I was at because it had chapter and verse references for every one of the theses about “hey we are to have allegiance to a king who knows no you no national boundary we are a people have ever reach tribe tongue in nation. You know if we're if we were to turn the other cheek and love our enemies, why are we going to war? And yeah, you know I discovered probably Stanley Hauerwas at that time John Howard Yoder, you know, all the anabaptist crew.

So that was a three fold cord of I'd say house church, Emergent Church and then new monasticism/Anabaptism all explored within the relative freedom of college. And that really began to evolve my faith.

Seth Price 14:32

So that's a lot of buckets. So you've gone from ultra conservative to leaning more conservative politically, to then blowing everything up leaning into mysticism and a few other things. So what do you call yourself today?

Like if I said, alright, Mike, what kind of Christian are you, is Christian the right term? What 30 second elevator pitch, what are you religiously?

Mike 14:57

Sure Christian is totally the right term. I don't like to get to precious about terminology, you know, yeah, labels suck, and we use them as a certainly necessary shorthand. So if I had 30 seconds in an elevator, I would probably say that I'm a friend of God and an aspiring follower of Jesus. If people ask me what kind of Christian I am? I would say, I'm a composted Christian, that there are all these elements in my life of Christianity and rather than the Protestant Reformation idea of scorched earth, starting from scratch, I see all these elements, even the ones that are decaying as nourishing the soil of my life. But even if they're rotting, they actually have something valuable to offer me and it would be disingenuous of me to disown any part of my past.

Seth Price 15:43

Last question about your past and then I’d like to move into hopefully what the future looks like for well, I think honestly for the faith if there's still going to be one for my kids, but yeah, we'll get there-so you have kids like mine, and so I find often and some of my changes in my viewpoints on religion and politics and faith and posture towards those that have less privileged than I do. And even recognizing that that's the thing, as opposed to feeling like I'm losing rights because other people are gaining them. When I didn't really lose anything, they just got “ some” which is, which is progress. So how do you explain God to your kids? And I say this not knowing exactly how old your kids are. And so if they're one, this is a really easy answer, you probably don't. But how do you navigate questions about God with your background in lens with your children?

Mike 16:39

Yeah, yeah, it's a great question. So you know, I have two girls, one is four and one is 11. And our four year old has special needs. She has Downs Syndrome, so that definitely, you know impacts every aspect of our parenting and relating to her with our oldest she has always been super inquisitive. And I don't know that I've ever sat down and had an ontological chat about God.

But she has been raised in in faith communities. We relocated from the Atlanta area to Raleigh, North Carolina in the mid 2000s, with about a dozen of our friends that went to college together to start this house church community. She was born in that context, though I doubt she remembers it, because within a couple of years, you know, we sadly imploded due to a variety of internal and external drama.

But we found another faith community that was fairly similar in certain ways in Raleigh, called Trinity's Place it was this church experiment, run by a couple of ministers from a tiny progressive denomination called the Alliance of Baptists. The Alliance of Baptists are our contemplative. They have a little bit of a Celtic flair. They're still undeniably Baptists and even Anabaptist and we met in a circle. We had We celebrated communion every week we had different folks share. And so she grew up with that in her earlier years that was also an experiment that passed away more with a whimper than a bang. It wasn't super dramatic, but the main folks who were catalyzing it moved out of the area for different reasons.

And we've continued to find faith communities that we're matching with our values and our momentum. And we can go into more of that later when we talk about possible futures, preferable futures, of Church and Christianity. But as I say, you know, she always had that sort of social public faith formation element. And then we try to practice centering prayer together. There's a little book actually, that outlines centering prayer, which if you're listening, so now is a streamlined form of the ancient contemplative tradition within Christianity. It's a a 20 minute practice, at least for adults. That The 20 minute practice where you, you sit with a simple intention to be with yourself just as you are and to be with God just as God is. And you hold a sacred word that symbolizes your intention to simply be there.

And whenever you catch your mind going off and drifting off to something, you use that word, not as a mantra, but as a kind of release a kind of internal muscle of of letting go and just relaxing back into that awareness of God. And so it's a practice that I've aspired to and have failed at and I've picked up again for about 20 years now. And it’s one that I taught, our oldest daughter, the kids version is like, seven minutes. So you know, she had that perspective that practice and being a reader, being a voracious reader and being my daughter, she loves comic books. So I've gotten her various comic book adaptations of the Bible.

Seth Price 20:04

I didn’t know those were a thing.

Mike 20:05

Oh, gosh, there's so many different ones and none of them are like progressive per se. They're all from various lenses of various, you know, creators that I just love to read them all. And then we talk about them and she'll notice that like, Oh, you know in this comic Bible, the story goes this way, this comic Bible, the story goes that way…and I'll be like, “Yeah, why do you suppose that is?” And so we get to have conversations that not unlike the actual Bible, different authors have different experiences and perspectives, they weave into the text. And so she's very literate with the Bible, and you know, now has her own grown up Bible. I don't know how much of it she's cracked. But she does have it. And, you know, when I worked on the book with with Richard, The Divine Dance, of course, she had questions about what a trinity was at. And so we did that. Probably The most ontological conversation about God that we we've had. And I said, “Well, you know, we we believe in a God who is the generator and Sustainer of life and, and we share that belief with with Jewish people and with Muslim people. And at the same time, we Christians have this interesting experience that's kind of unique, where we experienced this man, Jesus of Nazareth, as somehow also being divine. But we only believe in one God and so how can how can Jesus be divine also, and who is this Holy Spirit who, you know, Jesus says, He sends us this comforter is the Sustainer is this helper”. And I said, as Christians, you know, began to think about all of that for a few hundred years and decide that that we still wanted to be a part of the One God club.

And at the same time, we saw divinity present in Jesus and we took seriously Jesus promise of God dwelling inside of us. And we call that the Trinity. And it's God that is one but the Oneness is in relationship, that there's this relationship that we call Father, Son, and Spirit. And we also can experience oneness and relationship with each other as we move forward and in the Shalom and the goodness of what God's doing on Earth.

Seth Price 22:21

So I only wrote two questions on the Trinity because I'd be a fool to not ask you about the trinity considering you worked on that text with Richard; if I was to actually practice what I say that Christians believe in the Trinity, what would be different about the way that we do church and relationships now? Because I hear you say it's relational?

Mike 22:37

Yes.

Seth Price 22:38

But I know we never really talk about the Holy Spirit, except for that one week at Pentecost, that we do at that one time and all of the songs say fire and spirit in them and then we won't do them again for an entire year. And so if I was to actually live and breathe what Trinity should look like, how should that affect the way that I'm relationally posturing myself to anything?

Mike 23:00

Well, first, I’ve got to say you obviously didn't grow up Pentecostal because then you would have had Holy Spirit 24-7, and maybe there's this dude named Jesus has something to do with bringing the spirit. (laughter)

Seth Price 23:11

I grew up very southern baptist. And then after one of those Baptist conferences where everybody wanted to argue, for the 2800th time, I then went to an independent regular Baptist. Now I'm with co-operative Baptist. I can't get out of the Baptist camp, but I really love the church that I'm at now. So I'm not mad about it.

Mike 23:32

Did you find that the regular Baptist had better fiber intake?

Seth Price 23:37

Well, it's more consistent fiber. I don't know that it's better but it's definitely it's something in the way that we did communion. It's just better consistency. Definitely not gluten free but better overall bread.

Mike 23:52

Good. That’s helpful (laughter from both.)

Well, so, so yeah, I mean, you know, some folks have talked about how different denominations or historical periods generally emphasise one person of the Trinity over another. And I think it's interesting to look at that we gravitate maybe towards certain depiction or lens of God more than others. But the idea of, what theologians would technically call the social Trinity, this sort of circle dance of the, you know interrelate lationship and the cooperation of the members of the Trinity both within themselves and generating reality. That's something that Christians hardly ever think about barely in theology and almost never in the pulpit. And that's why I think my friend Paul Young's novel, The Shack did so well. So I mean, that was when I really first started thinking about the Trinity. I was a part of the launch team for The Shack back when it was a small independently published venture, I guess, over a decade ago now. And, you know, it's a very narrative depiction of this Papa who loves his, you know, son, his slash her son, so much and this sort of flitting about energetic, but of benevolent spirit, and how much they all adore each other and that within that relationship, all of these paradoxes are eased including the paradoxes of senseless death and pain.

And I think that that novel really hit a chord with Christians and non Christians alike because suddenly, it was an alternative image of God. It was distinct from the sort of, you know, Zeus, a distanced stern Zeus of the the Calvinists of the Puritans, or the sort of Santa Claus slot machine of popular TV preachers and prosperity preachers. And of course, you know, different than the super remote deist deity of, you know, maybe unitarianism or Transcendentalism.

So you have like all these American Gods not to confuse it with the excellent Neil Gaiman novel and show, that aren't working for a lot of people these days. And The Shack and I think the divine dance in our own small way, or showing that, hey, this, this dusty concept of the social Trinity can actually be quite juicy, it can actually transform everything.

And what it transforms for me is to know that, as I sit here with you, you're not disconnected from me. That our stories are intimately tied to each other, and that you bear the imago dei, the image of God. That the image of God, in fact, can't fully be properly buried by individuals, but it takes a community of people to truly generate the image of God. And then to me that changes everything.

Seth Price 26:52

Well I have two questions on that. The first one is when you say Zeusian God, all I can picture in my head is the Walt Disney Zeus Hercules movie of him just throwing bolts at people or spoiler alert, improperly impregnating humanity to make Hercules with no consent. But it's specifically about the imago dei are you saying that I can't, as an individual, bear the full image of God outside of relationship, is that what you're saying? Or that my image bearing of God has made better through relationships?

Mike 27:27

I mean, if I had to choose between the two options I would probably veer toward the latter, you know, as a pantheist. I think there's something of divinity in every rock and you know, shards of glass and everything that exists. But I do think that that unique way that we bear the imago dei is social. I mean, if you even think of Genesis where the idea makes its debut. It's, you know, male and female, God created them in the image of God created them it was it's a plurality. It's not a solo sport.

And I think that that's actually how a lot of theologians come to the Trinity through a sort of internal logic, which is that if we attest as Christians that God is love, well, for God to be love, there needs to at the very minimum, be a lover and a beloved. And for God to be love in a way that isn't simply self-reinforcing in the way that narcissistic coupling can often happen, that God being a three comes in really handy metaphysically.

So I would say that definitely, it really ups the game of how are we unique image bearers in a way that could be different. And at the same time, I want to maintain creaturely humility, because I think that sometimes various animal kingdoms can model interdependence a lot better than we can.

Seth Price 28:55

Getting back to that metaphor of Zeus. So one of the things I wanted to talk with you about was mysticism. But before I do oftentimes when I say mysticism what people hear me wanting to talk about is…

Mike 29:10

Mythicism?

Seth Price 29:13

That's the one. I can't say it.

Mike 29:14

Do they? You have some really intelligent friends that could you know come up with that mishearing of a word.

Seth Price 29:18

I guess…so what is the big distinction between Zeusian and type God, which is a myth, you know, and oftentimes when I start talking about any mysticism, which is what I find myself, gravitating toward, often while I pray, or while I read or while I think or while I look at the mountains that I live next to is something much more grander than text on a page for me, but I've never been able to distinctly be able to say, “Well, here's where you can draw the line between mythisicm and mysticism”.

Mike 29:51

Wow, I've never even heard people wanting to conflate those two. So let me…let me sit with this for a second. What do people mean when they're thinking about mysticism?

Seth Price 30:02

I think they mean that I'm, for one, they usually mean I'm taking a low view of Scripture and elevating something that isn't, quote unquote, in the Bible to status of authority, whether or not it was written by someone. And that then I'm allowing outside influences that are myth to influence the way that I see God, I think is what they usually are trying to tell me.

Mike 30:23

Wow. So it's like, a willful mishearing of a phrase in a way that hurls invectives into your paraidgm.

Seth Price 30:30

Yeah. And I get it often enough, but usually on Facebook, and so I'm either typing something wrong, or I do have smart friends, and it's probably a little bit of both. It's probably more my fault than anything. But if it was a question I wanted to ask you.

Mike 30:46

Yeah, well, I mean, I think that first of all that kind of goes into this popular misconception that myth means lie. And I get that that's how we often use it in our current English language like oh, that's not true. That's just a myth.

But I think That like myth in the Joseph Campbell sense of the term, are the stories that actually tell really deep truths, whether they've really factually happened or not. And so, you know, clearly the stories of Zeus told truths about, Greek and Roman society, these various Pantheon, that were true about how their culture, their values, how they operated.

And in that sense of the term, I actually don't mind saying that a lot of even
Scripture, Christian scripture is myth. You know, clearly like letters between people like Paul writing the folks and saying, oh, by the way, don't forget to pick up my coat in such and such a town. It's not quite intended to be mythic literature. But there are other stories, especially I'd say the first you know, dozen or so chapters of Genesis and arguably Job, that are more parabolic, that are intended by their original hearers to be these epic stories that tell deep truths about who we are and who we claim to be. I've long since made peace with that, understanding that I don't have to have a completely 100% sort of out, “oh, this really happened”, and this is a myth, quote unquote, also because you know, people can enact things in real life that also have mythic significance. So there's that too.

Like sometimes, you know, some of my favorite contemporary New Testament scholars will be like, Well, you know, the meaning of this story of Jesus miracle is x, y, and z. And I'm like, oh, man, right on. I totally agree with that meaning, and as a Pentecostal, I saw weird stuff happen I can't discount all of. So it's possible for me that something weird really does happen and that it has this sort of mythic significance.

Seth Price 32:36

Yeah.

Mike 32:47

So those are my thoughts about about myth. Now, mysticism. You know, my favorite definition of mysticism comes from Evelyn Underhill. She was an early 20th century Anglican, spiritual writer and she talked about

mysticism was the art of union with reality.

And I really liked that because it places the emphasis in two places that I really like, which is art and reality. That, you know, sometimes mystics are improperly pigeonholed as being pie in the sky, impractical people. But for me mysticism is actually about loving what is. It's about embracing what is the fullness of reality, which at a bare minimum has to include my idea of God. Like if God isn't at bare minimum reality, then God is not worthy of the name. And it's an art of union as opposed to a science of union because a science of union would imply that we're not already one with this reality that we're not already a part of this reality.

And frankly, I think that is the curse of the civilizational mind. To see ourselves as separate.

Actually, I'm working on co-launching a nonprofit with a good friend of mine right now called Rewilder. And part of the core of it is our anthropological reading of Scripture, where we see the advent of agriculture and the advent of this separation mindset as being one of the same. And it opens in the Fertile Crescent where our monotheistic traditions emerge. It opens with the story of transitioning from a tree of life of wholeness of unity, to a tree of knowledge of good and evil, which is duality and discrimination. It opens with a garden, but then we're cast out of it. I really think that's what we experienced as a species.

We developed what evolutionary psychologists call self reflexive consciousness, where suddenly I'm a very distinctive, me, you're very distinctive, you and it gives the gift of a certain rich inner subjectivity and discrimination, but the curse is I no longer feel like we are brothers. I no longer feel one with my band of people, I no longer feel one with my environment, or myself as an embodied creature who has a bedrock place within this creaturely universe. I no longer feel intimately connected to Spirit or Divinity as I understand it, and when I don't feel connected when I'm cast out from that garden of interconnection, I'm capable of all kinds of atrocities, not because I'm evil, but because I'm lonely.

Seth Price 36:00

I want more of that, I don't even know where to read more of that but I want more of that. But what I'm hearing you say is the myth of Genesis is anthropologically related back to us being able to be self sustaining knowledge. And that made us inherently tribal. And not only tribal from each other, but tribal from the divine?

Mike 36:20

Oh, interesting that you're using the word tribe in that way. And I get that that's actually how a lot of people use it these days that tribal inherently means like cliquish, divisive, etc. I would actually love us to see a return of tribal as we were tribal for hundreds of thousands of years of our existence. As I continue to dive in anthropological literature, what I'm seeing is that when we were immediate/return foragers, what's more popularly known as being hunter gatherers, we basically lived in functional egalitarianism and did not have organized warfare, because our population was at a relatively low level for a few hundred thousand years. Whenever two tribes would start to kind of bump up against each other and food started to get a little scarce, it was way less resources to simply move in opposite directions than to fight over property. Because the Earth bore so much abundance during this time, there was a certain, you know, fertility by enlarge to the earth.

So again, it wasn't that these folks were like saints, and they weren’t terrible. It's about the sort of environmental triggers that signal certain things internally. So I think we actually became less tribal, and more civilizational when we began to till land, suddenly, we had the question of whose land is it? That was a question that never occurred to humans before the advent of agriculture about 6000-8000 years ago, and so suddenly, I had to know if this land was mine. And I needed to know who I was passing it along to. So my children had to become my property now as opposed to being raised in a village, my women had to become my property now. And you see this echoed in the language of even the 10 commandments.

I see it as a sort of loving divine condescension trying to limit the damages of agriculture. Because women are listed in a list of property, it's like don't covet your neighbor's oxen or their tools or their wife. It's like, wow, what is this? And, you know, on the one hand, I feel like we have far too many fundamentalists today that want to preserve that, you know, ethos as limit as property. And you might have more, you know, skeptic and atheist type saying, see, this proves that religion codifies women as property.

I think there's a third alternative, which is that culture in general, had this massive shift. What anthropologists Jared Diamond calls

one of the worst ecological and social disasters of the human species

and that religion was attempting to catch up with that religion suddenly recognize that there was a breach. That there was this fourfold alien from God, self, other, and world, and all healthy religion, all Healthy Spirituality is attempting to bridge that gap. It's attempting to provide us with the practices, the beliefs and the community forms that can reunite what has been lost. And the struggle is that we can't solve a problem at the level that has created it. And so you know, this era, the last 6000-8000 years, brought with it some alienation mindsets. And so even with the best of intentions religions and spiritualities often increase shame increase in grouping and infighting increased that unhealthy form of tribalism that you're naming.

And it's a real act of discernment to figure out what are the you know, the stories the community forms, the practices that can help; and one of the reasons I'm still a Christian is because I believe that Jesus of Nazareth embodied a lot of the ethos of immediate return foragers in his teachings of taking no thought for tomorrow—of considering the lilies of breaking bread as a sign of this sort of koinonia, this fellowship of the kingdom of God.

I think he was bringing this sort of hunter gatherer, life way, in the midst of his empire and agrarian context of his time, and people didn't understand it. And if we're honest, we don't even fully understand it today. But I think the ecology is necessitating us understanding it is necessitating us getting it, because we've had an 8000 year long adolescence, and we are breaking our stuff, like any adolescent does, but our stuff happens to be the planet and the planets not gonna last for much longer unless we grow up.

Seth Price 40:39

What I'm hearing you say is there's two alternatives. There's either a Thanos type snap, and we go back to where we were prior religion, or maybe we actually follow Jesus and practice what Christianity preaches, as opposed to what Christians preach.

Mike 40:55

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.

And you know, it's again, with a compost metaphor, it's not like anyone has ever gotten 100% right, or 100%. Wrong, I think we can look at the history of Christianity and find the contemplatives find the mistakes that we're seeking to draw closer to God, we can also find the folks who sought to honor the Earth in more holistic ways. Francis of Assisi and Claire being very picturesque examples of this greater harmony with nature. And so I think that our own eschatology holds a key in the idea and the image of the New Jerusalem, descending from heaven to Earth.

Like on the one hand, it's a city and it's interesting because scripture has almost nothing positive to say about cities, you know, from the earliest mentions in Babel they're often places of violence and confusion. But yet, the closing image in our narrative is not returning to a garden it is a city. But if we look closer, it's actually a garden city, because it contains the elements of Eden…

Seth Price 41:57

Yes a river flows out of it…

Mike 42:00

Yes, trees of life lining the side. Rivers of life, gold, silver, precious stones. It's like a laundry list of Genesis one and two, making its way into Revelation 21 and 22. And how I'm choosing to interpret that is that it's a symbol of permaculture. It's a symbol of this movement that's happened for the last 50 or so years, globally, where humans are like, wow, we do have this sort of, I think God given bent towards exploration, curiosity and innovation. But what if we turned that and instead of creating more things that involve the extraction mining of like rare minerals and creating metals and concrete? What if we figured out ways to innovate that are a blessing to the planet rather than a burden? What if we mimic the design principles of nature in biomimicry?

And when I'm hanging out with my permaculture friends, my eco village friends, I'm seeing them learn to live in a whole new way that is entirely doable. Like we could actually do this. It's not for want of a policy shift or a blueprint for change that we're experiencing the difficulties that we have, I think it's a want for a heart level connection, which is why I consider myself a kind of contemplative activist who wishes to help people reconnect to spirit, self, other and world because when we do that, then we're naturally going to find the policies and the community forms that will enable us to to live more gently with this planet; to take our seat at the creaturely table, rather than continuing on with this delusion that we are somehow entitled to dominate.

Seth Price 43:36

Well we're not…for those listening if you haven't listened to I did an interview with Elizabeth Johnson, it was about this time last year but I think it released in February of 2018, and we talked about interdependency and ecology and Darwin and evolution and our responsibility and how we are all interdependent, like who's subservient to who? The plants and the trees or us, because if we destroy them all then guess who loses. But that doesn't mean that I'm subservient to treat. But it mirrors a lot of what you're saying and something I should revisit. And I didn't realize that I should until I'm hearing you talk and I'm sitting here nodding my head, and I'm sure you're watching me lean over not pay attention while I take notes. (Mike laughs)

But I'm getting to, to mysticism a bit. And so the way that I would define mysticism is take whatever your salvation experiences your your come to Jesus moment is, and anything like that I would qualify as mysticism. Something that I struggle to give words to, because it's beyond what I can describe, which oddly enough is the way that I think the Bible was written. That it is people's best attempt to talk about something that they have no ability or vocabulary to comprehend, or document. But I do know, from what I've read, the way the brain works is every time I revisit that mystical experience or connection with the divine, I'm going to alter it and I'm going to change it slightly. And so how do I talk about mysticism or mystical events related to God In a way that will preserve what actually happens and remains genuine?

Mike 45:07

Hmmm…wow, yeah, that's such a good question actually happens like my internal postmodernist wants to deconstruct the idea of anything actually happening. But then on the other hand, I feel like well, that's happening in our political life right now and we have Trump so maybe I should…

Seth Price 45:24

Trump is actually happening….

Mike 45:27

Trump is actually happening, but they would talk about what was what's Kellyanne Conway’s early term about the how they were alternative facts. It's like, oh, my goodness, the fundamentalists are becoming the worst caricature of post modernity that they always warned us emergers about, alternative facts and fake news.

But, I'm going to use that as the launching point to say a few things that came to mind and you can rein it back in if I didn't answer your question about that.

Okay, so when I think of what you're describing these like, really powerful, transcendent experiences. I definitely would include those within mystical experiences. But not all mystical experiences are that kind of like how all poodles are dogs but not all dogs are poodles.

I think you're describing a poodle of an experience really…describing a poodle of an experience that sort of translates to transcendent, powerful experience that I would probably label more as a you know, drawing from my Pentecostal background as more of like an ecstatic experience. This sort of, “Oh man, this is like really different than my ordinary”. Whereas I think mysticism offers us the opportunity to begin experiencing a more sublime or subtle divinity within the ordinary everyday moments.

So the art of union with reality is this gradual letting go and easement into what “is” out of which can definitely prepare us to have more of those kinds of transcendent experiences in the present tense these sort of ecstatic experiences. But it's interesting because unlike my Pentecostal background, most contemplatives warn against having too much emphasis on seeking these unusual experiences. And frankly, we're a bit tame even these days compared to experiences that saints have reported in centuries past. You know people will talk about levitation and manifesting the stigmata, the wounds of Christ have their hands and all kinds of weird stuff, which again, is as a maybe overly credulous Pentecostal I cannot entirely dismiss as possible.

But at the same time, all these you know, contemplatives are like that's cool, return to your practice. And returning to the practice in the healthiest of the mystics was, again, not about attaining a union that they that their soul somehow was missing was about recognizing what is and when I begin to recognize what it is and recognize that I'm gonna have all the God I could ever have, even in this moment, even sitting here talking to you. My time sitting on a bench in meditation or contemplative prayer, centering prayer, is simply re-tuning my heart to be more receptive to what is it's not provoking God to create this extraordinary reality that was not otherwise there. And so it made me circle back around to what I think is part of what you're asking, which is, you know, just like when you make a copy of a copy of the copy, eventually the copy loses its integrity; if I'm going to continue talking about this amazing mystical experience I had when I was 12 years old it might eventually lose its potency. My I guess my best response to that would be to continue living in the open hearted manner that had you receive that initial experience to begin with the living more off of fresh manna than only recounting the past.

Seth Price 48:54

Yeah, yeah. No, I like that. But yeah, and I might have missed that. So I don't mean that that's the only way to get a mystical experience I don't mean that. But that's often what I equate a mystical experience. And I often find that they come when I'm not actually looking for them. Usually they come in an inconvenient time when I'm actually not in the mood for them. If that makes sense, like at a time that I don't need to deal with this right now, I don't want to deal with this right now. And I know for me, oftentimes, it's during contemplative prayer, or for the one thing that I've been leaning into a lot this year is the Examen and I can only do so many things at one time. Then I talked a little bit about conspiring prayer with Mark Karris and I haven't gotten to that yet. I'm going to try that a little bit more as I pray, but when we're talking about contemplative practices and contemplative spirituality, I find that there's a huge correspondence between trauma both collectively and internally. And so how do I while I'm trying to quiet my mind into whatever the contemplative practices, how do I deal with and filter trauma either collect or personal?

Mike 50:02

Yeah, I'm so glad you named that because you know, again, part of this paradigm that I'm exploring where I'm putting anthropology in dialogue with Scripture in dialogue with contemplative practices, is that the shift to, again to agriculture and writing and some of these abrupt technological shifts that happened, seem to have the effect of trauma in our species. That we began to have this experience where we lost inches off of our stature years off of our lifespan, men and women turned against each other in ways that were unprecedented. And it's really hard to overemphasize the roots of sort of species wide trauma that begins to open in that time period.

And I think it echoes through today in all the different ways that each of us have experienced these various traumatic breaks in our lives. And, you know, I think that Thomas Keating who recently passed away one of the pioneers of centering prayer. He sometimes referred to centering prayer as, as the divine therapy. And rather than trying to, you know, stop these thoughts from occurring, stopping these sort of weird, unprecedented emotions and images were arising; it's actually built into the unique genius of centering prayer itself, that you don't actually try to stop thoughts you don't actually try to quiet the mind.

There are meditation(al) forms that do that various, you know, transcendental meditation, etc, where they're more concentrated practices. But as one of my favorite teachers, Cynthia Bourgeault says, Centering Prayer has more of a kenosis underlying it, this more melodic sense like the early Christian hymn and Philippians that, that Christ, being equal with God but not seeing equality is something to be grasped and instead took the form of a servant, you know surrendering this. And that as a surrender practice, we can continue to let whatever arise, arise, and then let it go in the moment, trusting that God is present with us.

And, you know, that can be a nice thing to say. I think the other thing with that is whenever we begin to do any kind of deep work, and I would definitely include a consistent practice of centering prayer as being a part of really deep personal work, it's important to have community around you. And this is again, where I think the Trinitarian spirituality really comes home. Like, do you have a circle of folks who can be unconditionally present with you that you can process with? Barring that do you have a spiritual director? Do you have you know, are you especially awesome faith community?

You know, I found part of my community not within Christianity, but within a men’s circle with an organization called The Mankind Project, about about seven years ago I did a men's initiation right, a rite of passage with this amazing organization that helps men move beyond the stereotypes of masculinity and discover what masculinity, authentically and lovingly and powerfully, means for us. And part of the enduring gift of that was being able to sit for many years in a circle of men, where we had absolute confidentiality. And we have certain agreed upon processes from which to express our true selves and all of our love and our anger and everything and know that that can be okay.

And you know, frankly, even I greatly respect therapists and therapy. But there are ways that we can, like peer led, teach each other and hold space for each other, to deal with the traumas that come up when we're doing important work like contemplative prayer.

Seth Price 53:50

Besides centering prayer, what has been the most impactful contemplative practice that you do on a continuing basis that is really changed the way that you do things?

Mike 54:02

Yes. I'm glad you asked because I feel like I have a response to this that might be different than what other wonderful responses you get from other contemplative folks because of this sort of Trinitarian emphasis. You know, Father Richard was very generous in our collaborating on the book, in that he allowed me to include some practices in the back of the book that drew from my experience facilitating these relational skills exercises.

About a decade ago, in addition to finding men's work and finding that to be so amazingly transformative and wishing that Christianity had something comparable, at least in our contemporary experience of the candor and the skill that this movement had of this men's work. I also discovered this stream of development work known variously as authentic relating practices or relational skills practices. And they involve various face to face exercises, where we're invited to become more vulnerable, let our guard down truly see another person or persons sitting across from us. It can be as simple as an eye gazing exercise, which is one of the things that we include in the book, and just really softening our gaze, allowing ourselves to be seen, as well as to see the other that's in front of us.

And I've got to tell you, when facilitated well, these practices can be just as contemplative as when I'm sitting, you know, by myself in a solo practice of really opening up to the marvel of the mystery and the story of this other human being who is right in front of me. And so I've been privileged to help facilitate this for churches and groups for the last several years. In fact, if you go to relationalskills.com you could see a good friend of mine, David and I, where we've been able to do this at the Wild Goose Festival, and several congregations from various denominations in various parts of the country.

And I really want to bring these practices more together, because I think a lot of even advanced Christian contemplatives, frankly, don't know how to fully be with another person at a really intimate level. And, or, have no way to have boundaries and when to say, hey, actually, this doesn't feel good. And I'm going to hold a boundary here but to have awareness of when I'm holding a boundary and when I'm letting you in, and you know, similarly in a lot of these personal development worlds, where these practices are the whole of what they do, I find that they're really hungry for and curious about an established spiritual religious tradition, like Christianity. I've had some of the best conversations with some of my friends in these these particular realms. But I think even my Southern Baptist, evangelism explosion, mentors would be proud of me for.

Seth Price 56:58

so I can't picture what that would look like. Like even like I know if even staring at my family, like my kids, my wife for too long with intention, which is what I'm hearing you say like I'm looking to see as opposed to looking “at” is wholly uncomfortable for me like it makes my skin crawl. And so what is the feedback or how many people are doing this when you're facilitating this, like, Is everybody looking at everyone or I'm assigned? Like I'm assigned to Mike and Jenny's assigned to Thomas or what does it look like?

Mike 57:32

Yeah, so even even your use of the term staring tells me a lot about how you've experienced this in the past. You know, some some species really locked eyes as a form of aggression and intimidation. And it definitely it does have this force staring kind of thing. I'm sure that you know, since you and I are our perfect fathers, we've never, you know, stared at our children in that kind of way to hurt some time.

Seth Price 57:56

(laughter) Sometimes that how I talk to them. Just a stare. (laughter)

Mike 58:01

But the gaze is something something altogether different, the loving glance, what Father Richard likes to call the very etymology of the term respect means to look again and to look again in a deeper sort of way. And so this is being facilitated, one is you know a pair of people could do it you know, you could whip out the as part of the divide dance, read it and do it with your your wife tonight if you want it after dinner. But when we facilitate it in a group, this particular exercise, eye gazing, we’ll typically do it will have the room break up into pairs. And we'll give folks a certain amount of time. usually start off with one minute and then we might increase it as people switch partners.

So we have them connect with a person silently and we give them certain prompts. So it's less awkward. It's not complete silence, various visualizations or exercises they can do while they're holding this other person's gaze, and a lot of people are uncomfortable with eye contact. They either see it as threatening, or see it as inherently romantic. You know, and when we have people switch partners, we'll often explore, we'll take shares in between people, we'll explore things with gender dynamics, you know, if they're heterosexual, they might be like, “Oh, it's easier to connect with some of the same sex than the opposite sex”, or vice versa, if they're a bit homophobic, you might be really hard for them to do this with someone of the same sex.

So all kinds of interesting stuff comes up that I feel like we really need to have conversations about as the human species, and you know, I'm sure it can be facilitated in less skilled ways where it might seem more volatile than it needs to be. But that's one example. We can also introduce sentence stems into those exercises. So after some moments of silence, connection, we might have people say, what I'm noticing when I'm with you is…and then they share something. And then the other person, you know, receives that takes that in. And then they might say, “hearing that I notice ____”. And what they notice may or may not be directly related to what the other person initially named noticing. It's your own experience in that next moment, it's not exactly like a linear conversation.

So these kinds of experiences can be deeply transformative. And you know, if you don't even want to plunk down the cash for a copy of the Divine Dance, I give away a bonus chapter on my blog. It has several of the exercises in it and also several exercises unique to the bonus chapter. So if your listeners want to, you can go to Mikemorrel.org/bonuschapter. And you can see some of these exercises and try them out for yourself.

Seth Price 1:00:54

Yeah, I have not downloaded that because I assumed it was the same as the last chapter of the book it's over there. I'll do that today. I'm all about that. I found personally that when I do anything like that, and I've never done, I'll try to use the right verbiage eye gazing. Emotionally, it changes me in a way that I can't put that toothpaste back into the tube like it. Yeah, be it. I don't know, like, over the last four to five years, every little thing of my religion or my faith that has changed has changed in a way that they're all very small.

I wrote a blog post about this not too long ago, the very small tiny things that shift the entire mountain individually, they look like just one night of practice of this intention to look at Mike's face and talk to him about what I see in him. What I find true in him What I find holy in him and etc. But that changes the way that every interaction from there on, yeah.

So I guess the caveat is make sure you're ready for that when you get in it. So if what is what is your hope for the church, I hate to think 50 years from now because I'll be dead. So what is what is the hope for the church even five years from now? So we live in an age of horrible trauma, a lot of yelling, I don't want to be political. But there's all of that. People are dying by the millions in Yemen, like what do you hope for our church to either mobilize change and or do or none of that in the next three to four years that you feel like would be a good thing for people to invest energy into?

Mike 1:02:34

Yeah, such a great question, you know, growing up and being this really arduous spiritual seeker, exploring the house church movement and the emerging church conversation, you know, there probably would have been a time where I would have had highly ambitious answer to that question. You know, especially before having children, I had very specific ideas of how to rethink both theology and practice in really detailed ways. And having kids changed that for me a bit not in the sense of like settling, but realizing that there were these sort of torchbearers who had been pioneering this for decades within a certain mainline Protestant denominations. And they were also open to rethinking who they were and how they were.

So to be more concrete, like since moving to Asheville, North Carolina, where my family and I've lived for about a year and a half now, I would say that there are half a dozen churches that we could be fully a part of, without crossing our fingers-without feeling like we were missing out on something. And the traits that I'm appreciating about these groups are that they really do honor the priesthood of all participants, the sort of holiness and generativity of all of us that there isn't this sort of expertise cast that separates the ministers from everyone else; even though these ministers do indeed have a lot of expertise and skill in being who they are.

They encourage a greater level of congregational participation, perhaps not as much as in my house church days, but nonetheless, like you could attend our particular faith community Circle of Mercy for a couple of months and not have a clear idea of who paid ministers are versus who active congregants are just different people, you know, sharing messages with the children, working with communion, facilitating the prayers of the people, etc. And, you know, robust engagement with with Scripture with the lectionary as a launching point kind of keeping grounded in the narratives of our tradition. But then, you know, what's been most touching for me in this time of post election craziness is the way in which these faith communities but the ones that I'm directly a part of and the ones that I'm aware of are such a witness in our community. That we are standing with folks who are on the verge of being deported. We're writing letters we're visiting, we're being visible with them we're engaging with ICE. We're engaging, you know, folks who don't have homes in our area.

People who are experiencing various addictions and cycles of poverty, like both individual congregants and as a church are involved in the frontlines of so many important initiatives with the most vulnerable of our culture. And, you know, Christianity gets a bad rap nowadays, and in many ways, rightfully so. But I actually don't see the local yoga studio or meditation groups out there in the community as much as I see Progressive Christian communities really practicing what they preach and really embodying that Jesus they seek to live as. And I would basically say I want to see that tribe increase. I want to see folks who are living these whole harvest It open handed lives of service to the world; and also paying attention to the interior life paying attention to self observation and awareness and looking at what fellowship with God looks like in these various contexts.

But honestly, it could take a lot of different ecclesial logical forms. But as long as we're being mindful of the inward journey and the outward journey, and the journey together, I actually feel hopeful. An part of that hope is also rooted in the the sobering sociological reality that as our our empire begins to contract, which I think that you know, personally not to get doom and gloom, but I do think that the age of American hegemony in the world is already fading.

Seth Price 1:06:48

I agree.

Mike 1:06:50

And then, you know, more globally looking at catastrophic climate change, ocean acidification, desertification, deforestation, massive species extinction, we're in the midst of the sixth great species extinction of our planet. We're losing so much biodiversity it's heartbreaking. Because of all of that, I actually think we are going to become as a culture, more religious and not less as we're seeking to like find, and ground, in the meaning of our own contraction. And so if I was, you know, talking to ministers today, and I probably am, you're probably listening, I would say be less concerned with the sort of preoccupied questions that folks have been asking for the last few decades of how do we keep church relevant? How do we keep people in the seats, these sorts of really technical questions, and ask questions of how do you or people in your congregation practice hospice care? How do you be with someone who is dying?

Because while I'm not going to speculate as to how many literal deaths are going to occur in the coming decades. I do think a certain element of our culture is dying. I do think a certain self perception of Americans as being this “exceptional people” is going to die. And when that happens, if you are a loving, pastoral, place you are going to attract people to your community. And so it's a question of how can we be agents of compost, agents of yeast, agents of transformation when it looks like decay is all around us? I do think that is what we are being called into.

Seth Price 1:08:29

I agree with that. And it reminds me of one of the first interviews I did was with a gentleman from Houston, Sean Palmer, and I asked him a similar question in a different way. And he said, if we would, just to paraphrase it down, just draw a circle around the five mile radius of your church and “we own these people, whatever they need, that's what we do”. If they need help, they do it at whatever they need, whether or not they come in whether or not they tithe. We love these people.

And if every church would do that, there's the entire population basically taking care of. But no, I agree with you. I full heartedly think that the age of America being whatever America wants to be, and whatever America thinks that it is, is, is already passed and just not realized, and it will be traumatic when it is realized. But that is an entirely hour long podcast episode.

Mike 1:09:24

Part 2!

Seth Price 1:09:26

Where would you direct people to engage with your content Mike. So you've got your website, Mikemorell.org, but where else would you have people engage and kind of dig into contemplative practice, dig into a little bit of what you do because you do, like 27 different things between the Wild Goose gestival and Speakeasy and everything else…so where would you send people?

Mike 1:09:45

Yeah, I would send people to MikeMorrell.org. It is my hub on the web. And specifically, if you sign up for my email newsletter, which happens automatically if you're getting the bonus chapter, you'll be able to stay in touch with all the things that that I'm working on. We've got some things coming up this year with Wisdom Camp at The Wild Goose festival in summer of 2019. With the launch of ReWilder, which I don't have the URL to give you yet, because we're still building that site as of this interview, maybe once it airs, there'll be a website to give you for the show notes.

But yeah MikeMorrell.org is the hub. And then you know, if you're interested in the relational exercises, we were talking about these sort of, you know, group contemplative practices, I would recommend going to relationalskills.com. And actually, you know, one of the 27 things for something completely different. This will be up by the time folks are listening. My friend of mine and I are actually launching an Enneagram jewelry company for folks who are into the enneagram who are struck by the symmetry and the symbolism of the Enneagram. We're creating high quality rings and pendants.

Seth Price 1:10:58

What does that look like for an 8, or actually, I feel like predominantly when I'm not at work, I'm a five. So what does that look like if I was to buy a pendant for five are they all the same?

Mike 1:11:09

They're all the same, right? Right now we simply have a few different designs, but they're all variations of the the nine pointed enneagram symbol or not differentiating based on the number. Which, yeah, I'm a bit of an Enneagram geek and you know, what's interesting about all of that is that the enneagram of personality is but one use of the Enneagram. It's sort of an esoteric handy tool and there are many other uses of the enneagram. And in its origination point, it was actually a symbol that was more to be danced with your body than to be analyzed as to what your type was. But again, that would be a whole other hour long conversation.

Seth Price 1:11:51

I'm willing to have that too.

Mike, thank you so much for for coming onto the show. genuinely enjoy the conversation. I look forward to doing it again. At some point in the future of our busy lives.

Mike 1:12:02

Likewise Seth, let's do it. I’m glad to be here.

Seth Price 1:12:39

If we can't learn to embrace mysticism, our faith is quickly going to become, “the law”, it's just gonna be dogma, it's just gonna be memorization and it's just gonna be penal, like a legal contract. And I don't want that and I don't think you want that and I believe for the future of our faith in our church we will have to learn to embrace aspects of our faith that are emotional and carnal at a level that are hard to talk about.

Thanks so much for listening. Please remember to rate and review the show on iTunes. Talk with you soon. Roll those music credits.

Seth Price 1:13:59

The beats you heard today that you bobbed your head to our from artist Ecclesia they are based out of Florida. I am falling in love with that band. There is not enough music out there from them and there needs to be more and I highly encourage you to click the link on the playlist, follow their stuff, hit that subscribe button. Every time a new jam comes out from them instantly in love, love what they're doing. As always, you will find those beats those tracks that music on Spotify more easily at the podcasts playlist. And Can I Say This At Church and there's two feeds there, one for the show and one for the playlist. It is quickly becoming one of my favorite playlist so hope you listen to it.