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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Karl 0:00

I think I spent so much of my life and my “career” as a pastor of defending he things that I couldn't be certain about certainly was important, but they were in consistencies. And so spending my life trying to justify what I was certain about. That makes any sense. Defending the Bible, defending my beliefs, but found you know, as Brad Jersak, and some of them would say, a more beautiful gospel that seen through the lens of Jesus said, Love your enemies and turn the other cheek and, you know, all those things. This finding kind of a more beautiful way that's less violent, less retributive, but restorative. And not only you know, have I found that as a philosophy or a doctrine for life, but, but it's also becoming very real in my life, as I said before, beginning to experience life We talked about before real peace.

Seth Price 1:16

Hello, you beautiful people. Welcome to the show. I am Seth. And I want to ask you real quick rate in review this show, wherever you happen to be listening algorithms run the world, not Beyonce, unless Beyonce…you're listening. And then of course, you run the world, which means you also run algorithms. Either way, we have to feed those ones and zeros of the computers that run the world. So right interview the show on iTunes, consider becoming a patron supporter. You'll be one of my favorite people. And I mean that genuinely even though I laugh while I say it. That's true. The Patreon supporters of the show are the people that I often text message, phone call, message back and forth with, email back and forth with and they are between amongst some of the closest people that I know. Early one Saturday, (I) sat down with Karl forehand and when I say early, like 6-6:30 in the morning and Karl and I were both up really early and we had a conversation about fatherhood and about deconstruction and about faith. (And how) our lenses of God are shifted as we get out of our comfort zones, our lenses bend the frames though, the frame stay true. And I'll take that metaphor and break it apart, that frame is God but the lenses that fit inside there, we just see the world in a way that we can’t unsee it. So I really hope that you enjoy this conversation. Karl Forehand, his book that is out is beautiful. It's written from the heart of a father. Enjoy this conversation with Karl Forehand.

Seth Price 3:14

Karl Forehand, welcome to the show, I'm glad that you're here! For those listening we're doing this one early in the morning. And so I'm also excited to be trying something new. My brain usually doesn't work this well in the morning. And so we will see how it works. But, welcome and thank you for making the time to come on, man.

Karl 3:30

Thanks for the privilege of being on your show. I'm a big fan.

Seth Price 3:34

I appreciate that very much so. I'm always I don't quite know what to say when people say that and it's it's a blessing that other people get something out of it. But usually, yeah, it's me therapeutically working through faith just very publicly. But you know, I really enjoy the community that's come of it. One of those is community that I believe that you helped create, Water to Wine community on Facebook, that's become one of my favorite places not of safety but just different thought like, what I like about it a lot is there's not a lot of political arguments in there. It really is focused around let's just talk about religion, and faith, and Jesus, and everything that that goes with which is refreshing to have a place that's really centrally or focused on and stays on point.

Karl 4:17

You may not be able to tell, but there's about four or five moderators that were just members of the group and they try to keep that in check. To make sure it's civil, because we wanted people to have a healthy place to share.

Seth Price 4:39

We u’all are doing it. And I appreciate them moderating it, you wrote a book and the title escapes me at the moment because I know it's gone through a different couple title changes. But I want to talk a bit about some of the themes and some of the topics in that, kind of where that's going. But before that I wanted to learn a little bit more about you and so for probably everyone listening yours will be a new name that they haven't heard. And so I'm curious if you could kind of set the context of, you know, for those that decide to get the book, and I would encourage them to do so. It's written from a perspective that I really appreciate, you know, as a father and as someone also struggling or wrestling with faith, like it's there's a lot in there. It's not an academic level book, this is a “real” book, if that makes sense. for lack of a better metaphor. And and so I want you to kind of break apart you have it kind of what is your upbringing and where you coming from, to create to create the man that wrote these words?

Karl 5:34

Yeah, I was born in Oklahoma. I was raised Southern Baptist and I had a stable upbringing to some degree. However, there's some things I didn't know about that were going on and you'll never recognize those when your kid but especially alot of rejection in my life. It's part of what you see in the book. And when I got out of college and was trying to reconcile that I searched for the community that was closest to what I knew and what I was comfortable with now that would have been Southern Baptist community. And so I returned to that after I got out of college and found some acceptance there and just kind of ate that up about 10 years into my career as a computer programmer. I got enough education to be a pastor, whatever that means, and then kind of plunged both feet in the small town church ministry at non-denominational Bible Church. I pastored, a couple of churches in the meantime, developed a career on the side that kind of blossomed and became productive for me, but also had some success in those churches along with a lot of pain and just kind of a growing and unrest with that certainty, that fundamentalist evangelical mindset. just started having problems with the literal interpretation and there was this type of interpretation of the Bible. And just to grow in unrest about five years ago when I really started to question my beliefs.

The title of the book is Apparent Faith: What Fatherhood Taught Me About the Father's Heart, so as my children began to grow and mature and went I through things with them. The book kind of begins with just my story of us sitting down with my kids, who are all adults now at an IHOP restaurant in the Kansas City metro area when we can finally get them all together. I just realized that not that I don't know, you know, most people kind of have those aspirations of, you know, I hope my kids someday will come to me and say, “Man, you taught me this. And that was so important in my life. And now…”, you know, and those that really doesn't ever happen.

You know, they'll say thank you for this, you know, occasionally, but usually as teenagers and so on, you hear from them when they want money, when they can't find something. And so, as we sat in that IHOP restaurant, I realized not that I was giving them words of wisdom to live by or anything like that. But I realized all of a sudden that they were teaching me. And that kind of you got a process of looking back over the years and looking at my story and see where they had influenced me. And all of that as my beliefs began to change and about two years ago I went through a serious deconstruction of my beliefs. And so all of that's in the book, that's all my story of you how my children, raising my children, is interconnected with what I hope is getting my beliefs to the right place.

Seth Price 9:36

Yeah, I can relate a lot to that, but slightly different. So my kids are not the same age as yours. I mean, my oldest just turned 10. You've probably seen him on Facebook, although I try not to post pictures of the kids too much on Facebook, but my wife does and then she'll tag me to him and then all the people can see him. But I know emotionally, you know, as my kids were born, it caused me to do deal with faith differently. Because the answers that you can give to you know, Karl or Jim down the street or Samantha across the road about God. You can't do that with a kid like the answers just they have to change. And for me, you know, the answers had to change…why? I'm doing this wrong, something's wrong, something can't…it shouldn't be this hard to talk about God and faith but…

Karl 10:24

That's my favorite part.

Seth Price 10:32

Two questions why IHOP and that sounds like a silly question, but why IHOP? Like, is that a family thing? Like, no, this is where we go like Sundays at IHOP?

Karl 10:38

I guess just a comfortable place and we all can meet. We weren't anywhere close to anyone's house. You know it had kind of been a thing before my daughter's wedding we met and IHOP for some reason. I instantly think of Jim Gaffigan talking about IHOP:

I have never hopped out of there. I can barely move

and it's just a comfortable place to eat some comfort food and

Seth Price 11:19

Just catch up. Yeah well, it brought me back. So in college will right as I graduated high school I was involved in a college group at the Baptist Church, the southern baptist church that I was involved in at the time before I went to Liberty. And as we would hang out, we would often like be out and it would be Lord knows what time in the morning. And we just go to IHOP and there would be six or seven of us there literally just being in community with each other. But at IHOP and I hadn't really thought about it until I read those pages of your book. And I just kind of had to set it down. I was like I remember being it. I hop in it with Laurie and with Jimmy with Mario and like he just all these memories came flooding back in. And so it sounds like a weird question, but really with intention like I didn't know if IHOP held a special place. Because I didn't realize that it did for me until I read you're talking about I hope. And you know, honestly, it made me reconnect with some of those people. Yeah, which was great. Like I should call her and see how she's doing.

There's a story early on in your book, where you talk about lessons that you've learned from trying to push your kids to be more and if I remember, right, it's a story about like a football game and your son is that I feel like that's the right story. I was wondering if you can break that apart again, about what changed and how you can see God specifically from the habit of parents constantly, I would argue living vicariously through their kids.

Karl 12:39

Right.

You know, the story is about my son. He played football but always just kind of liked being on the team. More than that, he worked real hard to become a star athlete. He liked being a blocking fullback instead of the tailback that ran the ball every time. And there was a time when he hadn't had a chance to score a touchdown. And I wanted that so much for him and I’ve written a blog about it before. But you know, when you're raising children you think that's part of my job to to push them or help them excel or teach them how to achieve or however you want to frame that. But I was just, it was at that moment, when I knew he was going to get to football. I knew they're going to give them the chance to score a touchdown. It was just a yard away. And everything in me was in that moment. And wanting that for him. And kind of being the typical soccer mom is what I felt like. And all over that event at that time.

But he did get the ball but he didn't score the touchdown. I realized how deflated I was. And you know, it just kind of had a deep impact on me. And I go back to like Bob Goff, who says, you know, what's the real thing that a father does or shouldn't do? And then he talks about the idea of father leaning over to his children, and saying, “what do you want to do today”? And then saying to that child, “let's go do that together”.

And that's, you know, I think that's more of the Father's heart than pushing me to excel or crafting me into some kind of a human being. I think more than anything that God kind of leans over my life and says, “What do you want to do today? Let's let's go do that together”. And that God, learning to see God more as a being that sets with me. And that walks with me more than he's interested in my performance. And of course, that was a big, issue in my life now to have to succeed and accomplish and overcome. Does that make any sense?

Seth Price 15:36

No, it does. It's beautiful. I can relate to it on two ways. So my son today like in a few hours, we'll go play baseball. And, I'm sure he listens to a lot of these episodes. That's a reason I try to intentionally not have a lot of curse words in them. He'll listen to them and so buddy, if you're listening, don't take this personal. He's just not very good at baseball.

But, for the last season, he teetered on like “I don't want to play.” Okay, then don't play because in my family if we start it we finish it. Like, if we do it, we do it right. We don't have to do it again. But if we start this we made a commitment to ourself, you know, to our teams to the family, I made a commitment to taking you and so did your mom. So we started and we're going to finish it.

And like the last day that you can sign up, he's like, I want to play. (and I say) Okay. And really I'm enjoying it. I've tried to intentionally like I don't scream from the stands. I haven't. Because it doesn't matter. Like it's not going to make him change his stance. He's not going to hit the ball better. I've just literally shut up and watch him play and giggle with his friends and run around the bases. And it has been so encouraging. Honestly what I'm learning Karl is how to just be quiet, he's got a coach, so let the coach be the coach. I just watch him laugh. Don't watch him play baseball,. I’m just coming to watch him laugh, not baseball, if that makes any sense.

Karl 17:10

Yeah and part of you being a father is that you can't have an identity crisis. God doesn't have an identity crisis when he looks over our lives. And it's not what we do that makes or breaks it, but for many parents that's that's how we act as I need them to succeed for whatever reason in my life. And that creates an identity crisis in us and we’ve got to know who we are. Does that make any sense?

Seth Price 17:43

That's a big question or up to you but no, it's fine. interrupt me whenever whenever you want. That's a big question. Like, I think you're right, like we need them to succeed. But I don't really know why like the banker part of my brain is I need you to learn to succeed because eventually I need you to Leave my house and you know, be your own father. But I don't actually know why that. I don't know. Maybe there's something you know, evolutionary that…I honestly don't know, that's a good question. I'm gonna have to dig into that. Like, why psychologically? Am I wired to be like, No, you need to, you know, I need you to find your place in this world and then crush it.

Karl 18:21

Mm hmm.

Seth Price 18:22

yeah, I don't know. Maybe that talks more about the way we’re raised, parents. I don't know. It's a big question. I'm writing that down, Karl. Yeah, I don't. Yeah, I like walking away. One of the things that you talk about is prayer. Prayer for me over the last two years have been massive, like huge shifts. One of the books that has impacted me the most was Mark Karris. And then I read that in conjunction with Aaron Niequist, and between those two different versions of prayer, prayers becoming beautiful for me, not a not not, not a not a chore, but just beautiful.

Karl 18:53

Right, right.

Seth Price 18:54

And you talk a lot about, you know, moving beyond superficial prayer. So I'm curious if you could break that apart again, I feel like I know what you mean when you say superficial prayer, but I hope that you'll define it for those listening. But then talk to me how you've moved beyond it and kind of how that's impacted you.

Karl 19:11

Yeah, there's been a lot of factors in that I'm one of them. Is that, that Brian Zahnd is my pastor, we attend, or do Life Church, St. Joseph, Missouri.

And he teaches a prayer school where there's more liturgy in that but also they teach a little bit of centering prayer and so on. Brian says prayer, I'm probably misquoting but he says prayer, prayer is not to get what I want from God but it's to be properly formed. So that's that's had an impact on me but also things like my grandson that was born premature last year. I talked in the book about standing NICu unit, and it's still emotional for me standing in the NICU unit and looking at my baby daughter, and her husband stood there looking helpless. And where I thought, you know, thoughts of sin what the heck God! You know, wanting to run out of the room and and things like that.

But then I also wrestled over the past few years with this and I know that you've been in churches before where we say God is good all the time and all the time God is good. And I think what we really mean by that is God is God is good to the extent that he does what I want him to do. And we get caught in patterns like that. But over the past few years in my deconstruction, I think God is, especially through parenting especially; my wife would tell you and she's a big fan of yours, but she would tell you that becoming a grandparent, especially of that premature baby that leads me just have a totally look at prayer differently. Now that it's more like when we're standing in the Natal intensive care unit and just being there. So prayer has become more contemplative for us. I think it's becoming more, Brian would talk about it as “sitting with Jesus” more than lecturing him, or begging or promising or any of those things. It's just become being with God more than demanding something from him. And it's just become a more beautiful thing. Something maybe a little harder to define, but it's good.

Now the best thing when I was writing the book was just when I reflected on just standing in the natal intensive care unit and then just crying. And that seemed like the most appropriate thing to do. And maybe for the first time could see God weeping with me at times in my life, and also celebrating and going through life with me. Just, I think, gave me a little better view of gun to make sense.

Seth Price 22:45

Yeah, it does. (Music)

Seth Price 23:06

I'm curious how does that change in prayer shift for you those in the moment, emotional, responses you know when you're in a Nic you or you know in an argument with your wife or loss of a job or shoot the flooding that's happened you know where you're up there over the last few like a month or so. Like how does having a prayer like that kind of impact the way that you handle those oh my gosh, this is not a good thing type of situations?

Karl 23:35

Yeah, I think it changes. One of the last chapters is about peace Brian, my pastor, ever gives me a lot of advice. But a couple of things he says is “we want to stay on the journey” And the second thing he says is “be at peace”.

And my first reaction was I would like to be at peace, but tell me how. Tell me what to do. But as it's gone on, and I have a little different view of prayer, a little bit different view of God. I think that's what it brings. Now that may sound kind of a religious to just say, “Well, I have peace.” But that's what I find.

When I view God as not retributive but restorative, when I see God as someone that's walking with me and standing, sitting, with me in my life, then I just find peace. I don't have to change the situation right now. I've realized that I was doing a lot of things in my life for money. Including ministry. And taking kind of a different turn. I took two months off and that's when I finished writing the boo. And punching a time clock now for the first time and 15 years or maybe longer than that. I have a name tag and working more earthy kind of an hourly jobs. But with all the uncertainty that that brings a much lower level of income, there's for some reason more peace. And just being able to be there and kind of find a little truer expression of faith than if God's giving me what I want. What are the promises that God has for me and let me see if I can somehow wrangle those promises into my life. It's just a more pure expression of faith, I think to just be where you're at and be at peace. It's a wonderful thing. It's a beautiful thing. But it took me a long time to even get close to that.

Seth Price 26:08

It is a religious answer, but you can hear it in your voice. It's a true answer. And so who cares if it's a religious answer. I mean, it's true. And I agree with it.

Yeah, I know, for me, contemplative prayer has made me figure out how to work myself. It's helped me learn empathy. And it's helped me intentionally be present in situations that I used to the way my personality is I figured out what the room needed and then I did that, which led me have some form of power or control in the room, just from the way my personality is wired. And I often now just let that vacuum exist, although that is so hard. Like when I see what the room needs, whatever the room is, right? And then I'm like, nope, don't do that. Because I find if I let someone else do that they grow, if that makes sense? Like I'll let someone do it wrong or do it differently and find out that I was wrong. But, yeah, so that's what prayer is done to me a bit like it slowed me down and made me better in a community, if that makes sense?

Karl 27:10

Part of my journey and part of what we talked about in the book is the rejection in my life led to me wanting to fit in.

And so I was short, had thick glasses, smaller than everybody else, and all those kind of things and even had, you know, a couple of my best friends to my girlfriends and I felt a lot of rejection growing up. So my answer that was, you know, a religion I talked about, you know, finding the thing that's most comfortable that I could fit into, but my life kind of became about fitting in in every way. But for the second half of my life, you're talking about, you know, reading the room and so on that was what I was famous for the small town pastor was going into a community and adapting to that community and fitting in and being“successful”. And, you know, building a little church, where it couldn't be built, because I could relate to people and fit in. And think as, as time has gone on, and a lot of lessons from my children and things they've taught me about being authentic. And being authentic with them. Being authentic for them, sometimes has helped me to just have a more genuine faith overall and for the second half of life. I think I'm going through right now and that's good.

Seth Price 28:54

Karl, my absolute favorite story in the whole book is the story that you write about going to visit your friend, I believe his name is Tom in Taiwan. And if it's not Tom, I'm sorry, but I think it's Tom. And just, you know, the tea shop and how that was a reflection of, you know, service and community. And so I really would love if you would just kind of share that with us; not in full because people need to buy the book. But just a bit of the themes of that like that is literally the favorite story of the entire book for me, like as I read that I read it again, I read it again, just really love it a lot.

Karl 29:28

That's a chapter in this book it's also at the end of that story. There's a lot of lessons I learned from him and it's (had) quite an impact on me. So this my second book that I don't know when that's coming into the future, but it's just about that tea shop. It came about when our host who always hosts us over there she we asked her if we wanted to buy a tea pot or a cup for our daughters. And some, she took us to tea shops and we were just expecting to find that tea pot get on and get out, like a Walmart type of thing. But it turned into kind of an hour and a half long adventure where the guy serviced us. He found out that we're plant based so he fixed us this meal. And I think it just did a lot of things like teach me about presence about just being there, soaking in the moment, learning from the moment and being with that person. Spending time in community but also the guy was probably a Buddhist and we didn't talk about religion. I didn't need to convince him of anything. I didn't need to evangelize him. So just a ton of lessons from a person who, you know, we really kept asking the host, “what's his name?” What's the name of the tea shop? And nothing really had a name nothing had anything normal to it, but it was just one of the greatest experiences of my life. And I walked away from that moved by genuine ness of this person. The deepness of that experience, it's really, really hard to explain and took me a whole nother book really to really unpack it.

Seth Price 31:24

Have you started that book?

Karl 31:26

Yeah.

Yeah, it's, pretty much finished but hasn't been edited or anything. Yeah, just you know, marked up by an editor yet.

Seth Price 31:36

My favorite part of the story is two things. So there's you and your family in a new place, doing a new thing, kind of wondering what's happening. And then my absolute other favorite part is, and I'm reminded of so many stories in the Bible and other cultures or you know mission trips that aren't glorified vacations. You know, where you're in a culture, right. The community that you're with (that) you can't speak with. But there's something at an emotional and human level. That, “oh, I see what you need. You need to just be here. Let me go get you something”. Here's what we do here when we just want to sit and be in presence with one another. And what I like about is there's no expectation of knowledge having to be transferred. There's no expectation. There's no words that need to be said here. We're just going to sit in presence with one another. And we're gonna have some tea. And I'm going to show you how a small I'm just gonna show you a small little bit of service… serviceable…service…no, that's not a word…of love through an act of service. You know, that's what I really liked about it like it just as I’m reading. I'm like, Man, this is really good because there's, there's no expectations from either there's only a surprise and joy.

Karl 32:50

He was deeply interested and making me happy. And, you know, he already had my money for the tea pot. And he had completed the transaction but he was deeply interested in making me happy and kept trying to find the all these things and sunflower seeds and things he thought I would like right share some liquor. It was kind of Taiwanese and…

Seth Price 33:17

How strong was that?

Karl 33:20

It was incredibly strong.

Seth Price 33:21

He probably did that. So you'd stay longer. He doesn't want you to walk away!

Karl 33:25

I guess, but that they told me it was kind of a holiday liquor and they don't usually serve it to foreigners. So everything was the specially wrote characters for me and is kind of telling the story of us but no one could really understand what he was writing, but everything was just deeply touching. The second book, hopefully we call The Tea Shop and unpack all that. So there's so many lessons from one one night.

Seth Price 33:56

There's a chapter in which you talk about military service, I can’t remember the name of the chapter. And I'll quote you a bit here if I can find the right words here. So here's what you said. You say you say

“I thought that it seemed logical to consider”…

and the reason I bring up military service is that's the culture that we live in now, and that's going to be the conversation for the upcoming years. You know, as we get closer to the election, this that and the other, there will be a few tentpole things and the military is always one of them. Because that's what we spend money on as a nation like that's what we deem as important. And so you say

I thought there was it seemed logical to consider military service as a way to avoid the cost of sending a kid through college. And as a side benefit, it would teach them some discipline and thought.

And then you say,

Laura, my wife had a different opinion. For her the military represented sending her only son into the ravages of war and facing the possibility that he might never come home.

And when I read those, I'd never thought about it that way. I agreed with you. Like, you know, my issues with Empire aside, I can see the purpose of the military and the cost trade analysis. But I never thought about the emotional parts of…I’ve thought about the emotional parts of repairing soldiers when they come home, you know, loving on them, but never the emotional trauma that it caused to my spouse.

So I'm wondering if you can break that apart a bit if you're comfortable with kind of how that changed you or how that changed your marriage or the way that you see, you know, military as a whole?

Karl 35:32

Yeah, I have relatives that have served in World War Two and Vietnam. I have a brother that was in the Navy and brother in law that was in the Air Force and so the upmost respect for military personnel. But obviously my ideas of nationalism and things like that have changed over the past few years. You know, when you talk about, you know, for us sending our only son and he lives overseas, now. And that's traumatic enough for my wife, but send them in a place where he might be fighting for his life is, you know, deeply personal. But I don't remember if that’s the exact chapter where I also talked about that it seems to me that God sets over us—and look at a war like the Civil War—and has children on both sides. And I can't see that that's ever something that he would want. I can never imagine my children, I don’t like them even arguing but much less trying to hurt each other. When you begin to look at things like that as real people, it's not just a nation and who is right and who deserves or who doesn't deserve or who's the other. You know, in the end you begin to look at that as God would look at a child.

I would say that's where it began. Because I had this superficial kind of thing of I don't want to pay for college. Right? But then again my wife is much more in tune with her heart. And that's our son, you know? And he could die.

Seth Price 37:21

And you're worried about college!

Karl 37:23

And I'm worried about money and college, and it's always been that way. She's always been ahead of me in those kind of things. And it's kind of a deeply moving thing.

Seth Price 37:32

Yeah, I know. I don't know exactly what chapter I'm in, because I'm looking at electronic version here. But here's because I highlighted it. So one of the things that I like about the program that I used to read these is I can make notes I can just manually move back and forth, but I highlighted what you just touched on. So if it's alright with you, I'll read that. And so you basically said, you know,

Something changed in my view a few years ago. I had always accepted that violence was simply a reality of life. And I assumed that even God understood that we could only take so much. After all, even he is portrayed as an angry and retributive (God) at times. But Jesus didn't accept that suppose that reality when the empire encircled his world and promoted violence and conquests, he offered an alternative reality of peace.

And then you go on to say,

and slowly I'm beginning to accept that Jesus paradigm with all of its mystery, and uncertainty and paradox.

And then the next line is the one that impacted me the most,

…and I don't really have an end to that story.

which I think is a good way to say it. Like you have to sit with it's gonna it's gonna be uncomfortable until we're dead like this will not go away, right, our bent towards violence.

So yeah, I want to end our time with something much better. One of the favorite lines that you have in the book, and I want to end with Jesus is that you are not on a journey to prove the Bible. And I think that word prove is key. That you are on a journey simply to discover Jesus and so I'm curious what you mean by prove the Bible and I want to know what you have discovered in Jesus at least up to this morning?

Karl 39:05

I think I spent so much of my life and my “career” as a pastor of defending the things that I couldn't be certain about. Certainty was important, but they're in consistencies. And so I was spending my life trying to justify what I was certain about, defending the Bible, defending my beliefs. But found, you know, as Brad Jersak, and some of them would say, a more beautiful gospel that’s seen through the lens of Jesus. That said, love your enemies and turn the other cheek and, you know, all those things. Just finding kind of a more beautiful way that's less violent, not retributive, but restorative. And not only you know, have I found that as a philosophy or a doctrine for life, but it's also becoming very real in my life. At 54 beginning to experience, like we talked about before, real peace.

And living in a place of the book title is kind of what I didn't do it. But there's another person that did that book title. It's called Apparent Faith because it should have been apparent to me. It also plays on the word of a parent, you know, and becoming more real experiences faith that is genuine feeling the abject pneus of life sometimes and then I don't know how it's gonna turn out. Well, that's what faith is all about! You know, some of those things are becoming more and more real to me.

And I've had thoughts. I don't really deal with this in the book too much, but I had thoughts of just saying, you know, I'm just going to go to work and come home and forget about the rest of the world. Forget about my ministry. All those things. I don't even know how important it is to believe in God. But then what was compelling was a person of Jesus Christ that I couldn't get away from. Now is becoming not a doctrine I defend, or a religion I'm promoting—it is a relationship goes on between the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and it's compelling me to that way, if that makes any sense? And walking in that way and living there is just much more beautiful. It's much more where I want to be for the second half of my life.

Seth Price 41:43

I like that. I think that's a beautiful way to wrap up of just you know, the call to not wanting to get something from God but just wanted to be with God and bring that everywhere that you happen to be.

So point people in the right place called. So where do they go to contact you, to engage with you? Where will they go as this book releases soon? You know, to get that how can I get their hands on it? Where are all of the places?

Karl 42:11

I mean, I'm most of my stuff through karlscoaching.com. That's from my blog is that's where my podcasts are. Now the Facebook page by that name. You mentioned Water to The ine. That's where I hang out most of the time. But the publisher’s Quoir.

Seth Price 42:31

Well thank you for your time this morning, Karl. I really enjoyed the conversation. I've enjoyed putting the voice behind the words that I read so often on Facebook, it's been good. It's been good to chat with you. I've enjoyed it.

Karl 42:39

Yeah, my pleasure in being here.

Seth Price 42:43

One of the things that I love best about Karl is the way that he writes helps me hold beauty in new light. I'm able to see beauty in both light and darkness realizing that both are created and both are equally beautiful. There's nothing to fear in the light. And Karl's writing reminds me of that, Karl’s stories remind me of that. As you come up against things that hurt. As you come up against cultures and contexts and lenses that don't seem to fit the narrative lean into Jesus. What you'll find there is a bending, not a breaking, and a mending of our soul, of our psyche, and of our faith.

Today's music is from Justin Jarvis-beautiful music. You'll find links to him in the show notes. I wish you all a fantastic day and I'll talk to you next week.