Biblical Narrative, Translation, and Literalism with Professor Robert Alter / Transcript

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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Intro

Hey there, everybody. Welcome back to the podcast. I'm really, really excited for today's conversation. And so I'm going to belabor all of the normal things, the plea to support the show and rate and review the show because you know that you should have already done that. You'll find those links at canisaythisatchurch.com, and you know, fire up the Patreon, Facebook, Twitter, all the places and so here we go.

Show of hands, how many people have ever translated anything? Your hand is down just like mine. I finished recently wrapping a conversation with Professor Robert alter. I recently read a post somewhere online that said, you know, who would intimidate you to talk to and so, you know, Robert is definitely on the list. And I think you'll hear that trepidation in me repeating questions here in a minute, but the conversation was beautiful. I do not want to belabor any points. And so here we go, Professor Robert Alter.

Seth

Professor Robert Alter, thank you so much for agreeing to come on to the show. I'm a very big fan of your work. I'm actually looking at a set of your Hebrew Bible that was on sale recently, I grabbed a copy, because I could not afford it at full price, but I've really enjoyed it. So, welcome to the show.

Robert

I'm happy to be here.

Seth

I was pointed in your direction by a few people. One of them was the creator of Bibliotheca Adam Lewis Greene and talking with him. He had said, you know, you should really look at the work you know on biblical narrative and poetry and etc, by you. And before that, I didn't realize who you were, but I believe your work has been fairly impactful for just theology as a whole. So thank you for that. But for those that are going to have the same problem that I had tell us a bit about yourself, what is important as we discuss, you know, biblical narratives and, and thematic elements and whatnot, what is important to know about you as a scholar?

Robert

Okay, well, I started my career strictly as a literary scholar, and, in particular a scholar of modern literature of the European and American novel. Now I happen to have known Biblical Hebrew also modern Hebrew, by the way, quite well since about the age of 18. And the Bible always enchanted me but I couldn't figure out what was so great about it, given the fact that it's so sparing in details and seems, at times, almost simple. And then about 15 years into my career, I thought, well, I'm beginning to figure out a few things about how biblical narrative works. So I wrote an article and the article, I was pretty young then, which was rather feisty. You know, I sort of scolded Biblical scholars for spending all their time hunting down Acadian lone words, and not knowing how to read a story. And I tried to demonstrate how you read a story by proposing a reading of the the story of Judah and Tamar in Genesis 38, and how it relates to everything around it.

And I thought that this was going to be a one off, but that there was a rather big response to with letters from readers and so forth. So I thought, well, I have a couple of more ideas about Biblical narrative, and I'll write another article. And then soon it was four articles. And by that time, I saw I was on my way to writing a book about Biblical narrative which came out I guess, 38 years ago in 1981. And it's been in print ever since.

And that kind of drew me into the Bible in general, and I wrote a book on Biblical poetry and a series of articles and then one thing led to another and through a proposal from a publisher, I ended up doing a translation of Genesis.

To begin with, I didn't really think I was going to do the whole ball of wax. But I did end up doing that.

Seth

Yeah.

Robert

Now maybe I should say something about the importance of Biblical narrative.

Some people ask, well, if you're talking about something about these writings, in literary terms, aren't you misrepresenting the Bible by putting such an emphasis on its literary art? And here's the thing that I am convinced of; these Hebrew writers from whatever from about the year 1100 before the Christian era, and onward down to around 165 BC, they, of course were impelled by a powerful religious motive.

They had this new vision of monotheism one God replacing the many gods and all that entails morally and in terms of a covenant between God and Israel and so forth. That's what they wanted to talk about. And that's what everyone is always recognized about the Bible right? But for reasons we cannot fathom they happen to be, really in comparison with their big neighbors with Egypt and the various Mesopotamian kingdoms, which were very sophisticated cultures. Far suppressing ancient Israel in material culture, but they completely Eclipse their neighbors in literary brilliance. And they made the decision to cast their vision of God, creation, history, Israel, the moral realm, in highly sophisticated literary narrative and, and great poetry.

So my contention over the years has been that in order to see what they want to say about all those grand, religious, theological themes, you have to pay more attention to the literary vehicle through which they convey those things.

Seth 9:51

I want to circle back to a word you said a minute ago because I'm just going to show my ignorance here. You said Acadian lone words. What are what is that?

Robert

Oh!

Well, okay, here's the story. The Bible is full of puzzles, that is words that appear only once or twice in the whole biblical corpus. And scholars over the centuries, including the modern, highly informed period, when we have archaeology and all that have been making guesses about what those words mean. And of course, we do want to know, to the best of our ability, what every word in the Bible means. So sometimes, when scholars come across a word, this an enigma, they will look around to the other Semitic languages in the region, and say, “Well, here's a word and Acadian”, Acadian was the language of the Syrian Empire and that's, you know, over the the area of Mesopotamia.

“Here's a, here's a word and Acadian. That means, I don't know torrential rain. So maybe this word in a Ezekiel, which sounds a little bit like it also means torrential rain”. So that's what what an Acadian lone word would be.

Now, I might add to this that this is a tricky road, to conclude that if two languages are in contact, and words look similar, that they mean the same thing in one language is another. I'll give you an example. Let's say in the year 3500, when 21st century English is not known very well, a scholar who knows French very well comes across the person word assist in an English text. And he knows that in French, you have this verb, assisté which doesn't mean to help, it means to attend, like to attend to ceremony.

So he says, oh, then assistant English must mean to attend to ceremony, and he’d be dead wrong.

Seth

What do you do with that then if it's someone like me, that doesn't know Hebrew, how do I recognize those when I'm reading scripture? Like if I'm reading that, and I don't know the difference? Did those words have like an ultimate impact in the overarching narrative? Or will it not necessarily…

Robert

It depends, I would say that if you reading in translation, of course, there is no way to know unless you're reading some kind of annotated translation. We're an honest translator. And there are a number of the translations by committee, I have a dim view of them, but they are, some of them are honest in this respect. They'll put a little notice about the meaning the Hebrew is obscure.

And what I do because I ended up writing a commentary, not just the translators notes, I often explain in in detail, and it's, I think, frequently the case that a single word that's obscure, isn't going to mess up the understanding of the the whole Texas maybe just a small, local nuance, and to be frank what translators and scholars do often is to make an educated guess, based on context.

I'll give you one rather frequent example. Biblical poetry is based on parallelism in meaning, that is the second half of the line somehow echoes; I think it often develops, but it echoes the meaning of the first half of the line. So let's say in the first half of the line, you have a noun, that means ship. And everybody knows it means ship. And then in the second half of the line, you have a word that appears only at this point in the whole Bible. And you don't know what the word means, but you figure…it's okay, it's parallel to ship. So it's some kind of see craft.

Seth

I want to pivot a bit. So earlier, you talk about religious motives and biblical narrative. And so, there's a lot of things there that fascinate me that we can that we can dovetail into, but I'd rather not. So my question is, I often get the most confused in the metaphorical language of the prophets, and how often I feel like they call back to Genesis or they call back to Exodus or you know, Jesus will call back to that, but we read him so flatly. How does one sit down and relate well you know, with the prophets or move past or or knit together, thematically, how they all are telling a narrative?

Robert

Now, I would say this, that this mechanism of said the prophets, harking back to Genesis or the Exodus story, or whatever, is part of the the dynamic of all literature that is, all literature, particularly secular literature is as well work but by building on its own pass by taking earlier tech and getting into a dialogue with them, sometimes transforming them. And that happens again and again in the Bible.

So what I would invite a serious reader as a Bible to do is when he or she hears an echo of an earlier text, simply for these readers to ask themselves.

Well, why is this piece of Genesis being invoked in Jeremiah? What does it tell us about Jeremiah's intention? So I'll give you one example. For the moment I'm blocking the chapter number. But there is a passage in Jeremiah, in which he invokes the ghastly devastation that will overtake Israel, if Israel does not remain faithful to its covenant with God. And the way proceeds is by a verse by verse, recollection of the creation story in Genesis with things turn backwards.

That is, you know, I’m paraphrasing from rough memory, you know, the Prophet says, and I look to the heavens, and there is no bird flying, I look to the sun, and it is turn dark and so on and so forth. So what you have here is almost like a film spool running backwards, where all the steps of creation that you get in Genesis 1 are being reversed. And the world is being returned to its primordial chaos. Okay?

So if you then ask yourself, and I think you don't have to be a profound scholar to do this, just a thoughtful reader, yes. But why is Jeremiah doing this? He's doing this because he's trying to get across to his people, the message that creation itself is contingent. That said, if humankind doesn't observe its responsible, moral stewardship of the world, the world can turn back into chaos. And that's a very powerful religious message.

Seth

It is. So I crowdsource some questions when I told people that I will be speaking with you.

Somebody had said that they're currently reading through your Genesis translation currently. And they had some thoughts on the strengths and weaknesses of those that read the Bible in literal translations. And so I guess what does literal translation mean, as opposed to like a literal literary narrative approach?

And then maybe if you could also what is an example of a literal translation of the Bible, and then the translation that would possibly be like approaching it from a literal narrative version?

Robert

Well, what I tried to do a kind of tricky balancing act. That is, I want to make the Bible readable as a beautifully wrought narrative, for the reasons that I've indicated earlier. Because that's what it is in the Hebrew and to make it sound clumsy or bizarre would be violating what the original is like. But I try to do this to the best of my ability by hewing closely to the contours of the Hebrew.

The King James version does this to a large extent, I think I do it even more than the King James. Although, I have to say I do have a lot of respect for the King James Version. So maybe I'll give you since you mentioned metaphor a couple of minutes ago. I'll give you an example of literal translation of a metaphor.

When Joseph's brothers come to see him in Egypt for the first time. And as you will recall, he knows who they are, but they don't know who he is, he looks like an Egyptian to them. At one point in anger, he says to them in my translation, which follows the Hebrew including the word order, quite literally, “the nakedness of the land you have come to see”.

Now, two or three Translations by committee, done in the 20th century that looked at, translate this as “you've come to seek out or spy on the weak points in our defense”. Now, what have the translators they're done?

They figured, well, here's a metaphor, it's going to confuse people. People don't understand metaphors anymore, which I think is wrong. And so, instead of conveying the metaphor, we will represent in our English version, what the metaphor refers to. So they say, the weak points in our defense, which may or may not be what that metaphor refers to, but I preserve the metaphor literally. Why? Because I think it is quite powerful. That is, a reader familiar with the Bible and those that to see that nakedness is a metaphor for taboo, sexual relations, like you shall not see your mother's nakedness.

And, and so what Joseph is saying to his brothers is something that never should be seen by alien eyes. You've come to see in in Egypt, and that's why the, the metaphor works so beautifully. And that's the kind of thing that I tried to do pretty consistently in my translation of the Bible.

Seth

So I'm glad that you brought up taboo because it's a question that I have, a question actually spoke about with my pastor a few days ago at our church, and then with a few friends online.

So I thought so they're currently going through like a 13 week summer series, just because I honestly I think, Robert that the calendar just matches well, but we just finished Nahum, and then we're just we're going to Habakkuk next week, like we're just going through all of the prophets, which has really been enjoyable because they're throwing in all the context context.

Robert

Yeah, that’s a big challenge.

Seth

So I find that oftentimes, people only talk about the easy things, and the things that require too much context that you can't fit into 25 minutes sermon, we just can't talk about these because you can't do it justice. Right. And a 13 week series is so big. But I told I was like, you know, we should talk about, you know, the wisdom books and Song of Songs and like, we just don't talk about any erotic prose or narrative. And so I'm curious, your thoughts on that. Like, that's a taboo subject. It's rarely if ever, talk about so how does a reader approach those texts in a way that they can learn something? Because the metaphors they're like, I've read some stuff from Robert Williamson where he's like, you know, this isn't really, there's three or four ways to view this. But because we don't talk about it, it's entirely confusing. So what is your take kind of on those erotic prose and those erotic poetry? And how does that relate, I guess to the narrative of you know, the Hebrew Bible?

Robert 24:24

Okay, well, the first thing I have to say is that the Biblical writers are quite frank about erotic matters. That, by the way, this is a kind of tricky challenge in translation. For example, terms that refer to the sexual act, you will find in the modern translation, translators rendering these terms as to be intimate with, to have relations with, to co-habitate with all of which are kind of ponderous and don't feel at all like the Biblical world. Or one translation I looked at with Potiphar’s wife when she tried to seduce Joseph has to say to him, make love to me.

Which is all wrong because it's such a modern locution. It's like a frustrated wife might say to her husband make love to me, but not an ancient Egyptian aristocratic lady, right. So, the Bible uses very simple terms, which I think still work that is, to lie with, to come into and to know. That is because of the King James version which literally translated, the Hebrew didn't know as that it's become an established term in English in a Christian we even have a kind of legal term carnal knowledge.

So, I think that a translator needs to respect the dignity of these references to sex. But as I said, the Hebrew writers are quite frank about this, and the Song of Songs which of course, both Christians and Jews, as I'm sure you know, have read allegorically.

I myself don't read this mainly allegorically but kind of very exuberant, guilt free, celebration of the joys of sensual love, and my own take on this is that this is a, I would say this to believers, that this is a gift from God to humanity and there's good reason to celebrate it.

Seth 27:45

if you're not going to read it out gorgeously for those like me that don't say up on the English verbiage, English is whatever it is on the internet anymore. So allegory is you know like a metaphor revealing you know some form of hidden meaning like the message behind the message. So what would be another way to read that text or text like that? Because there is so much allegory.

Like I remember asking Professor NT, right about, you know, water wheels in the sky, I think in Ezekiel and he's like, I just don't know.

Robert

(Laughter) Yeah. That’s a great question.

Seth

He's like is like I don't know what to do with that. I'm just going to really say didn't really answer the question. I was like, what do I do with it? No, it wasn't NT Wright it was Brueggemann. But either way, I was like, What do I do with this?

He's like I there's some questions that are great questions. I just don't have answers. So how else would you read it if not allegorical?

Robert

Okay. So, here’s the thing. As I said, both Jews and Christians have gone the road of allegory. There's a wonderful moment in the Talmud, where there's a debate among the the sages as to whether the Song of Songs should be included, and scripture and one of the greatest early sages, Rabbi Akiva says, if all the writings are holy, then the Song of Songs is holy of holies. By which he clearly meant that it was a sacred allegory. From the Jewish point of view. It's about the love between God and the community of Israel. In the Christian allegory, it's the love between Christ and the church.

And the allegorical reading is beautiful in its way and I don't dismiss people who choose to read it that way. And probably without the allegory, it wouldn't have gotten into the camera, but I think that the original meaning, I suppose, not the only meaning but the original meaning of these poems is the love between a young man and a young woman.

And love, and love poetry, were part of the the cultural experience of ancient Israel. And these poems are so expressive of that experience of balancing a kind of refinement with frank sensuality, that, that I think that the people didn't want to let go those problems. So they were preserved in the Canon and then to make them fit better into the overall religious impulse of the canon it became the practice, as I say, for both the Christian and the Jewish community, to read them allegory,

Seth

So I’m going to use the word Sola Scriptura only because I think it matters when you translate in the Bible. So I get a lot of pushback from people when I say, you know, I don't necessarily believe the Bible is literally always trying to say what you think it's saying. But as you're reading through translations, what would you say to someone that says, you know, Robert, if you're going to retranslate the Bible, or really anyone, the words, I hear you earlier, you know, there's words that really only exist and a handful of places and we're just guessing.

So how can someone that really wants to rest in the the, I guess the safety net, of a Sola Scriptura mentality? How can they wrestle with Scripture in a way that they're going to allow themselves maybe to see new insights that they didn't see before without really dealing with trauma; with intentionally dealing with it. Because there's a small little loss of fidelity there I think for a lot of people, you know, they're wrestling with things are like, “wait, it has…it has four meetings? This isn't acceptable. I need just this one”. How would you advise you know, if a student was asking you that?

Robert

Well to begin with, this goes back to our discussion of the invocation of Acadian loan words, now that we understand what those are. There could be places where there's a word that appears only once in the entire Bible and there doesn't seem any convincing etymology to relate it to something we know. And at best, we can only guess by context, and that's just built in. Now a second thing that I hope this won't disconcert some of your readers. But ancient texts, this is true of the Greek and Latin as well as the Hebrew, are copied by scribes and the scribes in a generation of scribes, you know, one generation of scribes copying the work of a preceding generation. And the fact is that scribes are human, and scribes make mistakes in copying, unfortunately, and I can attest to this because I've discovered quite a few times in my own translation that my eye has skipped over word, which is something that scribes do.

So this means, and there's not much to save this part of Scripture, that being in ancient text copied by hand, from one generation to another there are places where the text got scrambled. And it's very hard to unscramble it. Maybe the best example is In the Hebrew Bible is Job. Job is a very powerful book, brilliant poetry maybe the most brilliant poetry in the whole Hebrew Bible.

But the Job poet uses a much bigger vocabulary than any other biblical poet, which means that he's often uses words that don't appear anywhere else. And the ancient scribes, what a scribe does when he's copying a text, if he comes across a word that is unfamiliar to him, he may substitute a familiar word and by that scramble the text or he may simply get confused and do something odd with that word. So the fact of the matter is that we can carry with us the brilliance and the profundity of the book of Job.

But there are places where the text is kind of messed up.

Seth

Yeah.

Robert

So that is a built-in problem and it's something as you say, that maybe lay readers of the Bible don't like to think about because as your question suggests…the whole idea that would make them a little uncomfortable.

Seth

Yes,

Robert

But it just, it goes with the territory.

Seth

And if correct me if I'm wrong, but you did your current translation by hand correct, and then I assume it was someone else's job to type that up? And that's a big job, but you did it by hand?

Robert

Yeah.

Seth 35:59

That is absolutely insane. I'm curious with your training.

A narrative and, and literature outside of biblical texts. What are some of the ways that you know the Hebrew Bible that we have now? And maybe the New Testament Bible as well, although I'm not sure where your training ins has drawn from other texts that we have maybe forgotten about or just pass over and so because of that, we may lose some of the meaning.

Robert

You mean, my training and other texts?

Seth

Yes.

Robert

Okay. Let me give you one example. I mentioned earlier that I've been focused in my general literary studies, mostly on the novel. Something that is observable in the novel maybe beginning in the 19th century with the so called “art novel”, is that many writers choose to build their novels by weaving in from one episode to another a recurring image or motif.

For example, in Flaubert Madame Bovary, the first time we see Emma Bovary, she has a parasol, and the sun is shining through it and the parasol is blue, and casts a blue light on her face. And then we find that the color blue keeps coming back in the novel, in her fantasies. Her romantic fantasies involve blue distances and so on and so forth. So this is something that I was alerted to early in my training in my reading as a student of literature. And then I came to Genesis, and I saw that something quite similar is going on, for example, in the Jacob- Joseph's story, garments are very important.

Almost from beginning to end, that is, Jacob first deceives his father to steal the blessing by wearing his brother's clothes. Then Jacob's sons, deceive their father, by taking this coat of many colors in the King James Version, that the father's made as a gift to Joseph dipping in in blood and bring it to him and saying that wild beast has devoured him. Then we have the change of garments in the Joseph's story from prison garb to royal arraignment, and so on and so forth. I don't want to hold for too long, but a long stretch of story is tied together by this. Oh of course I should mention that one prime example that when his wife assault, Joseph, she tears the garment off his back and he runs naked outside; and then she sets the garment alongside her. And when the people the household answer her screams, she says, “Look, he took off his garment to assault me” when, of course with the real fact is that she tore the garment off him. So it becomes a crucial evidentiary fact. So see what I mean that something that I learned from reading Flaubert or James Joyce pops up almost 3000 years earlier in the Hebrew Bible.

Seth

I want to end with this because my time is coming quickly to a close and so I must thank you guys as well. One of the things that Adam had said I'd asked him a question and he'd said, I'm going to try to paraphrase something that I think Robert has said in the past, but I like the way that it lenses the way that we should methodically and intentionally sit with uncomfortable in Scripture, but also read with the lens of a little bit more beauty.

And so one of the things that he said is the thing about the Hebrew Bible, you know, when it's held up to the New Testament or I think he was also arguing not really many other large libraries of text, or that it's just a level of artistry that is achieved in the Hebrew Bible that is rarely if ever reach elsewhere in Scripture. So I'm curious if you could break that down a bit? So if that is true, and hopefully it is that paraphrase is true, because I didn’t fact check it, I didn't know where to look. How can I, you know, I'm sitting down and I'm going to pull out and I'm just going to randomly open up and you know, just, you know, I'm going to wrestle with Jonah today or I'm gonna wrestle with 2nd Kings today; like how do I read scripture in a way to just kind of read that beauty as opposed to let flat reading for those listening that are going to turn it off, grab a Bible and be like; “all right let's see what Roberts actually talking about”?

Robert

Okay, I have one rule of thumb, it won't cover all cases, but it covers a surprising number of cases. One of the primary procedures, artful procedures, in both poetry and narrative in the Bible is repetition that looks like repetition, but turns out not to be exact repetition. And where it's not exact repetition, something revalatory happens. For example, and this is by no means the only category but on the microscopic level. Again, and again in Hebrew narrative you have let's say a narrator saying something and or one of the characters, and then another character says something and it looks like exactly the same words.

But if you read it carefully and as long as the translation doesn't play games with the original, and I try not to play games, you can do this in translation. When there's a repetition, most of the time it looks like an exact repetition, but it's not. Sometimes one word will be changed, or the order of words, or something will be subtracted or something will be added. And that always tells you something important about what's going on in the story. So when, when Joseph is falsely accused by Pulitzer Prize wife of attempted rape, she tells the people in the household that the Hebrew men that “he brought to us” (he being her husband-in which he doesn't call them by name or title, but contemptuously he) that who brought to us came into me to play with me to mock me; it's a double meaning word.

Now, when her husband comes home, she tells him exactly the same story in almost exactly the same words, but instead of saying, “the Hebrew man”, she says, “The Hebrew slave”.

Now why the difference between the two versions so just in that one word? Well, when she's talking to the workers on her estate. She’s talking to people who are no doubt slaves and she doesn't want to remind them of Joseph’s slave status, tut the fact that he's an Egyptian…I'm sorry, Hebrew man, you know, one of those wild Semites from the North who are all rapists! Right?

Whereas when she talks to her husband, she grounds, just in that one word, because otherwise she's repeating what she said, verbatim, but instead of “a Hebrew man”, she calls him “a Hebrew slave” because to her husband, she wants him to be conscious of the fact that a mere slave; someone who is his property, had the audacity to attempt to assault her.

Seth

Yeah,

Robert

So it's a little thing but it's quite beautiful and it gives you a much more vivid sense of what's going on in the interaction between the characters.

Seth

Well, and it makes me ask questions I don't have time to answer, but I'll ask him here. And we won't answer him, but I'll ask them intentionally. It makes me wonder of the metaphor, in this part of the story, of you know, nakedness calls back to how often Israel is stripped naked, or laid bare after sins are exposed.

And in the way that we view humanity today, you know, what that story has to talk about with, you know, the way that I view other people and whether or not they have value to have their voice be heard. But we won't we won't go there today.

Robert

Yeah, that’s a big topic.

Seth

Yeah, that's a four hour topic, and I think my internet connection has proven today, it is not going to cooperate for that.

Robert

Ha (laughter…) okay.

Seth

Thank you for your grace with that. Where would you point people to Professor that want to get ahold of your work? That want to read more, and honestly, I'm curious…is there a place to go back and see those original articles that you referenced at the beginning, I wrote them down that you had some and I'm happy to Google that, but I'm curious if there's a place to get the original articles.

Robert

The original articles are put together in a book, not a very long book, there's about 230 pages, called The Art of Biblical Narrative, and I revised that somewhat, not fundamentally, though I did expand a few things here and there and modify a few statements back in I think 2011-2012, somewhere around then, and it's available in paperback. So under the imprint of Basic Books, so it's not very expensive and I think I try in all my writing, not to use academic jargon and not to be highly technical. So I think an open minded reader can follow it well enough. And it would give that reader, I think, a certain handle on how Biblical narrative works. And really, I do try to write in an accessible and lively way without technical language.

And my aim really is to give readers a kind of toolkit; that is, after they read the book on Biblical narrative, can they take those tools and go read other Biblical narratives beyond the ones I’ve discuss and read them more fully?

Seth

Yeah, absolutely. So there's that book and then how do they find more about you know, they're inclined and they're like, I need to know more about this. Where Is there like a repository of just all the places to go to is there an easy way to access your stuff?

Robert

Well, I've never set up a website. Let me see, if you go to the website of the Department of Comparative Literature at the University California, there's, you know, a bio on me.

And otherwise, one can always, I'm not recommending purchases, but one can, can go to, under my name to Amazon books and see what I've written that's out there.

Seth

Well, I would recommend purchases. The only reason I know that that most recent version is 2011 is because I recently bought it. But then when you said that they were older, I was like, this sounds familiar. And then I looked at the copyright and said 2011 I was like, well this has to be something different. So I appreciate that clarification. Well, Robert, in fear of the internet breaking again, I'm going to thank you now for coming on.

Robert

It was very nice.

Seth

Thank you, Robert.

Closing

Man, I am so happy to have been able to speak to Robert and I have about 5000 more questions to talk about. And maybe that'll happen one day. For those of you that are Patreon supporters of the show, you will know how hard this one was to edit. The Internet broke like 29 times. its closest I think I've ever come to literally just yelling at the computer.

Anyway.

It is a privilege to be able to do this. I would really encourage you to go and get some of the writings of Robert Alter, those books that we talked about right at the very end, I'll put a link to that book in the show notes. They're brilliant. So I bought them since discussing with Robert and really, really good books and I cannot recommend enough his Hebrew Bible translation with commentary it is, it is a love labor-labor of love, however you say that. I hope that you got as much out of that as I did. I cannot wait for the next time that we're together, I hope that you are all blessed.

90 - Finding God's Life for My Will with Mike Donehey/Transcript

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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Seth Happy Monday, I mean this comes out on Monday so I'm gonna assume that you downloaded on Monday, and if not happy whatever day it happens to be. I am Seth, this is the Can I Say This At Church podcast and let's do this thing.

A few weeks ago on Brad Jersak’s episode someone that is engaged with the show had commented (on Facebook)

“you know another great conversation that I can't listen to” because of audio impairments. I realized he was right and so what I did was I went in and I transcribed all of Brad Jersak’s episode, last week's episode with Clare I also transcribed. I'm finding little nuances there that I didn't see before but this episode also, if you go to www.canIsaythisatchurch.com click on the episode link and right at the beginning, right underneath the little animated play button to play the episode, will be a link to the transcription as well as in the show notes at the bottom-there will be a link to the transcription.

Tell your friends if you know someone that can't really discuss these things, can't listen to the podcast or anything like it, and you feel like they may benefit from a conversation like what is happening here. Let them know that I am transcribing now. Any episode before Brad Jersak eventually will be transcribed, I have no idea how I'm gonna do that that's a lot of hours of transcription-maybe I'll crowdsource the help.

It's a thing that I am happy to do it & is worth the time; and to be honest I'm slightly disappointed in myself that I didn't think about it prior but like most things unless, they directly impact you…you just have blinders on. To that gentleman thank you for bringing it to my attention and to everyone else let your friends know it's there, take advantage of it, I know I certainly am going to.

I really like having the text there has been a few new things added to the store at the website as well get you something there are some really cool things. I know I've seen you know people on Facebook and whatever taking pictures of what they're wearing and supporting the show in that way.

Those shirts those mugs they tend to start conversations not necessarily about the podcast but about God and faith and I love that, absolutely love that.

Mike Donehey is, well you'll hear in the episode and, I've listened to his music for a long time and it was an absolute privilege to have him come on to the show. So you'll hear a lot of people use that platitude of “its just God's will this happened because it's God's will” or “of course this happened because if it's the will of God it's got to be easier you know he shuts this door and opens that door”. And that's not quite right and so Mike has a book that is coming out man, it might already be out by the time that you hear this, called finding God's Life for My Will and that play on words is intentional. In this conversation you can hear some beautiful stories…

We laugh quite a bit, which I love it when I can laugh with a guest…love those, but mostly you're gonna hear just genuine conversation about what God's will even means. Is that a question that we should even ask? So I hope that you really enjoyed this conversation with Mike Donehey here we go…

5:27

Seth Mike Donehey, welcome to the show. I'm excited to talk with you for a couple reasons A: I didn't know that you wrote books B: I didn't know that we were about the same age. C: reading through a lot of your book, well when I say reading I mean briefly skimming I do want to be transparent, and the kind of the stories that you tell at, least in that first section or the first sections I relate a lot to l. So welcome to the show. I'm extremely excited to talk to you I'm glad you're here man.

Mike Thank you. I'm glad to be here.

Seth My wife and I actually saw you and your band, gosh, a couple months ago when you were in Charlottesville. I don't know what it was called “big night out”…no no “big tour out” big…big something big. It was at John Paul Jones Arena. I think we were the first one on the tour, and if I remember right somebody, I think was Michael W Smith, like his mic did not work at all.

Mike Haa! That was that was The Road Show.

Seth that's what it was, yeah yeah! We had a blast man. When we left I actually told my wife…I was…I've never seen Tenth Avenue North, although you are, the album that you had come out (gasps) what's it called?… You have bleached blond hair on the cover

Mike Over and Underneath!

Seth Yeah, there it is, couldn't think of what it was called.

Mike First one!

Seth Yeah so that is my soundtrack every time I paint one of the kids bedrooms because that was the soundtrack of painting my son's bedroom; and so it became the soundtrack of painting my daughters and my other daughter.

Mike Aweee!

Seth So every time I that's the, I don't know, why but that is that soundtrack takes me back to that moment of… “I'm about to be a dad!”. I don't know why it was that soundtrack, I'm sure there was a data storage issue and it's all that I had downloaded offline but it doesn't really matter that is that's become that soundtrack. All of that to say-been a fan for a long time.

Mike I hope that my music is synonymous with fertility…

Seth (laughter) why?

Mike Oh, you know I just wanted to be like just robust and spilling over with life.

Seth Ahhh…yeah…we already… I don't often play on the title of the show but we're already really close to that line, like.

Mike Bro. I live on that line…you don’t even know.

Seth So for those that don't know that you sing, or don't know anything about you, if I was to break you down into small parts and you're like alright I got 90 seconds which really you can take as many seconds as you want. What is it that makes you you and then how does that like inform your faith; what what matters and how did it get there?

Mike Well I was a middle child but the eldest male. I'm an Enneagram 4…I'm thinking of all like you know the titles have just been handed upon me

Seth mm-hmm

Mike I love…the thing that makes me, me, is I love when I see a light bulb go on for someone; particularly when that light bulb is freeing you from unnecessary shame that you've carried for a long time.

Seth hmm

Mike Does that make sense?

Seth yeah yeah I want to circle back to that. What are those points in your life though that have shaped you religiously isn't the word that I want to use. Spiritually also isn't the word I want to use. But what are those, those, things that when you think back you're like: “This moment right here…” this is where I began to become…at least whatever you are now. I'm a big fan of believing that the Christian that I'll be in a decade is probably going to be different than the one that I am now, and if not I'm a little sad for faith.

Mike Oh, bro. You're in good company.

I remember a conversation with my dad when I drove a big wheel down my front road, the road right outside my front house. And you're you're near Charlottesville, I grew up in Fredericksburg, Virginia.

Seth Yeah I actually live right outside Staunton, it’s a much smaller city right at the base of the Wintergreen Ski resort there.

Mike Hot dog man! Yeah I know Wintergreen…I learned to snowboard at Wintergreen.

Seth I've never be on a snowboard up there, I'm brittle and old and it’s not happening, not happening.

Mike osteoporosis like…?

Seth yes

Mike So conversation with my dad like I knew I was bad and I knew I needed someone to save me from my spankings. So those early conversations like that whole like “Jesus will be your savior” it's like okay cool yeah I can get into that. I definitely want someone else to take my spankings because I got a lot of them. Then I would say a couple like inexplicable sort of experiences one would be my freshman year a high school I went to a young life camp and I sat out on this lake and there was a heat lightning storm and for lack of better words I felt the presence of God.

I felt like I was connected to this Great Being who loved me even though I was this little peon in the universe, right. And then my senior high school, and I write about it in my book, I got in a near-fatal car accident. Got thrown out of a car, broke my back in 2 places, broke my head, and you know I flat-lined five times on the way to the hospital. That was the first time I went, “Oh man. I am fragile and life is fragile”.

There's this verse in the book of Job that it's actually one of his friends…there's kind of like ranting about what he thinks about God. So it's a weird verse but it basically says if it was God's intention and he withdrew his breath all mankind returned to the dust. So getting in a near-fatal car accident senior high school is this revelatory moment of “wow I am dust and I'm gonna die and if I'm breathing it's a gift”, right? And then I get him to college and I start I went to like a private Christian school called Palm Beach Atlantic University.

Seth mm-hmm

Mike Which most kids go to just because the word beach is in the title

Seth and the other 20% are there because they were forced to go by their parents.

Mike Yeah and those people I usually fail out the first semester. There's a very high Freshman flunk out rate at Palm Beach Atlantic, unfortunately. But I went all four years I loved it. My first day on campus there's this group of kids who are just just worshiping and praying right outside my dorm room and I looked over my balcony I went, “man there's a lot of good-looking girls down there”. There were guys playing guitar and I just started learning to play the guitar after having my near-fatal car accident in high school because I had to lay on my back for two months, waiting for my back to heal. And while waiting for my back to heal that's the first time I asked for a guitar. So I didn't start playing guitar until I was 18 years old

Seth hmm

Mike So I got to freshman year of college and I was like man. There are these good looking girls and these guys who play guitar…these good-looking girls are singing with them so I need to get better at the guitar. And with all that mixed motivation, I again, like my freshman year high school sitting there with 50 kids experienced this sort of supernatural, effectual, presence that I didn't have any other explanation for. And I saw things in that freshmen year college, when usually people are experimenting and doing all kinds of crazy stuff. I got really into prayer, and really into worship, and we would three or four times a night five of us or 50 of us would gather in this little outdoor amphitheater outside my freshmen room and just pray for each other and worship and sing. I just experienced a feeling that I'd never really experienced before.

Seth mm-hmm. I relate a lot to that. So we talked a bit earlier and so I went to Liberty and had a very similar experience with guys and guitars and you know attractive women. So one of the questions that…so we buried the lead…so the name of your book is is a play on words. Which I do want to ask you about in a minute, Finding God's Life for My Will and the question I'll ask you is…I don't really want to know why the play on words I just don't know what you mean by finding God's life and then how that relates to any choice that I want to make. However, we'll table that for a second. So at the amphitheater if it's anything like Liberty and you know the flock that I was around what would be the ratio of, you know “real worship music” you know Heart of Worship, Chris Tomlin, maybe a bit of that..you know…the early stuff there. And then you'd have you know More than Words and maybe Enrique Iglesias. You know just the G C D (chords) things. So what would be that ratio there between - if I just twist these words a bit - it could be a worship song, but really it's just an Enrique Iglesias song or Extremes More Than Words. You know, just to get somebody to swoon. Like what would be that ratio there at your university.

Mike Honestly, in those little moments, it was like 15 percent Enrique and trying to think Lifehouse was popular you know at that time;

Seth absolutely yeah falling even more in love with you

Mike yeah absolutely. We weren't even to Tomlin yet, there was this record called Enter The Worship circle if you remember that?

Seth I do yeah that was the one that was a raindrop…right? That's hitting down and it's a raindrop I think yeah I

Mike Yeah, I don't remember the cover. I just remember playing those songs to my fingers bled.

Seth mm-hmm

Mike and those were the, those are the the repeat

Seth Enter the Worship Circle, I think was the one that was like Casting Crowns before Casting Crowns…like acoustic Creed-ish, Casting Crowns-ish right?

Mke No…it wasn’t Creedish; what are you talking about? It was more like “hippie-ish”

Seth I guess the vocal tone from what I'm remembering in my head.

Mike Well the guy from Waterdeep they wrote alot of songs. They were like seventies sort of rock band. So it had that sort of like, you know, Jesus Movement, 70’s, kind of thing going on. A lot of djembe…whole lotta djembe.

Seth well that's portable! It’s a better percussion than that back half of the guitar. Because you hit that too often and your guitar’s out of tune and it just ruins the whole night.

17:00

Getting back to the topic, so what do you mean in that title there of “finding God's life”? That's not a phrase that people say, like everybody says “God's will” or “my will” or “your will be done” and really I think when most people say that they're just looking for permission to do what they already want to do. And then pray about it so what do you mean when you say finding God's life?

Mike Okay, so just I have this unique position, right, I started a band spring of 2000, so it's been 19 and a half years. I've played in churches all across America, every denomination, you know, and the thing that I see over and over and over is this weird belief that if we obey and do things right and pray enough and have enough faith we can leverage God to give us what we really want. The rampant prayer I hear over and over is “I need to know God's will for my life, I need to go know God's will for my life, I want to know God's will for my life”. And there's this sort of like belief that if I do every and correctly he'll show me his will for my life. But really what we're saying is I want to know his plan for my life, and I want to know that if I obey he'll give me what I really want out of life.

Which really if you want to really label it correctly we're just saying “God how can i obey you where you'll owe me my idols” because like “God if I don't have sex till I’m married then you owe me a virgin to marry.” right; or if I am virtuous and I do business correctly you owe me like this really prosperous business and success in the business field one day.

And so I go I don't understand why we keep asking what's God's will for my life? There's so many verses in Scripture it's like this is God's will for your life…be joyful always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances, and like well “no I need to know like this the secret plan” and I'm going let me get this straight you…you don't care how you make money or why you make money you just want to know that you're gonna make money. Because they're like “God what's what's the plan show me my career” and Gods going…yeah before we work on your career can we work on like why you want to make all that money. Why career is so important to you…

Seth yeah

Mike and why you need to be…So I had the stupid analogy about the book right. I was making a smoothie for my daughters I have four daughters by the way

Seth mm-hmm

Mike yeah all under the age of 10 and having four daughters is great just means someone's crying and it's usually me, someone is always crying.

Seth no they're crying, you're weeping.

Mike yes exactly I'm, dude right now right when we get off this podcast, I'm gonna go pick up my wife from the airport. I've been watching the girls by myself for 7 days so she could have this big trip out to Yosemite with her friend; I'm actually passed out right now. I'm talking in my sleep.

Seth But have they eaten anything more than chicken nuggets an easy Mac because that's my go-to?

Mike And Fun-Dip-come on…

Seth No... fun dip, so I don't know where you're at but there's too many the little pissants that come in with fun-dip because fund dip(s) everywhere, and although I have a miniature dachshund, she's kind of averse to flavored sugar. She just won't pick it up and I just don't want to…I just don't want…it's too much it's everywhere and then there's ants everywhere. So now it's just chicken nuggets an easy Mac

Mike My kids lick the fun-dip dust off the ground…I mean there is no trace of it left

Seth I mean well that's impressive.

Mike (laughter) So I'm making for my kids the other day right it's early in the morning and I've actually I'm actually gonna fly on a plane early in the morning to go do this festival with Tenth Avenue North. So I get up early and I'm like feeling like a king because I've set my alarm super early, I've gotten up at 5 a.m., I'm gonna make this smoothie for my girls so that my wife when she wakes up breakfast will be made for the girls. And smoothie is just it's the only way I can secretively force nutrients into my children's body.

Seth mm-hmm

Mike Right…so good because you can hide all kinds of nutrients

Seth oh yeah throw kale in with Kiwi yeah

Mike You never know! So this is what I’m doing…I added an avocado, to make it creamy, so I’m forking half an avocado into the Vitamix blender and my nine-year-old wakes up. It's like 5:15 in the morning she comes downstairs she goes “dad what are you doing?”

I said, “I'm making a smoothie I was gonna put it in the fridge so you guys could have it when you wake up.” and she says “Oh daddy! Daddy I want to help. and I said “ok here”, I mean I was about to throw some spinach in. Well I just forked the avocado which came downstairs took me by surprise and I dropped to the fork in with the avocado into the Vitamix.

Next thing I know she's putting a big handful of spinach into the Vitamix. I forget the forks in there right so she goes to hit the switch on the Vitamix…well what happens? The fork, the lights in the kitchen are like flickering right, and then this fork goes shooting out the side of the Vitamix and puts a hole in the wall. I'm not making this up there's a hole in the wall. It exploded outside the Vitamix-there is smoothie everywhere!

Seth I feel bad for laughing, but I don'.

MIke So now I'm gonna spend the next 20 minutes I have to get ready to go to the airport cleaning up and…okay so the title of my book is finding God's Life for My Will, right? It's, God I don't need to know your will for my life like, what the big plan is, I just need your life to come change my will. Some of us are going we're just throwing stuff in! I want to make my portfolio look perfect! I want to make I'm putting everything in! I look good, my Instagram looks amazing! Everything is like awesome and God's going “hey how about that fork that's in your your smoothie...like the bitterness you have for that guy?

It's like, no, God what's like am I supposed to be a lawyer or am I supposed to be an astronaut and Gods like hey can we just work on the bitterness you've got in there?

No God! Like just show me what to do. I just, before we do that, just take the fork out! You got a fork in there and if you don't deal with that fork now then you could be the most beautiful put together businessman but it's gonna come out sideways eventually.

Seth mm-hmm

Mike That's sort of the the idea the book. How I have seen my own hidden idols come out sideways.

Seth Did they drink the smoothy?

Mike Heck yeah they drink the smoothy! I mean I was scraping it up off the ground. I was like “this is good for your immune system…you will like this!”

Seth It makes me think of description of the plank in your eye but if you don't address it, when that fork explodes, like it's gonna break you. It's gonna break your Vitamix, you probably got a new one now, but it also I mean you got lucky it sounds like it didn't hurt anybody but it literally could have shot anyone. It could hit you could hit your daughter

Mike it could have impaled me…right through the stomach

Seth I think you're right now if we don't address it when it shoots out like it's gonna cause more damage than your uncomfortability of dealing with it if you just sit with it if you just sit with it. What happens then when I'm trying to find my will and I work at a bank for a living and I feel like I'm good at it; and you know and I'm like, I've got these big dreams to do this. If I'm honest, if I'm really honest Mike, if I could make the amount of money that I needed to, to do this (podcast) I would do this full-time; if I could figure out how to make it work. I would much rather talk about God then talk about money. But I'm really good at the other and so what happens when my hopes and dreams seem to work out just fine but you don't feel like it's necessarily filling that hole of what God's will actually is? Like how do you make those two puzzle pieces, they go to different puzzles, all fit together?

Like I'm having success but I don't have any fulfillment-this will make me go bankrupt but I get so much fulfillment, like how do you reconcile it too?

26:23

Mike Right, and and it's sort of like ,we have to recognize that we do live in this very privileged place in world history where we even get to ask that question. Like you're living in poverty you're not going “What can I do that's gonna bring me a great fulfillment and feeding my family?” You know? You're going “I will do whatever it takes!”

Seth mm-hmm

Mike But we have to acknowledge that that can't be God's intent-is just do whatever you can to pay the bills. There's an amazing Frederic Buechner quote that I've been sort of trying to aim the trajectory of my life toward, and he says…do you know Frederick Buechner?

Seth No, mm-hmm.

Mike He wrote in the 60s and 70s primarily, anyway he's basically too religious for a secular crowd and to secular for a religious crowd.

Seth So like Henri Nouwen where he only fits in now?

Mike Yes but even more like…salty. Think of Henry Nouwen and he had a love baby with Mark Twain

Seth (laughing..so much laughing)

Mike okay…so make sense yeah a little more like salt of the Earth. Okay he says your calling is where your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet.

Seth hmm

Mike He’s like, you got to ask two questions. You don't just ask what makes me come alive, if that's the only question you ask you just end up a narcissistic a-hole right. And you can't just ask what is the world need, what does the world need, was does the world need.

Because if you only ask that then you just burn out but if you can figure out and obviously this is it's a trajectory it's like what you're aiming for it doesn't mean you're gonna get there right now. But if you can at least aim your ship toward, okay what makes me come alive, and how can I meet the world's deep needs doing that thing? That's where true fulfillment and true calling is I believe.

Seth I would go one more ,if I found anything in doing this A: other people are impacted by just having an honest conversation but I find if I focus on meeting my needs other people hear truths in that whether or not they intended to. At least that's the feedback that I get I get it like

Mike I get the tension of like Tenth Avenue North is my band. The last EP we put out was called The Things We’ve Been afraid to say and every every song was about an issue that the church doesn't like to talk about. And for the people who listened to it I felt like it was incredibly rewarding, but it was our worst performing piece of art we've ever put out, commercial.

Seth I'm assuming that's because, and I forget who they give you like a name…like Susan, or whatever doesn't the people on the backend of the production, like a target demographic Susan or whatever.

Mike The name is Becky

Seth Forget who told me that…David Zack from Remedy Drive, I think, and I'm assuming it's because they couldn't put that on KLOVE…I don't know I don't listen to SpiritFM or KLOVE all that often but I'm assuming that probably relates to why it wasn't as successful.

Mike Here’s the deal with KLOVE, people like Christian artists they kind of have this chip on their shoulder about Christian radio. I go look it's not that KLOVE doesn't want to talk about Jesus but they built their brand on a slogan called “positive and encouraging”

Seth Which is not the Bible..

Mike Right well but it is parts of the Bible. do you know I mean you're like and this is true of a lot of churches wait guys we're not against the other parts of the Bible but these parts if we double down on this one section we found that more people like us and more people want to be a part.

Seth mm-hmm, yeah

Mike You know it it doesn't start like malicious or through ill contrived I guess. It really begins is like Hey…how can the most people hear about Jesus we find that if we just stick with the positive encouraging things about Jesus more people hear about him. And if their slogan were music about Jesus that is beautiful and true. That's a really it's a much narrower slogan but it's actually a much broader landscape of genre and themes you could sing about right.

But I get it like Jesus isn't appealing to people who don't know Jesus so positive encouraging it's like that could that can be marketed to people who know Jesus and marketed people who don't know Jesus.

33:00

Seth guess my biggest gripe with KLOVE is it doesn't matter where I'm driving or KLOVE or anything like it it doesn't really matter what you call it you know Way-FM or whatever; it's all the same stuff. Um when you hit that point of the dial on the radio there is a lyrical and melodic stamp but it's like that with with everything like I know when I hit the country station it doesn't even matter like you know when you're in the dial range? That's my biggest gripes is there's nothing…the lyrics are fine but the lyrics aren't the only part of music that moves me matter of fact sometimes I just wish people would not sing and just let their emotions bleed through the instruments. But that leads me…it's actually so a question I like to ask every musician I talk to…

How does making and writing music shift your lens personally of how you see God?

Mike Oh…wow…

Most of the songs I've written I feel like have been gifts to help me actually believe God likes me. Because I feel like my default is to believe he doesn't like me, and you know I think…I think it was Leo Tolstoy who said music is the shorthand of emotion. Like you put these little lyrical truths, that you've heard a million times, you put it in a song with a melody and suddenly it's much more impactful and much more quickly (impactful).

Seth yeah

Mike and a lot of the songs you know people say to me, man thanks for writing that song; that was just for me, and I was like…actually it was for me but glad it spoke to you too.

Seth right right

Mike There's great verse in Psalm 49 where David says I incline my ear to wisdom and with the music of the lyre I will solve my riddle. So that to me is a really beautiful template for some writing is I'm just trying to solve my riddles with this music. I don't know it's it's interesting I the Christian radio thing like I love every song I've ever put out on Christian radio. They sound a lot different than the songs that haven't been on Christian radio but I get that they are, you know, they're trying to mathematically figure out what will people like the most. And honestly they really do care they're like “I really want people to hear about Jesus” but we also want the most amount of people to be listening. Mathematically we found that this, you know even like the mix of a song you listen to on record, and then listen to on the radio and the vocal is almost twice as loud and that's because the people who listened to that station have said we really want to hear the vocal, you know.

Those sort of intangibles, it's interesting, a lot of the songs even, I don't know if you heard the Hillsong UNITED song oceans that was just a massive song

Seth mm-hmm

Mike they had like four different radio edits for it than the album version. That was because they went, look we really love the song and we'll put it in whatever package you need it to be in to speak to your audience

Seth hmm

Mike Cause as an artist you're always balancing this weird line of “this is really what I believe in” but also, like I tell my guys whenever we take the stage

“Don't forget we're waiters tonight.”

Seth What do you mean waiters?

Mike Okay so like there's two ways, well there's probably multiple ways, to look at it but in my mind there's two ways to look at taking the stage. I'm either there for them to serve me, or for me to serve them.

Seth Okay

Mike And when I think of my job as being a waiter….I go “cool! We have this art, we have these songs, but ultimately I'm here to serve you. Then it…it shifts just my whole perspective on what I want to get out of the evening. And part of that is I was a theater major and you know there's a lot of different ways of looking and acting. There's some people who say as long as the person viewing me acting feels something then my acting is effective'; but then there's some actors you go depending on the style, or the express…gosh what's the word?

Seth method acting?

Mike there it is! Say if the audience feel something it doesn't matter I have to feel something refer to be important and like I look at it as … man I want it supposed to be feeling something but if it's one or the other I hope you feel something before I do.

Seth I get that. So I sing at my church

Mike sing us something!!!

Seth So that probably won't happen although…

Mike have you ever sung on this podcast?

Seth Uhh… The patrons

Mike DO IT! DO IT! DO IT!

Seth no stop it, not doing it. Maybe, I don't know, maybe I will. I have sung and I think people that follow me on Facebook have seen me singing. I sang a song that John Mark McMillan did on his Christmas album which is one of the best Christmas albums that I've ever listened to, that came out last year but I can't remember the name…Baby Son…that's the name of the song. I enjoy singing though the comfort level of my singing is I have to have a guitar in front of me even if I'm not playing it or I feel like I'm too close to everybody, if that makes sense? It's my blue Linus blanket, and that's that's all about me.

Mike A Linus blanket..that’s fantastic!

Seth It's the best analogy I can think of mostly because there's also blue blanket directly behind the computer here so but the only two, Oceans song, that I've ever listened to are the one that they'd filmed in I believe it was Israel and then one from the Relevant studios because I really don't want all of that mix all I want is as few guitars as possible and the voices; because that's really what I want is the voices on almost any song.

I don't want the production I need the emotion because if you sing as you do your voice is the biggest instrument out there but that's hard to relate to and it's really hard to explain to people that don't - don't sing

Mike Well no, what sets bands apart more than anything isn't the music, it's … there's something that you can't replicate and that's the timbre of the singer's voice.

Seth There's a part in your book you talk about position and so I asked it because you relate to like you know Michael Jordan and I think you tell story about Michael Jordan just you know when he was done playing basketball like just falling off you know Wylie coyote style like right off the edge. Like life is over, I have no place in this world, and I feel like so many people set the bar so high especially in the economy and the culture that we live in America of I have to excel all the time; anything less than whatever accolade I'm striving for is not acceptable. I'm curious, you know when we're talking about roles, what does it look like to be the Barnabas? You know in whatever vocation you fit into, whatever puzzle piece that finally latches into, you know as you're honest with yourself and with life and what you've been called to do to to bring joy to the world. Like how do you know if that's where you're at and then if you can realize that like how do you make sure that you're not ever trying to to push further than you really meant to but also still be satisfied in that?

Because I think you know without Barnabas most of what we have from Paul we wouldn't have that, but nobody talks about Barnabas; like his role is deeply important and to take the wisdom that you took from Monsters University and without whatever that that one guy is with the one eyeball without him

Mike Mike Wyzowski

Seth and then we'll call the shaggy one Paul; he wouldn't have succeeded.

Mike If you’d have kept reading there's a chapter in the book called The Day I Stopped Asking God to Use Me, That is, so I worked at a church a local church for a long time. A lot of people who work in a local church I don't think they realize how big of a deal they are. Like I say this all the time, I've been in this band for 19 years and you know we've gotten some accolades here and there but I've never felt as famous as I did when I worked at a local church because everybody knew me everywhere I went in that town. And when I got out on the road and touring I just prayed what we always prayed “God use us. God use us, you've given us the special thing that we're gonna share with the world; we want we want to be used by you.”

And that's a good prayer right? Like God used me, God use me, God use me. Then one day God kind of like revealed to me how even that really noble prayer can go sideways in your heart. We're at this big festival and it was the first time we were kind of you know, we had started touring now, we were out with other bands and we'd never been in that situation. We were always just the worship band at church, there was no one to compete with right; and now it's weird like, the longer you do music the more young kids who've just been in the music business a tenth of the time you have-they shoot past you in accolades and listenership and CDs sold and tickets sold.

And it's easy to go and “I'm doing it wrong” you know and I'm sure if I keep writing books I'll say the same thing about book writing. I remember this one time we're doing this festival called Livefest in Wisconsin and we were sitting backstage going “God use our band, use our band, use our band.” A God just kind of tapped me on the shoulder and said “Hey what if I want to use the other bands?”

And I remember (Dog barks over and over) “oh sorry…we got a dog barking here” (laughter)

I remember I was sitting there going “that's fine just use me first!” And I realized that I was using being used by God to to be my identity; and I actually that day…I stopped asking God to use me.

I love saying that people go what? That's…. your you a heretic!

I go “No! Now whatever situation I'm in I just say God move, God work, God set people free, God heal peoples shame.”

I'm here I would love to be used, I'm available, but it doesn't need to be me. If you use someone else I will celebrate that you're moving; and suddenly I'm not in competition with other people, I'm in solidarity and I'm in community with them all striving for the same thing. I'm actually able to participate in their joy when God uses them instead of being like fraught with jealousy because it wasn't me.

Seth That goes back to what you were talking about earlier with you know when you're on stage you you want to act as the waiter like it's the same mentality it's just a differently it's a differently phrased sentence. That's actually the last thing that I wanted to touch on before we wrap with…I have a few random questions that have nothing to do with anything but I'm curious because I could read your humor in the book. So I just, you know some little, I don't ever do a rapid-fire session but I'm gonna try we're gonna make it happen.

How do you then define joy because that that words got a lot of nuance and I think I know you have a chapter on joy that again full disclosure haven't finished reading. How do you define joy because I think what is joy for one person is deep pain for another person? You know the joy of childbirth, or the joy of motherhood/fatherhood or success or music or whatever. It is like that joy can equally be entirely unjoyful.

Mike Yes, I'm generalizing the quote Ann Voskamp she talks about the secret joy is to keep looking for it in the places you're unlikely to find it.

Seth hmm

Mike so joy is like that to me they always say joy and happiness or two different things. Happiness is everything I want circumstantially has worked out and I'm happy. Joy is I have a piece, a bedrock of peace, that exists even when circumstantially things are going way wrong. Right…

Seth yeah

Mike and I think that only comes and the theme in my book is really just surrendering your idols and the more you surrender every Idol then the more circumstance doesn't have the power over your peace that used to have. Joy is peace that surpasses circumstance.

Seth who is the quote again you said?

Mike Ann Voskamp

Seth You keep with the last names that I don't know how to spell but Google will fix that…

Just a couple of quick questions just to tie up some loose ends that made me laugh as I was skimming through…

So when you explain Hollywood video to your kids what's the look on their face? Because my first job was at Blockbuster Video you know?

Mike Yes!

Seth Out in West Texas and there was a Hollywood Video across from me; it was the enemy, because I don't think that they charged you to rewind the videos. and so either way,

Mike Sure didn’t, I rewound those videos bro!

Seth Yeah I was 50 cents. Do It Yourself I mean this is, you're gonna pay for my service, so but what is like how what's the best way to describe the look on their face when you're like, “let me explain to you Meet Joe Black-in a six-inch tome of two massive VHS tapes. Like how does that work when you try to explain that to your kids or other people?

Mike That's funny cause me and you we probably working at the same time when you meet Joe Black came out when I was working at Hollywood Video. And it was, it was, two VHS tapes.

Seth Yep

Mike Double-double tape! Did blockbuster charge you double if both tapes weren't rewound or was it a just single rewind fee?

Seth I think it was per UPC…

Mike Ha that’s fantastic!

Seth You know I think it was so it was just one item that you rented.

Mike I given up, I've actually given up, trying because the best equivalent is RedBox cause RedBox is still around though I don’t know when this podcast gonna air, it might not be around by the time this thing airs. But my kids they get that like well I gotta go get it cuz it'll save us $4 I leave here…and I go…but a whole store like…

THIS…guys…imagine all of these titles that were skimming through on Netflix, imagine each of them as an entity on a shelf and we have to go into a store and browse them manually. I lose them on the manual concept, you know?

Seth I can remember, you know, from the cashier stand you would judge people inherently as you watch the same people week over week. Like, oh that guy only goes down the drama section he's got some issue. That guy I know he's going to the comedy section and we moved the comedy section and nobody told him. This is gonna be fun everybody get together.

Mike Maybe the guy looking in the comedy section is the one who has issues cause he needs a pick me up. Maybe the drama guy is only trying to get in touch with his feelings.

Seth I'm off topic

Second: you reference What About Bob, and I again, I quote what about Bob often so what's the best scene in that movie? Like if someone goes to RedBox and finds out that What About Bob is not there and then they go to iTunes and they buy it anyway…where did they skip to?

Mike Richard Dreyfuss him and Steve Martin have probably embodied physical tension better than any other two actors at least in the early 90s sure. But like the tension that builds in that scene (dinner scene) we're just…just because of the bliss that Bill Murray is experiencing eating that fried chicken.

Seth I'm with you although I think the kids make that scene the daughter in there that looks on her face.

Mike Well that’s it I mean 90% of acting is reacting.

Seth For me it's the “I'm sailing! I'm a sailor”!

Mike I’m Sailing!!!!

Seth Final thoughts, like if people have not been listening and I hope that I hope that you have. I don't often get to laugh a lot on these podcast and so thank you for that. Often it's so overtly serious that I'm afraid to laugh but I've enjoyed laughing a lot and I probably kept my daughter awake who's literally above me.

Mike I just read this thing, an article from Princeton I think, about the honesty that exists in a community in correlation with the amount of cursing that is allowed by that community. That like the more cursing there is the more honest a community. And in some ways I feel like for me like the more I give myself permission to laugh and my kids to laugh there's like there's actually a deeper ability to actually go real low, and I don't know I have to do some study on that I haven't read Princeton’s study in detail.

Seth I mean do you feel the need now to curse is that what you're saying you need?

Mike No no!

Seth Feel free.

Mike It's like the great dramas, like the really greatest dramas in film history, are not sad the whole way through, right? There's always a comedic element because it actually enables the viewer to like go deeper down. Like Braveheart has hilarious scenes and that's what makes it great because it sort of like relieves you and resets you and almost like builds trust. Okay, I can laugh with this guy, I can go deep.

Seth Yeah he does that craziness, and so does “spoiler alert” you know Game of Thrones that giant guy. I don't know if you watch Game of Thrones or not but there's a giant it's a….

Mike Yeah, I don't watch Game of Thrones because I’m a Christian…Ha !!!

Seth I also am one and I finished it. But do you really not?

Mike I haven’t

Seth There is a comedic character that's like he lives outside of civilization so like if Jonah's trying to escape Nineveh you know he's going west off the known earth and then he meets a giant there like a half giant. The dude is hilarious but he is that in that whole show…of all this war and tension and ability and then I'm a crack this joke which and you're right it builds like you just you wait for him to be on screen.

But for those listening in the back row if they haven't heard anything at all like what is the last thing that you want them to hear and then how do they connect with you?

Mike The only thing is like that God, and don't miss hear me I'm not saying God's not interested in what you do with your life, but he's way less interested in what you're doing then he is in how you're doing it and why you're doing it. What you do with your career to make money is not near it's not even close to why you're wanting to make money and how you're doing it. So that's it.

Seth Perfect how do people connect with you? Obviously they can get the book everywhere fine books are sold I feel like in August that to answer your previous question that'll be close to when this releases. Where would you direct people to either engage with you, engage with the band engage, with a book. Where would you send them?

Mike We have a new record coming out a couple days before the book comes out. It's all happening. Honestly for me ,if you want to talk to me online direct message me on Instagram. That for whatever reason of all things like there’s a million ways to comment on things if you direct message me on Instagram I'm gonna see it. I may not respond to you but I will see it and choose not to respond.

Ha!!!

Seth Ha…farm that out to your ten-year-old it'll be fun.

Mike Could you imagine….

Seth Say whatever you want

Mike God is awesome! Love, Ponies! Butterflies Mike are you okay? Have you been drinking?

Seth It would be fun. So those links obviously I'll include the show notes. Thank you again so much for being on I've really enjoyed man.

Mike Dude, such a pleasure. Thanks man.

Closing

Seth And we wrapped another one didn't we? It's fantastic! it is such a privilege to be able to do this. Thank you so much the supporters of the show on Patreon and if you're not one that get off the couch and make that happen well actually you can do it from your phone so just stay on the couch and make that happen.

But thank you to every single one of you to support the show financially you make this work. I can't stress enough how much you make this work and I am honored that you value the show in that way.

Gor those of you that can't do that rate and review the show I won't read some of them on the air but man they really…I love those things I'd like to see them even if I don't agree with them. But remember to do that it helps other people kind of make their way you know when they search “Bible” or when they search “church” or when they search “faith” to find a show that they maybe wouldn't have seen prior. So rate and review the show

All of the music today is from the newest release of Tenth Avenue North. I believe the album is called No Shame it is really good! I had the privilege of listening to it a little bit before its release to find songs for this episode…I mean it's really really good, I can't stress that enough. So you'll find links to today's tracks on the Spotify playlist for the show.

Thank you for listening, I hope that you have a fantastic week.

Be blessed, remember that your beloved. Talk to you soon!

End

89 - Spiritual Rhythms for the Enneagram with Clare Loughrige/Transcript

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.

Back to the Audio

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Seth If there's a buzzword that is out now, and there's a lot of them; for instance, illegal immigration-we won't get political in this episode, but you know there's us versus them. There's patriarchy there's a bunch of buzzwords, but one that if you just hit Google and just start typing in E n m e a g r…and just see what the autocomplete says. The Enneagram is everywhere now.

I touched on this topic briefly, very briefly, with Suzanne Stabile. I don't know if, gosh maybe a year ago, and I've wrestled with it and I touched on it with my pastor and I still continue to wrestle with it, the Enneagram.

I was sent a really good book called Spiritual Rhythms for the Enneagram, and I wrestled with that. I'm still wrestling with it and I'm liking it and I'm hating it and that will make sense as you listen to the episode.

I'm Seth you're listening to the Can I Say This At Church podcast; I am glad that you're here.

Before we get going, I just want to say I know you have options to download, to listen to whatever you listen to, and I continually see the Downloads tick up; and I can't tell you how humbled I am by that and how thankful I am that you devote any time at all to listen to the show. So thank you, if it's gotten the hold of you at all, if something speaks to you, just let me know.

I would love to hear your feedback! Tell a friend! There's almost 50 of you now that support the show in a financial way on patreon be that anywhere from $1 a month to…some of you, are way more generous than I deserve. So thank you from the bottom of my heart but each and every single one of you makes this happen and it's a privilege.

Fair warning, as we dive back into the show, there is a partly…I don't…I don't, I'm getting better at dealing with emotions, and you'll hear that in there, but I was so tempted to edit out parts of this. Where my humanity or my emotionality breaks through but I decided to leave it in; as that’s terrifying. So here we go, a conversation about the Enneagram with Clare Loughrige.

Seth Clare Loughrige, welcome to the show! Thank you for your understanding with my lack of calendaring abilities, and for long-term listeners to the show that will not surprise you. I screw up all the time with the calendar and then just for those listening I'd originally said let's do this Thursday, and then we realized, and by we…I mean you, that that's the Fourth of July and I'm like well that's that's stupid. I don't know how I missed that! I think I just looked at this Thursday's wide open on the calendar and didn't realize that the reason it was wide open is because all the family would be here with me. So anyway, welcome to the show I'm glad you're here.

Clare I'm glad I'm here too. No fireworks.

Seth We shall see, we shall see. A couple questions before we dive into the subject at hand, which is the Enneagram. I'll tell you up front the enneagram both frustrates and amazes me ,sometimes at the same time, but we'll get there. But I want to talk a bit about you like what makes you? Because I feel like the book, and the practices that come from it, will be informed greatly by your life experiences. So if someone asks, “Hey Clare, what makes Clare…Clare?”, what would you say? What are those things that have made you what you are?

Clare Wow, alright, so I was raised by a Sicilian father, maiden name Pizzimenti, and he was raised by the Christian Brothers and the Jesuits. So that's my story, so I went to Catholic school, I loved mass and at 18 years old I was introduced to the Catholic Charismatic Movement and that just fit my personality style. I loved reverence for God but I always had this “out there” energy. You know this, I wanted to experience God not just learn about God, not just honor God, but have an experience. So the Catholic Charismatic did that for me. Those priests and nuns, it was wonderful. And then my husband and I, we knew we were called to ministry together, and because the Catholics don't have a married order, like Francis and Clare, if they would have gotten together it might have been fine. I could have stayed in the Catholic Church; but we discovered that that wasn't possible. So we went to an Assembly of God-Bible College; which felt a little Catholic Charismatic, except for there was some resistance to Catholicism there.

So I began to leave behind my Catholic roots into this new realm, and then went from there to not to this nondenominational world. And then from there went to studying with the Methodists and and Quakers and all of that. Then finally, at 40 years old, ten years into our church plant I was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis and I ended up at the Transforming Center, with Ruth Haley Barton, don't know if you know who she is…

Seth I don’t…

Clare but that creates space for pastors and leaders to recover their souls. And I discovered that I had lived such an extroverted life that I didn't pay much attention to my own interior-ority, and so when I discovered that I had this autoimmune disease. I went to the transforming Center and ended up with the first practice I was taught was rest. And I actually, that was to me, that wasn't even Christian. I thought, you know, you die. Jesus says enter your rest. You know, now you work at the vineyard because the Sun is going down, night is coming, no man can work.

So I didn't realize that I had worked myself…I had lived such an extroverted-active life. Lots of social justice stuff, and I you know, the youngest of six, living with Sicilians…I mean it just, my life was always out “here”.

So when I discovered that there was an interior world to pay attention to I also discovered that I had been wounding my own life and the life of others with that very active energy. While it had done some good it had also caused some problems. And so I began to practice rhythms of work and rest. Silence and word, action contemplation and discovered that there was actually rhythm in life and not just all out here stuff. So I was introduced to the Enneagram during that first two-year community and then discovered I was a three on the enneagram.

So a very active, workaholic, image management, deception, self-deception; somebody would say; “Are you tired?”

I'd say, “No! No need for rest until heaven.”

So what makes Clare…Clare is that I really am a combination of glory and grime, action and contemplation; only because I had to learn the contemplative style because of trouble. And I am an ecumenical potpourri! I love…I love so many faith traditions that, you know, and part of that is my gift as a three that I can blend in different places. But it's also been my pain…that while I was blending into places I lost my own soul. So that's kind of the elevator speech of who Clare is.

Seth I've never heard the words ecumenical potpourri but that needs to become something. I like that! I don't know how to flesh that out, but I like that. I've never ever heard anybody say that before.

10:20

Question…because I don't know much about either the charismatic faith you know in America or in the Catholic tradition. What are those differences or are there any outside of Catholic and this is the pastoral order that I report to? Is there any practical differences or is it just all dogmatic differences?

Clare I like the way you said that. Yeah, I do believe it's dogmatic differences and that we have so much more in common than we do separating us. There's a deep desire to know God and be transformed by the renewing of our mind; and that mind the Greek word, nous, which really isn't just your brain, it's your whole life. It is your head, your heart, your gut, your actions in the world being transformed for the glory of God.

Ruth Barton would say, for the abundance of your own soul and for the sake of others; and so we have far more in common this desire not just to know God intellectually, but to have an encounter with God that goes beyond just our intellect.

Seth So the book that you've written, or you and others have written, there's a lot of names on the front cover. It's called Spiritual Rhythms for the Enneagram, and then subtitle: A Handbook for Harmony and Transformation.

I want to circle back to harmony in a minute but the first question is how do you…how is it even possible to write a book with four humans involved? Because I don't understand how that would, I mean it was hard enough to just calendar this, much less hundreds of pages, and an editor, and a publisher. So how does that even happen, and then when conflicts arise, because I have to think that all four of you are gonna have a different take on…you know, “what a three is” or “what a five is” or “how they are healthy or unhealthy”…how do you work through that?

Clare Well, I wrote my first book on the Enneagram back in 2006. Self-published. I wrote my second one in 2012 and was doing trainings with those books my friend Adele, who you see her name on the front cover. Adele wrote a book called the Spiritual Disciplines Handbook, and she was my first spiritual director seventeen years ago. Then we became friends, so we let go of the professional, you know, client you directee/director relationship, and we began to just love the Enneagram and spiritual disciplines together.

So they were teaching the Enneagram my husband and I were teaching the Enneagram and actually I certify people in the Enneagram, but we began to find this lovely connection. So if you've read a little bit Doug is a 1 that's, Doug Calhoun, Adelle Calhoun is a 4, Scott (my beautiful husband) is an 9, and I'm a 3.

So we as we have this mutual love we said well what could we do together that might offer some some grace to the Enneagram world. Lots of great stuff in business and psychology and spirituality but is there a way that we could show this kind of harmony?

So one of my favorite scriptures is if two of you would agree on Earth, anything is possible; and what I've discovered is that most people can't even agree in their own soul. You can't even agree with yourself. You're in arguments with yourself all the time right, and so this idea of already what we were doing with the Enneagram was working on harmony with your head your heart and your gut. Your IQ your EQ, emotional intelligence, and your GQ, your gut intelligence, and so we we were beginning to find some flow; some harmony individually. And we said, “Well if this is really gonna be the good stuff…if we're gonna love God with our hearts and mind and strength and our neighbor as ourself-let's practice and see what we can do together with this work. See if it's true, see if it's really possible to bring harmony”.

So that that's how it began and yeah you are right. We did have moments where we looked at each other and said…”okay, right now I'm just gonna take a moment and breathe I'm gonna try to find some inner harmony because I'm feeling some outwards dissonance”. So we would do that. We would actually…we've named our own demons, our own stuff, our own false-self; whatever you want to call it, vice. We had that kind of honesty and if we didn't the other one might say; “How are you doing right now?”. If they were picking up on something…

Seth just shut the laptop… call me later so

Clare yeah, that's really how it went. It was really practicing the book.

15:15

Seth There's a part of me that gets angry that when I, say like I'm 8 5 and 2 because I know…when you asked me and I said well here's where I'm at…so part of my brain is like “don't tell me what I am”! The other part of my brain is “challenge accepted” I'm not that. I get so frustrated because I can't actually change anything, and then I get mad. So does it have to be those three numbers? Because they're, as I read through everything, I'm like…I would like to be able to be like “this”. My wife is a nurse, she's entirely different than me I don't ever want to do what she does; there's no way I ever could, but I would like to aspire too.

But I feel constricted by limitations that I don't know how to get out. Is it always those three numbers? Is there any nuance?I guess what I'm asking is, when I'm 70, can I be a different three things? Is that even a thing? Is that even a real question I should even be asking?

Clare Well I think you asked a lot of questions there

Seth haaah

Clare I love it! I think first of all you know any Enneagram teacher that has been in this wisdom for a while says you are not alone. We've heard, and I maybe that makes you mad too, but we have heard others say the very same thing and then we would just like to say we feel you, we see you, and we really do believe you are a dominant type. That there are things that you have dismissed along the way, maybe because one part of you was applauded, and so you did more of that.

Maybe because one part of you was told “we don't do that in this house” so you dismissed it or it wasn't valued. You know you could have been raised in the house where intellect was so highly valued that you just undernourished the heart part of yourself. That kind of caregiver person and so you know whether it's undernourished or dismissed or something was more applauded we have all three centers of intelligence. You have all three of those accessible to you, but you have taken one to an art form and you have been able to work. That it's got you your job, it got you your marriage, it's done great work for you. And at the same time when you say, “Can I be something else at 70?”. I love that too, because what we say about harmony is it's a model that actually gives you access to more grace when you're centered.

So when you are centered you can access all of the virtues at the time you need them and what we see in people who have aged well, and who have suffered well, is they have lost a lot of the egoic structures. They are far more “living from essence-from true self” and able to access grace. That is really, really lovely and then we've seen people who have not let go of their egoic structures, and they get meaner and more difficult in their aging process.

So I think the point is the more centered we are you do have more access; but yes what we would say is that all models are wrong and some are really helpful (and that's quoting someone else but we don't know who it is but they're right). So this model of the three numbers is really just a way for you to practice letting go of the things you're constricted in.

Thank you for using that word, I love the word constricted, because it really gives us a picture of how we get stuck and trapped in what we've overplayed in our lives, what we've taken to an art form. And when we can loosen that and when we can open to FLOW which is one of the acronyms we use, Free Loving Open and Welcoming, we have accest to more than just what we're constricted in when we're over playing our personality style that has gotten us good things and has gotten us in big trouble and frustrates the heck out of you.

Seth Right at the beginning of your book the part that, it's probably the part of my brain that likes to rip things apart it's a reason probably that I do this podcast if I turn the screen there's like 27 books here that I'm gonna read this month in one way or another, it's all gonna get read. The logic of things is what I tend to gravitate to and rip apart and then I just question, unceasingly sometimes, I don't know what the purpose is for the questions, but I feel like I have to continually ask them. So there are two diagrams, there's the traditional Enneagram diagram that has like an open-end; almost like a horseshoe with fancy points. But yours is more, you call it like a harmony, the harmony Enneagram. So is that just semantics in the verbaige that you're using or do the extra lines actually intend to mean somethin?

Clare Yeah so the original Enneagram is nine personality styles around a circle that begin with, let's start up in the gut area.

The 8’s is the, you know, the person that shows us that God is strong. They show us the face of God is strength. The 9’s show us the face of God as peace, those peaceful people. The 1’s show us the face of God is good, you know, they're reforming the world. The 2’s show us the face of God is loving and serving you and caring for you, maybe your wife's a 2,I don't know?

There's a, you know, the 3’s the effective person they show us that God indeed is effective. “Let there be light” - there was light. The 4’s shows us that God is creator, this originality-this beauty of God. The 5’s shows us that God is wise and will rip apart everything and study everything in research and come let us reason together, Seth…

Seth mmhhmm (in laughter)

Clare right, excellent. Then there's the 6 who shows us that the face of God is faithful and loyal mercies, new every morning. Then the 7 shows us that God is an Epicure. God is adventurous, God is joy. God has plans that we know not of and then we are at the top again.

Okay, so I'm sure that Suzanne did a perfect job describing all that. So what I'll say about the the original diagram in the West…we have to understand that if you look at the beginning of the book the history of it; you know it could go back to the Pythagoreans…it can go back to Plotinus.

So we find it in math, we find it in philosophy, and then we find it with a Evagrius Ponticus, in the third century. With some conversation he has with Melania, where he looks up at the sky and says “The heavens declare the glory of God”. But when it came to the west we started with all these arrows and have things pointing, now, we've got wings. It's lovely, it's a robust system, it's fabulous. It's a model, and all models are incomplete but some are useful when you look at our model; which we say there are hints of it with the third century and the 12th century. We talked about that in the first chapter, but where I learned it with Stanford psychologist David Daniels, back in 2009.

David Daniels has written much on the a diagram, he's a brilliant psychiatrist and Enneagram master who is now gone on to his great reward. He threw up this diagram, I was studying at Loyola University, and he was the presenter and he threw up the new Enneagram model in my eyes but it dated back with three triangles. These connected one-four-seven, two-five-eight, three-six-nine and as soon as I saw it…what happened was it, it, just dropped me right back down into my Catholic roots.

With Ignatius Loyola who taught us how to know and do the will of God by checking in with all three centers of intelligence. We can't just make decisions with our intellect or with our heart affections or with our gut instincts; but all three, together open us to this flow. So that diagram while I learned it in 2009 from Dr. Daniels it has hints with Raymond Lowell in the 12th century. It has hints with Evagrius Ponticus.

23:44

Seth Is there a way to have any growth without suffering? Well I think that's what you said, suffering well, and then how do you even define that? Because suffering, for me is entirely different. So I'll say this, I've recently been telling my wife that this year-I've been doing the Examen and ever since I read the book last year, the name escapes me now, every single night..and I hate it and I love it but mostly I hate it.

It makes me deal with emotions and I like the way that… I've never thought about it as…

As a child it was, I can remember my dad often times saying you know “we're gonna do this use, your head, calm down, breathe, think through this logically”. Everything logically was rewarded and applauded. Only control what you can control and make sure that you control that well. Don't even worry about the rest of this “stuff”, which he would use biblical reasons for, but everything was logic and rhetoric and debatable, if that makes sense. But emotions…we don't cry. We don't do that. What purpose do they serve if you're not bleeding? What's the point in crying? You know?

Which, I'll say similar thanks to my kids now and I never thought about it as being undernourished. So for me emotions are struggling, like I feel a sense of loss when I…like if I'm watching a movie. and..

I watched the movie Interstellar the other day with my kids. I don't know if you've seen that movie or not so I'm gonna get scientific for a minute; and I'm not a scientist.

So here we go as you get closer to a black hole time actually gets sucked in, and so the closer you are to a black hole the slower time moves for you. But, relative for you here (on Earth), it moves at the same pace and so if I'm really close to the Sun a day for me…maybe four or five times longer for you. An hour for me maybe a year and a half for you. Because time itself is being sucked into that gravity well, which, that's just Einstein. I'm really badly explaining that. The movie does quite well and actually hired a brilliant physicist or astrophysicist from somewhere in the UK and because they had them, the money for the models, those are some of the best scientific models that exist for that type of science. They literally now use those as, hey, they had the money of a studio as opposed to grant money-so we can really make these computers work for us.

So there's a part where this guy is leaving earth he can SPOILER alert for those that haven't seen the movie from a decade ago, this is your fault, and he he basically…is like you know. When I get back to Earth…his daughter who's maybe 12 or 13 when he leaves …well we might be the same age. But my goal is to save humanity, we have to leave this planet were not destined to die on this rock. This is just where we were born but we have to leave because we're out of resources, effectively we've been poor stewards and were just out of resources. It is what it is and we can't go back and fix it.

So he leaves and has to make a decision with a team and the decision costs him I think 40 years. When he gets back (to the ship) there's all these relayed messages that are sent through the satellite stations. He's watching his son come on…his son say “I graduated college” his daughter say “I don't think you're listening to these/we buried grandpa today/I lost my firstborn son”. And you can just seethe hut the father just began to break down like…I was gone for hours and I missed their life.

And even now I'm getting a little mad about it, but I was watching it with my kids and it's, either way I couldn't deal with it, and so I basically just pause the movie. I'm like who wants to go play outside? We'll finish this later. Because I don't deal well with emotions. I've started talking my wife about it, like, I feel like that's a big issue for me and somehow I got to fix it. But I can't seem to move past any of those walls as I pray, anything else, and I don't know how to suffer that well. But for my wife it may be something different, you know, it may be she has cancer kids that she takes care of…and so for her her suffering is entirely different.

So I'll have people and, even listeners to the show like, how do I do this? What are some resources to suffer well? But…but my question is two parts how do I do that? Because I think you do have to do it, but is there any way to actually have spiritual or personal growth without suffering?

Clare Yeah well there it is…

So when I think about a 5

Seth mm-hmm

Clare and you saying I'm watching this movie and when it gets to this part I want to go out. Let's go out and do something else. You're actually naming the pain of your dismissed childlike self. So, if that's okay, I can say this if not you can cut it out

Seth it's okay

Clare and so just in June I was doing our training and certification, and I had a British 5 who was here and day 1 we began to unpack some things. I was giving a preview of what we would experience, not just cognitively, but actually in the body throughout the week; and was talking a bit, just as just a preview. even though he read the book before he came about the dismissed childlike self. And he said, “You know, you're reminding me right now that people talked about CS Lewis as a feeling intellect”. So he said, “and I realized that as a child when this particular teacher ripped up my art. I put my heart away“ and this was day one in the training.

This British 5 PhD, and he connected with a story of where his suffering came from; and where he dismissed his heart. And that became just an open door for the next several days for him to practice living in to his health. Not just the suffering of it, but the beauty of it. You know the gift for you, Seth, being a young dad you're actually being invited to not miss the story of your children's lives before you're at the other end. Like this father who came back and realized I missed the best part of life here, right. So there's a grace there, you know, the fact that you're doing the Examen daily, even though you hate it/love it. So that's Ignatius for the people who are listening who don't know that, as I mentioned Ignatius telling us to open up to all three centers. You're inviting that opening, and so practice doesn't make perfect but…one person said practice makes permanent.

When you're regularly accessing that ability to touch into “Where did I feel like I moved toward light today'“? “Where did I move away from light? Where did I move toward God? Where did I move away from God?” and then if you were sitting with a spiritual director and you said that I would say, “and where are you holding that in your body? Is there anything you're noticing? Is there a tightening in your gut, is there clenching in your jaw? Do you feel tears behind your eyes?

Which maybe I can also say this; it looked to me like there were tears behind your eyes when you talked about Interstellar…

Seth yeah they're gone now though, we..we are better now though…

Clare and so you know this…this willingness to wake up all three centers of intelligence is practice for every one of us. Because we have one part of our intellect whether IQ, EQ, or GQ that we have overplayed and one that we have diminished or undernourished. So the practicing through the Examen is one wonderful way to do that. And yeah you can awaken and it is through even feeling the suffering like what did I miss? What did I miss? And when was the last time I felt that as a little person? When did I feel like I needed to close that down? Listening to the words about your dad saying the tears are not necessary, right, you just say oh my gosh. When…when was the last time I felt the freedom to feel tears? And going there for a moment and welcoming back that wonderful God-given EQ that you have.

32:08

Seth so I want to go away from my numbers because it's….just..just as uncomfortable as I was with Suzanne, I'm also uncomfortable now, so let's go to yours. You say “effective loyalty harmonizes” and then you talk about that in the way that you pray and in the way that you engage in life. So what do you mean by that when you say effective loyalty harmonizes?

Clare So that's my harmony triad. So I start with the effective, which is my 3 heart, and I go to loyalty which is the 6-head my IQ, and I go then to my 9-harmonizes my GQ, my nine. So 3/6/9 the goose drank wine, you know that?
Seth nope

Clare okay you don't know that? “the monkey chewed tobacco on the streetcar line?

Seth I have no idea (laughter)

Clare You probably didn't jump rope as a kid, okay.

Seth no I did not

Clare 3/6/9 is my harmony and if I'm all stuck in my heart, which is effective, it just means I want to connect. I want to make it happen. I want to produce, I want that. If I just stay there I will dismiss my wonderful loyal questioning IQ that says Clare…why do you want to produce this? What is behind this? Is it that you are feeling unworthy and you think if you produce one more thing you'll be loved? What about waiting on this? How about you do a little more research about producing that-or are you just gonna get all caught up in your workaholism. So I go to my 6 to let me ask some questions and then I take a break and practice this rather rhythm of rest and harmony with the nine. Because 9s, nobody rests like the 9s the nines actually in their virtue they show us the peace of God, the face of God. So when I go to my 9 I will sit back in a chair, if it's okay to say this here, I'll pour myself a glass glass of cab. And I will sit with my overactive-effective-producing self and let the 6 ask some questions and let the peace of God come before I just move into something and produce one more thing that is saying “start another web page, make another phone call, get another thing done”

34:35

Seth So my pastor, I forget what he is I'd have to ask him again, I find myself often though in other virtues find myself entirely jealous. Like I wish that I could do that in such an easy way. To do it, which I know that's not…it's just not the way that I am. What are some practices to grow towards things that you see in other people that you’re like “Yes! That is something that I need to do and I need to do it better!” but to do so I also feel like I'm not me. Like it's a way outside the comfort zone…so what are some good practices that when you see things like you know, just rest and relax, or…Like my music minister is a 9 and I pastor teases him all the time like just make a decision like stop trying to placate ever but just make a decision already. It's the Easter service what are we singing? Well I thought we could do this and he could do that but… Buddy listen and we really need to do this so just make a decision. So how do you know when you see something that you're jealous of, a bit, and I think I use that word rightly I don't mean like a sinful jealous like a I would like to emulate that how do you practice to grow that way?

Clare Yeah. Well this is why we love this triangle because it gives you access to three different kinds of energies. A moving toward energy, which we can't unpack today, a moving away energy, and a moving against energy. Which all three are really important and you had them all present in the Harmony triangle. So for you, you naturally move away. You're great behind the camera right? In terms of, like, you're interviewing somebody else…right? You can live behind the one-way mirror but you moving toward eight; I love what you said you do this in groups. You've got that moving against energy, you can say, “Okay, no. Let's take action here; no we're gonna direct this group” and that kind of a thing. Then your two would be moving toward, right. Moving in-relating, engaging in ways.

And then the 1/4/7 has that same gift. You know 1 are move against, though they've got this “we're gonna reform it, we're gonna make it happen” but they can't always be reforming things otherwise it's perfectionism, right. So they have to move away, down and in, like a 4. Do some introspection. Feel your feelings. Get a lay of the land, feel other people's feelings, move down and in, right. And then the 7, move out into the world and experience and enjoy and take hold and taste everything and enjoy some stuff!

So each of the types really have that gift, practice really is it is present in this harmony triangle. Because what we say is when you're living in your type alone as a 5 you're playing God. But when you actually are harmonized you're reflecting God. Because you're accessing more than your type, your thing way to three different kinds of energies. You're giving way to three different kinds of intellect and practice makes permanent. You know God didn't just say oh you have a lovely headset and that's all you're gonna need in this life, you know, your body is just an appendage attached to your head. No you really do have a heart.

You know and as The Wizard of Oz says, you know “You have the head, a heart, a home, the nerve.” So you've got access to all three centers of intelligence; and all three energies, that will help you say; “This belongs to me. I don't have to be jealous.”

Just like Dorothy, it's like it's all here. There's no place like home. I've always had it right here within me. So are you too young to know the Wizard of Oz?

Seth no I have it on one of the anniversary specials. We watch it with our kids regularly, which is probably traumatizing. Those monkeys actually, now that I'm older, I'm like wow! This is pretty traumatizing, I still like monkeys though so it's fine but yeah. Yeah just the whole movie is a little bit unsettling the book is worse. I'm sure you've read the actual book, is actually worse.

Clare I understand, yes!

38:53

Seth I'm curious so you said something there you know you were born with a head, it's not just the head. So I don't know enough about Gnosticism but do you feel like, or in your experience, two people that hold a different type of faith-that don't have the same “Western civilization Aristotelian” addiction to logic…do they struggle or do they have an easier time with a practice like the Enneagram?

Clare Oh you are naming that tune! There is much, especially in underdeveloped what we would say non-civilized places, people access more body wisdom. You know the first Bible, as many have said, is creation. And so, you know, before we have anything on the page; before I think therefore I am, we did accept our body wisdom. We did know… “okay, there's a lion outside and I've got to be”…you know, we actually did listen to the hair on the back of our necks standing up, right. We did actually listen to the wisdom of the body and so when we think about how the gifts of reason and logic and, you know, the printing press have helped us-they've also hurt us.

So we don't always look up at the night sky and say the heavens declare the glory of God; we forget that as David said…he did a great job and saw him saying “when I kept silent about since my bones were wasting away” or or saying things like “oh my God my heart has come alive”. When was the last time we felt our bones telling us, Hey you need to get this right, or our heart saying…oh life is here! This is awesome! And so if we are willing to receive the gift of the intellect, the gift of our emotional affections, the gift of our body instincts then we're living a whole and holy life and able to experience life.

Human beings, we're spiritual beings trying to have a human experience, right? That is that's not my quote, it's one of the greats, but we really realize that this body, this temple not made with human hands, is where we're experiencing the life of God - the life of the divine. You know however people want to say it, the life of the universe it's here! We are a part of the cosmos and the beauty of awakening to all three centers of intelligence is an enlivening and harmonious experience.

Seth So I've been accused of lacking empathy probably because I don't do well with emotions, which works well at the bank. Because it's just, everything is, it's not black and white; but the gray area is as the manager there, that's the area that I flex but it's still predicated upon logic and risk management. But you end, or y'all end (somebody ends) each chapter with what does empathy look like for a one? What does empathy look like for a 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 27, there aren't 27—I was just seeing if everybody's paying attention ;)…

Clare haaa!

Seth so why empathy? Why that focus on empathy? Because I read a lot of books and there's not a lot of books that intentionally recenter everything back to empathy before we move on to the next topic?

Clare So the golden thread throughout the whole book is this beautiful scripture from Luke 10. Love God with all your heart, mind, strength-love your neighbor as yourself. So my professor Dr. Muholland, from Asbury, used to teach at the transforming Center. He talked about how it's like a Mobius strip, so it's actually this it is inextricably bound-loving God, neighbor, and self. It is two sides of the same mobius strip and if you run your finger in a mobius strip that's you gonna keep, just keep, touching. I really do believe that you can't say you love God, if you don't love your neighbor. You can't say you love your neighbor, if you don't of God. They are an inextricably bound truth that there is something about my connecting with you Seth that opens me to grace, and hope, and love, and faith, right.

In neuroscience we would say it's a social-synapse, it's really good for us. We're firing one another's little happy neurons and we're creating a way to start to see a 5 a 3, you know, and then empathy begins. Like if I tell you my story, Seth, why I do this little dance to impress you; it's because I'm the youngest of six children. They were all developmentally smarter, developmentally more, you know developed right. So I always had to impress, I always had to compete, I always had to know their music, know their books. I wanted to be as good as them and so it wasn't that I was trying to deceive anybody; I just wanted love. I wanted worth and if you can get my story you're gonna you're gonna wonder about other 3’s.

You're gonna say, “I wonder what their story is?” not, “oh there they go doing their little dance, their little impress you dance” right, I don't trust it. And when the 5 starts to move away, rather than judging you and feeling judged by you, like; “he's so smart he thinks I'm an idiot that's why he's moving away right now”. No! I might get to know your story and say, “well actually there's a story about tears not being acceptable here; but just go to your head with logic.” So then I start to just open space for you. To be curious about you. To care about your story and then it's just the social synapses are firing.

And if you know anything about heart math…do you know anything about heart math?

Seth mmhhmm…no..mmhhmm

Clare Oh, it's awesome! So they did some work on 9/11, after 9/11, when people were running in to help their neighbors. When people were not polarized by stupid stuff but they were polarized about caring about their New York neighbors. They actually found an atmospheric change over the city of New York. Now, I love it because you're gonna research it now, and if you look them up on YouTube what they'll do is they'll actually take people up on stage. They'll give them something that causes some disharmony, in their heart area. That causes this kind of frenetic movement and then they will give them something that helps harmonize it. And they can pick it up through their blood pressure, through their EKGs.

What happens in the body in disharmonious times, when the frequency is all jagged, and then when they can regulate. When you can regulate what happens in the body and then what happens out “here”. You can tell the difference when you're with a person that's harmonized and a person who is dysregulated in their emotions. But now we can pick it up, and we can actually say, “Yeah…it changes the world.” It doesn't just change between you and I, it can actually have an effect on our culture.

Seth So this is just a comment that requires no answer…but that terrifies me. When I look at the ideological landscape that is our current country, because I don't see any harmony there. But I don't want to go there because we're running close out of time. When you kept saying they for heart math and they for bringing people up on stage who is they? It'll make it easier to research…

Clare Heartmath.org …

Seth Oh! That's the name of it okay…okay-yeah that sounds fascinating. Yeah and then I'll dip down that rabbit hole for a bit. So the back of your book, what I like about your book and a few other books is, there's a lot of content upfront but then there's some practice at the back. And so if there's one of these practices, and I'm not gonna call it the appendices, it's called something else…Resource Center…something like that. What is maybe one or two of the practices that will yield, not the easiest results, but yield maybe the most fruitful, easily seeable, results as people begin to engage in things that are uncomfortable?

Clare Well you know number one. STOP for harmony it's an acronym and it is:

See. Trigger. Open to. Presence.

And it gives for each and every type a way for them to see, be awake to where you are and the situation that's causing you a problem at the moment. Trigger, what is the trigger here? If I can actually name that demon it doesn't have power over me right. If you can name it you contain it, so to speak. Then open, beginning to breathe, and open up to all three centers of intelligence. 1, 4, 7 if you're those three numbers 2, 5, 8, if you're those three numbers 3, 6, 9 if you're those three. Then you're open to presence, your own presence, which is your truest-self. Not you're out here, ego-structure personality type that's over playing your gift and the presence of God to what is more than you.

So it's really you know it's in response to Romans; “The things I want to do, I just don't do; and the things I hate, I end up doing. Who can save me from the pit”. Right… or who can save me from the noonday demon? I wake up, I say I'm not going to do that today. I'm not going to do it and then 12 noon hits and you do the Examen, and you say, yeah I did it. Oops!

Seth I did it again and again. I did it yesterday. Why do I suck at this! Yeah I was talking about Romans last night with someone at a baseball game. We were talking about…I don't take the Bible as a literal textbook to tell you what you're allowed to do and not to do, I think it's intended to be chewed on more than that. But he did, and so he kept quoting Romans to me and I ended up quoting that scripture and then just the whole first part of Romans. I'm like if you just read the whole first missive of Romans he's basically saying

Stop being so legalistic! Stop judging people. Because as soon as you read this Bible in a legalistic way or this letter, it wouldn't be in the Bible then, you're doing the same darn thing. So now we're gonna talk about “this” we're gonna talk about, “this” we're gonna talk about the way you worship at the temple…he just looked at me. He's like “that's what it says”.

Then we can't…we can't even talk, because we don't have the common ground. That is a tangent it's just related… So

Clare No, no, no. Can I add to that?

Seth Yeah

Clare It's not a tangent because it's what the Enneagram is about. We don't see things as they are. We see them as we are and we all have a lens, you know, we're all looking at the world through our own lens. So you know somebody said don't argue with a fool because even if you win you've just made friends with a fool.

There's this idea that we all are not awake until we're able to be awake. So there is a way that many people view the Bible and so that is part of the struggle in our landscape right now. And so what we might say is that practices that help us open to more of God's presence and the true self made in the image and likeness of God.

You know Nelson Mandela said “human beings can't bear the burden of their own inherent greatness”…and so there's this part of we have been made in God's image; and when we touch into presence all that other stuff drops away. All the law, and all the prophets, drop away so this one thing loving God and loving neighbor as yourself.

Seth You start the book with a similar quote - that's from Soren Kierkegaard - which is “With God's help I shall become myself”.

Point people in the right direction. Where do they contact you or any of the other 72 authors of the book? How do they get a hold of the book, etc? Where would you send people to?

Clare So Spiritual Rhythms for the Enneagram is available, it's on sale right now for $17 dollars. Spiritual Rhythms for the Enneagram by the Calhoun's and Loughrige’s.

We have a Facebook page: Spiritual Rhythms for the Enneagram. We have a training actually accredited through the International Enneagram Association that is available twice a year in Marshall, Michigan. I can send you my links if people want to look at show notes, be happy to do that.

We have a website: morethanyourtype.com or Spiritual Rhythms for the Enneagram. So there's lots of places you can go and really love to get this wisdom out there; and you know hope that the world can be in harmony together.

Seth Yeah me me too, that would be fantastic. Well thank you again Clare. Thank you for your willingness to bend to my poor calendaring I really enjoyed the conversation, thank you so much.

Clare Thank you! Appreciate your willingness to let me come on and share with you and I love your show.

Seth Thanks

Clare I got to tell you some of the authors you've had on or my very, very favorite. I won't name them one by one but thanks for getting the word out there.

Seth Perfect, thank you.

Closing

So by now it's been it's been some time since I recorded this with Clare and begrudgingly I am learning to appreciate the Enneagram. I'm learning more about myself with it but I'm also holding it still at a steady distance but it's beginning to crack into me. I'll tell you why, I don't know but but Clare could hear it, when I started talking about you know my kids and that movie Interstellar…there it was…it was emotional. And I'm learning that that's okay and that is changing me but I'm also learning to be protective of that. I think that there may be a damage to allowing oneself to crack too quickly and maybe I'm wrong would love to hear your feedback on that. But I am intentionally letting things break away and letting that reveal whatever is beautiful underneath me; and that is frightening. It's frightening to watch what I've made the ego that I have created that I work with very well to protect myself chip away; and even just saying that sounds weird. And it's not quite right but it's the best that I can say it now and so I'm gonna end with that because I don't know how else to end. This one really hit home for me and I hope it did for you.

Big, big thank you to every single one of the patrons supporters of the show. Everyone that has rated and reviewed the show I can't thank you enough. I can't do this show without you and so thank you, so very much.

To the hope Arsenal whose music you heard blended into this episode; thank you as well.

Ben has been gracious enough to let the show use his music ,twice, and I really love it. His most recent album is just good! It's fantastic. So check him out.

You'll find links to him in the show notes as well as all the stuff from Clare.

I look forward to talking with you next week.

Be well everybody.