One has been thinking all week about those precious little girls from Camp Mystic. There's also a pastoral situation or two in which sharp suffering seems to have been "imposed" on people I love. Why and How and ... What?

I had a kind of visitation late one night this week. It came initially from ... Van Morrison.

Then something else happened:

The Christian response to darkest tragedy is probably not explanation or interpretation, but rather superimposition. It's impossible to explain away a certain reality, let's say. And yet what happened is not the whole reality. There is another reality. You might almost say, there are two realities. But isn't this true of our life histories, even of our personalities? The Old Creation is alive and potent. The New Creation is eternal and more potent.

See what you think. Hope you'll maybe try it on.

How does someone who is living, like it or not, in the last third of life, address everybody else who is living in the second third? It's an important question, cuz most of the time it's like two ships passing in the night.

An older Episcopal priest used to come up to me about once a week -- he was assisting in a busy parish where I was rector -- and say, "Hey, Paul, relax. You're working too hard. Please, relax." Every time he did that -- and his "intentions were good" (The Animals, 1965) -- I'd get a-fib! Literally, my heart would jump and I'd get a-fib. What this nice man said was kindly intended, but it always had the opposite effect....: a-fib.

So hey, how can Hewes Hull, my conversation partner this week, and yours truly say what our experience and our faith has taught us -- mostly through impasse and insuperabilities -- in such a way that it can get through to a normal, busy (i.e., stressed) listener? That is the Question.

I think the podcast probably works. And mainly because of a story Hewes tells, from his own life, near the end. Oh, and there's the music, too, and especially the last, eternal track.

So, hey, you out there,... Relax. LUV U, PZ

While one was within the second third of one's life, one had all these goals in view, of happy marriage, happy fathering, and (most of all, sadly) successful careering. That was the way it was -- and probably the way it is, at least for some who may be reading this. And in that (now) embarrassing order, too.

But at this point it's beginning to look a little bankrupt -- at least the order of valuation. Maybe "superficial" is a better word.

So "What Now, My Love?" (H. Alpert/M. Ryder/Sonny & Cher... ad infinitum). Is the last third of life, i.e., for those of us among the "new demographic", disillusionment and moping; or compulsed repetition; or possibly/impossibly "Behold, I do a New Thing" (Isaiah 43:19)?

Today, and again next week, my friend Hewes Hull and I will be discussing this (to us, core) theme: What Now, My Love? Is it Marcus-Aurelian grinning-and-bearing it? Or maybe assisted suicide, even? Or again, "Something Better Beginning" (The Kinks, 1965)?

Hewes has had a fine career practising law and then in private equity finance. He has an extraordinary wife, Trent, of 31 years. Hewes himself is 57 years of age. (A young man, as I now pronounce him.) His chief hobbies are theology, jujitsu and hunting/fishing.

Hope you'll enjoy our conversation. Oh, and I hope you'll LUV the closing track, by... wait for it... Bobby Sherman!

Every version or tradition of the Christian Faith offers an objective or corporealized dimension within a person's (longed for) relationship with God. For Roman Catholicism, it is the Real Presence of the Lord within the Elements of Bread and Wine. For pentecostalism, it is the embodied Gifts of the Spirit in miracles of healing and divine intervention, and often an accompanying gift of speaking in tongues. For many Protestants, it is the Written Word of the Bible -- the actual and specific words as dictated by God Himself.

Personally, I like all of these 'doors' to experiencing God. During Covid I almost switched to Catholicism because only the Catholic parish where we lived at the time kept its doors open. So I could go there every day and pray. Earlier I had sort of already become a pentecostal Christian, partly because of a vision I received during a sermon preached by a pentecostal pastor. And I have always loved -- treasured! -- the Old and New Testaments as the continuing Word of God to one's hungry heart.

Then, too, I have on three occasions seen dead people. Three times I have interacted with people I had known who were now dead. Each time I was being addressed by individuals who were speaking to me from God's Heaven.

So Pixie Dust. Like in the Disney Peter Pan, animated - classic - perfect: Pixie Dust. We need Pixie Dust. As Ringo sang in "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band": 'I Get By with a Little Help from my (Pixie Dust)'.

It's not an optional extra. It's essential. LUV U.

It's been too long but here is my new episode.

It started with the second-to-last scene in an 'Outer Limits' episode from 1963 entitled "The Human Factor". Brought yours truly straight to tears.

Then we hurtled through time to 1996, to Cliff Robertson's touching redemption at the end of another 'Outer Limits' episode, entitled "Joyride". The combination of these two genius moments equipped PZ to talk about... yes... Anglicanism... and yes... the Episcopal Church... and yes... contemporary parish ministry.

But I couldn't go there until my heart was ready. And that work was achieved by Sally Kellerman and Gary Merrill in 1963.

Incidentally, I recommend you begin your sermon preparation -- maybe any public preparation -- by getting in touch with your heart. (People aren't really that interested in your mind.) Get in touch with your heart and you might actually convince somebody.

Oh, and by the way, I'm an Episcopal minister and still glad to be one. (And we go to a great church.) LUV U.

This is a sort of "marker" podcast -- my 400th. It's kind of my summing up on the subject of human identity and the origin of human satisfaction.

The cast cites a recent interview with Jordan Peterson, and do note that the interviewer is almost as interesting as the interviewee I also quote John Zahl's distillation sermon from December 29th -- which happened to be Mrs. Zahl's and my 51st Anniversary. The cast finishes with a little James Hilton (i.e., one's current fave) and... a 1978 cover of Maurice Williams & the Zodiacs. You'll see.

I want you to think about the origins of your own psychic self. From where does "self-hood" come? Did you create yours? What do you want for yourself more than anything else in the world? What would you do anything to acquire? Oh, and is satisfaction in life about loving or being loved?

"All You Need Is (Be-)Love(dness)". Nothing else really matters -- or at least at the start of life (I mean infancy), and also at the end of (mortal) life (I mean death). Oh, and also at every felt point of need you have ever had to face.

At the end of the day, a baby, a "disheartened" person (to quote Jackie Wilson from '68), and a dying person need one thing: Love From Outside. And may that Love ever "STAY" (J. Browne, '78).

Podcast 400 is dedicated to Mary Cappleman Zahl.

Everyday I see how little I know.

A prime example of this is Agnes Sligh Turnbull. Have you ever heard of Agnes Sligh Turnbull? (You probably have.)

She wrote very successful novels in the 1940s and '50s, and later, too. But she was an optimist, she was a Christian, and she believed in redemption. (So she's more or less been "cancelled" by critical opinion, even tho' she sold millions of novels in her day.)

Now you've got to read Agnes Sligh Turnbull's 1947 novel entitled The Bishop's Mantle. It's the inside story of a young Episcopal rector in a northeastern city -- "inside story", in that the author gets inside the heart and mind of a sincere man of God who is still completely human and vulnerable. Almost every page of The Bishop's Mantle has a moment of total insight into what it is like to be parish priest. The man happens also to be in love with a high flying young woman who is reluctant to marry a "parson". That problem needs to be worked out.

Oh, and one more thing: The Bishop's Mantle describes a denomination that was, prior to 1979, about 90% "low church". The church observed by Agnes Sligh Turnbull is just so refreshingly not high church. (I think you'll love that aspect.)

Oh, and it's 'Sligh' not 'Sly' -- tho' we sure loved Sly back in the day.

LUV U.

There is a roughly four-minute sequence in the middle of the first Superman movie (1978) that hits the stratosphere of movie emotion -- and of real-life emotion, too. It is the scene in which Superman takes Lois Lane's hand and flies her leisuredly over Manhattan Island. As the pair glide over the city, Lois Lane (played by Margot Kidder) confides her innermost thoughts to the viewer: she has fallen completely in love with Superman, and that is because he has singled her out as the object of his most personal regard.

The sequence is monumental in feeling and memory because it sums up the sequence of romantic loving -- and also the sequence of God's loving of poor us. Because Superman has singled out Lois for his most tender regard, she responds with her entire self. She voices her feelings in this way:

"Here I am like a kid out of school. Holding hands with a god. I'm a fool. Will you look at me? Quivering. Like a little girl shivering. You can see right through me. Can you read my mind? Can you picture the things I'm thinking of? Wondering why you are all the wonderful things you are. You can fly! You belong in the sky. You and I could belong to each other. If you need a friend, I'm the one to fly to. If you need to be loved, here I am. Read my mind."

What this demonstrates is that love does not start with loving someone, but rather with being loved by someone. I need to be the object of someone's love before I can actually love someone myself. Now capitalize the 's' - S - and the analogy to the Christian Gospel becomes palpable. Instantly palpable! All love begins as One-Way Love: not love from me but love to me.

So go now and look up that sequence in Superman from 1978. It's easy to find. And it's the truth of life. And not a truth of life. But the truth of life. LUV U.

I so want to connect with my hearers when I preach or speak.

Yes, one has a Message -- the One-Way Love of God embodied in the Compassionate Christ. But if it doesn't really connect with the listener -- with the sufferer! -- it is not able to do its job.

J.B. Priestley (d. 1984), who had basically lost whatever faith he had been exposed to as a child, spent a lot of years looking for... something. He would gladly have capitalized "something" (i.e., Something).

In 1960 Priestley wrote specifically about the decline of Christianity in the West. He wrote that the only way the "Church" could 'come back' -- which he would have welcomed given the cultural despair and nihilism he observed everywhere around him -- was to get through to the unconscious. Christianity's original, great and contagious strength had been to reach individuals in their depth/s.

I agree with JBP. For many years Mary and I have listened to sermons that are sincere, sound theologically, and well prepared exegetically. Yet we often leave the service untouched, un-addressed, un-healed. As Herr Kaesemann said once, after listening to a sermon during a conference at Yale Divinity School: "Es gibt keine Anrede!" In other words, the Word has to address me in the deeps. The preacher's "deeps" need to be calling out to mine (Psalm 42:7).

This cast draws on Priestley's "Presence of the Absence"; a John Wyndham paperback from 1953; and -- wait for it -- Spanky & Our Gang. The last track, from 1969, is IMO pure perfection.

Oh, and "Out of the Deeps" is dedicated to Mary Zahl, whose recent talk to the Women of the Advent in Birmingham, entitled "The Things That Remain" (https://talkingbird.fireside.fm/400) is as fine as anything I have ever heard her present. LUV U.

I'm thinking about ecclesiology today. Rarely do.

But a combination of J.B. Priestley's "low anthropology", a couple of recent lightning bolts from outside space and (present) time, and a fresh glimpse of the touching statue of "The Compassionate Christ" outside Cathedral Church of the Advent in Birmingham:

Well, they got me thinking of what the Christian Church is centrally and anchoredly about. Add to that the third verse of Lou Christie's number-one song from 1966, "Lightnin' Strikes"; and it's probably all there. One's ecclesiology, I mean.

"Dangerous Corner" by J.B. Priestley, which was first performed in London in 1932, unmasks the human tragedy of self-serving, manipulation, and deception in about as unrelieved a manner as could be imagined. The last scene but one, which leads directly to a character's suicide, surely rips the curtain off our world's endemic conspiratorial malice. It is almost a pure enactment of the "low anthropology" that is endemic to us.

But the playwright offers us no hope. He actually, explicitly dismisses the antidote of faith in God. I so want to enter that scene myself, speaking sincerely and personally, and address the desperate "hero". He's got it mostly right, you see; his diagnosis is accurate. But we believe in God -- and not a "deistic"/hands-off sort of force, but rather: Pure Empathy, Pure Sympathy, Pure Mercy, Pure Grace.

Our ecclesiology, therefore, is the Church, in whatever form, as Embodiment of One-Way Love. That's PZ's ecclesiology. That's Lou Christie's "chapel in the pines" (1966). That's the churches of refuge at the end of War of the Worlds (1953), that's 'Mr. Carpenter' in Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), that's the Isaiah 2, verse 4 climax of The Colossus of New York (1958), that's the hymn chorale at the end of The Space Children (1958), that's the Christ-figure at the conclusion of The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957). And so it goes.

When the curtain is ripped away on life as it really is and people as they really are, all that's needed is One Helping Hand, One "Next Voice You Hear" (1951), One... Man from Galilee (Ocean, 1971/Elvis, 1972), One Jesus Christ Superstar. LUV U.