PZ's Podcast

It's not just Tyrone Davis. It's almost any artist who captures the popular imagination. He or she is talking about real things, personal and individual issues, the things everyone is carrying. As opposed to abstractions and concepts.

I was looking at a church news service the other day and noted that every single item featured had to do with a "social-justice" or group-identity concern. And every single item was worthy, in the sense that the concern is real and the possibility of Christian moral input hopeful. But I also thought, not many people come to church for the first time looking for group-answers or conceptual constructions. People who come to church for the first time -- and most of us, probably -- are looking for relief from personal pain. We come to God -- when we really come to Him -- for relief and help in the now! This is an empirical fact from experience.

That is why Tyrone Davis speaks to me more than almost every religion news service put together. TD is right there in the arena of lovelessness, lovelornness, love abandonment and love recouping. Just listen to the opening phone call in "I Had It All the Time", which begins this cast. The man has flown 1000 miles to get something back that he lost. Love L-U-V, in other words.

Tyrone Davis, and not the unspecific concerns of our momentary moment, represents the Future of Mankind. LUV U!

A little bit of surgery can compose the mind, right?

In any event, in my recovery I went back to Nevil Shute's novel The Rainbow and the Rose. It concerns the twilight of a man's life as he lies dying in an overturned airplane in remotest Australia, and the insights he has -- and someone else has -- about himself. These insights concern the inward man, not the outward man; and the reader learns to look at himself in the broadest possible and yet the truest possible strokes.

I've tried to say it before, but only one or two relationships that you have had will be on your mind at the end. It may be a child, possibly a lost child. It may be someone you've loved -- and who may be there still, by the grace of God. It may be one of your parents, or a father-figure or someone like that. But it will be a person, not a thing; an intimate connection, not an idea or "narrative".

This podcast invites the listener to review his or her own life in these terms. They are the terms that last, or last until we are "swallowed up in death", or better, in the Light and New Jerusalem of God.

Oh, and read Rupert Brooke's sonnet "The Treasure", from which the cast takes its title. Shute begins his novel under the rubric of that profound poem. You can find it anywhere. LUV U!

I'm wary of telling a story about myself unless it has potential resonance and carries some possible hope to a listener. Here I am giving a short witness of a counter-intuitive Word received in church the other day; and an even more counter-intuitive "Word" from the world of pop music, which came crashing through my windshield on the way home from church.

The initial Word related to chain-breaking and the possibility of a life-cycle completed rather than repeating. Moreover, this first Word came during the minister's Offertory Sentences! (I had come to hear a sermon, but the Word came via an Offertory Sentence.)

The second Word gave me an instrument through which the first Word could become real, a concrete thing. And that second Word was a rather pale-sounding Christmas perennial entitled "The Bell That Couldn't Jingle". So, much to one's surprise...

God's Word confounds one's most established and convinced narratives. He has a narrative -- or rather, is a narrative. But any narrative I'm trying to project on my life soon stands in tatters on that "hill I chose to die on".

Oh, and listen to Kim Walker Smith at the end of the cast. For me, she was a complete discovery! What do you do when you think you know a lot, and it turns out you know more or less nothing, or at least nothing about a very big something. LUV U.

Imputation is the prime "agent" within the great dynamic of the Grace of God. As one need never tire of saying, imputation is when you regard someone as better (or finer or prettier or stronger or kinder) than they are. And the effect of imputation is to make the person actually become, in "real time" and real life, the way they are being regarded.

Often imputation is understood as a sort of "legal fiction", by which you just put a cloak over a wound and by not actually treating the wound allow it to fester and contaminate. This misunderstanding is dispelled when you demonstrate imputation from life -- which not enough exponents of it do! The fact is, romantic love as well as the love of parents for their children, and also the love of mentors and teachers to those in their charge, almost always, if it is to work, includes the "agency" or instrument of imputation. In other words, you're seen as if you were better than you see yourself; and the effect of this in practice is that you wordlessly change and get better. It just happens! And it happens all the time.

This episode of PZ's Podcast begins with a 'Philadelphia Soul' instance of imputation, in a track by The Spinners entitled "Lazy Susan". The song is both improbable and wonderful. I can almost guarantee that on the second listen, you will tear up. (I feel certain Sarah Condon will. At least one hopes so.)

Then I try to explain how imputation works in life, concluding with reference to Taylor Caldwell's 1960 novel entitled "The Listener". I have to thank Stu Shelby for quoting that novel during his Palm Sunday sermon. (I had never heard of it before.) In the novel, a totally compassionate yet hidden 'Listener" evokes complete, unsparing self-disclosure and confession on the part of sufferers. And they are each changed. "The Listener" is a Run-Don't-Walk novel for Mockingbird -- let alone, everybody..

Episode 271 of PZ's Podcast is dedicated to 'Father Stu', Rector of All Saints Episcopal Church, Winter Park, FL.

So I was looking high and low for a little peace the other day. An article I read had upset me, and I thought to myself, "Well, if that's true, then why not just go to sleep for the next ten years, say, and not be conscious."

Then suddenly, an hilarious Instagram post came up from a Mockingbird contributor, which sparked an old association: the 1973 single by The Tymes, entitled "You Little Trustmaker". And somehow, like the correct fork in Robert Frost's "The Road Not Taken", that made all the difference.

This podcast is in fact a reflection on love and trust, on love enacted as well as love sworn. I hope it will open a door on your own loves, let alone on your own isolation (when you feel it) -- a door on Love as it really is.

And please don't miss Tyrone Davis' 'story in music' at the end, entitled "I Had It All the Time". LUV U!

As the human soul makes its trajectory through life, it "lights on" hoped-for objects of connection. From birth to death, the soul is looking for, urgently aspiring to locate, a substitute for the connection with God that it had before it was born.

Unfortunately, the soul is almost always disappointed. That is because no created entity and no living being can satisfy what only God can satisfy. No person that's been made can satisfy the longing for direct connection with Immortal Love which fills every human soul.

Thus hurts are born and wounds are made. Sorrows are indited and pain is pressed in. And, as my first Episcopal bishop said, the man of God I had known as a little boy on the Washington Cathedral Close, on his death bed -- shocking the Diocese of Washington in 1971 -- "Life is tragic."

How are the wounds of life healed?

Well, about 95% of them can be healed under the maxim, "Feel to heal". If the wounded individual will just stop suppressing, displacing, and swallowing the pain of the wound, and, rather, feel it and express it, the pain almost always diminishes. It may not diminish to the point of non-existence. But it very often, when abreacted, when felt, diminishes to the point of being able to be borne.

And yet, and yet, there is about a 5% element within the pain of one's life that is just too deeply buried, too poorly stitched up when it happened, too "immediate" to the child-self inside you, to be healed by being felt. Some sicknesses, to quote SK, are "unto death".

I have observed this fact of life (or death, rather) through years of pastoral ministry. Some problems are, it appears, incurable.

And this is where the experience of spiritual warfare comes to the fore. (I often wish this second element of healing weren't true, because it threatens to cross over into the Twilight Zone or One Step Beyond -- the bizarre and potentially superstitious.) But it is still true! Some of the burdens you and I carry can be healed only through spiritual deliverance, the casting out of demons.

But hey, Jesus did it. He was much less finicky about it, too, than I, for one, constitutionally, am.

So "Come with Me, and Take a Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea".

It was touching beyond words to attend and witness the Institution of Stu Shelby as Rector of All Saints Episcopal Church, Winter Park, FL. Mary was a Presenter, and I had the chance to just take it all in. Sarah Condon preached the sermon, and it was an absolute home run.

The whole affair felt like "Mockingbird Embodied"; and the message of God's Grace in Christ was utterly tangible and fully fleshed. For me and Mary, this was a high point of our life in Florida.

So I thought about "seasons" in one's life. The word's a little over used -- sort of like "conversation" -- but there is still something to it. Stu and Sarah, and Josh and Crissy, and Dave and Cate, and many, many others we know, are right in the middle of life, of engagement. They are on the front lines of ministry, service, and witness.

Yours truly, on the other hand, is more on the margins. One can't help this for it is a part of aging. Nevertheless, one can give, and serve, in a different way.

Think about Nick Lowe and Los Straitjackets. They are just about to release a new album, "Love Starvation", and the early notices are raves. They are all now older versions of themselves, but still... themselves. Or Steve Perry. His recent album, "Traces", got a few complaints concerning the timbre and range of his voice. But listen to it: the emotion of his Journey songs is right there! The heart of his Journey songs is right there! He is right there.

The same is true of you as you "grow in grace and you grow in years". You're the same but you're in a new season. That season has different doors and different possibilities. But you're not regressing! You're deepening.

LOL, PZ

Huge -- Yuge -- feedback from the previous two casts, entitled "Surprise Surprise" and "Soul Searchin' Time".

So here I am looking at two basics, two core issues I have with current religion -- religion in the David Zahl/"Seculosity" sense, that is, every attempt to solve the problem of being human by conceiving a lever to fix it.

I see two core problems with most religion, let alone culture, today. This includes evangelical Christianity, which persistently shows, in the case of fallen pastors, disloyalty to its central warrant; and social-progressive Christianity, which also persistently shows, in the case of traditional believers in its own ranks, a failure to live up to its warrant of "inclusion".

My first point is that if one's anthropology is too high, if one's understanding of human nature underestimates the problem of inward inherent conflictedness (i.e., sin), then one's soteriology is routinely too low. In other words, if you believe human beings can produce a just society on their own, then the tools you give them to do it will not be up to the task. The Gospel presupposes a low anthropology, which requires a high soteriology. You need to get your diagnosis right in order to get your treatment right.

My second point is that if you think parity-of-power and/or economic security are the two necessary elements of social and individual satisfaction, then you are missing an element that's even more important than they. What's that, you ask? Romantic Love.

Oh, no, you say, Paul's at it again! But no! Just listen to the songs you like on Spotify, review the records you buy (or download), and think about... what you're usually thinking about. Let's not even use the phrase "romantic love". Let's just say, relationships. Let's just say, connection with another human being. Let's just talk about moms and dads and children, boyfriends and girlfriends, 'Friend and Lover' ("Reach Out of the Darkness", 1968). These are the things -- the people -- that make your world go 'round, or make it crash!

Two basics, then: the inviolable connection between low anthropology and high soteriology, and the irresistible claim on you of a relationship. Or the hope of same. (Sighted Sub. Sank Same.) LUV U!

The previous cast, "Surprise, Surprise", raised the vexing question of exceptions in the practice of grace to sinners and sufferers. I spoke about the chronic inability of Christians who emphasize grace to embody it in relation to specific sinners and specific sins. One example I chose was from the Reformed world and one was from the Social Progressive world. The context of each was different, but the phenomenon is the same: "talking the talk" re grace and "radical welcome" but exempting certain individuals or groups of individuals from its "saving embrace".

My question now is How Come? How is it possible for Gospel-emphasizing Christians to still flee a particular sinner? And how is it possible for Inclusion-emphasizing Christians to make "traditional" Christians feel so un-included?

Well, one thing I know is that when you and I are loved -- really loved, concretely and personally -- at our worst point, then we almost cannot fail to extend that mercy to other people at their worst point, no matter what it is. Mary and I have seen this time and again. You probably have, too.

The cast concludes with an illustration from the 1935 movie version of "The Last Days of Pompeii", and a reference to the British TV mini-series "We The Accused" (1980). Each incident described mirrors the Real Thing. It is why we are Christians, after all. LUV U.

A friend recently surprised me with the observation that Christians he knows who preach a "theology of glory" seem to be more welcoming, and forgiving, of real actual sinners than Christians he knows who preach a "theology of the Cross". In other words, the folk who you'd think would be the most merciful to people who've fallen aren't! And people with whose theology you can't necessarily sign on the dotted line -- such as pentecostals or African-American evangelicals -- are!

I'd have to say that my own experience confirms what my friend said. I've spent my whole ministry in a denomination which avers passionately that the chief sign of a Christian Church is its Radical Welcome and Radical Inclusion. (I agree with this, in principle!) But the "rub" is that the welcome doesn't always apply, at least to traditional Christians.

The question I'm asking is why. Why do Christians who protest they are proponents of the "relentless love of Christ" and "the fierce love of God" not practice it in specific cases? Why the exemptions in practice? I mean, I can barely number any more the excellent rectors I have known who have felt it necessary to become Roman Catholics. These are good, loving, and experienced pastors -- not squeaky wheels -- who have concluded that they cannot be themselves in their old environment. The "hard wood of the Cross" seems to be applied to everyone but themselves.

We are looking at un-integrated assertions concerning the Grace of God. The assertions are great. One agrees with almost everything being stated concerning the reach of God's Grace, whether it is stated on the theological right or the theological left. But they seem to find it hard to mercifully engage real sin, or real difference.

Listen to William Hale White's reflection on this odd surprise in the following short passage from his novel "The Autobiography of Mark Rutherford" (1881):

"It must be added that (the evening services in our evangelical chapel) afforded us many opportunities for walking home with certain young women, who, I am sorry to say, were a more powerful attraction than the prospect of hearing brother Holderness, the travelling draper, confess crimes which, to say the truth, although they were many according to his own account, were never given in that detail which would have made his confession of some value. He never prayed without telling all of us there there was no health in him; and everybody thought the better of him for his self-humiliation. One actual indiscretion, however, brought home to him would have been visited by suspension or expulsion."