PZ's Podcast

What are we all looking for in this life…? The new being, rebirth, meeting your inner child again for the first time. However you name it, whatever you make of it, the truth of reality is this: we all withhold a few things from everyone including and especially from ourselves. We lose so much in the withholding and the repression, which is quite understandable. But there is hope! You can go forward through going backward. Aldous Huxley did it. He became a theological psychologist par excellence, and we can follow his lead. A graced archeological excavation can produce so much in the way of the teleological imagination.

The introduction to this cast is done by Bill Borror and Scott Jones, co-hosts of New Persuasive Words. Scott also hosts the Mockingcast, the podcast of Mockingbird.

Episode 214 – PZ’s Podcast:

There is this observable difference in the way most men and most women process romantic love affairs. Men tend — with exceptions — to live in the past and in past memories of love, especially as they grow older. Women tend — with exceptions — to desire to live in the present, with openness to the future, in the experience of romantic love.

The song that opens this cast, “How Do I Get To Heaven”, performed by Dave Mason, is a touching instance of the male processing. The lyric lurches, with no warning, from thoughts of impending death and immortal life, to memories of romantic love that “won’t fade away”. As I might put it, there is a Meister Eckhart vibe, as with several Burton Cummings compositions from the 1980s: You’ve got to go back, back to your past, in order to be ready to live in the present. Your past is an unavoidable point of engagement and negotiation if you wish to live in the now, let alone the future.

Do you understand?: I’m not dismissing the call to live in the present.But I am reflecting that such a  call is impossible to heed without doing the necessary work of personal archaeology. That’s not usually fun. It never has been and never will. But no one can limbo around the past, “Over Under Sideways Down” (Yardbirds).

Here is the praeparatio ad mortem that is the purpose of life.

The cast concludes with a sketchy song concerning “no fault” divorce, which is also oddly memorable and catchy: “We Just Disagree”, performed by Dave Mason. I think it wonderful that Playboy Magazine voted “We Just Disagree” the worst song of l977.

Communication, I mean, real, person-to-person communication, is the name of the game in just about every relationship.  It is also the name of the game in that Game of Love (1965, Wayne Fontana and the Mindbenders) which is preaching. So this podcast is for politicians; for all who aspire to love another person — like Jean Valjean; and for everyone who undertakes to preach the Word of God.

You’ve got to “blow deep” — Jack Kerouac was never wrong about this — and thereby connect with the subterranean part of every potential listener or reader.  That means blowing deep into yourself and by consequence, when you communicate what you find and hear, blowing deep into the ear, brain and heart of the other.  It’s really quite easy.  Simply because it’s not hard. But almost no one does it.

In this cast, I try to learn from Samuel Walker, who is believed to have been converted by his own preaching; from a news conference that was broadcast on “Super Tuesday”; and from Eric Clapton with the Band, and Randy Bachman and The Guess Who.

Historic Christianity generally hears the First.

Personally, I hear both -- by which I mean,

Yet when I'm in a jam, when I am simply unable to be in touch at all

This cast speaks of our deafness and blindness when it comes to hearing and seeing God in, well, what lies before us, in our purview -- with a little help from Howard Pyle, James Garner, Manly Wade Wellman, Donald Trump, William Hale White, and Christopher Isherwood. It's Joe Meek, though, together with Geoff Goddard, who cuts the knot.

The cast is dedicated to Ethan Richardson.

assuming help did get through to you?

Did God speak from out of the whirlwind -- of crisis, panic, and despair?

Nevertheless, your source of inspiration, and help, and salvation in the imminent immanent sense of the word: what was it?

You won't be surprised that I've been thinking, in this connection, about UFOs.I saw a Big One in the early '80s -- as did John Zahl, who was with me at the time. And ever since Battle in Outer Space (1959) came out, I've been a kind of believer. But never mind.

What's interesting, though, is that Booth Tarkington was a kind of believer, also. As was Nevil Shute. As was Rudyard Kipling. (You have to read Kipling's short story "A Matter of Fact", just to name one.) Each of these writers left room, over on the margins, for the Unknown. Each was thusly religious.

In your experience of crisis, from what source has "the power of God unto salvation" (Romans 1:16) come? "Tolle lege"? "My heart was strangely warmed"? "Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?" "I was wrong" (Robert Wyatt). Tell me about it.

This podcast is dedicated to John Arthur Zahl.

the popular success of Rodney Marvin ('Rod') McKuen.

Rod McKuen died a year ago, and did you know he sold 100 million records? No kidding. Rod McKuen sold 100 million records.

(He also sold 60 million books. But hey...) Here is a man who was universally dismissed, from day one of his earthly success, as being a "kitschy" Philistine and arch-sentimentalist. No critic had a word of praise for him. Ever, ever, ever. And that's been true right up to the present day.

And let the People say: He sold a hundred million records.

Here is a writer who when you actually take time to listen to his songs

Now let the People say: He sold a hundred million records.

Here is a man who, like Rudyard Kipling -- if it weren't for T.S. Eliot and George Orwell --

Therefore let the People say: He sold a hundred million records.

So listen up, guys:

"But not The Vogues. They were from Pittsburgh and they understood about shifts and hourly pay. Yet they understand more than that!

"For the fact is, 'as you lay dying' (Faulkner), you won't give your "nine-to-five" life a single second thought. Not one single second thought! You'll forget it all, in the absolute blink of an eye.

"What you won't forget, however, is "the long haired girl who waits for you/To ease your troubled mind". Or the one who did. Hopefully, it's the same person. As The Vogues observe: in light of her, ''Nothing else matters at all.'

"This cast explores the 'Five O'Clock World' in terms of romantic love.

"Moreover, it is the core of the Gospel. If you want to understand what Christ did, for you, look at your experience of romantic love. For better or worse, look at your experience of romantic love. Like my friend Lloyd Fonvielle, who put one brilliant experience that way underneath the microscope just a few weeks before he died. And what he came up with!:

"For many of my listeners, this will be a message from your future.

I talk about Islam (and "Islamophobia"), Syrian migration into Europe,

Christ's Parable of the Rich Man (aka 'Dives') and Lazarus is given in St. Luke, Chapter 16. It's a scorcher, as rough and sand-paper-like as anything he ever said. It's got that devastating line, that between there (hell) and here (heaven) there is a great gulf fixed, an impassable, untraversable barrier.

I believe this. (My own experience confirmed it, tho' I wish it hadn't!)

Unfortunately, I'm not set. For no one knoweth the hour.