PZ's Podcast

Mary Zahl was recently the guest on an episode of a podcast known as "The Brothers Zahl" (out this summer). The subject of the cast was parenting, and I can think of no better illustration of a good parent.

Mary listed three core themes of enduring motherhood/fatherhood that feel utterly right to me. They are (1) complete dependability when your child is little; (2) no control or pressure when your child is growing -- let them or her pursue their own interests; and (3) try to detach from your grown child's life most of the time, tho' not always. Sometimes -- if very occasionally -- you may have to intervene.

I was awed by my wife's reflections, the mother of our three grown sons.

I also couldn't help theologizing a little, for each of her three themes has a direct relation to the Christian Gospel. (1) mirrors the One-Way Love of God's Grace. (2) suggests the continuing solution of Grace to the problem of Law. (3) connects the "Eastern"-sounding insight of non-attachment with the Christian fact of God's Incarnation -- God's personal intervention in this septic world.

This cast is also a sort of pre-op moment for the Mockingbird Conference, which begins this Thursday in Manhattan. Do join us if you can. Mary and I will be there, and hundreds of others, too. I'll speak about parenting, tho' Mary (by my side) is the best authority on that front.

This cast is dedicated to Larry Brudi and Bob Smith, and reverentially, to Dickey Betts.

I wonder if you are ever struck by the ubiquity of this phrase at the end of every checkout line in the known universe: "Do you need a receipt?". Or, in grocery stores, "Find everything you were looking for?". Or, again in every cell-phone (business) call on earth: "Is there anything else I can help you with today?"

In an earlier day, it might have been: "Paper or plastic?"; or, even earlier, "VHS or Beta?"

I believe these everyday reflexive questions are an expression of the World, the Flesh and the Devil's active desire to shut down anything that might resemble or enable a real exchange between persons.

In this cast I tell some stories of interchanges at the 'cash point' in which the reflexive words of the cashier suddenly fell apart, and the real person came through. The truth was out!

Now here's an either-or statement: Everybody all the time is sitting on a major inward issue.

I used to think that was an overstatement, and should be diluted to something like: Most people at some point in their lives find themselves sitting on an engrossing inward concern that they are reluctant to share with anyone else. But experience has taught me the further truth:

Everybody all the time is sitting on a major inward issue.

You the Listener will need to decide what you think about that. But one thing I do know and for absolute sure: The answer to life is not bound up with the question of whether I need a receipt.

LUV U!

You can't help noticing, if you study Soviet-Era Iron-Curtain sci fi illustrations and posters -- an activity which I feel sure governs your every waking minute -- that there are ZERO aliens or extra-terrestrial forms of life to be seen. The Soviets and the East Germans, who did in fact excel in graphics concerning space exploration, never ever bring UFOs or alien inhabitants of other planets into the narrative, either visually or narratively. Yes, maybe Tarkovsky "un tout peit peu" once, but he was exiled pronto from his homeland.

There is a connection between the mandatory and aggressive atheism of Communism and the definite exile of any trace of openness to extra-terrestrial life. It's just an observable fact.

So while you may enjoy Iron Curtain sci-fi for its pragmatism and occasional heroism, it is also totally un-cool, un-fun and un-hopeful.

Where would you and I be without the possibility of answers that come from outside ourselves?

As I say in the cast, relevant to a recent movie review of an old (but now Blu-Rayed) "film noir", nihilism, whether New or old, is ultimately suicidal. It is also self-sufficient in principle and therefore a crash-landing in real life -- with no survivors, by the way.

So, hey, keep your mind open. Keep your heart open. And moreover, as Holy Week really teaches, God is Good; We Are Not Alone; and everything has a Purpose. LUV U.

I'm trying to put into words the core principles of accessible Christian theology.

Not mentally or intellectually accessible, but feeling-accessible -- heart-accessible -- and therefore actually and experientially accessible!

Karl Barth promulgated what was called a "theology from the top down". He saw himself as opposing theologies "from the bottom up". But it was a false dichotomy. We start from where we are -- and in base-level terms, where our hearts live (and die, sometimes daily); and then we are in a position to listen to Hope that travels from the top down. Theology, in other words, is neither from the top down (solely), i.e., entirely vertical; nor is it from the bottom up (solely), i.e., entirely horizontal. Christian theology is Up the Down Staircase!

Oh, and I hope you like ABBA. "SOS" is one of the great songs of the Glacial Age. Not to mention Ash's track at the end of the cast, which is moving straight from the top end.

I don't tire of quoting Thomas Cranmer's 'meme' that goes like this: "What the heart loves, the will chooses, and the mind justifies." That is so true to life.

Now note its difference with the sentence quoted in part one of this cast by my old episcopal acquaintance in Australia: "Nothing can be loved at speed" (M. Leunig).

But the heart always loves at speed!

Perseverance and steady, thoughtful loving exists, yes, but as a fruit of heart-love: Its fruit -- its consequence -- its effect.

And the heart, I say again, always loves at speed.

You could almost say this is the secret of life. Cranmer certainly said it. You and I know it from experience. Almost all our core decisions were made "at speed". We didn't think them through before making them. Our heart was "caught", and so it went and "So It Goes" (B. Joel, 1990).

When we said 'yes' to God, or when we first said a real prayer, it "Only Took a Minute, Lord'.

We didn't "count the cost". We probably should have, but we didn't in fact. By the Grace of God, our hearts were so "warmed" (John Wesley on May the 24th) that the warm lasted. The warm kept heating us as long as life went on. "Listen to the Warm" (Rod McK., 1967).

So, um, well, OK, I, ... Listen to your Heart. LUV U.

An old acquaintance, an Australian bishop, has been quoting recently from a popular cartoonist and kind of pop philosopher "Down Under" named Mike Leunig. The bishop quoted an aphorism from Leunig in relation to his long-term hopes for the Anglican Church in Australia: "Nothing can be loved at speed".

When I heard my old colleague quoting Mike Leunig, a 1975 disco hit by Tavares flashed instantly into my mind: "It Only Takes a Minute, Girl (To Fall in Love)".

What this sudden flash told me was: It's not true -- it is not true that "nothing can be loved at speed". One's heart in fact always loves at speed. Almost every big decision you've ever made was made "at speed"! The heart moves no other way. The heart loves at speed.

Incidentally, people rarely say this, at least where they could be heard. You don't want to be thought to believe that "It Only Takes a Minute, Girl". That sounds un-wise, un-"nuanced" -- the worst possible thing you could ever be regarded as being -- and imprudent. Nevertheless, it is the way life is. When you review your life, how many decisions you made were actually made in a flash, in a lightning-like "AHA" ('Take on Me') moment? Please tell me.

You didn't choose the college you went to based on ... thoughtful ratiocination. You didn't choose the profession you chose based on... weighing all the pros and cons. You didn't marry the gal/guy you married on the basis of... thought. (Did you?)

This cast is about inward (heartfelt) truth vs. outward (rationalizing) truth. When you are dying, I believe you will only know the former. LUV, PZ

Personally, I think that one's most cherished tunes come from ... oneself. By which I mean that the music you love may say more about you than about the music itself.

You hear a Pretenders single and it calls you instantaneously back to the person you were when you first heard it. "Don't You Forget About Me" by Simple Minds has the power to instantly recreate the mood you were in when you first saw The Breakfast Club in the theater. Or maybe it brings to mind and heart the person you were with when you saw it!

I seriously ask you, Why do you like the music, and especially the rock 'n roll music, that you still like? Why does a particular song have the power to evoke tears -- like in two seconds? Why? Tell me, please -- I'm deeply interested. And why interested? Because I care about you. I care about your heart. I care about the assimilation of both your negativity -- which often has its origin in long ago experience of pain -- and your positivity -- which can boost you up when other things pull you down.

How would you begin this podcast? I mean, with what music would you open it? And conclude it?

Incidentally, the Spirit of God spoke to me during the recording of it. You'll notice a change which takes place near the end. So I left it in -- the unexpected change -- because, well, it witnesses. LUV U!

I've been thinking some about "borderland" states, meaning extremely strong states of mind and feeling that are not necessarily explicit, but are nonetheless real. Borderland states of mind are when you are in despair concerning your life, or your primary relationships, or simply the way you feel inside. Sometimes the borderland state is positive -- for example, when you fall deeply in love, or when somebody reaches out to you in selfless concern when you are "all fall down". More often, the borderland is negative, and can result in self-destructive acts or even suicide.

Rod McKuen (d. 2015) was a magician of the borderland. His songs, performed with that hoarse, breaking voice of his, are almost all addresses to the borderland of human feeling. They are almost all slightly "abnormal", expressing laconic extremes of feeling.

Their "kitsch" -- as they are sometimes pigeonholed -- is only as kitschy as extreme states of feeling are kitschy. We want to jump off a bridge or call up everyone we know to announce our euphoria or whisper our disappointment to the ends of the earth.

Rod McKuen's songs are hymns to the borderland. You could almost say they are a little "off". But who is not a little off? His songs actually carry huge promise.

Note that this cast references a recent sermon from Brad Knight, who spoke from his own borderland to the borderlands inhabited by his hearers. He hit the mark!

Podcast 377 is dedicated to the Very Rev. James G. Munroe.

One just can't get over that repeating, concluding forcefulness of Los Straitjackets' music by which they almost always save the best for last -- like in the wedding at Cana, sort of.

They light up the sky in the last third -- sometimes even the last fifth -- of their covers and their songs.

Like you and me could do!

And especially if we could take the heartfelt learnings of the last third of our lives and import them retroactively into our lives' stressful, burdened second third. Now that's what PZ is trying to do for you today. "For you the living/This Mash was meant, too".

I am trying to impute what I believe has inspired me in recent times to one's listeners' stressful and demanding adult lives.

I can't tell you, as my now deceased colleague in South Carolina used to tell me almost every time he saw me: "Relax, Paul!" He meant well, yes, but it only made me feel always worse when he said it.

What I want to say is more like this:

"Let me take you there" ('Strawberry Fields', 1967). Let me take you in your now to a place of focus on the Big Things, the Big Heart, the Big Connection/s. I feel sometimes like the character 'Emily' says she feels in the last act of "Our Town". Recently dead, she returns to the scene of her 12th birthday, and longs for her parents and brother -- and herself back then- - to see what's really going on. Not to-ings and fro-ings and "process", but rather real love and real care and real gestures and real connection and real feeling -- real heart!

Will you let me be to you today, dear Listener, a surrogate for Emily?

"Let me take you there" -- to a life not of obvious burden and exhaustion, but a life of optimism and promise and satisfaction and joy. That's what PZ's Podcast is all about. LUV U.

Heard a sermon last night that cut to the quick. It evoked the image of a "new priesthood" -- a new movement of God in the New Year. The preacher's vision of life and the work of God in the world felt inspired to the first power.

And then I thought of Jack Kerouac -- right in the middle of her sermon. I thought of his amazing book, on practical Buddhism no less, entitled Some of the Dharma. Kerouac and the preacher were on the same line.

Then something else came to mind: the jaw-dropping last act of Thornton Wilder's "Our Town".

Each of these three 'productions', i.e., Paula White's sermon, Jack Kerouac's spiritual diary, and TNW's seminal play: they were all saying the same thing.

To wit, the Truth of life lies in every case under the surface of the world. What you see, and even what you think you want to see, is not the Lasting Thing. God's work is infinitely higher than our desires and our ratiocination, tho' at times linked with those things.

Ultimately, what God is doing is different from what we think is going on.

What a relief! What a redemption (of our pasts)! What a Promise of real action!

So I'm hopeful for 2024. Hope you can be, too. LUV U.

PZ