The Diner

Welcome to The Diner!

It’s season two and you won’t want to miss out. Come sit at the counter of our virtual diner and let us serve you a slice of mental pie! It’ll go good with a cup of coffee, then you get your refreshed self back to the fray with a few new beautiful thoughts to think.

Today we take a detour to discuss a rather popular marriage book that Lisa read, and how it helps us understand why it really isn’t a good idea to universalize our own experiences.

Grab a cup of your favorite coffee (or tea!) and join the conversation!

And don’t forget to check out Laura’s new sex ed curriculum: Sex Ed for Sane People

It’s “…a sex education curriculum written from an Orthodox perspective, from an author with a bachelor's degree in biology. Written for high school students on the cusp of adulthood, with the prerequisite of high school biology, this course introduces concepts in anatomy and physiology, embryology, theology, and ethics. This material is framed and presented as an expression of religious freedom.”

Welcome to The Diner!

It’s season two and you won’t want to miss out. Come sit at the counter of our virtual diner and let us serve you a slice of mental pie! It’ll go good with a cup of coffee, then you get your refreshed self back to the fray with a few new beautiful thoughts to think.

Today we have a short recap episode — for ourselves as much as for you, our listeners — to review some of the Big Ideas we’ve been chewing on, and to move us forward into our next couple episodes.

And don’t forget to check out Laura’s new sex ed curriculum: Sex Ed for Sane People

It’s “…a sex education curriculum written from an Orthodox perspective, from an author with a bachelor's degree in biology. Written for high school students on the cusp of adulthood, with the prerequisite of high school biology, this course introduces concepts in anatomy and physiology, embryology, theology, and ethics. This material is framed and presented as an expression of religious freedom.”

Welcome to The Diner!

It’s season two and you won’t want to miss out. Come sit at the counter of our virtual diner and let us serve you a slice of mental pie! It’ll go good with a cup of coffee, then you get your refreshed self back to the fray with a few new beautiful thoughts to think.

Not only do we need to understand how to differentiate between bad masculinity and bad femininity, we need to learn how to “unknow” everything we think we know already and allow Christ to show us the way. We crucify our gender callings in that we let go of trying to control things.

What does it look like for men and women not only to live out their gender callings in both a priestly way and a cruciform way, but also what does it look like to inscribe the cross on our gender callings?

And don’t forget to check out Laura’s new sex ed curriculum: Sex Ed for Sane People

It’s “…a sex education curriculum written from an Orthodox perspective, from an author with a bachelor's degree in biology. Written for high school students on the cusp of adulthood, with the prerequisite of high school biology, this course introduces concepts in anatomy and physiology, embryology, theology, and ethics. This material is framed and presented as an expression of religious freedom.”

Welcome to The Diner!

It’s season two and you won’t want to miss out. Come sit at the counter of our virtual diner and let us serve you a slice of mental pie! It’ll go good with a cup of coffee, then you get your refreshed self back to the fray with a few new beautiful thoughts to think.

Today we start looking more closely at the triune calling that we all share — Priest, Prophet, King — and we connect that with the ideas of chiasm and enstasy and ecstasy. As usual it’s difficult to approach it linearly, but there’s plenty to chew on until next time.

Our main question to ponder this time is why it is that we (culturally) seem to understand the masculine gender calling (that ecstatic going forth) better than the enstatic feminine calling? In a similar vein, what does it mean to say that gender is an icon?

(you’ll notice somewhere in the middle a slight edit where I pasted in a segment after the fact — hopefully it’s not too distracting, but I couldn’t leave it out after I’d remembered who I was talking about!! ~ Lisa)

And don’t forget to check out Laura’s new sex ed curriculum: Sex Ed for Sane People

It’s “…a sex education curriculum written from an Orthodox perspective, from an author with a bachelor's degree in biology. Written for high school students on the cusp of adulthood, with the prerequisite of high school biology, this course introduces concepts in anatomy and physiology, embryology, theology, and ethics. This material is framed and presented as an expression of religious freedom.”

Thanks for reading Patterns for Life! This post is public so feel free to share it.

Welcome to The Diner!

It’s season two and you won’t want to miss out. Come sit at the counter of our virtual diner and let us serve you a slice of mental pie! It’ll go good with a cup of coffee, then you get your refreshed self back to the fray with a few new beautiful thoughts to think.

Getting deeper into chiasm and gender, in today’s episode our discussion ranges over a lot of ground, from the complementarian/egalitarian dichotomy to personality tests, to coordinated grid imagery to help talk about anger.

As you ponder this episode, spend some time with the concepts of enstasy and ecstasy and how they are both part of the masculine and feminine experience in different ways.

And don’t forget to check out Laura’s new sex ed curriculum: Sex Ed for Sane People

It’s “…a sex education curriculum written from an Orthodox perspective, from an author with a bachelor's degree in biology. Written for high school students on the cusp of adulthood, with the prerequisite of high school biology, this course introduces concepts in anatomy and physiology, embryology, theology, and ethics. This material is framed and presented as an expression of religious freedom.”

Thank you for listening! If you like what you hear be sure to subscribe so you never miss an episode!

Welcome to The Diner!

It’s season two and you won’t want to miss out. Come sit at the counter of our virtual diner and let us serve you a slice of mental pie! It’ll go good with a cup of coffee, then you get your refreshed self back to the fray with a few new beautiful thoughts to think.

We started this episode trying to talk about gender, but we found we had much more to say about chiasm before we could really get there. It’s a big topic to unfold, but definitely worth the time.

As you listen think about your own experiences with grief, as well as how the way some experiences cannot be described in words, but must be lived through in order to truly be understood.

And don’t forget to check out Laura’s new sex ed curriculum: Sex Ed for Sane People

It’s “…a sex education curriculum written from an Orthodox perspective, from an author with a bachelor's degree in biology. Written for high school students on the cusp of adulthood, with the prerequisite of high school biology, this course introduces concepts in anatomy and physiology, embryology, theology, and ethics. This material is framed and presented as an expression of religious freedom.”

If you like our work, please subscribe and share. We appreciate your support!

Welcome to The Diner!

It’s season two and you won’t want to miss out. Come sit at the counter of our virtual diner and let us serve you a slice of mental pie! It’ll go good with a cup of coffee, then you get your refreshed self back to the fray with a few new beautiful thoughts to think.

In this episode we begin our discussion of gender which, as we all know, is a highly relevant topic these days.

In order to discuss the vision of gender as expressed in The Ethics of Beauty, we first have to discuss chiasm — what it is and why it’s important.

After listening take a little time to think about where you may have encountered chiasm and why you think it is important to the discussion of gender, and keep the discussion going in the comments!

And don’t forget to check out Laura’s new sex ed curriculum: Sex Ed for Sane People

It’s “…a sex education curriculum written from an Orthodox perspective, from an author with a bachelor's degree in biology. Written for high school students on the cusp of adulthood, with the prerequisite of high school biology, this course introduces concepts in anatomy and physiology, embryology, theology, and ethics. This material is framed and presented as an expression of religious freedom.”

If you like our work please subscribe and share. We value your support.

Welcome to The Diner!

Sit at the counter of our virtual diner and let us serve you a slice of mental pie! It’ll go good with a cup of coffee, then you get your refreshed self back to the fray with a few new beautiful thoughts to think.

Today’s episode is about how excessive rationalism can sometimes lead to irrationality. It’s a difficult concept for us westerners who are used to rationalism as the answer for everything, after all, what higher authority is there than the mind?

Some ideas to ponder:

* How do emotions differ from the heart?

* What does it mean to be excessively rational? Why might that be a problem sometimes?

* Take time to notice where your thoughts are your ultimate authority when perhaps they ought not to be. Is this a problem? Is it sometimes ok?

Welcome to The Diner!

Sit at the counter of our virtual diner and let us serve you a slice of mental pie! It’ll go good with a cup of coffee, then you get your refreshed self back to the fray with a few new beautiful thoughts to think.

In this episode we discuss Moral Agency and how it becomes an answer to Moral Luck in that the more responsibility we voluntarily take on ourselves in our efforts to be with Christ, the more free we become as we learn to rest in Him.

* What are the areas in your life where you can exercise agency?

* What are the areas in your life where you have no control except over your own responses?

Welcome to The Diner!

Sit at the counter of our virtual diner and let us serve you a slice of mental pie! It’ll go good with a cup of coffee, then you get your refreshed self back to the fray with a few new beautiful thoughts to think.

In this episode we continue the conversation about moral luck and the ways in which we relate to it.

Take a few minutes to think about the following questions:

* Think about your own moral luck. How can you view it in such a way as to be less judgmental and more compassionate?

* How do you view suffering?

* Do you relate to suffering in a way that allows for the possibility of transformation or do you fight against it?