The Long Letter

Yeah, it's been awhile since I've published an episode and I'm a little rusty. Having said that, try to follow along as I look behind the scenes of a local political kerfuffle and try to tease out the different pieces to see if there's more that can be understood about small town politics.

Ever wonder how an ordinance becomes a law? Well, join me on this fantastic journey through the seedy underbelly of public policy creation. In my longest episode ever, try to relax while I walk you through no less than 6 public meetings about a dubious ordinance of unknown origins and justification that seems hand-designed by some dark entity intent on destroying Gather Church and, with any luck, just may succeed in finding a reason to arrest Cole Meckle.

I'm kidding. It's Swope. He's peddling an ordinance under "accountability" again and, yes, it appears solely directed at Gather.

Well, it's certainly been a minute but I'm finally wrapping up the series on the book Grace Can Lead Us Home. Listen in as I talk about abundance, beauty, and how we measure success.

Want to find out what happened when scientists in the 70's provided cocaine laced water to rats in a cage? Or maybe you would like to better understand addiction and the factors that contribute to its cause? Listen in as I discuss the topic of addiction and recovery from the book Grace Can Lead Us Home - A Christian Call To End Homelessness.

Listen in as I talk with Samantha Davis about her struggles with addiction, having her children taken away, doing the work to get them back, and all of the people and services that enabled her to find recovery and a purpose helping others that find themselves in a similar situation. Or in her own words: "I want to use all of this hard stuff to do something good."

Listen in as Jenna shares her experience with navigating her mental health care and how that would later inform her calling to help others who are struggling. This episode has it all: un-diagnosed mental health conditions, inappropriate laughter, unintentional innuendo, the death of a beloved uncle, and more inappropriate laughing. It's amazing we got through this one at all.

In this episode, I continue to discuss the book Grace Can Lead Us Home and I'm joined by my guests Lily Lo and Gillian Davis who both serve in Gather's Meds First clinic. The conversation details on the difficulty of providing treatment for addiction, how fentanyl turned everything upside down, and why harm reduction matters to a community.

Listen in as we discuss the difficulties of navigating the thorny issues of mental health and housing as we continue our discussion on Grace Can Lead Us Home. This episode features Daylen Gonzales and Kat Meckle, who share their experiences in working in behavioral and mental health services. Meanwhile, I'm terrible to Nate on several occasions and we liberally exercise the censor button.

In this episode, we discuss the themes of community and solidarity in regards to encampments, race, gender, LGBTQ+, and more, with special guests Troy Westergard and Patty Howard. Listen in as Nate gets me monologging twice, I hit the wrong sound effect on the board yet it still works out, and I apologize to Brenda for something stupid I said 20 years ago. Just a whole lot going on in this episode.

This episode covers chapter three of Grace Can Lead Us Home. We discuss the topics of isolation, connection, trauma informed care, and more. Listen in as I wrongly assert the author of ending a sentence with a preposition, which Judd has the best beard (or worst), and how we can use trauma informed care when dealing with those in opposition to us, or even ourselves!