If indeed "There's no place like home!" then where is home for you? As we enter this holiday season, this month's Mystic tackles the idea of home by reflecting on the people, memories, and experiences that make it possible for home to be wherever we find ourselves. This intimate conversation between regular panelists Rabbi Micah Greenstein and Rev. Joshua Narcisse explores the reality that home is a choice we make about the relationships that matter most to us.

Jonny Pineda conveys musically what his perceptions are during his own storms and connects to the devastation of the current physical storms in Florida, Haiti, etc. We all share about where to hide during, how to be strong in, and how to survive storms.

John Carroll of City Leadership joins the Mystic crew to discuss philanthropy in and around our beloved city of Memphis. Also, Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, begins Sunday, so we will also discuss our thoughts on forgiveness.

In Genesis, even before Adam and Eve eat the apple, Adam is sent to till the earth, not as punishment but as part of what human life is meant to be. How today do we understand work as a path to better knowing God? What does any of this mean during the great resignation and the struggles the country faces in the Labor market of today? How can work draw us closer to God?

Have you chosen the one and only path God wants for you in your life or is flexibility to God's plan a more authentic road? How do you know if you are on the right road for you? Listen for dialog and ideas.

The recent and ongoing mass shootings occurring in the US are just the tip of the iceberg of our countries gun violence crisis. 99% of gun deaths are by violence other than mass shootings. Every day there are more than 110 gun deaths.  Listen in to learn of the advocacy group Moms Demand Action and enhance your understanding of violence, suicide and how the faithful respond.

Enjoy The Mystic's Mother's Day's 2022 edition. While holding space for the reality that not everyone's experience of a mother may be equally nurturing, this discussion explores the question of what our mothers teach us about God. This may be character traits we come to appreciate more fully as adults or specific experiences that left a lasting imprint on our spiritual formation. A saying from the Jewish tradition says, "God cannot be everywhere, so he created mothers." How do we see God more clearly and bear God more fully when we understand both what it means to parent someone in faith and what it means to receive God as "mother" in our own lives?

This episode probes how our individual understanding and experiences of freedom shape our responses to the ways others express their freedom. In what ways do some systems fail to regard freedom as something that should be equally distributed? What is our responsibility to one another with how we use our individual freedom? When we feel our freedom is threatened, how can we find a foothold in faith? And how do we allow each other the humanity of our fears while also nudging each other toward the freedom that our faith tells us God intends?

One hundred percent of us have failure in our stories. The meaning we add to failure—that we've been taught to add—is what holds us hostage in a society obsessed with perfection. Too often we send a curated version of ourselves into the world when what we need most is grace and gentleness toward ourselves as we discover the usefulness in struggle and imperfection. What do we lose when we don't face the challenging parts of our stories? What do we gain when we do? How do we own our stories, including the failures, so that we can be more whole people?

The ongoing pandemic makes a lot of things feel fuzzy around the edges—from outright loss of life of loved ones we haven't felt free to mourn with comforting rituals to the demands of living with the contradictory nature of finding ways to deal with stress without the familiar lifelong patterns of community and activities that help us do that. How do we heal from grief when everyone around us is trying to do that same thing? When we keep waiting for this grievous collective experience to be over, but it's not? Listen in on this episode of the Mystic for some thoughts on planting crops of hope and watering them for one another, taking meaning even from experiences of loss at any level that we can share through our lives with someone else.