We’ll be back with new content next week but, in this encore episode, Dave Schmelzer and Tom Wassink look at the changing legacy of J.R.R. Tolkien and CS Lewis for Christians. 

David McKee is a counselor who is also an oblate at a Benedictine monastery (and a member of a Zen center). In a far reaching conversation with Christina Roberts, Ryan Bauers and Dave Schmelzer, he talks about how learning to be present to ourselves with compassion opens us up to healing--and God--but also to the kind of prophetic engagement with the world that he says is a particular gift that Christianity offers other traditions. 

Mentioned in Todays Podcast:

Amy Carlson talks to groups around the country about joyful, thriving eating and the power of eating around a table (or even just at a table, if we're alone) and how learning to notice our body's response to food is a game-changer. In a vibrant conversation with Ryan Bauers, Christina Roberts and Dave Schmelzer, she talks about how churches, sadly, often complicate our relationship with food--even as they provide the powerful community that offers us the good stuff she's so passionate about. 

Mentioned in Today's Podcast:

On last week's podcast, Dave Schmelzer offered a book report on a book called "Why Buddhism is True" to consider crossover between Buddhist and Christian Contemplative insights. Christina Roberts asks: How should Christians navigate spiritual exploration? Are there things they shouldn't explore because those things expose them to spiritual danger? If so, how might one figure out what's safe and what's not? Ryan Bauers joins Christina and Dave to consider this.

More recent Christian contemplatives like Thomas Merton famously have discovered that what they're learning has a lot in common with what contemplative Buddhists know. Christina Roberts and Ryan Bauers commissioned Dave Schmelzer to do a "book report" along these lines, and he chose Robert Wright's (he's a journalist with The New Republic) provocatively-named book "Why Buddhism is True" (not, as Wright points out, in a religious sense, but as a description of how meditation impacts our consciousness for the better). Christina, Ryan and Dave have a vibrant conversation about what Dave reports.

Mentioned in Today's Podcast:

New Yorker article: Thomas Merton, the Monk Who Became a Prophet, by Alan Jacobs 

• New Yorker obituary of William Goldman

One of Blue Ocean Faith's founding perspectives is "My drive to judge other people is a big problem." Yet it comes across to us differently in today's ever-more polarized world. As was pressed by our conversation about Ken Wilber and our conversation with Doug Pagitt, what does it look like to embrace people very different from you while also living out your convictions? Christina Roberts, Ryan Bauers and Dave Schmelzer discuss.

Mentioned in Today's Podcast: 

Doug Pagitt just finished a remarkable, pre-midterms bus tour--that was covered by the New York Times and the USA Today and other media outlets--called Vote Common Good. His idea? To tour red states in order to call his fellow evangelicals back to their faith and away from the madness of--for, they say, religious reasons--supporting Donald Trump and his candidates. Doug talks passionately with Ryan Bauers and Dave Schmelzer about the need for faithful progressive evangelicals to get their voice into the public sphere. 

Mentioned in Today's Podcast:

Ken Wilber is a popular theorist for some in the post-evangelical crowd. He has a fascinating theory of the evolution of consciousness that has overlap with the Stage Theory we talk about here. And he wrote a book called Trump and a Post-Truth World where he applies his theory of consciousness to how we got to a Trump, post-truth presidency. (Spoiler: He lays a good deal of the blame on liberals and offers a clarion call to liberals about what leadership might look like.) It makes for a dynamic conversation between Ryan Bauers and Dave Schmelzer.

Mentioned in Today's Podcast:

• Blue Ocean Faith's "Giving Tuesday"

What I'm Into:

• The Borowitz Report