theeffect Podcasts

Dave Brisbin 8.20.23

How do you know you’re in love? Can you explain it, define it? Control it? Oh sure, you can talk about effects on your heartrate and attitude…but define, much less control? You just know. The train leaves the station, and you’re on it. Great movie exchange between atheist and theist: atheist says she will only accept what she can prove scientifically. Theist thinks for a beat, then asks, do you love your father? Yes. Prove it.

Jesus gets this. Said such spiritual processes are like the wind. You can’t see it, only hear and see its effects. Can’t know where it’s going or coming from. Powerful, invisible, mysterious. In his usual enigmatic way as poet, Jesus is saying that love and spirit operate outside of logic and rationality. We can’t define or control anything without thinking about it, and if we’re thinking about it, we’re not in it.

The only way to fall into the complete loss of self we call love is to stop thinking, fall out of control. To be in love is to be out of control, out of our minds. Literally. The mind’s job is to separate, compare and contrast, storing that information for quick retrieval. Great for survival, but to perceive ourselves as separate from, in competition with everyone and everything else is what creates all the misery we see and experience in our lives. The deeper truth is that we don’t even exist independently as separate entities. Our only existence is in being connected to everything else, which is why it feels so good to be in love, to stand outside the mind that creates the illusion of separation.

This is basic human nature, and why Jesus’ main objective is to shock us out of our minds. Look at his words again. He’s a poet, so you won’t see it directly, but an ancient Chinese philosopher framed it perfectly, telling of a river, full of its power during a flood, emptying into the ocean and there facing the shock of its own insignificance, dependence on greater waters. Life will deliver such shocks naturally, but our minds resist the conclusion. Jesus is teaching an intentional Way, eliciting experiences that will shock us into a benevolent mental breakdown.

Dave Brisbin 8.13.23

Ever heard of the nine dots puzzle? Nine dots arranged in a square, three equal rows of three, like tic tac toe. Challenge is to connect all dots using only four straight lines and without lifting pen off paper or retracing any lines. After snapping a couple of pencils and throwing up your hands, you find the solution looks like an arrowhead with its head on a corner and wings extending beyond the box of dots. We naturally assume the solution must be contained inside the box. There is no solution inside the box.

Puzzle imitating life.

We naturally assume every challenge we face must be solved inside the box—the scope of our life experience—because we can’t conceive of anything outside our box. You cannot speak of ocean to a well-frog, the creature of a narrower sphere, the philosopher said. As with the frog, the sneakiest part is: we don’t even know we have a box. It’s just life. Our lives. The laws of society, religion, physics, the dynamics of our family of origin, our traumas and training…all we know and have decided to believe, forms the walls of our box.

I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch to say that everything Jesus does in the gospels is creating leverage to get us outside our box. The good news he’s telling of a degreeless and indiscriminant love can never be found inside our box. By definition, it violates any box we can imagine. Thoughts, words, logic, experience we’d use to try to understand and express it, were born in our box and can only describe its walls, never something outside. You must be born again; sell all you possess; you can’t see the wind or know where it goes; you must hate your father and mother, children, even your own life; pick up your cross daily; drop your nets at the shore, come and see, follow me.

Jesus leaves nothing on the table in a single-minded drive to break us out of the prison of our box. Boxes limit and contain. That’s their functional beauty. But the love and life Jesus is living can’t be contained and remain themselves. Only when we’re willing to get out of control, out of our minds, will the first glimpse of vast ocean come into view. Outside the box.

Dave Brisbin 8.6.23

Thirty-some years ago, I was at retreat with a group that booked the same weekend every year. I’d just go, get a room, and participate in whatever was going on. Or not. This weekend was a large group of older men, and the retreat director, a Chinese-American Franciscan priest, was leading the session. I mention Chinese, not because he was first generation or could write beautiful Chinese script, but because he stood squarely between East and West in his approach to life and faith in a way that changed everything.

He was increasingly frustrated with this crusty old group, finally asking why they thought Jesus came to us humans. Hands went up and answers came right out of the Baltimore catechism: he came to die for our sins. The director let out a near wail of a no…clapping his big hands over his shaved head as if to hold it together. What kind of father sends his son to die? He sent him to live, to show us perfect love. He then said something like, if you are going to come here year after year and never change—next year, just stay home.

It took years for the full significance of that exchange to sink in.

About the same time, another priest introduced me to Brennan Manning’s new book, The Ragamuffin Gospel. Here was another Franciscan, now lapsed and married, a struggling alcoholic writing about grace and love in a way I’d never heard or experienced. Brennan was open about the shame he collected as an abused child, his drinking, failings, inconsistencies, and yet he never ceased to see himself as God’s beloved.

All these years later, if I were to raise my hand, I’d say,

Jesus didn’t come to save us from our sins.

He came to save us from our shame.

Saving from sins is legal, a transaction that leaves us unchanged. Saving from shame is relational, the experience of a love we can never lose. It’s a longer way home, but to lose shame is to lose the fear of disconnection that makes all our sinful behavior necessary. Only unlosable love overcomes fear. To know we’re beloved not because we’re lovable, but because we keep showing up to Unlosable Love is all the salvation we’ll ever get. Or need.

Dave Brisbin 7.30.23

Fasting is the body’s natural reaction to loss and longing. Have you ever thought of it that way? When you’re grieving a loss, longing for the return of that loss, you’re probably not thinking about food. Associated with grief and heightened awareness, ritualized for religious purposes, fasting has always been with us. Ancient Jews ritually fasted twice a week personally, four times a year nationally, and to obtain or avoid things longed for or feared. In other words, fasting is not associated with celebration.

When Jesus is criticized for not making his followers fast, he replies that they can’t fast as long as the bridegroom is with them. Any Jew hearing that response would instantly know he’s talking about the Jewish wedding tradition, a seven day festival where loss and longing are held at bay for that precious week, celebrating with groom and bride. This little saying gives us a window on Jesus, how he views life—always celebrating, laughing, eating, drinking, experiencing abundance rather than loss, enoughness rather than longing.

Then in a seeming non sequitur, Jesus pivots and says no one puts an unshrunk patch on an old garment. First time you wash it, the patch will shrink and make a bigger tear. And no one puts new wine in old wineskins. New wine was not yet fermented, and wineskins were literal animal skins or bladders that could stretch with the fermentation unless they had already been stretched before, bursting and losing everything. Jesus is hammering right on the same point.

The old garment and wineskins represent a static, unyielding mindset stuck on the humorless, legal severity of working to become worthy of connection, on loss and longing, the fear of disconnection. New wine and unshrunk cloth represent the flow of changing circumstance, the willingness to flow with it, bubbling outward with new life and growth. Only minds free to be herenow, rooted in tradition as a tool for guidance, not a prison cell, can see their connection everywhere, celebrate all the moments of life: the times of fasting, those when the bridegroom is still present, and all the little ones in between.

Dave Brisbin 7.23.23

Over sixteen years at theeffect, we’ve only had to ask two people to leave a gathering. We want everyone who wants to be with us to be with us, unless they can’t maintain themselves enough to allow others to have their own experiences. Years ago a woman living on the streets would come on Sundays from time to time, usually under the influence. We and the donuts didn’t mind, until one Sunday she was acting so violently, we had to escort her out. But at the end of the gathering as we were all mingling, she came back and made a beeline for me.

I stiffened, wondering what was coming—may have actually taken a step back, but gave her direct eye contact, listening while she speed-talked about things I can’t remember. On full alert, I was ready for anything, all sensors tuned to signs of distress, but the more she talked, the more it seemed her difficult moment had passed. Then she stopped, and after a beat said, I guess I just need a hug. Didn’t see that coming, hope I had the presence of mind to smile, sure that I hesitated, but moved in for the embrace.

You know about first hugs…head and shoulders, arms and hands. I was still thinking through it all, waited what seemed right number of seconds, then relaxed my grip to back away. She maintained pressure, not letting go. Oh, ok…I re-engaged and waited what again seemed right lapse of time, relaxed, but she still held on, saying in my ear but not necessarily to me: sometimes it’s hard to get a good hug. The human condition in eight words. And as my humanity recognized hers, all the categories in which I’d placed her, all my interior boundaries, my tension, fell to the floor. I reeled her back in and held on until I finally felt her relax.

Jesus always seems out of order. Touches a leper and calls a paralytic his son before healing them. Loves before forgiveness. For Jesus, even when our need is lowered through a hole in the roof, the touch and forgiveness of family are the healing itself. Physical healing is almost an afterthought. And for all our focus on miracles, I think Jesus is trying to redirect us. Get us to see that sometimes a good hug is hard to find.

Dave Brisbin 7.16.23

Thirty years ago, three men, Catholic priests, gave me some of their time, became key figures, teachers in my life. I didn’t see it then—it takes time to see trajectories being established, the paths that remain. One of the three I only met once, but I still remember his name and the names on all the book covers he pointed out at the bookstore that afternoon. The other two I knew longer, a period of years. They counseled me and challenged me and then they were gone. I always thought we’d reconnect, but two of them died years ago, and we never did.

When the student is ready, the teacher appears. They came into my life exactly when I was ready to receive them, gave me what they had become, and though they left again before I was ready, I still remember their names.

The hardest part of being a pastor is watching people go. Letting those who have become friends go their way, sometimes never knowing if you really helped, never hearing the rest of the story. But like teachers and parents, for most of the relationships we engage, at some point the nest empties. Life takes them in and out of focus and proximity. We assume and want to believe that all our relationships will last a lifetime, but whether they do or not, they are only ever experienced as moments of connection.

I’ve looked at life from both sides now. And though it can still hurt, I can finally see the way of it, the necessity of it. When we’re ready, a person appears, and we let down our defenses and let them in…show up, break boundaries, connect, give all we’ve become, and when it’s time, let go. If we can’t let go, the strings attached show us how it was much more about meeting our own needs than a gift freely given, the simple flow of who we’d become.

Jesus healed ten lepers one day. Sent them off to the temple to be restored to their families. Only one came back to thank him. That didn’t stop Jesus from doing the very same thing the very next day. Our moments of connection define us. There is no outcome or legacy, no rest of the story. Just the willingness to break a boundary and make all you’ve become available to whomever you’re with.

Dave Brisbin 7.9.23

One of the rallying cries of the Protestant Reformation five hundred years ago was “sola scriptura,” which means scripture alone reveals God’s word to humankind. For any Christian who holds the bible in such esteem, what they believe about the book is more predictive of their thought, behavior, and emotion than what they believe about God. If the book is the supreme authority revealing God’s nature and relationship with us, then how we interpret the printed word dictates how we hear God’s word. Unless…

The Greek of the New Testament uses two different words we translate as word. The most common one is logos, which signifies the constancy of the written word: the underlying meaning, reason, intent behind it. The other, lesser known and less used, is rhema—the spoken word, a call, the action of uttering a thing said. It is always immediate, present, personal, and spoken now. Plato used rhema as the verb/action that drives the logos, noun/proposition, into being. Rhema is the living voice of God, the call that requires a response.

In Luke 5, Jesus is beset by such a large crowd at the shore of the Galilean sea, that he climbs into Peter’s boat, already pulled ashore for the day, and asks Peter to put out a little way from the land. Sitting in the boat, he teaches his word to the people on the shore and then tells Peter to put out into deeper water for a catch. Peter resists at first, saying they were fishing all night and caught nothing, but then stops, takes a breath, and says, but upon your word, we go. The word heard by the people sitting safely on the shore was logos. The word Peter hears, the call to the risk of deeper water and a miracle breakthrough, was rhema.

We tend to think in terms of sola—this or that alone. Both logos and rhema are necessary for moving from hearing to listening, passivity to action, understanding to knowing. Logos gives us a paradigm, belief enough to put out a little way from the shore, gain the confidence for something more. Logos is not the final answer. It’s only mind deep, but prepares us to hear rhema, the call to put out to deeper water and drive logos into being.

Dave Brisbin 7.2.23

The recent film Top Gun: Maverick, was hugely successful, with many fans saying, “they don’t make movies like this anymore.” Maverick feels like a throwback to Hollywood’s Golden Age, and it is. It’s depiction of clear heroes and villains, unapologetic respect for country, military, staunch individualism, are all marks of the Modern age that began around the year 1500 and is characterized by reason, science, capitalism, and the morality of individual and human rights. But since the end of WWII, we’ve been living in an increasingly Postmodern world that has questioned and deconstructed Modern values, accounting for most of the left-right culture wars we now face.

For all the valid points Postmodernism makes, it’s fatal flaw is that we can’t live life as a negative. We can’t say there’s no meaning here and live that way indefinitely. Humans need meaning, and since the turn of the 21st century, a new movement has been gaining traction that some are calling Metamodern—meta: beyond, transcend—that is attempting to essentially fuse Modern and Postmodern into a blend that finds meaning again in an increasingly confusing and meaningless world.

These are cultural revolutions, and like any revolution, make things worse before any possibility of better. Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence that we shouldn’t enter revolution lightly, but when we have suffered all we can with no hope of relief, revolution is the only course left. The shape of such exterior, macro revolutions mirror our own interior, micro revolutions. The search for meaning is a series of revolutions we wage as the meaning we have accepted is challenged by the traumas and losses we experience. Each loss creates a personal, postmodern reaction that must be replaced by some metamodern return to more expansive meaning.

It’s a relief to fall back into the arms of Maverick, return to familiar forms of meaning, but truth is always messier than we’d like. We can’t unsee, unfeel the losses we have sustained, so when we’ve suffered all we can suffer with too-small meaning, we become entirely ready to engage our next interior revolution.

Dave Brisbin 6.25.23

Heard of an elevator speech? You get on an elevator with someone of influence who wants to know what you do. Could you tell them before the doors open again? Thirty seconds to get across mission, vision, meaning, purpose, maybe even a bit of identity. Three or four sentences to be clear, concise, compelling. Obviously, this is a must for sales and marketing, but applies to anything we do with intention or passion. Including our spiritual practice…especially spiritual practice.

If we can’t express the crux and intent of our spirituality in one sentence, in one word, it’s likely we’re not experiencing it on a daily basis.

Jesus understood this. So did Br. Lawrence, a 17th century French monk who said that his spiritual life was all about presence, that the practice of the presence of God is the spiritual life itself. One word, one sentence…they ordered his life and experience. Jesus said that his Way to the Father was all about love, to seek first the Kingdom of God, and all else would be added. Different? What is love without presence that unites love with beloved? And how can presence be experienced without expressing love in its purest form—identification with the beloved? And what is Kingdom but the quality of life when love as presence has become the basis of who we are?

Br. Lawrence and Jesus are saying exactly the same thing with different elevator speeches tuned to their own audiences and cultures. And they are saying it today. Their today, our today. Always today, because once you’ve experienced presence, you know it can only exist today, and can only be expressed in the language of today. All the sayings, stories, teachings that Jesus voices are active, present, and radically immediate. There is no escaping todayness in his elevator.

But today is terrifying. No wiggle room. Today demands a choice, now. Will we “enter” the presence of Kingdom today, this moment, or not? Much more comfortable to imagine truth out there somewhere distant, someday after tomorrow. But all the truth that matters is right here, within us, within our families, friendships, communities. Our presence makes it so. Today.

Dave Brisbin 6.18.23 Father’s Day

One of the greatest science fiction novels ever, Dune, finally made into a decent movie last year, takes us to a planet that is entirely desert. Sand dunes encircle the globe like an ocean punctuated by islands of scorched rock, the only refuge against the immense sandworms that swim the dunes like leviathan. In such a world, the culture, religion worldview, behavior, discipline of the native people—every detail of daily life, every ritual and concern—revolves around the scarcity of water, their lifesource.

As both principle and metaphor, the world of Dune describes us humans on any world at any time. Whatever we experience or perceive as scarce becomes the center of our concern. We wrap our time, attention, effort, religion, culture, hopes, and dreams around it. Whether gold or oil, fame or power, youth, health, wealth, it becomes an object of worship and center of attention. But back on Dune, an outworlder tells a group of natives that where she was born, water fell from the sky, ran in wide rivers, vast oceans… There is an audible gasp from the people, sighs, awe at such possibility.

We also live a desert mentality of scarcity, competition, rationing, thirst, fear. Our experience and culture have installed this worldview, and our churches have reinforced it, applied it to God. We imagine God’s love and acceptance as scarce—withheld and elusive—and we obsess over performing to acquire them, aim religion and ritual at convincing God to bestow them. What if we stepped off a starship, onto a planet where God’s love fell from the sky?

Jesus is trying to show us that we don’t need a starship. Such a planet is already ours, and scarce is not a word in Jesus’ vocabulary. His God is insanely extravagant, abundant beyond belief with trillions of stars in trillions of galaxies, tethering trillions of planets with trillions of life forms in his back pocket. All of them good in God’s eyes, swimming in a love that falls from the sky. Squinting through the downpour, Jesus wonders when we will become willing to drop the nets of our performance and sell the possession of any worldview that imagines otherwise.