theeffect Podcasts

Dave Brisbin | 11.4.18

When Jesus speaks of Kingdom, he’s not speaking of a place or a territory. He’s talking about us, all of us living a particular quality of being that translates into a particular quality of life—a habit of being. Some sociologists call any habitual way of being a habitus. But Jesus’ habit of being has a quality defined by presence, connection, the ability to see both the seen and unseen components of life—to see the overarching connection of everyone to everything and each other that is not apparent without this quality. It is a complete change of our way of perceiving the world and life and how we react to it. It’s a new way of living life that includes and transforms all our ingrained habits, skills, and attitudes—a new theory of everything that changes everything we experience. Jesus spends most of his teaching time describing this Kingdom habitus in terms of its effect on the quality of life it creates. It’s the only way it can be described at all. When we read the Beatitudes, the kingdom parables, and watch Jesus in action, we are seeing his habitus. And we are also seeing how he leads others to create their own habitus of Kingdom…how he heals, teaches, mentors, and serves—guiding those who are willing from imbalance and dysfunction to a platform from which they can see a new possibility for their lives. And for the students who are ready, the invitation to follow from passive learning to active engagement with him, and from there to turn and serve others themselves. Where are we along this path to Kingdom? What is the nature of our own habitus? How closely does it resemble Jesus’ in effect? And how ready are we as students for the next phase of our journey?

Dave Brisbin | 10.28.18

A friend tells me he wants to take his motorhome up to Canada and stay for at least three months or more because he can’t stand being a part of the U.S. anymore. I figure it’s because of his politics, but as we talk, what comes out is a real grieving over the state of all relations in our country: race, political, religious, social, cultural, generational…he’s ashamed to be a part. Though we do talk about how many hours a day he spends watching cable news, he has a point. What’s happening in our country? The short answer is fear. People are afraid of not maintaining their quality of life or that of their children. And scared people build walls. Real ones and mental ones. Emotional ones. Religious, political, social, and cultural ones. And as soon as we build a wall, we create enemies of those on the other side. Even if we don’t mean to, it’s the nature of walls. Jesus tells us to love our enemies, not to judge those on the other side. If we are to love as Jesus loves, as the Father loves, what does that really mean? And how do we know if we’re actually doing it? Paul was a man full of walls, and so by definition, full of fear. Early Jewish followers of Jesus offended Paul’s certainty about Judaism and later Jewish followers of Jesus offended his certainty about Gentile followers. But by the end of his life, he writes that he is at peace with his weaknesses and content in all circumstances. To love like Jesus and the Father is to become unoffendable. To grant enough freedom to the enemy to live peacefully on the other side of our walls until the moment we realize those walls no longer exist.

Dave Brisbin | 10.21.18

In one of our studies last week, someone asks the age old question—maybe first question we humans have asked about ourselves and life: how can I believe or trust there’s a God or any higher power that cares about me and my well being when there is so much evil all around? The oldest book in the Bible is focused on this question. An entire branch of philosophy focuses on this question. Polytheism and atheism are answers to this question because if you have many gods, some good and some bad or no god, problem solved. But for those who believe in one God, all good and all powerful, and yet evil exists—pick any two but you can’t logically have all three. Even Satan doesn’t get God off the hook. If God can’t stop Satan, he’s not all powerful, and if he won’t, not all good. Is there a way to understand God that maintains what theists believe about one God and yet never shrinks from the realities of daily life? If there was such a rational answer, we would have had it long ago, so any “answer” won’t exist in the form we’re expecting, but as we consider a quote from a second century church father, the lyrics of a popular song, the stories of the separation and reconciliation of two sets of biblical characters, and the dysfunctional marriage of one prophet, a way through begins to emerge. We can’t know God until we know why he won’t make us love him, that love is only love if it is freely chosen. And we won’t see God’s face until we allow ourselves to fall deeply into the risk of the pain of loving as he loves—by setting our beloved perfectly free to choose whether to love us back, to choose the “evil” that is actually the proof that such perfect love really exists.

Dave Brisbin | 10.30.11

Driving home from northern California through the endless San Joaquin Valley, radio stations fade in and out as we drive through their broadcast ranges. Scanning for the next signal, I hit on a clear channel just as a song I haven't heard in years is starting...turn down the lights, turn down the bed, turn down these voices inside my head... Her voice brings long dormant memories flooding back with the music, and by the time she gets to the chorus: I can't make you love me if you don't; I can't make your heart feel something it won't--I'm fully involved. The uncanny thought strikes that this song, passionately about unrequited romantic love, could so easily be sung by God to each one of us. Our relationship with God, though obviously not sexual, has always been portrayed in intimately human terms. There's the prophet Hosea, told to take an unfaithful woman for a bride as extended metaphor for the tenuous relationship between God and Israel--God and us. Did God personally risk anything by creating us with the capacity to refuse his love? Can his heart break like ours do when we sing, I will lay down my heart, and I'll feel the power--but you won't, no you won't...? Maybe God could make us love him, but maybe he won't, because if he did, we would no longer be us, and love would no longer be love: deprived of the one thing both need to be what they are...a choice freely made.

Dave Brisbin | 10.14.18

Last Thursday was a tale of two hospitals. First a trip to a prominent children’s hospital to speak to the director and manager of spiritual care about new programs they are initiating for patients, families, and clinical caregivers. I am struck by the unhurried presence of the two I meet. Unhurried, gracious, taking their time with me, as if I were the only person in their world until the moment they have to move on to their next meetings. From there, I drive forty miles to visit an elderly friend in critical care in a massive hospital downtown. Darker, more serious, not for kids. I walk into the darkened room and she asks what brought me all the way downtown. I say, only you, dear. I’m here just for you. She says, oh isn’t that wonderful? And we talk and hold hands and seven minutes later, she asks what brought me all the way downtown, and I realize her memory has reset itself. Still carrying the unhurried presence of the last hospital, I choose to enter her world and simply say, only you, dear. I’m here just for you, and she says, oh isn’t that wonderful? We repeat this every seven minutes for the 45 minutes I’m with her, and I have just as much a thrill in telling her as she does receiving the news. I have been given the gift of presence voluntarily by two practiced professionals and involuntarily by my friend for whom I am the only person in her world for seven minutes at a time. It’s a study in presence that stays with me as I turn to see how Jesus handled presence, the steps he took to create and maintain, and I find five stories all back to back in one chapter of Luke—chapter five. Reading between the lines of stories that don’t tell but simply show, I find six lessons in the practice of presence that allow us to enter into the world as Jesus sees it, if only for seven minutes at a time.

Dave Brisbin | 10.7.18

Sometimes insightful messages come in sets of threes, it seems. Or maybe it’s that as the first time goes right over our heads, second brings awareness, and the third really hits home, we’re just sensitive to the threeness of things. I suppose it’s always our choice to see life as either a series of coincidences or having divine influence or somewhere in between. And that’s the point: how we see the events in our lives and our place in them is a choice. Any worldview we choose will answer some questions and beg others, but whether we hit an objective accuracy we could never prove anyway, some views of life are just more fun. A series of events of the past week from a trip to the zoo to the homecoming greeting by our pet dog, to an email from a friend in crisis telling the story of a young boy running into the pool with his swimmies on, a pattern of experiences and images formed with an impact that seemed to far outweigh mere coincidence. Jesus always points to children as the emblems of kingdom, but more than that, when we dig beneath some limiting translations, we find that he’s really saying that kingdom is us and we are kingdom when we look at life in a particular way—a way that makes us look like children. Whether to see the threeness of this last week as God’s guiding hand is my choice. And yours as well. But whatever the mechanics of life, some choices are just much more fun and childlike. Kingdomlike.

Frank Billman | 9.30.18

Through the study of the mystics and contemplatives we’ve been conducting both on Sundays and midweek, we’ve covered several historical personalities. Several of them have been studied by staff and members of our community, and several of those chose to present in first person, even dressed for the part to bring home the fact that these storied saints of the church were simply flesh and blood people who answered life’s circumstances with a fierce desire to know God completely. Here, Frank Billman, one of our recovery pastors, takes on the persona of Frances of Assisi, and presents him as the humble man who saw himself as a poor but beautiful part of God’s creation and never lost the childlike quality and wonder that made him call himself and his followers, God’s jugglers.

Dave Brisbin | 9.23.18

Every now and again we stop presenting new material so we can consolidate our thinking and just have a conversation. Starting with the theme of contemplative life that we’ve been discussing for several weeks and placing it in the larger circle of perfect love, we set out. Our goal is not to provide absolute answers to any given question. When it comes to issues of faith, no such certainty is possible. We’re just talking through issues and providing educated viewpoints to consider together. You never know what’s going to come when you hand the mic to someone in the room, so take a listen and find out… there may be questions you’ve been asking as well.

Dave Brisbin | 9.16.18

Movies are our dominant storytelling media these days, and though we can say it’s a shame people aren’t reading as much anymore, sometimes the combination of a great script, great actors, and great pictures really brings a message home. Spinning the dial, I came across the movie Jackie and became involved in the story of Jackie Kennedy coping with the first seven days after the assassination of her husband/president. But what riveted me was the series of scenes between her and a priest counselor in which she asked the classic questions of grief, loss, and life in general. She questions God and his cruelty, she questions her actions and what she did to deserve the trauma and pain, and she questions her life as she reveals she’d been praying every night to die. The priest carefully tries to steer her down a middle course between the extremes of an indifferent God and one who actively creates or allows pain, but ultimately confesses there are no answers. Delivered by the great actor John Hurt just weeks before his own death to pancreatic cancer, a death he knew was coming, makes even more pointed the truth that at its most mature, our spiritual journey ceases as a search for rational answers that aren’t coming—and becomes a conscious immersion in moments we may not understand, but that God in his infinite wisdom has made sure are just enough for us.

Dave Brisbin | 9.9.18

Speaking more from a personal point of view, Pastor Dave talks about how the recent series on the contemplative journey and lives of mystics in the Christian tradition has stirred up emotional memories of his own journey and the questions they pose on the nature of the deep desire in some of us to engage this journey at all costs. Where does this desire come from? Why is it so strong in some of us and not others? How is it sustained? And most importantly, where do we direct it and nurture it into a conscious contact with God and each other? As always, we go to Jesus and see that he had a very defined Way of bringing his people to their Father, and it roughly breaks down into four main areas of growth: healing, teaching, mentoring, and serving. When the desire in us becomes strong enough, we become ready to stop being victims and start healing at least enough to build a stable platform for learning about a Way of living that changes everything. Then at some point the student becomes ready to actually engage the Way with a mentor who can guide and provide accountability until the student becomes the teacher and can serve. This is the contemplative way, the Way of Jesus that takes us from fearful brokenness to an assured humility and willingness to be openly vulnerable in our moment by moment experience.