Three Dogs North

In this episode, the dogs talk about what it means to sacramentalize all things. They discuss the tendency to separate “holy” things from seemingly unholy things (1:30) and the opposing belief that all things are restored in Christ (4:00). Mike brings up his experience serving at Life Teen retreats (9:55), Rob shares what was so impactful about visiting the Martin home in France (11:20), and Connor tells about a recent trip to the doctor (13:10). They all discuss being freed, as priests, to focus on loving people, not just trying to save them (21:30). Also, they reminisce about that time Mike got scabies (28:25).

“Life with God is not an obligation, but it’s really a gift.” (Mike, 9:10)

“The retreat actually is reality; what we want to do is integrate the rest of your life into that relationship, into that experience.” (Mike, 10:30)

“Every room in their home was clearly about being together.” (Rob about the Martin home, 12:15)

“I want to bring Christ into that world. That’s what the invitation is, bring all of that suffering into Jesus. Even that is not outside of his power and grace.” (Mike, 20:40)

“I just get to love people. That’s my whole job.” (Mike, 21:00)

“Jesus says ‘behold I make all things new’, not ‘behold I make new things’.” (Connor quoting Schmemann, 22:05)

“Nothing is wasted. It’s all ingredients somehow in this ultimate project of joy.” (Connor, 23:20)

“He has assumed all of our humanity and now we donate our humanity to him to become transfigured and glorified.” (Connor, 23:36)

“I’m not on to save people, I’m on to love people.” (Rob quoting Mike, 25:29)

“The Christian is to the world what the soul is to the body.” (letter to Diognetus, 35:10)

“My prerogative is to treat everyone with equal love and equal dignity.” (Mike, 38:20)

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In this episode, the dogs talk about ways they have grown over the past year (4:45). Connor shares his experience during Holy Week (7:00), Rob remembers lessons learned from Connor’s pandemic garden (8:30), and Mike defends the relevance of the liturgy (13:35). They all share the joys of priesthood that they’ve recently experienced (21:30).

“The kingdom of God is just coming.” (Rob quoting Connor, 8:37)

“You just have to feel what you feel.” (Rob, 9:00)

“Reality is hard, but it’s better.” (Rob, 9:20)

“Everything in Heaven is so much more real.” (Connor, 12:15)

“When you live in reality and enter into the liturgy it becomes immediately relevant and pertinent because it’s God’s desire to save us and walk with us in our suffering.” (Mike, 13:50)

“God’s responsive love to the suffering human heart.” (Mike, 14:20)

 “How much of a gift it is to be a priest and have Jesus explode your heart for people.” (Connor, 21:30)

“Christianity is real and it’s dope.” (Connor, 22:40)

“It’s good to be a priest.” (Mike, 26:00)

“It’s so good to have everybody home.” (Rob, 27:50)

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In this episode, the dogs hear Rob’s hot take on 7 Habits of Highly Effective People (4:35). They all discuss the importance of choosing to engage with reality (11:48), especially when it can be tempting to “shirk” off the present moment (34:30).

“I am not alone. It’s not just on me to create the meaning of my life. This is not all there is.”  (Connor, 23:10)

“Jesus seems to rectify and provide a lived reality that you don’t have to rebel against everything in order to fully actualize your humanity.” (Mike, 25:10)

“She (St. Therese) only wants reality and what her human limits allow. She has no problem being limited by her humanity.” (Rob, 26:50)

“It’s impossible for Jesus to will useless suffering.” (Connor quoting St. Therese, 28:50)

“God is out there, in the desert with you.” (Connor, 31:30)

“We’re not at the promised land yet, but we are there, in those moments of Kiaros.” (Connor, 32:51)

“What gives me life is living within Christ and then responding to the reality with Him that’s in front of me.” (Connor, 40:40)

“Part of what’s been great about life is that it’s not what I expected.” (Connor, 41:20)

“The youth are the future.”

“We’re building tomorrow’s church, today.”

“Senior citizens are our past.”

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In this episode, the dogs talk about Rob’s Sabbath activities (1:50) and Connor’s obsession with Milanos (6:00). Connor brings up the Mother Teresa documentary (7:10) and they all discuss why she is so initially intimidating (10:42) and ultimately disarming (26:50). They close the episode with love for all the Teresas (34:34).

“Engagement with that kind of poverty… the truly untouchable, Mother Teresa so radically went to them and was willing to be affected by them in a way that I resist.” (Connor, 10:42)

“You go into some of those rooms (at the gift of grace house) and it engages all of your humanity; it’s a very tangible experience of the “marginalized”.” (Mike, 18:00)

“Mother Teresa enters into that discomfort in this really remarkable way that can be intimidating.” (Mike, 18:35)

“You have no lifelines there (with the poor); you’re totally dependent on God.” (Mike, 19:10)

“Get comfortable being uncomfortable.” (Mike quoting his siblings, 20:40)

“The world offers you comfort. But you were not made for comfort. You were made for greatness.” (Connor quoting Pope Benedict XVI, 22:15).

“What she (Mother Teresa) was up to was not solving world hunger, the goal of what she was doing was communion with God… What was driving her, from the beginning, was a desire to be with Jesus and where she rested at the end of her day was in the company of Jesus.” (Connor, 24:30)

“The MCs are so joyful…. They are not spiritually intimidating; they are spiritually disarming.” (Mike, 26:50)

“It’s the circumstances I find myself in, that’s God’s will for me and that’s what she (Mother Teresa) would want me to do.” (Connor, 31:40)

“She (Mother Teresa) was disarming because in her own freedom, she was able to love the person in front of her.” (Rob, 36:00)

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In this episode, the dogs discuss the movie Devotion (1:00) and what it takes to become a saint (6:10). They pull from the Office of Readings (7:29), Bishop Barron (10:14), and Cardinal George (27:30), all while making too many baseball references. Mike closes the episode with a reference to the North American Martyrs (35:35) and his modest rebellion against becoming a semi-pro therapist (30:30).

“It’s not morality that makes someone a saint.” (Rob, 6:15)

“God desires for us to be saints. It’s not enough for us to behave properly; He wants a transformation of the heart.” (Mike, 7:50)

“The desire on our hearts is that someone will crash land for us or that I will crash land for someone else… it calls to a deeper part of our humanity.” (Mike, 8:45)

 “What makes a saint is not moral virtue, but union with God.” (Connor, 11:25)

 “You become who you are and who you are meant to be in the measure that you receive your being from Him.” (Connor, 12:15)

“You’ve been set free as children of God.” (Connor, 12:40)

“What God wants is to simply enjoy you, to enjoy being with you” (Connor, 22:50)

“He can be anywhere He wants to be and He wants to be with us.” (Connor quoting Cardinal George, 27:50)

“God’s desire for us is to be with us.” (Connor, 28:35)

“He continues to crash land to get me… it’s often in those disasters that I feel least abandoned because I have to completely rely on grace and ask for His help and He provides it.” (Connor, 41:20)

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In this episode, the dogs extend an invitation to a “big-souled life” (35:50). Connor brings up the pilgrimage to Rome in The Story of a Soul (2:25) and Rob connects St. Therese’s allure to truthfulness (5:50). Mike emphasizes the importance of living in the present truth (13:00) while also having your eyes fixed on eternity (20:40).

“I cannot tell you how deeply I was impressed with this scenery so full of poetry and grandeur. It was a foretaste of the wonders of Heaven. Then the thought of religious life would come before me, as it really is, with its constraints and its little daily sacrifices made in secret. I understood how easily one might become wrapped in self and forget the sublime end of one’s vocation, and I thought: “Later on, when the time of trial comes, when I am enclosed in the Carmel and shall only be able to see a little bit of sky, I will remember this day and it will encourage me.” (Connor quoting The Story of a Soul: Chapter VI, 3:10).

“Here’s hoping that you probably like this.” (Rob, 4:55)

 “We have a desire as men to not live in the pretend fake world, but to live in reality; that is costly, but it’s so much more substantial.” (Connor, 9:05)

“I’d much rather be a real person who loves real people.” (Connor, 11:00)

“I can use my words to build someone up, which is actually a cooperation with the creative word of God.” (Mike, 12:30)

“It’s safer in the longterm to constantly live in the truth because reality will break through eventually.” (Mike, 12:54)

“She (St. Therese) suffered the violence of grace in the most ordinary moments.” (Rob, 17:52)

“Therese lived fully in the moment while looking completely to Heaven, which isn’t the future, it was reality.” (Mike, 19:23)

“The more real you become to yourself and others the less you are interested in people not being real to you.” (Connor, 25:14)

 “You are one of a kind, but you’re not the center of the universe and you don’t need to be.” (Connor, 36:17)

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In this episode, the dogs talk about Connor’s office art (00:35) and Mike’s recent experience at the Joint Readiness Training Center (10:40). They all describe the feeling of wonder (24:54) being in the presence of a “massive reality” (21:30).

“Because she was innocent, it didn’t make her less prepared for reality, it made her more prepared to see things as they are.” (Connor quoting Mike, 28:00)

“Innocence allows you to experience a thing as it is and it oftentimes leads to wonder.” (Mike, 30:05)

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In this episode, the dogs catch up (0:30) and discuss a recent movie Rob and Connor watched together (1:20). Connor asks the guys if they’ve ever unknowingly read a robot generated article (7:20). They continue to talk about the intersection of semiotics and AI (8:40), emphasizing its limitations (13:50). Rob compares emails and letter writing (18:46) and Mike brings up the coolest scene from a movie, ever (26:50). (This summary was written by GPT-3, OpenAI’s language generator.)

“Is our brain just the hardware that the software of the consciousness is uploaded to?” (Connor, 11:20)

“I think computers are always going to be trying to express what humans would say.” (Mike, 17:27)

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In this episode, the dogs talk about deer season (3:50) and the need for initiation rituals in young men (11:30). Rob brings up the importance of mentorship through a Harry Potter reference (14:20), which reminds Mike of Bishop Barron’s idea of the mystagogue (16:45). Connor recounts a story from early in his priesthood (21:11) and they all echo the importance of Fathers who aren’t afraid to “pass on the kingdom” (32:29).

“I’m always thinking about getting gored.” (Mike, 7:20)

“You don’t get maturity without someone to help you mature and initiate you.” (Connor, 11:23)

“If this were the 90s we’d be playing with baseballs and headshots would be encouraged.” (Connor quoting Matt Alexander, 12:25)

“Youth can not know how age thinks and feels. But old men are guilty if they forget what it was to be young.” (quote from Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, 14:29)

“I think we actually need people there to be mystagogues, to walk with you into a mystery.” (Mike, 17:40)

“I want the future to be analog.” (Rob, 18:21)

“The Lord put the right people in my way and they cared about me and loved me.” (Mike, 25:40)

“The sabbath is made for man not man for the sabbath.” (Connor, 29:35)

“There’s something about a father who does not cling to what he has, but gets to share that freely.” (Mike, 32:40)

“It’s okay to pass on the kingdom, that’s what we’re supposed to do.” (Mike, 33:20)

“Look, I called my mom earlier and she said I was so handsome, so it doesn’t matter what you think.” (Mike, 34:40)

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In this episode, the dogs discuss Connor’s new album (00:39) and his recent experience at Second City (03:40). Mike asks the guys whether they make jokes during homilies (6:30); Rob (7:50), Connor (10:14), and Mike (24:20) give their different perspectives. Connor invokes Aquinas to explain man as the risible animal (30:15) and they all talk about the power of laughter (35:00).

“When Chuck Norris falls into water, he doesn’t get wet the water gets Chucked.” (Rob, 7:55)

“You do you, but that’s not me.” (Rob, 9:10)

“The boogeyman checks under his bed for Chuck Norris.” (Mike, 9:24)

“How’s Mormonism treating you?” (Anonymous, 12:49)

“We’ve been doing this for so long we can start repeating stories and nobody will know.” (Mike, 24:13)

“It’s one of my great stories. It’s one that I laughed hard at too, which is nice.” (Connor, 24:19)

“I talk to the customers so the engineers don’t have to.” (Connor quoting Office Space, 28:15)

 “It’s a revelation of the person when you get to watch someone deep deep belly laugh.” (Mike, 35:00)

“To have someone’s capacity to enjoy another person expressed, it’s deeper than words… it’s an authentic response to something.” (Mike, 38:40)

 “As the kids say, neat-o.” (Fidel Jesus, 39:50)

“There’s something delightful in delighting in someone.” (Connor, 40:28)

“It’s important not to canonize the person (at their funeral), we’re here to pray for them.” (Rob, 41:10)

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