[SPEAKER_01]: Welcome to the intentional fatherhood podcast where we give you a strong biblical framework and lots of practical ideas on how to live intentionally as a father and a husband.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm Brooke Moser and I'm Justin Whitmore Early and we're your host to guide you through the many roles and challenges that God is calling you to live intentionally as a father.
[SPEAKER_02]: We're following a visual framework that you can check out at intentionalfatherhood.org and it's going to help you break down fatherhood into eight columns.
[SPEAKER_01]: And in each one, we're going to talk about how God made you to be a father, and what practical habits you can start trying today in order to live intentionally into that home.
[SPEAKER_02]: So come along with us as we follow Jesus on this journey towards being more intentional fathers.
[SPEAKER_01]: Justin, we just got down with the most amazing conversation.
[SPEAKER_02]: That was a delight.
[SPEAKER_02]: That that is actually everything that I hope for in that man.
[SPEAKER_02]: What a beautiful, beautiful voice.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh dude, I could not believe, obviously we're talking about father Ronald Rollheiser and I mean, that's kind of a bucket list for both you and I To have conversation with him as he's been so influential, but maybe I can't believe how spray he was.
[SPEAKER_02]: I indeed, I mean, he's just been so influential for both of us and so many of my friends actually, you know, I talked to a lot of people.
[SPEAKER_02]: And my friends usually aren't impressed.
[SPEAKER_02]: When I told him I was doing a podcast with father, Ronald Rollheiser, they said, are you serious?
[SPEAKER_02]: Mike, can I come to you know, he's just an amazing voice.
[SPEAKER_02]: It particularly good for people in this stage of fatherhood, who are learning to give it all the way.
[SPEAKER_02]: He's such a good voice on what to do with your anger on how to be like Jesus.
[SPEAKER_02]: Man, that was encouraging.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, man.
[SPEAKER_01]: And you're going to hear a lot of, you know, we asked specific questions around.
[SPEAKER_01]: fatherhood, of course, but it really just meets anybody in their stage and to hear his journey of cancer and listen into that and where he's at in the stage of life as a 78 year old giving his death away as we talked about.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, you know, it's such a practical example.
[SPEAKER_01]: And one of the things we highlight also when just let you know, because this will hopefully just be a gift for you is he just released a book about a couple of months ago in St. for the Light, which is his recent most recent book about giving your death
[SPEAKER_01]: Man, it couldn't be more happy.
[SPEAKER_01]: Also, we're going to say it because Justin, we need to, we need to tell the good dudes really quick.
[SPEAKER_01]: We need to tell them that we need them to rate and subscribe and to leave a comment.
[SPEAKER_01]: And why do they do that, Justin?
[SPEAKER_01]: Why?
[SPEAKER_01]: Just help people.
[SPEAKER_02]: Because that is the number one way that other people hear about this.
[SPEAKER_02]: So if it's been helpful to you, make it helpful to somebody else by liking, subterrence, subscribing and commenting.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, do it.
[SPEAKER_01]: But enjoy today, Justin and I just, I mean, we're like giddy little kids.
[SPEAKER_01]: So just forgive us for all of our questions, which we did our best.
[SPEAKER_01]: I thought you did a great job of, you know, conserving some of that energy.
[SPEAKER_01]: I was like giddy inside doing like I want to ask 18 more things.
[SPEAKER_01]: Even at one point, you're like, I'm sorry for asking another question.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, are you kidding?
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm going to take it over.
[SPEAKER_02]: So so much of what he says leads to another question.
[SPEAKER_02]: So listeners, you are again, you are going to love this.
[SPEAKER_01]: You're going to love it.
[SPEAKER_01]: We'll enjoy today's conversation with Father Ronald Rollheiser.
[SPEAKER_01]: Father Ron, welcome to the intentional fatherhood podcast, Justin.
[SPEAKER_01]: I could not be more excited to have you here.
[SPEAKER_01]: Welcome.
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thanks, good to be with you.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm truly like, this was kind of one of those gifts that we didn't see coming.
[SPEAKER_01]: And we've been so impacted myself and Justin by your work and by your ministry.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'd love to just give you like two seconds of what that even means.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so it just won't you start because I know this three of us here, there's a dynamic, but just maybe just give a second of how impactful other runs ministry has been to you.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'll briefly say it.
[SPEAKER_01]: And we have just so many questions so we're gonna get right to the good stuff.
[SPEAKER_01]: But I wanna briefly highlight.
[SPEAKER_02]: I want to do that because Father Ron, your book, The Domestic Monastery, was incredibly influential to me about five years ago.
[SPEAKER_02]: I have four young boys and during the pandemic, I started writing a book on habits and parenting.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I remember, so I'm a practicing corporate lawyer, and I would spend the first hour of my morning working on this book.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I remember thinking, why am I doing this?
[SPEAKER_02]: This is, what do I even know about my parenting?
[SPEAKER_02]: My kids are young, why am I doing writing a book about this?
[SPEAKER_02]: But I was reading people and researching, and the domestic monastery was incredibly helpful to me, because I kept thinking, I think that what I'm doing in fatherhood,
[SPEAKER_02]: is the core of the Lord's spiritual formation for me right now.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I feel like all these ordinary tasks are actually extraordinarily spiritual, but I don't know if I'm right about that.
[SPEAKER_02]: And when I read the domestic monastery, I just felt this wonderful gift.
[SPEAKER_02]: of saying, okay, I, somebody that I respect things like that.
[SPEAKER_02]: That was the beginning of your influence on my thought.
[SPEAKER_02]: And it really changed the way that I wrote.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I tell people, they say, what did you read and to write happens to the house on it and you're on, you're like, one of the top three books that I recommend subsequently.
[SPEAKER_02]: All my friends and I, because we're all fathers around the, you know, in 30s or early 40s have now read your book, this is the sacred fire.
[SPEAKER_02]: Many of them also holy longing.
[SPEAKER_02]: We're very much looking forward to insane for the light.
[SPEAKER_02]: I haven't picked that.
[SPEAKER_02]: I know that one's out, but I haven't picked it up yet.
[SPEAKER_02]: But I'll just say your framework for thinking about getting your life together, giving your life away, giving your death away.
[SPEAKER_02]: It was so impactful to our friends that broken I decided we wanted to do a podcast season.
[SPEAKER_02]: based around that framework and so all our listeners now are going to be familiar with you and your concepts of particularly of giving your life away because we all feel like we're in that stage with kids right now.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'll just briefly say I just recently released a prayer devotional all on a quote from you in the prayer devotional is called sewing hidden seed 31 days of prayers for your child spiritual growth and it comes from a quote that you have, which I'm sure you remember, but I just it has been such an impactful thing to to find someone like yourself and to connect with your work and.
[SPEAKER_01]: you know, your way of thinking and describing life and Jesus has been a gift to so many, including Justin and I, but we are just, we're grateful.
[SPEAKER_01]: We want to give you the floor.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, thank you for giving us this space in this time.
[SPEAKER_01]: You did just release a wonderful book in same for the light.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm already all the way through it.
[SPEAKER_01]: I sent you through it, Brooke.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, man.
[SPEAKER_01]: Of course.
[SPEAKER_01]: I couldn't.
[SPEAKER_01]: I was getting that right away.
[SPEAKER_01]: I sent it to all my friends for my birthday.
[SPEAKER_01]: Some people coming out to my birthday was like, we're going to be talking about this.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I sent it to
[SPEAKER_01]: We could go on and on, but I want to talk about this idea.
[SPEAKER_01]: Maybe just to set up our first question here, Father on is, is restlessness.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, we're talking about these different stage theories, spirituality, all of this.
[SPEAKER_01]: And for us, there's a restlessness that happens in the midlife, especially as we get into the real middle years.
[SPEAKER_01]: But I'd love to talk about,
[SPEAKER_01]: how do we process restlessness and what is God trying to teach us about our own desire through this thing of restlessness as fathers and as families?
[SPEAKER_00]: People will start first with restlessness first to that later on as fathers.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, but you know one of the great kind of one liners, every Christian history was with my senior ghost.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, he begins his spiritual lot of biography, he's saying, if made us for yourself, Lord, and our hearts, our rest is until he rest in you, that explains everything.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then, why are we restless now?
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not because we're neurotic or whatever.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're built for God.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're built to big for this world.
[SPEAKER_00]: And even though this world is wonderful, you are never going to find complete this here.
[SPEAKER_00]: because we're always looking at the bigger her eyes.
[SPEAKER_00]: And in fact, in almost all my works that one line underlines it.
[SPEAKER_00]: He made it for yourself, Lord, or hurts and rest looks to be resting you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know what?
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a line I used from Coral Rona that I like it.
[SPEAKER_00]: He once got all that there from a friend of his or she said, you know, I got married and it's a happy marriage and I would have kids that everybody's going well.
[SPEAKER_00]: He said, but somehow there's still something missing in my life.
[SPEAKER_00]: What's wrong with me?
[SPEAKER_00]: And Ron are going to scrape away.
[SPEAKER_00]: He says, the only Germans can have tortured language like this, he says.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's an internment of the insufficiency of everything attainable, to learn that in this life, there is no finished symphony.
[SPEAKER_00]: We know if it gets to finish symphony,
[SPEAKER_00]: And so our restless is actually to healthy thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: It keeps us settling.
[SPEAKER_00]: It keeps us from settling for anything less than second best.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: How we apply that to fathers, I would need to think about that a little more.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, the applies to everybody.
[SPEAKER_00]: But as friends, as you're both young dads,
[SPEAKER_00]: Let me tease this out, and trust in you began by talking about that, you know, domestic monastery, I think what I'm trying to do is the overall thing is that it looks to say like your spiritual life is not something separate from your ordinary life.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, you know, so that, you know, I begin with a story, I think it's in the book.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm a friend of mine, he said he'd be long to one of these hip prayer groups in over it.
[SPEAKER_00]: They would meet him.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm doing centric prayer.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm doing, you know, mindfulness.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm doing this.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the answer is, what's your practice, what's your practice, what's your practice?
[SPEAKER_00]: My practice is raising my kids.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: See, that's mindfulness, that's it for you.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: See, those are the bells of the monastery that go off.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right?
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's the incarnation.
[SPEAKER_00]: Jesus came to be incarnate in human flesh, which means in families.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I would say we have more of the mystic God than a monastic God.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_00]: Sometimes we think of a somehow I have to be monastic or something.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I love the tradition of men and masters, I've spent so much with monks.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's it.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's an extraordinary, I don't want to say fringe, but you don't have a vocation.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's not for everybody.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it was a man, your vocation right now is to be a father, to be a husband, to raise kids, that's your practice.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes, you can ask you a question about how you came to write the domestic monastery because, you know, when I say, one of the best books that I've read on parenting,
[SPEAKER_02]: was written by a Catholic priest, people are so surprised.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, most of so many authors I'm parenting, we appreciate people who are in the fray and doing it.
[SPEAKER_02]: And yet, you seem to just be able to nail thought on this concept in a way that many people just haven't.
[SPEAKER_02]: What made you want to write it?
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, one of the major areas I've talked, and I've been teaching for 40 years is
[SPEAKER_00]: mysticism and monasticism of John of the Cross, you know, who has a great spiritual genius.
[SPEAKER_00]: But as I'm teaching this, I say, I call it, it's a work of retrieval.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, he was the one, a monk writing for monks, you know, but the principles are deep, you know, see?
[SPEAKER_00]: So,
[SPEAKER_00]: My wife's work almost says a few moments and it's what I call retrieval.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_00]: When she's saying they custom, and you bring it out, and you realize this isn't just for monks.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: Everybody.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the principles are, as you see, the principles are wonderful, like the one you just coined like, the monastic battle, remember, in a monastery, you know, Benedict to wrote the rules.
[SPEAKER_00]: He said, a monk's life is ruled by the bell.
[SPEAKER_00]: When the bell rings, you go to the next exercise.
[SPEAKER_00]: Not just you watch.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's time.
[SPEAKER_00]: So the time is New York Times God's time.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, he has a famous one.
[SPEAKER_00]: He says, if you're writing a letter and you still need to dot a T or an I, he said, the bell rings, you put the pen down.
[SPEAKER_03]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, for you,
[SPEAKER_00]: The monastic bell is your alarm clock.
[SPEAKER_00]: The monastic bell is when you have to show up for work.
[SPEAKER_00]: The monastic bell is the mortgage payment.
[SPEAKER_00]: The monastic bell is driving your kids to soccer, practice it all the stuff.
[SPEAKER_00]: See, you go not because you want to, it's time.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's time to wipe it.
[SPEAKER_02]: And it's not your time, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: It's time to serve it.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's time to serve it.
[SPEAKER_00]: The principles are so rich and they're actually more important
[SPEAKER_00]: Those are principles.
[SPEAKER_00]: He ruled up for a month, but you strip it out.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, I wonder raised one other topic next to this briefly.
[SPEAKER_02]: Another book that I constantly recommend to people, and that was very influential to me, was a book called Finding Got At Home by Ernest Boyer, who was, I don't know if he ever wrote another book.
[SPEAKER_02]: Father Ron, have you heard of this by chance?
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay, I just want everybody, including you father on it to hear of it because it is not well known on Amazon, it has two reviews and it's one of the best book that I've ever read because it was a young Catholic dad in the 1980s I believe.
[SPEAKER_02]: that he thought that he thought that he was going to become a monk and go live a pretty desert sort of life at a European monastery, and then he met a woman fell in love at seminary.
[SPEAKER_02]: They had children, and he spent years wrestling with had, you know, did he miss his call that he foregoes call, and the whole book is about him learning what you just said,
[SPEAKER_02]: He's a beautiful writer, it's autobiographical, and I can't believe the man never wrote another book because he just nailed it, um, metal and lingo, and maybe even Frederick.
[SPEAKER_02]: He actually endorsed it.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like he must have known people at the time that were spiritual writers of that moment, but it's just not well-known, and it's an incredible work, and so I just want everybody listening to go here and do this work of retrieval of finding this guy earned his
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, let me give you a biblical example of that.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, especially John's gospel is so rich at his symbolism and so on.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that is the end of John's gospel chapter 21 when Jesus calls Peter.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he says, Grimary, ask Peter three times to you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Love me.
[SPEAKER_00]: And Peter said, you know, I love you, feed my limbs, you love me, feed my sheep, you know.
[SPEAKER_00]: And because he asked him three times, he was Peter, you know I didn't have three times.
[SPEAKER_00]: When Peter said, you know everything, you know that I love you, then Jesus says this to him.
[SPEAKER_00]: He says, because he said this, he said, up to now you've heard your belt and you walk where you want to walk.
[SPEAKER_00]: But no, that you've said this.
[SPEAKER_00]: Others who put a belt around you would take you where you'd rather not go.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, you know, for instance, okay, you're both young fathers.
[SPEAKER_00]: You've had married your kids.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, those kids are going to raise you.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're going to raise you.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, sir.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, they're putting a belt around you and they're taking you where you'd rather would actually out of on selfishness.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, yes.
[SPEAKER_00]: You now have to live for other people.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can't just be thinking about yourself, which you could have your single.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's right.
[SPEAKER_00]: See, so commitments, I just love that line.
[SPEAKER_00]: They'll put a belt around you.
[SPEAKER_00]: They'll take you where you'd rather not go.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's what your marriage is doing.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's what your kids are doing to you.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's taking to the right place.
[SPEAKER_00]: I always say parents don't raise kids.
[SPEAKER_00]: Kids raise the parents.
[SPEAKER_00]: You've grown up.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, I can't tell you how much I have experienced that.
[SPEAKER_01]: I want to maybe not even pivot, but just on the same line.
[SPEAKER_01]: In season two of our podcast, we used the wonderful framework of getting your life together, giving your life away and giving your death away.
[SPEAKER_01]: And Sacred Fire is about giving your life away that book that you wrote.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then saying for the light, which is the most recent release is about giving your death away.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, I know that you're probably above 40 and below 100.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know where you're in in that mix.
[SPEAKER_01]: Seven, but you look, you 78.
[SPEAKER_01]: 78.
[SPEAKER_02]: I hope I'm still publishing books at 70.
[SPEAKER_01]: I see an old thing.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: And hold, and hold, well, here's what I want to talk about because you were at this stage of life.
[SPEAKER_01]: You're writing from this experience.
[SPEAKER_01]: Would you just be able to kind of take us on a journey because I think what helps me ingest in many men listening and anyone listening really,
[SPEAKER_01]: is to have just someone that is in this stage of life of actively practicing giving your death away.
[SPEAKER_01]: And maybe just even give us a clue of where you're at.
[SPEAKER_01]: I know that there's been some just different from what I understand health struggles in journey and that plays into this moment.
[SPEAKER_01]: So would you just give us like a window into what your life really looks like now in this moment as you are trying to practice giving your death away?
[SPEAKER_00]: Good book.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let me switch with it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm 78.
[SPEAKER_00]: No.
[SPEAKER_00]: In the early years of my life and college and priesthood, I was still in many ways sorting life out who am I, what am I going to be, someone.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then you get our day and then you get into ministry and then you
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, we never become a completely grown-up, but we're essentially grown-up.
[SPEAKER_00]: See, then you enter that second phase, not so much harder against my life together, how do I give my life away?
[SPEAKER_00]: I've just finished my 50-second year of teaching and writing and so on, and those are very active years.
[SPEAKER_00]: But now, I'm still not retired, you know, I'm still doing work and so on, but it's different, you know, for instance, I was present at the school.
[SPEAKER_00]: Five years ago, I gave up presidency.
[SPEAKER_00]: You step back, all of a sudden, you're nobody.
[SPEAKER_03]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: But, you know, it's enough, I'm adjusting to.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm also,
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm a cancer survivor, I'm struggling with cancer for more than 10 years, it's come back, I'm doing chemotherapy, all of a sudden, you're looking at not so much, what can I still do?
[SPEAKER_00]: What can I do now so that I end my life well at a given my life way, my death's a way.
[SPEAKER_00]: to die with, you know, in faith, with charity, with humor, with Peter, so that's the spirit you lead behind.
[SPEAKER_00]: So the way you die, that's the spirit you're going to lead behind.
[SPEAKER_00]: Jesus died in a very special way.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's the spirit you left behind, you know.
[SPEAKER_00]: But if I die in anger and bitterness and say God, it's hard to be all that as a, you know, that's the spirit of
[SPEAKER_00]: In my dying, graciousness and letting go, so I'm really in that stage where I'm not fully retired, but I'm in the letting go.
[SPEAKER_00]: If I can do that, that Christmas song about, you know, let it snow, let it snow, let it snow, we get to go ahead and let it go, let it go.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a big way, you're marginalized, you're no longer the center of attention, you're just basically so that you can step away and do it with charity, with graciousness, with peace, with some humor, you know, that it, you always tell people, let's more courses, you have only one moral imperative.
[SPEAKER_00]: You don't want to die in angry, bitter person.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's one night, bad at you.
[SPEAKER_04]: Wow.
[SPEAKER_00]: When you get older, you can slimmer your spiritual vocabulary down to gratitude and forgiveness.
[SPEAKER_00]: Gratitude forgiveness.
[SPEAKER_00]: You don't want to die in angry, bitter person.
[SPEAKER_01]: How do you not die in angry, bitter person, in your estimation of that?
[SPEAKER_01]: What does that look like?
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I began, you read the whole, again, with the story.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Once when some years ago on with a young guy who was in a spot 25, we went and visited this wonderful elderly priest who was well over 90, but was this mellow, mellow spirit.
[SPEAKER_00]: So as we're leaving my young colleague, there are Brian, he says to the priest, Leo, when I'm here age, I want to be mellow like you, he said, what's the secret?
[SPEAKER_00]: Leo said, start now.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, basically.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now you have to try to let go of bitterness, try to be forgiving person, you know, who anger and bitterness, like don't give yourself the license well.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm young.
[SPEAKER_00]: I can be bitter.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know where the country's going and so on.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you can be prophetic and stuff and fighting for things,
[SPEAKER_00]: You don't want to die in the angry bit of person, you know?
[SPEAKER_02]: Father, which, which do you find harder?
[SPEAKER_02]: Because you live both.
[SPEAKER_02]: Do you, did you find it harder to start to give your life away?
[SPEAKER_02]: Or have you found it harder to start to give your death away?
[SPEAKER_00]: I think the second part is, they're hard in the difference.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's a good question, Justin.
[SPEAKER_00]: like, you know, they're hard in a different sense.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, giving your life, where as you've discovered as young fathers, all of a sudden you got so many things and you're played in babies and, you know, it's hard, but it's different.
[SPEAKER_00]: You have a sense of, you know, there's a good feeling about it.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: The mother who gets up to nurse the child, it's hard, but there's a,
[SPEAKER_02]: There's a lot of hope to it, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you're raising someone young, yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Where's the letting go at the end?
[SPEAKER_00]: That's a little bit different.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_00]: You're saying goodbye and you're stepping away and you're saying, life is not about me.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's about the young.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, we just celebrated the feast of three kings at Christmas time.
[SPEAKER_03]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, one of the deep blessings there is, you know, Luke has that his gospel.
[SPEAKER_00]: He wants you to compare them to herit.
[SPEAKER_00]: So they hear there's a young king born and the three kings they say to magic we're going to go and we're going to put a gift before the young What happens to them after it's we don't want to we don't have to you say we can die Yes, and here I'd have much of the country.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to kill him Yes, there isn't room for two kings, you know, see so that the magic said
[SPEAKER_00]: seed, so that in the age, you put your gifts at the foot of the young age, like you go away.
[SPEAKER_02]: Have you read T.S.
[SPEAKER_02]: Eliot's poem The Gift of the Magine in a while?
[SPEAKER_02]: I do.
[SPEAKER_02]: It always strikes me.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think it ends with the line and they left looking for another death, or yearning for another death, as in something about them resigning their kingship of this new king.
[SPEAKER_02]: meant that they were aware that their life had a terminus point, but there was more beyond that horizon.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's a really impactful poem on the...
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, and that wonderful thing from Zach or Maya, no Lord, you can dismiss your servant.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yes, it's a different piece, yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: I have to look at young people and say, I can, I can, I can pass away too.
[SPEAKER_00]: I've had one, you know, it's their world, pray for them, but that's not easy.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, see, being a young father, it's hard in a different way, but there's emotional payoffs and so on.
[SPEAKER_00]: Stepping away to death, you don't have that emotional payoff, it's not like I don't, I want to disappear, so make room for you people, you gotta work at that.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: But you've given us such, I mean, truly one of my favorite things about what you're doing.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I mean, I know Justin and I are hoping in time too, is just to be able to take all the things that other folks like yourself have have given and passed that along.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think you're doing such a masterful job of collecting these conversations, these writings, these words, and all this space to give us
[SPEAKER_01]: even right now a generation of fathers some framework to understand the chaos which is coming home tonight at dinner right like when when we get home tonight it's like okay oh that's right i'm giving my my life away oh this does feel a little bit like death because there's a version of it that is death right yeah yeah you know that makes me think um
[SPEAKER_02]: Father Ron, when we did the podcast series this fall about getting your life together, giving your life away and giving your death away, I think around the end of the episode, or maybe an episode too, I can't remember.
[SPEAKER_02]: We started intertwining it with your work and talking where it came from.
[SPEAKER_02]: I had a couple listeners.
[SPEAKER_02]: who maybe we just halfway into the first session, text me or email me and they said, wait, this is, this is father role-houses framework, they, some of them said, do you credit him?
[SPEAKER_02]: That was like keep listening.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_02]: But you mentioned your life has been a work of retrieval.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I'm curious.
[SPEAKER_02]: At what point did you distill a lot of your thinking into this framework?
[SPEAKER_02]: And were you reaching back where versions of this framework used by other authors that you had read?
[SPEAKER_02]: What influenced it?
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I came to that slowly chest.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it wasn't, you know, and that made me an academic, my writing is a work you retrieval on.
[SPEAKER_00]: I came to, first of all, I trained as a systematic
[SPEAKER_00]: 1976, and I don't know if it's divine province why you even took this course, it was interesting.
[SPEAKER_00]: I had never had an interest in mystics because I tried to read them as a young person.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then it read a book by Lang then Gilkey, who is a Presbyterian, the University of Chicago called naming the whirlwind.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, it's just fascinating.
[SPEAKER_00]: He says, you know, our culture is going through a dark night of the soul.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a culture, you know?
[SPEAKER_00]: So I read about this research course, the University of San Francisco six weeks.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think we used to join in the cross.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I went to the third, changed my life, changed my thinking.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it was a fun, the fabulous professor of Michael Buckley, but he lit us through that, and all of a sudden, realized, this is what I want to do.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is not about the 16th century destiny.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you
[SPEAKER_00]: people need to know this.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then I bought systematics for another probably 12 or 15 years that's fine I realized, I don't want to do this.
[SPEAKER_00]: I want to teach spirituality, you know like you have about, you know, that, I find systematics dry and, and so it's just to keep shifting to finally, I don't teach this to Manicsway.
[SPEAKER_00]: Not because it isn't good, it's important.
[SPEAKER_03]: Oh yeah, yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I give you my own, you know,
[SPEAKER_00]: thing of that.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, we say like, you know, systematic theology and spirituality again, take soccer.
[SPEAKER_00]: Systematic theology are the rules for the game.
[SPEAKER_00]: Spirituality is the game.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, that's good.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's good.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, like, all your doctrines have their very important, they're the rules.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're the rules.
[SPEAKER_00]: But you know, that's the game.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: It may be on that life-lived experience, maybe a kind of parenting based question for all of us and all the listening for parents especially.
[SPEAKER_01]: But one question I know I just jotted down because I was really curious, how do we practice this idea of surrender, you know, because that's part of this, without drifting into passivity and responsibility, without slipping into control.
[SPEAKER_01]: and responsibility, but without being hyper-controlled, would you have any thoughts on that?
[SPEAKER_00]: Excellent, excellent.
[SPEAKER_00]: I want to begin here with Scripture.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_00]: In his Jesus on the cross, in Mark's Gospel, and there's just a great line we need to just massage a little bit, they said, on the cross, and Sird puts that Jesus bowed his head and gave over his spirit.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, the difference between giving it over
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, see, we can resign, and it'll be passed to the Playground bully as you penned.
[SPEAKER_00]: See, Uncle Ronald Brickardek, you know, you say I can see.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's resignation, or it's just despair in life.
[SPEAKER_00]: My life means nothing, so I don't care.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's resignation.
[SPEAKER_00]: See, giving over to something, it's proact to say.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like Jesus said, nobody takes my life from me.
[SPEAKER_00]: I give it over.
[SPEAKER_00]: When my pilots are young, I could kill you or set you free.
[SPEAKER_00]: I have power, Jesus, you have no power if we put it so ever.
[SPEAKER_00]: I gave my life to the Father.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can't take for me by conscription, but I gave it freely.
[SPEAKER_00]: See, so the key thing is, if you're giving it over, it won't be passive.
[SPEAKER_00]: See, resignation, despair, giving up, that leads to my civility.
[SPEAKER_03]: You know.
[SPEAKER_00]: see us as fathers again back then.
[SPEAKER_00]: You're you're you're giving your life over for your kids for your family.
[SPEAKER_00]: You're giving it over.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_00]: See, then it's not past if you don't have, but just just that one line explained which is, he bowed his head and he gave over his spirit.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_00]: He didn't despair it and say, well, it's not nothing I can know when to die.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, said I want to give my last act, I want to give it
[SPEAKER_02]: How would you contextualize that for the restlessness of our generation right now, particularly maybe even the younger generation under us?
[SPEAKER_02]: I sense a spirit of, if you're not mad about something, if you're not angry about something, you know, you can look at this from left or right, so don't take me as,
[SPEAKER_02]: signaling either.
[SPEAKER_02]: If you're not mad about something going on in the administration or the culture or the policies, then you're not really living.
[SPEAKER_02]: You're not really a Christian or you're not really moral.
[SPEAKER_02]: How would you counsel somebody like that who wants to keep the fire and seek justice and longs for something more to handle it in a way that is more Christlike and has that holy
[SPEAKER_00]: And then I'm going to answer it in the abstract, then I'm going to try to answer it practically.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, and just the answer, you need to come out of Jesus and not all by the oven tray.
[SPEAKER_00]: You don't want to, I got to be angry about something.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's ideologically driven, either from the left or from the right.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I'm mad, or I'm walking, I'm mad about something that's so on.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then oftentimes, people try to cloak that with Jesus, when Jesus has come to so fire on the earth.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: Exactly.
[SPEAKER_00]: The fire of Jesus is the fire of love, not a division, you know, see so that.
[SPEAKER_00]: And let me give you an example, I mean, when Jesus is a radiology.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's listing to a radio podcast one day in this woman, think she's in a piscopalian minister out of San Francisco, who's done a lot of work on ecology, worth saving, you know, and so I was pretty liberal and so denounced her said to her, you know, you live in liberal San Francisco.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that gate goes over there.
[SPEAKER_00]: Notice that gate go over if you're in Arkansas, what's Texas?
[SPEAKER_00]: Surely good answer to this.
[SPEAKER_00]: I've learned this, speaks it.
[SPEAKER_00]: If I come out of Jesus in the gospel, sincere people hear me.
[SPEAKER_00]: And if I come out of ideology, they turn me off like a water faucet, which is so true.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you're coming out of green, so you're coming out of woke, you come out of maga, it's an ideology.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's not going to go anywhere.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's not an authentic anger.
[SPEAKER_00]: Jesus could get angry, but it's so important.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's got to come out of Jesus.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's got to come out of the gospel.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that is even in our criticism.
[SPEAKER_00]: You don't say, well, I hate Trump or I hate this or whatever.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's just like, well, this goes against the gospel.
[SPEAKER_00]: That goes against the gospel.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then also, it's second thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: In our anger, we always have to be gracious and respectful.
[SPEAKER_00]: see I think sometimes, we give ourselves some mission because I'm angry it's important, I can disrespect you.
[SPEAKER_00]: I can call you an idiot, you know, no, you can't, you may not, you know, you know, and in that anger, just come with, but others be, you know, civil discourse has broken down, we call each other idiots and dumb, stupid, you know, you know,
[SPEAKER_00]: We're not going to get together with that kind of similar discourse.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's just basic, you know, basic respect for each other.
[SPEAKER_03]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think that's an ideology.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like a fad.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to be angry at somebody.
[SPEAKER_00]: I got to be.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I think the richness of Jesus' life is that provides us with so many examples of how to live.
[SPEAKER_02]: He turns tables and yet he also opens his hands on the cross.
[SPEAKER_02]: But I think people like me at least, well, he really confused about which one are we doing at the right time?
[SPEAKER_02]: How was you counsel the young to decide
[SPEAKER_02]: What are the narrow circumstances under which it's time to be like Jesus and turn over tables?
[SPEAKER_02]: And what is the thrust of the rest of life when you're like him and opening your hands to be hung on the cross?
[SPEAKER_00]: That's a good question.
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I can't, I can't, can you help?
[SPEAKER_02]: Father, Father, this account's the exact same.
[SPEAKER_01]: We need your ear.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let me start just when we talk about Jesus turning over the tables.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: That is a very misunderstood text and scripture.
[SPEAKER_04]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, we always think Jesus turned over the tables because then the money changes were cheating and you shouldn't have that and so on.
[SPEAKER_00]: No, Jesus would have no problem with your church having a Starbucks there, you know, that's not what this is all of you.
[SPEAKER_00]: See, we're the money changes.
[SPEAKER_00]: Notice the expression money changes and it was this outside the temple.
[SPEAKER_00]: People came from all over the world there, but to buy stuff, to worship at the temple,
[SPEAKER_00]: So if you came from Greek, you had to turn your Greek currency to Jewish currency before you could go into the temple.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, that's a deep thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: What Jesus is saying with that is, they were sitting between people and access to the temples, these access to God.
[SPEAKER_00]: Mm-hmm.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, just saying, anybody who is blocking access to God, I've taken over the table.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it says, that's a single thing, let's do a step.
[SPEAKER_00]: No.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right, let's do it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: See, you know when you remember in the scripture work,
[SPEAKER_00]: The Samaritan woman, she says to Jesus, like, say, you know, I'm a Samaritan, and the Jews says, you have to worship in Jerusalem.
[SPEAKER_00]: Samaritan, you have to worship in Mount Harrison, which is the real temple.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he said, neither, the temple is your heart.
[SPEAKER_04]: Right, right, right.
[SPEAKER_00]: He just said, nothing sits between you and God and if some church figure,
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, kids between you God, they're going to be overturned.
[SPEAKER_00]: Remember, here he is.
[SPEAKER_00]: Strong talk once from Andrew Gryllia, Los Angeles, he said, you know what Jesus would up?
[SPEAKER_00]: He told him to most of our parish offices and staff and kick over the table sitting here.
[SPEAKER_00]: You're getting in the way, you know, you want your kid baptized, they go through me.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that's the new money changers.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, but our box in a church right and quick follow up on them.
[SPEAKER_02]: So do you see that story more as demonstrating who Jesus is, you know, he removes barriers to the people in their access to God or do you see it also as prescriptive for Christian action turn over tables of people are getting in the way.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's the first, but it's a little bit as Christians, we have to, when we see people or churches or ministers or priests sitting between people and their access to God, we have to protest them, say no, no, no, no, no.
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay, so you do see it as prescriptive under those circumstances, it's good.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's like all of scripture, you know?
[SPEAKER_00]: Remember, when Juan Hoffer coined this great line, he said, Jesus wants followers, not at my ears.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's not to vote.
[SPEAKER_00]: Wasn't he wonderful?
[SPEAKER_00]: No, I want you to do that.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: OK, then I want to expand this a little bit.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I'm sure you have a question after this book, but sorry for jumping in one more time.
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, I think I think one of the great struggles of people in our stage of life, Fatherhood,
[SPEAKER_02]: in the giving life away stage is suddenly being angry about everything, and it ties into looking at Jesus' anger in the temple.
[SPEAKER_02]: Father on, I never regarded myself as an angry person, and never struggled with anger.
[SPEAKER_02]: until I had children, and I was led around by the leash and they started raising me, and I was told now at the time, I didn't know at the time, but you know, now's the season for giving your life away.
[SPEAKER_02]: And angers become a live struggle in my life, you know, just in bad that things are the way they are.
[SPEAKER_02]: And this is just so normative for fathers, our age.
[SPEAKER_02]: I took to so many people like me who'd
[SPEAKER_02]: they don't know where their anger is coming from at their spouse, at their kids, and it's now a dominant feature of their life and it never was a feature before.
[SPEAKER_02]: How would you counsel us?
[SPEAKER_00]: Couple of things.
[SPEAKER_00]: First of all, let's see.
[SPEAKER_00]: to name it, you just think, that's the first stage, the first stage, you have to name it, you just think, well, I'm struggling with anger.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, if you deny that, it's gonna stick by you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then secondly, give yourself permission to feel it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, don't pretend to say, although not, I'm not an angry person.
[SPEAKER_00]: All right, okay, okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: Once, I've never been angry.
[SPEAKER_00]: I've never been angry.
[SPEAKER_00]: You're your body is stuff that's nice.
[SPEAKER_00]: Name it, give yourself permission.
[SPEAKER_00]: You don't find safe places to unload it.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know what I mean by that is, you know what I'm seeing as a father as a criticism, you are going to have to carry some tension for a lot of things.
[SPEAKER_04]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, and you're sometimes you're going to get angry, get frustrated with someone.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the key thing is, don't give it back to the people you're carrying it for.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_00]: You need to unload it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the same place is, that's this, you know, when you're just frustrated, you're going to get together with a couple of bodies, and maybe have a
[SPEAKER_00]: This is my kind of prescription for that one, then it sounds like a whole lifetime.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's going to be a mass shooting and I'm going to be the shooter, you know.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, that's the same page to unload it, you know, and you have to get rid of tension.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, cancer causes, so I've blood pressure, and so on, and you work with it.
[SPEAKER_00]: But give yourself permission to feel it, and as long as you can name it your healthy.
[SPEAKER_04]: That's good.
[SPEAKER_00]: When you stop me, I'm not a angry person.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's good.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're right to be angry.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that's not healthy.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, that's good.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I just, maybe for listeners, um, I have found the three things in my life.
[SPEAKER_02]: that have really started to help with this are physically move my body, because there's a metabolic effect of anchor.
[SPEAKER_02]: Second move my mind, when I journal about what I'm mad about, I feel like I'm giving it to the Lord.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's my way of praying.
[SPEAKER_02]: I would say prayer, but specifically for me, it's journaling it out.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then in close friendships, particularly my friendships with my two best friends, your enrichment, Stephen Matt, just,
[SPEAKER_02]: name, like what you said, naming it to them and saying, I'm so mad.
[SPEAKER_02]: And you know, I will say that those things have helped me tremendously in front of my listening.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think don't just throw weights around in the gym, you need to pray, but don't just don't just talk to God about it.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think the word of Christ is true and the mouth of our brothers.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's another Bonhoeffer quote.
[SPEAKER_02]: And we need to hear, they need to hear us and we need to hear it back from them.
[SPEAKER_00]: wonderful answer that I was just my little just a bit of a sense I think you can name it you know it's you're going to be healthy yes and with the intimacy where you can also release some restrictions I don't shoot somebody and so yeah but you're that's what we
[SPEAKER_01]: That's what we talk about a lot of this.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's good enough.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's true.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, I mean, it's such a true emotion of just that rage that can take over at times.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, in our time, you know, we could talk to you for a very long time, but with all that you the content you're still putting in the world.
[SPEAKER_01]: We're going to let you go, but I just want to ask just a kind of a closing question if I could.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that is, you know, you have 78 years on this earth.
[SPEAKER_01]: You have so much experience that you have gathered and collected and given your life to and literally not giving it away.
[SPEAKER_01]: If there's just anything that you would want to leave us with, Father Ron, myself Justin, but the family's, and there's many moms listening right now too.
[SPEAKER_01]: to the family's listening.
[SPEAKER_01]: What's a piece of encouragement or end or just anything that you just want to deposit into those that are listening.
[SPEAKER_01]: We'd love to know.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: In fact, I'll do it.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a piece I have in domestic monastery, you know.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you know, it's a line and when that's in that can sound so silly, where they write it, every time you leave your room, you come back, rest in there.
[SPEAKER_00]: But they're talking about your commitment, stay in your commitment, stay with your marriage, stay with your church, and it's going to, when you say, your cell is going to teach you everything you need to know.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_03]: I love that.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can study theology, study spirituality, but life is going to, if you're an honest father, you're an honest mother, you're an honest cousin and so on.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's going to teach you.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's going to teach you what you need to know.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's going to bring you to God.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's the rope.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's what the rope, what you're going to bring you with.
[SPEAKER_00]: So basically, I can put in one fidelity.
[SPEAKER_00]: Just be faithful, be faithful, be faithful.
[SPEAKER_00]: Even when it doesn't when it's dry, when it's empty, you know, the great person, you know what the one rule for prayer
[SPEAKER_00]: show up, just show up, and let it run, yes, just be there, be there.
[SPEAKER_00]: So wow, just the word just rock, fidelity, fidelity, be faithful, and it'll take you really to go.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, I just, I have to mention this, this is seems providential to me, uh, this morning.
[SPEAKER_02]: I was writing in my journal and I just pulled it up, but started with finally caught up on sleep because for the past two days, uh, these new puppies that we bought our boys have been keeping me up all night.
[SPEAKER_02]: And it feels like the new leash.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's like, you know, suddenly I'm up on the night.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I just, oh, I talk about anger.
[SPEAKER_02]: The past two days, father on, I just been steaming.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, you know, it's all up to me and all these things are happening.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I,
[SPEAKER_02]: I was blessed with a good night's sleep and I was journaling this morning after reading and Galatians about the fruit of the spirit And I just I just pause and I said look you know Lord you know speak to me anything.
[SPEAKER_02]: I need to hear it speak to me and and then I'm just going to read the journal I had a sense that the spirit was saying keep on keep doing the things that you're doing Faithfulness I guess do the things
[SPEAKER_02]: I think years ago in my life I would have read that sentence and thought well that sounds extraordinarily legalistic just do the things that's it but I think
[SPEAKER_02]: listening to the spirit this morning and reading about the fruit of the spirit faithfulness and probably Father Ron, the echo of your writings in my head, you know, I think in Sacred Fire, the stand in the place, stay there, the story that you tell about one of your relatives that was killed, I believe, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: Or the idea of, you know, don't leave the cell, stay there, keep doing the work.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think that it really has your your writing and the spirit and the spirit working
[SPEAKER_02]: think like that, that faithfulness, staying doing the work committing, don't leave, be there for your wife, stay there for your kids, has encouraged me so much to realize, okay, this, the Lord just saying, show up be faithful, it is through that that I am forming you to be more like Jesus and what else is better than that.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, sir.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, sir.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, like, and don't be intimidating people, say, well, then you're just going through the oceans,
[SPEAKER_00]: It's, uh, can I use a colorful expression here?
[SPEAKER_02]: Please.
[SPEAKER_02]: We love those, actually.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, we do.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he loves it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Who's this colorful spiritual writer on a San Francisco?
[SPEAKER_00]: She's a cultural story, but her son, she said, I've virtually raised this kid in church.
[SPEAKER_00]: Since then, he gets to be 15 years old.
[SPEAKER_00]: He says, mum, I don't want to touch anymore.
[SPEAKER_00]: She said, it doesn't mean anything to me.
[SPEAKER_00]: So what do you think shit, Tim, Tim said, I couldn't give a shit whether means anything to you.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm just saying, it means something in itself.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like visiting your grandmother and you don't visit, doesn't have to mean anything.
[SPEAKER_00]: So these things mean something in themselves.
[SPEAKER_00]: So when you want to church and so do you take to kids to soccer practice, doesn't have to mean anything to you.
[SPEAKER_00]: It means something, you know.
[SPEAKER_00]: And in fact, that's to definition of maturity.
[SPEAKER_00]: see when we're in matured's what does it mean to me what do we get out of it yes when you're which is what does this need period you know good yeah and you don't go to church on Sunday almost because it means something some films you're going to be bored second tired you're the
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes, and then it changes you, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, the wisdom, the wisdom of what you just said and from lived experience is just such a gift to remember that faithfulness piece and everything.
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, again, I, I, I'm just loving.
[SPEAKER_01]: Soking all of this in.
[SPEAKER_01]: Father on, I just want to say thank you so much, Justin and I are so grateful to just get a moment with you.
[SPEAKER_01]: Your work has been so encouraging and inspiring.
[SPEAKER_01]: Keep doing the work.
[SPEAKER_01]: If we could just say as two men not trying to fluff you up or make you to feel something different, your work is meaningful.
[SPEAKER_01]: It is making a change in so many people's lives.
[SPEAKER_01]: You don't see it.
[SPEAKER_01]: And way beyond your life here lived, it is going to bless generations.
[SPEAKER_01]: And we say thank you for depositing that.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I want to say this to you.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm old and I pass it.
[SPEAKER_00]: You are the young people.
[SPEAKER_00]: You've got to carry this off.
[SPEAKER_00]: So you keep doing the work you're doing.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I mean, I want to keep doing the work I'm doing like you can't do it anymore.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yes.
[SPEAKER_00]: But you're young.
[SPEAKER_00]: You're young.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's just great to hear young voices speaking at this time.
[SPEAKER_02]: I have so many friends in my life who's life you have changed, father on and to hear you say to us because I don't just hear to me, I hear you saying it to us, keep doing it, it is heard and we will and thank you.
[SPEAKER_00]: and rocket for giving you the Tennessee cap.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, you know, it was a, it was a design thing.
[SPEAKER_01]: Not a, I didn't even know what the team was.
[SPEAKER_01]: I just liked the hat and truth be told.
[SPEAKER_01]: I've made a poor choice.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I'm going to need your forgiveness on this.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm going to get one for you too, so just what you do.
[SPEAKER_01]: We'll get you an address.
[SPEAKER_01]: Next interview, we'll have you wearing it, hopefully.
[SPEAKER_01]: All right, thank you for your time, father-in-law.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Blessings on your work.
[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you.
[SPEAKER_02]: God bless.