Welcome to another thought-provoking episode of Cabernet and Pray, where a glass of wine meets deep conversations. In the spotlight this time is Jef Caine, an intriguing personality who's journeyed from the confinements of traditional Christianity to the liberating realms of spirituality and non-materialism. Jef, living in a van and embracing veganism, shares his fascinating insights, from questioning beliefs and Christianity's impact on his life to his recent decision to abstain from alcohol.
Our conversation with Jef is a candid exploration of personal beliefs, transformation, and self-discovery. We navigate through the complexities of life, tackling issues like living on-the-move in a van, practicing veganism, and reconciling with the aftermath of a divorce. Not shying away from humor, we also indulge in some light-hearted banter around amusing communion stories. It's a journey worth embarking on, one that promises a newfound appreciation for authentic living and the courage to question established norms.
As we approach the culmination of our chat with Jef, we delve deeper into the connection between extreme lifestyle choices, veganism, and Christianity. Jef's viewpoints provide an engaging outlook on the complexities of these aspects. We also take a moment to reflect on the current state of Christianity and the church in America today. So, pour yourself a glass of your favorite wine, and join us in this enriching conversation that promises to challenge, amuse, and inspire.
Wine: 2019 History Red Blend
https://www.jefcaine.com
See audio and video episodes at: https://communionwineco.com/podcast/
Find out more at: https://linktr.ee/communionwineco
Welcome to another thought-provoking episode of Cabernet and Pray, where a glass of wine meets deep conversations. In the spotlight this time is Jef Caine, an intriguing personality who's journeyed from the confinements of traditional Christianity to the liberating realms of spirituality and non-materialism. Jef, living in a van and embracing veganism, shares his fascinating insights, from questioning beliefs and Christianity's impact on his life to his recent decision to abstain from alcohol.
Our conversation with Jef is a candid exploration of personal beliefs, transformation, and self-discovery. We navigate through the complexities of life, tackling issues like living on-the-move in a van, practicing veganism, and reconciling with the aftermath of a divorce. Not shying away from humor, we also indulge in some light-hearted banter around amusing communion stories. It's a journey worth embarking on, one that promises a newfound appreciation for authentic living and the courage to question established norms.
As we approach the culmination of our chat with Jef, we delve deeper into the connection between extreme lifestyle choices, veganism, and Christianity. Jef's viewpoints provide an engaging outlook on the complexities of these aspects. We also take a moment to reflect on the current state of Christianity and the church in America today. So, pour yourself a glass of your favorite wine, and join us in this enriching conversation that promises to challenge, amuse, and inspire.
Wine: 2019 History Red Blend
https://www.jefcaine.com
See audio and video episodes at: https://communionwineco.com/podcast/
Find out more at: https://linktr.ee/communionwineco
Welcome everybody to another episode of Cabernet and Pray. This is the podcast where we get to drink wine, talk about theology and God and all those things and just explore wherever these conversations take us. And today is gonna be a wild one. We've got a friend of mine that listeners to previous podcasts of mine will perhaps recognize. Today's guest it's my friend, jeff Kane, who I had previously done a different podcast with, and we decided it's time to get him onto Cabernet and Pray.
Speaker 1:A little setup on who Jeff is and if you're keeping track of Jeff, it's constantly changing, so this is the latest as of today. Jeff would say he's a former Christian, former church staffer, pretty critical of religion these days but still spiritually curious. He's a freelance illustration and graphic design, animation, part-time barista lots of things he does. Here's a fun fact he's currently living in a van trying to practice homelessness and non-materialism, so we're gonna get into that a little bit. He has a weird hang up that all Christians should be vegan. I think he would go further than just Christians, but we'll see. And he said he's uncertain about almost everything, but he's still trying to figure it out. Welcome to the podcast, jeff.
Speaker 2:Hello Jeremy. Thank you for having me. What a pleasure.
Speaker 1:You had a mustache the last time you and I podcasted. The mustache is gone.
Speaker 2:It's true. Yeah, I've gone through quite a few life changes since then and, yeah, the shaving the mustache was something of a ritualistic acknowledgement of, yeah, my new life, or at least where I'm at at the moment.
Speaker 1:yes, the new you is mustache-less. Okay, what else do we need to know about you that I didn't cover in the little bio points there?
Speaker 2:Oh boy, I think all I should say is I should just apologize in advance, because I realized that I sort of invited myself onto this show, like I felt like maybe I had some kind of special access because we're former podcasters together and I realized that I have a lot of opinions. I can be kind of preachy and pretentious and probably pretty off-putting for a lot of your audience. So again, I just apologize in advance and I should acknowledge that my own personal life is a total mess and no one should take advice from me. So that's what I have to say.
Speaker 1:Well, we'll let the listeners to decide what they do with what you say, because maybe they'll be really intrigued by it, maybe they like it. So we'll see how it goes. But first it's time to drink some wine, jeff, because that's what we do on this podcast. We never got to drink wine on our other one, but we do on this one. Fun fact, jeff's actually in my kitchen right now, so we're in the same place, so we're actually drinking the same wine today. So you're gonna get two takes on the same bottle. This is called a History Red Blend. This is a 2019.
Speaker 1:This comes from a partnership of one of my favorite wineries in Oregon Stolar Family, and they have this kind of like side label that they do. That's History Brand, and this one's a blend of primarily Cabernet Sauvignon, so 73%, 25% Malbec and then a little bit of Merlot and Cab Franch thrown in. This is like one of my go-to. I love this wine Every year. It delivers. It's very consistent, very balanced and, as I was enjoying it today, I'm getting a lot of red plum both on the nose and on the palate. So I really like it, jeff. What do you think? What's your take on this wine?
Speaker 2:I'm trying to think of something smart. To say it tastes good to me. I think I can detect some of the plum, though it's difficult to say if I'm actually tasting that or if it's just the power of suggestion.
Speaker 1:You know what I mean the power of suggestion is a real thing with wine.
Speaker 2:That's another thing I should probably apologize for. I'm not a very good wine snob. I feel like in my past drinking life I don't know I feel like I tried a little bit to be sophisticated about it but ultimately just gave up and usually just went for whatever the cheapest bottom shelf option was. And I'm sorry to say this, jeremy, I know I'm gonna be a Philistine for saying this to you, but it generally tasted the same to me the cheap versus the expensive stuff.
Speaker 1:You know what. You're not alone. A lot of people feel that. And I would say I started with drinking the cheap stuff and that's how I developed the love of wine and boxed wine and tried all that and as I got more into it I started developing more of an appreciation, more of the ability to taste good wine, had the opportunity to try nicer wine. That's what really will ruin it for you is, if you regularly try nice wine, then you go back to the cheap stuff. Most people can go whoa, this is really different. But we're not about making wine snobs on this show, jeff. So all views of wine are welcome. We're just grateful that you drink. And, fun fact, you pitched me an idea, which is what originally I thought okay, this will be fine, we gotta do this. This is a special glass of wine for you today. This is not just because it's good wine that you would not have bought yourself, but this is a special glass. Why don't you tell us why this glass that you have is special?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so, assuming that I keep to my word and keep to my current pledge, with all the life changes I'm making at the moment, this is my last glass of wine or my last sip of alcohol altogether, as far as I have it planned out and committed to you for my life. So far I've been going through a lot of life changes and I've been trying to focus on my own physical and mental health quite a bit. So I've just been exercising, meditating, going to therapy, researching how to be just a healthier person, how to have more mental clarity and feel better in general, and I've often come across the suggestion that have you tried cutting out alcohol because of all the health benefits? Slash just avoiding all the negative health consequences of alcohol. To me that seems like a relatively easy adjustment I could make in my life and see how it goes.
Speaker 2:And honestly, jeremy, you were the one, my one hesitation with that right, I mean I have a lot of friends who are like IPA bros. I have friends who, like I, meet at bars and stuff like that. That seems like that'll be easy enough to just get a water or get a non-alcoholic beverage and I can still hang out with those people. But I really wanted to come on your show and I felt like it would truly be sacrilege to come on the show and talk theology without partaking in wine. So it seemed like the stars were aligning and I thought maybe I could sort of eventize my last sip of alcohol and call it my last supper, if you will. So that was my idea.
Speaker 1:I like it. You know it's funny. I'll have people sometimes will say they'll like apologize in like a conversation to me that they don't drink wine because they know. You know I'm obviously pretty wrapped up in the wine scene these days and you know, sometimes someone will say something like yeah, you know, like alcoholism runs in my family, like nothing personal, but you know, I just I don't drink. As if, like I'm going to be offended. You know that they won't drink with me.
Speaker 1:And I always thought like I need to say it more. But like it's not healthy for everyone to drink alcohol. Like there are some people that I'd absolutely say like you shouldn't drink alcohol. Like if you know that you can't control yourself when you're drinking, if that's you listening or watching, please stop drinking alcohol. Like it's not a thing you need to do. Or if every time you drink it goes to excess and you don't like the version of you you become, don't keep drinking out.
Speaker 1:I mean, like there's like so many reasons and you know people who will say like oh, alcoholism runs in my family. I've never had a problem with it, but I don't want to. You know, tempt that like totally fine, and so I think I need to say that enough, you know, just to like, remind people like I'm not just like everybody should drink more wine. My point is just, I have, you know, experienced a healthy version of it, in moderation, that I want to invite other people to experience, and for a lot of people they can and they experienced that. But for a variety of reasons that's not someone's situation, and so for you, I totally support it. I think it's cool that you're, you know, commemorating the last glass as far as you know, right, the last glass for an indefinite period of your life, and you can go back and listen and watch this video over and over to relive this last glass if you need to.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. Next time I feel like getting sloshed, I'll just remember, you know, we always had that one time that Jeremy and I did it together, so I don't need to draw my sorrows any further.
Speaker 1:We had that one glass that one time. Okay, you and I did a podcast I referenced in the intro, called the Forest and the Trees. That was your idea to get into the podcast and you invited me to read the Bible with you and this was, you know, part of your journey of kind of coming out of Christianity, deciding you're still curious about it. But you didn't believe it. And then you pitched me this idea like what if we read the Bible together and we talked through it? And I got to give you credit, because I have sat on the podcast fence for years and years and years and nothing was compelling enough, you know, and it just seemed like I don't know what I would want to, what I would want to talk about and do. And so we tried that and we, you know, kind of evolved as we went.
Speaker 1:We did two seasons, if you will, two different books of the Bible, and I really enjoyed it. I really enjoyed podcasting. I ended up getting a whole bunch of podcasting gear and kind of figuring it out with you and realized that I really enjoyed it. And so I would say that you're partly to credit for Cabernet and Pray, because I only realized I like podcasting through my experiences with you. So first just want to acknowledge on record thank you for giving me the nudge on that. But I'm curious now, a little bit removed from the two books that we did, we read through all of Romans, all of the book of Hebrews, and literally chapter by chapter. So pretty, pretty end depth discussion there. What has been your takeaway from that, even up to like today's? You look at that. What was kind of any concluding thoughts or like aha moments for you that you went? I really walked away with this idea.
Speaker 2:Yeah, thank you. I really enjoyed it too. I definitely don't want to make any promises. I've had a lot of people ask me, not a lot. I've had a handful of people ask me if we're coming back, which I'll say, maybe you know. Like for the record, jeremy and I are still in good terms. As far as I know, it was more about, like, the busyness of life and just the uncertainty about can we go the distance, can we cover the entire Bible, which was, you know, my initial ambition with this Also, I mean, I don't know, jeremy you obviously have a brand new podcast.
Speaker 2:You've clearly moved on. So I understand we'll always have those two seasons. Yeah, I have a lot of things. I enjoyed it so much. It was such a fun experience. I mean just the technical learning curve of like learning how to like create a podcast and like edit kind of long form video content and audio engineering and you know all the technical difficulties and stuff. That was interesting and in terms of you know sort of like my, my objections that I came up with for Christianity, the things that I specifically had a problem with, and you would come up with your answers. I always appreciated you had very thoughtful answers, some more satisfying than others, I must say. But here's my big takeaways from each book or each season from Hebrews.
Speaker 2:My biggest personal breakthrough was doing more research and coming to understand more about the doctrine of universalism. I was, I was familiar with universalism. I knew there were people who were Christian, who believed everyone's going to heaven. But years ago, when I was a Christian and just throughout much of my life, I didn't take it very seriously and I always thought it was sort of a niche like kind of a wishful thinking kind of thing, didn't think it had a lot of scriptural basis. So reading that all shall be said by David Bentley Hart and just doing more research and learning that it's actually a much larger and maybe even like a newly emerging or becoming, it's getting more traction maybe in the American church as a doctrine, and that was very helpful to me because I think they're like teaching kids that they're going to hell or like just instilling the fear of going to hell into people or using that as a tool to try to convert people. Is is one of the more problematic things about Christianity. So that's a great takeaway.
Speaker 2:And then from Romans, probably my biggest breakthrough, again just from doing more research and coming to understand more about how many scholars, both Christian and not, acknowledge the problem of pseudopigraphy, which is to say books of the New Testament that claim to be written by a certain author, specifically the Apostle Paul, that may in fact not be written by the Apostle Paul.
Speaker 2:And that was a huge breakthrough for me because it was the most satisfying answer I found for the problem of the more sexist passages. You know, especially in the Epistle of 1st Timothy, that that was always very troubling for me. I've heard all kinds of explanations for how you can sort of explain that away and why, like, it actually is okay for women to speak in church and things like that, and the idea that actually, maybe this was not Paul at all, maybe this was just some random guy who was kind of coasting on Paul's coattails and that's why there's disagreement between 1st Timothy and Romans and other epistles. Yeah, that was a huge breakthrough for me personally, comforting for me, and I feel like it has positive implications overall. It still presents a huge problem for the church because that means they should like throw out certain books of the New Testament, but that's probably not going to happen.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, that was a very, very extensive answer.
Speaker 2:Oh, I apologize, I wrote down. You gave me the questions in advance, so I wrote down my answers, so that I have something smart to say.
Speaker 1:I was just, I was enamored listening to that, like, wow, that's an engaging answer. So, in this journey you've been on, you have, you know, left behind most of the things that you used to believe about God and you know, you're still as you even say, you're still figuring a lot of this out. You're trying new things. I'm curious, looking back, was there like an incident that you can trace back and go this, this kind of set it in motion for me, or would you really say no, it was a culmination of a whole bunch of things over a season. I just think it's interesting to you know, to watch you in this journey. And then I'm always curious, like what? What started that or what, you know, what triggered that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, there certainly are a lot of things.
Speaker 2:I mean you, jeremy, no better than anyone.
Speaker 2:I have a laundry list of complaints about the Bible and Christianity and they they definitely like came up at different times throughout my life.
Speaker 2:But I'll say probably the the biggest kind of personal catalyst that really really caused me to question my own worldview and my own actions was many years ago, probably probably 10 years ago at this point, when my sister came out as a lesbian and I at the time was total conservative Christian, 100% believed homosexuality is a sin and was, you know, trying to navigate that of how can I like, love and support my sister but not support her, her lifestyle choices, you know, the whole love the sinner, hate the sin kind of thing, and I really agonized about it for a long time.
Speaker 2:She invited me to her wedding. She's she's married to another woman and I ultimately decided not to go and I've regretted that decision basically for the rest of my life Because I feel like that was, that was a moment where my own worldview, my own Christian beliefs, really really became real to me in the sense of these things that I believe actually affect other people and can actually, like, make me be a worse person, make me be a less loving person, because, the way I see it, I chose my own personal doctrine and beliefs over my love for my sister, and it was just like a real world example to me of how how religion can do damage to other people.
Speaker 1:I I've heard you tell that story before and I think that's I just appreciate and I so empathize with that that being a a, you know, determining moment for you of I chose, I chose this over my sister. You know, and I think a lot of Christians are even realizing that, where you know, I've, I've chosen these beliefs, or this understanding of these beliefs, over people. And you know, one of the one of the conversations I find myself in a lot these days I think more and more people are in this conversation is like when our understanding of God or our understanding of the scriptures, when it, when it actually prohibits or hinders us from loving the people in our life, you should pause, you should, you should take a moment and go okay, why is this belief of mine, you know, creating this separation from you? And you know, I remember for me, the last probably a few years just basically making this like personal statement to myself, like I'm not going to let any of my understandings of the Bible make me love people less. Like that's just like a personal thing. So if I find myself hesitant to love someone or show them love, or I can't support, you know, like when I find that, I'm going to really wrestle with that and be very cognizant of it, and so I just appreciate your honesty and sharing that.
Speaker 1:I think a lot of people can relate and a lot of people have similar stories of you.
Speaker 1:Know, I made this choice because I thought I was following my convictions on it and now I look back and go why, and you know you're obviously, you know, trying to trying to make up for lost time and figure it out and not continue to make you know those same type of mistakes. One of the reasons that you have decided in this current season to give up stuff and live in a van and kind of choose the slives all you're choosing is because of a conversation in the Bible, ironically, that Jesus had with someone, where Jesus told someone to give up all their stuff and to follow him. You put a lot of value in this idea that you know and you've referenced it coming from Jesus, and yet you would also say you're not. You know you're not living your life in submission to Jesus. You're not trying to follow Jesus, per say, why do you put so much credit or value in this idea from Jesus if you don't value all the other stuff from Jesus?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a good question. I would say that I mean part of it is just the formative nature of like. I grew up being, you know, being taught about Jesus and I remember like reading the Gospels as a little kid and even then like feeling really challenged about all the non-materialistic teachings of Jesus. I understand you're saying this is like I'm convicted by the story of the rich young ruler right, but I personally would argue that Jesus teaches non-materialism, like and giving up basically just everything in your life in pursuit of following him to multiple people, not just to the rich young ruler. I think he specifically like teaches against having personal wealth, and he talks about like not worrying about like where your clothes, where your food is going to come from. I mean, I guess like one way to interpret a lot of Jesus's teachings are you should just be okay with like depending on the kindness of other people, because you should be able to kind of walk the earth and and travel and like, stay with other peoples at other people's homes and and eat their meals and if they reject you, you shake the dust off your feet and all that. I mean his teachings were always so radical about you know, leave your family behind, leave your job, your livelihood. He talks about cutting off your hands, gouging out your eyes, becoming a eunuch, which you know, I'm not currently planning on putting those things into practice in a literal way. But, and again, like I realized, like whenever I start talking this way, people always like start making the excuses and justifications, saying like, oh he, you know what about Zacchaeus? Zacchaeus didn't have to give up all this stuff, he only had to give up half his stuff. And you know what about the Centurion? He was a wealthy person. So you know, I understand that perhaps this is my own personal bias in the way I'm interpreting this.
Speaker 2:I guess there's a lot of other sort of spiritual or aspirational people who who tend to just like gravitate towards this, this inevitable conclusion that you know, materialism just leads to emptiness. That you know I I consider that to be a really profound like insight that Jesus has and again, jesus is not the only person to say this, but I think it's true nevertheless, that we've all experienced that that cycle of like buying more things to try to fulfill ourselves and realizing that you can't like buy your way to happiness, which I know is a very cliche thing, but I've always felt sort of convicted by it and felt like I I'm not like living my true non-materialist lifestyle. I'm like compromising by by like maybe getting rid of some stuff, or like trying to buy less new things and buy more things thrifted secondhand, but I'm still, you know, I'm still like have this comfortable middle class lifestyle and I've often thought like maybe that's, maybe that's a reason that I'm not connecting with God. Because, god, you know how many times have I heard like in sermons, people preach against materialism and say like we can't hear God because we're too distracted with all the other stuff in our lives. And if you would just clear that out, then God would speak to you.
Speaker 2:I felt that, especially when I was on staff at a church. I felt more like conflicted, because here I am, like living this comfortable middle class life and getting a salary and getting a retirement plan and everything by like doing ministry, by working at a church. It seemed very opposite to Jesus's message for me. So, yeah, I guess that's my answer of like I acknowledge that I may just be be personally convicted more than other people Again, I'm trying to trying to avoid being too preachy for other people, but I feel like it's something that I've always wanted to pursue and this feels like a unique moment in my life where I can pursue a non materialistic lifestyle.
Speaker 1:So if you connect with Jesus in that way, why do you not? Why does that not carry over to other things? With Jesus.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I should say that I think there's a lot of Jesus' teachings that do carry over, like his teachings on love and forgiveness and grace and like nonviolence you and I have talked about a lot. Like Jesus had had pretty radical ideas about that. That I think the world would be a better place if all of us practiced. I certainly try to practice that one for myself in terms of why I don't believe like in the resurrection or like in the supernatural claims of Jesus. It's certainly not for lack of trying, because I did believe in all the supernatural stuff for the majority of my life. That's. A big part of my deconversion story is the fact that I always believed that all the stories about Jesus were real and the resurrection was real. And of course, a big part of Jesus' story is the miracles and the healing and the fact that he could just heal people on the spot miraculously, and his disciples could too. Even in the book of Acts, after Jesus left, it was no longer on earth. His disciples were able to heal people and I believe that that was still possible in our day.
Speaker 2:In church Everyone would say that God still works, god still does miracles and I had this, I guess, cognitive distance for the longest time of thinking like, okay, miraculous stuff does happen. I just haven't seen it yet. It must you know. And I would just kind of slowly whittle my way down if it must happen, a really small amount of time Maybe got only miraculously healed, someone like 1% of the time, or something like that. And I mean at a certain point I just had to admit to myself that I don't believe it. Like if my friend has cancer or something, I thought like I will still pray for them because why not, like it's worth a shot, but I don't actually literally believe they're going to be miraculously healed. So in that those implications in my mind spiral all the way back to the original story of Jesus.
Speaker 1:So when you think about okay, so now you're practicing it, you're living in a van, how's it going? Is it different than you imagined, or has it been exactly what you hoped for?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's different than I imagined. I suppose it's been a lot less like naturey, a lot more kind of like, you know, sleeping in residential areas outside the city and stuff like that, because I currently have a part-time job at a coffee shop in Phoenix, so I'm not getting as much time alone in nature. I'm not giving God as much of a chance to speak to me, you know, out in the wilderness as I probably owe to him. So far, generally it's been enjoyable. You know, I've enjoyed it.
Speaker 2:I can get hot in the afternoons, for sure, so I generally try to just like stay inside and kind of like find places to loiter and work on my laptop during the heat of the day. And probably the biggest difficult, the most difficult thing for me has been just like finding places where I can get quality sleep. I wouldn't say I'm really concerned for my safety, but just I always sort of have a little bit of anxiety of is someone going to see me like sleeping and like parked on the street or something like that, and like knock on the window and tell me to move along? So you know, going back to the personal health stuff, I feel like that's something I need to be more intentional about of like getting a little bit further from the urban areas and having more quality time in the wilderness altogether.
Speaker 1:Hmm, any epiphanies from God so far, or still waiting?
Speaker 2:Uh, still, yeah, still waiting. I don't think I've, yeah, I don't think I've seen anything supernatural happen so far.
Speaker 1:Yeah, You're still fairly early in this journey and actually I saw we didn't even talk about this not on my notes but you just blew up on Instagram, right, you had a reel about I think it was about living in a van. That got like over a million views or something. So people are definitely drawn to the story of this, drawn to you. Know someone who's doing it, practicing it, as you think about this journey into, like, homelessness, non-materialism, all these things has this been fulfilling so far? Like have you gone? Okay, just you know we're just this far into it, but I'm really thriving. Or, you know, do you have this like little check in the back of your mind of, like, what have I done? Maybe this isn't sustainable?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a good question about whether or not it's sustainable. It seems pretty doable so far, though again, I do acknowledge that I'm pretty new to it and, like I said, it's been enjoyable so far. I certainly wouldn't complain or say that I'm suffering at all. I do feel incredibly privileged that I get to like choose this lifestyle. You know, like I could get an apartment or stay with family or friends or something like that.
Speaker 2:And because of the nature of my lifestyle, I do spend a lot of time just kind of hanging out at places where people who are truly homeless not by choice, just because of like the hardships in their own life, are hanging out, and I feel a little bit uncomfortable and not even really sure like how to like refer to my own lifestyle because, again like, I feel so privileged to be homeless by choice, whereas other people are dishoused because of their life circumstances. So I don't know. I wish I could say I had some kind of profound insight on that in terms of like how I can like help people or just like be more educated on the homelessness problem, specifically in Phoenix, because that's where I'm located, but just throughout the country and world. It's a huge issue that's difficult for people to know how to solve. So yeah, it's been interesting. Has it been fulfilling? I don't know. I never feel fulfilled. I didn't feel fulfilled before and, you know, still searching for it.
Speaker 1:You haven't found it yet, huh.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, still haven't found what I'm looking for.
Speaker 1:You know, I just love to say yeah, have you just got me thinking? Have you connected with other people in that community, the homeless community, or not?
Speaker 2:yet Not a whole lot, you know I feel like I haven't like connected that with that Many people in the van life community either. Like a little bit on social media and a little bit like when I was traveling across the US country and kind of staying on public land I would. I would like camp at a place where it was like federal land so you can just like stay there for free, and I would see other people there who were also just clearly living out of their vehicles. So we had some camaraderie there.
Speaker 2:I had an interaction with where I was sleeping outside of a park and then in the morning I just went to use the restroom in the park and another gentleman came up to me and asked Are you homeless too? And so that was kind of a profound moment for me of, like you know, I hadn't like referred to myself as homeless before, so I responded by saying yeah, kind of, and he kind of chuckled and said yeah, kind of like you know, like I've heard that one before, so that's an interesting thing. No, I don't feel like I've made a ton of friends that I think that's something that I should be more intentional about. But again, I'm kind of like always on the move, kind of trying to not never park in the same place twice so they don't get caught. Don't like bother people too much by parking outside their homes without permission.
Speaker 1:Do you think other people should do what you're doing?
Speaker 2:Oh man, probably not. As I said in my disclaimer at the beginning, I truly you know this might sound like false humility, but yeah, I don't feel like I'm in much of a position to give life advice at this particular moment in my life. I feel like my life is a bit of a mess right now.
Speaker 1:So yeah, Now one of the things that previous listeners of the forest and trees will know all too well, or anybody who follows you for any amount of time but you are a very passionate vegan as a result of your convictions. Has being a vegan this is my question to you has it made you a better person overall and, if so, how? I know you have reasons why you're vegan, but that's not my question. The question is how you made you a better person.
Speaker 2:I know the way you worded that question is so difficult, because it seems really gross and problematic to say that yeah. I'm a better person than you, Jeremy.
Speaker 1:Yeah, obviously I want to admit it's not comparative. Has it made you a better version of you?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'll say that the practice of veganism for me is a way for me to attempt to do less harm, like I shared on the forest and trees a couple times before, like it initially started just not eating meat because of the environmental impact, because I was trying to like recycle and not drive and not like buy consumer goods as much as possible to reduce my environmental impact. And then I learned that the meat production actually produces more emissions than driving a vehicle does. So that was kind of my gateway into it and of course, you're directly doing less harm to animals by not supporting the slaughter of them and the health benefits are, I say generally overall positive for a vegan diet. Of course it doesn't have to be because Oreos are vegan. There's all kinds of processed, unhealthy vegan foods. But yeah, generally I think that veganism is a way for me to try to do less harm to the environment, to animals and to my own body.
Speaker 1:Hopefully, you stated in your bio intro that I quoted, that you are uncertain about almost everything. That was quite a phrase. But as I thought about, as I said that phrase, I thought well, but you're very passionate about veganism and you don't you don't seem remotely uncertain about that. Is this your main passion now, or do you have others?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I have a lot of passions, but in terms of, like morality issues and ethics, I think this one is just the most clear and straightforward. I'll quote again Gabrielle Zeven this life is filled with inescapable moral compromises. We should do what we can to avoid the easy ones. I think that, of course, there's so many problems in this world with war and human violence and exploitation and things like that.
Speaker 2:I, like many people, have been trying to keep up with the news about everything going on in Israel, palestine, for example, and part of me feels like, oh, I should speak up and have something to say about this. I've been silent because I honestly don't even know how to address it. The base part of me thinks like I should just say I condemn all violence, just no more fighting. Let's everyone stop the fighting. Even that seems too simplistic and not even probably not helpful right now.
Speaker 2:And just gun violence on our own country? I guess I practice that by just not being a gun owner myself, I suppose I think it'd be great if all of us were not gun owners, but so maybe I should be more outspoken about that. But with doing harm to animals specifically, it's kind of a unique situation because it's something that almost everyone does every day, over and over again, and feels almost no remorse for. So I personally believe that if we want to be people who are making peace, who are making the world a better, more nonviolent place, the best way to do that is to begin by practicing peace and nonviolence. And I think by doing something that you can do right now, today, in your own life, by just choosing what you eat for your next meal, you can actively choose to practice nonviolence, and I think that extends beyond just the animal kingdom to the humans in our lives as well.
Speaker 1:You don't seem uncertain about almost everything, Jeff.
Speaker 2:I mean again like I feel like so many of the moral issues in our world are are much more complex and this, this is an easy one for me. I guess I can do more caveats of people say like I have a medical condition or, but probably the best argument against it is like the fact that I'm speaking from a place of privilege which, again, I will acknowledge, maybe there are people in other parts of the world where that just isn't an option for that you know. But to the middle class people in Phoenix, arizona, you know all of them can choose whether to get veggie burger or a regular burger when they get dinner tonight.
Speaker 1:So we were, we were going through before that we recorded. I was just trying to wrap my head around like practically what Jeff eats, and so it was like, oh, so you'd have a burrito is like yeah, be burrito with no cheese. I'm like, oh, yeah, dairy, you know. Like I just kept thinking of, like all the things that you know, like eggs, like I think there's a lot of things to that people don't don't necessarily automatically go. Oh, obviously veganism includes XYZ. You obviously live this lifestyle, but the people who are listening and watching probably not as familiar with like, ok, how would you order a meal, you know, in a different restaurant? Like, what options do you have left? It's, it's not as many, it's not as many. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no. Thank you for for reminding me, Jeremy. I do feel like maybe if I spend too much time in my own vegan bubble I can forget how uneducated people are in general about what veganism even is. I guess I was assuming it was it was common knowledge. But yeah, it means just no animal products. So, like, if you're vegetarian, that means you don't eat meat. You can eat, like, dairy and eggs and other other products that come from an animal. Vegan means you do to the best of your abilities. You eliminate all consumption of animal products. So you know milk, eggs, cheese, leather products, anything that involves like exploiting of animals to reap their resources.
Speaker 1:There you go. On that note, I think it's time for a drink break. All right, jeff, we're going to do a hard pivot after, after veganism. I'm going to go to wine. Whenever I never do a drink break, I always ask the guest. We'd love to hear a story about an incredible wine experience you've had. I already at this point in the podcast I have. I have received quite a diversity of answers to this question, and so I never know what I'm going to get, so I have no idea where you're going to go with this. Do you have a standout moment with wine where the stars aligned, you sipped that thing in your glass and you went holy cow, this is incredible.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I'll say like I think one one is pretty tasty in general, but I don't have the distinctive palette that you were blessed with, Jeremy, so I've had plenty of, like you know, lovely things.
Speaker 2:I've had plenty of lovely experiences where I'm like having having dinner with friends and we're drinking wine and having great conversation, laughing. You know I don't have a specific one that stands out for that. I did think of kind of a funny story that involves not only wine but also communion. So several years ago when I was sort of deconstructing I was still a Christian but you know, struggling with all of my disillusionment from all the stuff still on staff at a church I had some vacation time so I decided to go to a monastery in New Mexico and stay there for a few days and practice like silence and meditation, and I went to the, the mass and everything, and so the mass was all in Latin so I wasn't following at all what they were saying.
Speaker 2:But there came a time where clearly it was it was time to take communion, because some people stood up and went forward and took the elements and some people didn't, and I was kind of unclear about whether I was allowed to or not. But I decided to just go for it. So I went forward and took the bread and the wine and then sat back down and I was kind of sitting on the pew looking at it like I wasn't exactly. Do I take an hour? Do I wait until later? I wasn't sure. And then a priest came up to me and whispered you're not Catholic, are you? And I said no, and he said he just swiped him from my hand, said like Clearly I was not. You're not allowed to take communion at this place if you're not Catholic. So yeah, that was my, my communion story.
Speaker 1:You got communion taken away from you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I got, I got swiped. Yeah, I don't. It almost felt like a moment from curb your enthusiasm or something. Yeah, it was. I Considered a pretty hilarious story about you know the way that, like religious people, can be so welcoming and tolerant of newcomers.
Speaker 1:That's brutal, you know it's funny. You may realize, my first, my first sip of wine was out of Catholic Church. I was a kid and my friend was Catholic and he invited me to mass with him one weekend and I was like, yeah, I'll go. You know how curious, how different it could be from my church. And the answer was very different. It was very different. And you know, it comes time for a communion and I'm like, yeah, I'm a Christian, I'm a take communion, so I walk up in line with them.
Speaker 1:I didn't know that it was wine in the glass. Like that's how, that's how Protestant I was, had no kid that this is gonna be wine. I also didn't know that, like I don't know if they still do this post Covid, but like there was just one chalice, you know, and everybody would kind of like sip it or whatever put, put their lip on it. I Didn't know, you're just like supposed to like put your lip on it. So I get up there and I like swig the thing and I'm like flooded with holy cow, what is that? You know, and probably the priest had similar action to you of like this kid's not Catholic, how is he, how is he up here? But I don't drink it at that point. So what is he gonna do? How's he gonna get Jesus blood back out of me? But that was like my moment I get. I sat back down, went dude, that's not grape juice, he's like, yes, wine, like what. So?
Speaker 2:yeah, yeah, I've had those experiences too where, yeah, I was always a grape juice kid at all the churches I went to when I was younger. And then the handful of times we would go to some Some other church and it would, it would be real wine and I would be like weird out by the taste of it, cuz of course my little kid palette just thought wine was disgusting, but I just kept it cool. You know, I only had one time where where it was swiped from me, as I just said.
Speaker 1:You know on an aside For any pastors watching or listening this I actually my favorite thing. This is just my personal preference. I think it's really cool when there's like a community station and they offer both where it's like here's grape juice if you want that, and then here's wine if you want that, and you just let people with all their Experiences or wherever they, you know, however, they've encountered it before. I also strongly believe that community should be open to all and I cringe that the priest took it from you because If you, if you read the scriptures, jesus celebrated communion the last supper, literally the last supper, with Judas, right before Judas betrayed him, and I'm pretty sure if Judas can have the last supper, jeff can too. I'm just saying.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah we're.
Speaker 1:We're simpatico Judas and I for sure we're right on the racers edge just saying Judas can have it. Why? Why do we get this line where we'd like I gotta enforce this? I've never, I've never understood that camp, yeah, okay. So on a more serious note and you have obviously given me permission to go here, so just in advance of someone's like wow, I can't believe he's asking this question You've, you've, recently gone through a divorce and you've shared a little bit about this online. This was a culmination of a lot of your journey up to this point. It's also a turning point. You know, as you've stated kind of for this season, that you're in now. How are you doing? How are you processing that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean Emotionally it's been really awful. You know it's very, it's very much still raw. It's been about two months at this point and you know I'm Predicting it's gonna be many months of grieving for years, probably the rest of my life to some extent to go. Yeah, it's, it's really sad. I feel all kinds of like shame and self-doubt about it. I mean this goes back to my initial caveat about, like don't take advice from me. My personal life is a mess. I feel like it it sort of taints all of my Preachiness and all my opinions and all my thoughts about, about all kinds of things that I've chosen For my life. I guess I should say it for the record it's.
Speaker 2:It's not like I like just left the marriage because I like wanted to live in a van so bad that certainly was. Part of it was was my wife and I had had different values and all that. There throw a lot of Differences that I'm not gonna get into, but I'll I'll say that, you know, because of that Circumstance I felt like I need to take this opportunity because I'd no longer have like the responsibilities of marriage to To live this like non materialistic lifestyle that I've always kind of thought about and felt like I didn't have the opportunity to you before. But again, yeah, it's, it's, it's awful and I feel terrible about it and, as I said, I'm going to therapy. That's. That's the reason that I've decided to quit drinking, because I've been in a pretty sad and lonely state generally and I've heard other stories of people who've turned to alcohol when when they are Sad and lonely and that's, that's a pretty dangerous combination. So I'm just trying to preemptively avoid that kind of problem in my life and and, yeah, that's that's where I'm at with it.
Speaker 1:I appreciate you sharing that. You know, obviously a marriage is two people, takes two people. We don't need to speak on behalf of your wife, but for you, from your point of view, you know, I'm just curious. You've changed so much. You know from who you were when you got married. Do you look back and think, you know there's so many things I would have done different and maybe, maybe it would have played out different. Do you think I, you know, maybe I never would have got?
Speaker 1:married if I was who I am now, do like, how is that with you know, with the journey you've been on to try to make sense of that? Or do you just feel like this is the inevitable end that it was always going to run? Like, how do you kind of process all that in light of your own growth and change?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think about it all the time and it's really difficult because I feel like our, our thoughts can be so deceptive and so so easily biased, and I mean this is something that I'm like talking to my therapist about all the time for sure.
Speaker 2:But yeah, I mean, and again, I'm trying to like avoid like just blaming my current problems with, or my the fact that I'm divorced now on Christianity, certainly that that is a huge factor in it, because the fact that that we got married so young, right out of Bible College, and we were both like on fire for the Lord and wanted to be Missionaries and we thought we got to get married and then like pack our bags and go that you know, that's kind of the origin story of of how my wife and I came together in the first place. And, yeah, throughout the years of being married, when, when both of our world views changed and we both like grew in different ways, I thought about that all the time of like what would have happened if we would have still met and been dating and fallen in love but not had Not been in that culture where we felt pressured to get married right away? Like what if we were allowed to cohabitate and have sex outside of marriage and all that stuff that you know, like Secular people outside the church do. Would we still be together now? Would we have broken up earlier, because it's it's easier to break up than it is to get divorced when you're already in the marriage covenant?
Speaker 2:You know, I try not. It's I kind of naturally like do that kind of like hindsight bias, like fantasizing about going back into the past type of thinking. I'm trying to just avoid that at this point and just like accept that what happened did and and move forward with this. Yeah, I, I really like cherish all the time that that we had together. It was obviously a person that that I love very much and I only want the best for them and, again, it was an incredibly difficult decision, but it was a decision we both came to agree to. That was that it was the best for both of us to no longer be married and go our separate ways. So that's where I'm at, but it's yeah, it's an incredibly sad thing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know I. I do just want to applaud you for the way you you just lean into hard things and you know you're You're not sugarcoating this, you're not acting like, yeah, no big deal, I got divorced and I'm fine. You know you're not fine and you're experiencing all that we would expect someone to experience. You know who's going through a loss like that and you're very transparent about it and and even online you know I've watched some of your posts and there's been a few of your things I'm like, wow, like you just put that out there. You know, you're just very open with that. But you're also willing to, you know, to do what you think you need to do in response and to try things, and I think that's that's why I've always admired you and, you know, have a lot of respect for you.
Speaker 1:Just because Sometimes, when we think about like okay, if I did this, it would be better, we, we imagine it, we think about it and then we kind of pat ourselves in the back of like I did it because I thought about it. You know it's like no, until you do it, you haven't done it. So, just because you thought about it or talked about it or had a conversation. You have to go do it. You're doing it. But I also want to be aware, you know, there might be some listening to this, watching this, that would say and you've even wondered, this allowed to me as well that you know, this guy's taking things too far, like, this guy's really gone extreme. You don't have to go this extreme. What are your thoughts on that? You know, do you ever like spend a lot of time on like maybe this is way too far, way too much? Or do you think, hey, I'm just getting started. Look how deep this whole goes?
Speaker 2:Yeah, you ain't seen nothing yet.
Speaker 2:How much, how much further can I blow up my life? Yeah, great question. Yeah, I think about all the time. I mean I feel like. I mean I feel like Again, just going back to my caveats and my like uncertainty about everything, again like I, I guess, like Veganism is again like one of the few things that I do feel fairly certain about, of like for most people.
Speaker 2:Most of the time I think I can say that, yeah, that's, that's a positive thing, that's a way not even a positive, that's a way that you can do less harm in the world. Yeah, in terms of like the materialism, like the not owning a home, living out of a van, you know, just Deciding to get divorced because you're in an unfulfilling relationship, you know, those are things that I would just I would never like I encourage anyone to go into lightly. And yeah, I have all kinds of self-doubt about how I'm going to live. I have all kinds of self-doubt about whether or not I'm I'm taking it too far For myself.
Speaker 2:Even even the the alcohol thing, you know, I, I have a hesitation for that. You know, part of me thinks like that's, that's no big deal, like I don't drink that much anyway, and it's easy enough to just get an on alcoholic beverage in public places. You know, my one hesitation is like am I, do I have this kind of addiction to legalism, or am I trying to like cope with the uncertainty of life by making these really strict rules? Again, I I think that's something that Jesus was like taught about a lot, like he was always calling out the Pharisees for being hypocritical and being legalistic and all about the letter of the law. So, yeah, certainly that's. Uh, that's a hesitation that I have about all kinds of things that I'm currently introducing into my life.
Speaker 1:Now, sometimes this is another thing I find interesting about you. You you will attend church services from time to time and you know you and I would periodically talk about you, know experiences you had or a church you popped into. Whenever you go, though, as best I understand it, you don't take communion. And even though we've talked about you, know some some older communion stories in your life, uh, tell us why. Why do you, even if you pop into church these days, why do you not take communion?
Speaker 2:Yeah, the reason I go to church sometimes is just because I find it interesting. You know, again, that was why I wanted to start the podcast and why I invited myself onto your podcast here. I really enjoy having these conversations with people. I'm really fascinated with Christianity. Again, I feel like it's possible that I've just been it's sort of like permanently broken my brain and I'm going to be stuck having these conversations for the rest of my life. But who knows? And I really enjoy kind of like the variety of different interpretations. You know, that was something I learned on the forest and the trees was like as I was researching these different questions. You know you had your answers, but the stereotype is true that if you ask 10 different pastors the same theological question, you'll get 10 different answers or possibly more. So I just I enjoy that process of kind of like sampling and seeing how different people like interpret the same scriptures and stuff like that.
Speaker 2:The reason I don't partake in communion anymore is because I still just cannot stomach the doctrine of blood atonement, blood sacrifice. I know that you and I like went back and forth on that for a long time and we have. I made a video on YouTube that's an hour long of us talking about it, with several different passages throughout Hebrews, and I've re-listened to it, I've revisited it several times, I've listened to other theologians give their explanation for it and I just don't get it. It doesn't make sense to me. It doesn't make sense how this is a good thing that we should celebrate. You know, in terms of, as far as I understand, the idea of communion is like a celebration or recognition of Jesus's sacrifice, Like the fact that he suffered and shed his blood so we can be forgiven is something we're supposed to continually remember. And, yeah, it just doesn't, doesn't sit well with me. It seems like a bad, barbaric, disgusting thing.
Speaker 1:So I'm going to give a little plug here. As of the time you and I recording this, episode seven has not posted, but episode seven I have already recorded at the time of this. Recording so episode seven, I get into what's called memetic theory and my guest goes into a really interesting explanation for the atonement based out of memetic theory. That actually would be curious your take on, because it's it was a different kind of angle than even I have thought of it and I've always fascinated. You know you talk about all the different, the different answers that pastors give you.
Speaker 1:Just look at atonement theory alone. There are so many different ways of thinking about it, explaining it, understanding it. And you know you can read books and books and books on atonement theory alone and so if you're listening to this you're like what the heck is atonement theory? There's a whole explanation of why did Jesus have to die and how do we make sense of that. And you know Jeff saying none of them. None of them resonate with him. But Jeff, you're going to have to check out episode seven after I post it and I'll be curious your thoughts on that.
Speaker 2:Okay, so I definitely will. I'm excited to listen yeah.
Speaker 1:Awesome. Let's take a look at Christianity. Take a step out. 30,000 foot view. Not the church will get to that next question, but just Christianity. It'll say in America. What do you see as some of the main issues facing Christianity from your point of view?
Speaker 2:Hmm, I mean the answer I put down is like, probably the biggest problem is the uncertainty of whether or not God exists.
Speaker 2:You know, like I feel like if God were to show up and, like you know, do something about like you're talking about America, so like, let's say, like if God were to show up and like stop gun violence from happening anymore because of all the thoughts and prayers that we've offered to him, that would be a huge win for Christianity. In my mind, you know, I know, I know it's like kind of unfair to bring up the problem of evil, of like God is all good and why do bad things happen. But yeah, I guess for me, you know, there's all kinds of ethical questions with Christianity or like the are we taking the Bible to literally or being too fast and loose with the Bible? But I mean, ultimately, the main problem is, like it just starts with the issue of like whether or not God exists in the first place. And for me personally I know most of your listeners won't resonate with this, but for me it just doesn't seem apparent that that he does.
Speaker 2:So you, know or she or she yeah, or you know, hit the force, whatever.
Speaker 1:Okay, as you look at now the church in America specifically, what do you see as the main issues facing the church, the way we, the way we understand church?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean to go back to my personal story with the anti LGBTQ persuasion. I again, like I've read the Bible so I understand, like, why the church is anti homosexual, because I think like certain passages of scripture are pretty explicitly anti homosexual. I do think it's fascinating that the church is so hung up on trans issues at the moment. I don't really see much biblical precedence for that. There's not a lot of stuff in the Bible that says you can't change genders the way there's like passages in the Bible that say you shouldn't, like have gay sex.
Speaker 2:The doctrine of hell I think is totally problematic. I think it's kind of systematically traumatizing children by like taking them to summer camp and like getting the fear of hell on them so that they'll make a decision Thursday night. I think that that does. I think that's an underrated issue. I think that does more psychological damage to people than we realize. And I'll say, the dependence on money the way that they ask people for money and say that you know you're, this is an obligation, this is something you have to do, you're giving money to God. It's all God's anyway, so you need to give 10% of it to us I think is manipulative and theologically it makes no sense to me. It doesn't make sense why God would need to use human currency to achieve his goals. Why can't God just make church happen miraculously? So those are my big three issues.
Speaker 1:So that's a spicy hot take. I like it.
Speaker 2:Oh, thank you.
Speaker 1:What's a what's a problem that you're trying to solve in your world right now?
Speaker 2:Yeah, for me personally, I'm trying to have more positive interactions with with other homeless people, like we talked about a little bit before.
Speaker 2:I think you know there's there's a lot of people that are just like nice and gentle and easy to talk to you, but there's also a lot of people who clearly have some kind of mental problems they're dealing with and some people who seem to be like violent potentially or just like ranting and screaming uncontrollably, and I, you know, I kind of instinctively like have a fear of people like that because I'm not sure if they're going to act out violently if I try to approach them or something.
Speaker 2:And that's something I feel very conflicted about. Because, again, going back to like what would Jesus do? It seems to me that Jesus has such an empathetic heart for the poor and the people who are disenfranchised and the people who everyone else is like the untouchables in society. So when I see someone like that kind of like on the street, I mean I feel bad for them. I wish there was something I could do to help them and I feel like the fact that I have this, this fear of even approaching them, is is a problematic thing on my part. So that's, that's a personal problem I'm kind of working through at the moment.
Speaker 1:Hmm, that's good. What's something you're excited about right now?
Speaker 2:I'm going to travel hashtag van like.
Speaker 2:I feel, like, yeah, my yeah. Initially I had kind of all this excitement like when I when I got rid of all my stuff and when I bought a van and I was going to kind of just like travel around aimlessly and just like sustain myself doing, doing freelance work, and I kind of like, because of kind of weird circumstances, I ended up getting this job at this coffee shop and kind of decided that I'm going to take some time to just sort of lay low, kind of survive the winter here in Phoenix while the weather is nice, and kind of figure out what I want to do next. And I was like I could like get an apartment and stay in the Phoenix area long term. But I kind of want to avoid that as much as possible. So I think I might just kind of travel freely or do some kind of seasonal work or something like that. So yeah, I'm excited for the future of that.
Speaker 1:I just want to plug for our audience anything that you're working on. You you're obviously a an amazing creator, designer, illustrator. A lot of people who know you obviously will know that. But if our audience listening to like this guy's fascinating, what can they do to follow along or to keep up with you?
Speaker 2:Yeah, thank you for saying that. I mean you can. You can follow me on social media. I'm at Jeff Kane Jeff with one F, just on all the social medias and Jeff Kane calm is my portfolio like website with my illustration graphic design stuff. I feel like I need to lean more into like the creative art side of myself more. I feel like I've been leaning a lot more on kind of the self expression, exploring my own feelings, making videos about lifestyle and stuff More recently which I don't know. I feel like I'm losing like the creative side of me or something like that. So I need to practice more, more of the art stuff. So to follow me for that, you know pastors who are listening or fellow Christians who are not vegan.
Speaker 2:I wanted to like put out my definitive argument on why all Christians should be vegan before before this episode aired. So I've got that on my YouTube channel For years. Honestly, I it's, it's, it's. I know it's like a niche hot take that like literally no one cares about, never just rolls their eyes at, but for me it was kind of a personal obsession of like. I had this, these arguments, in my head and I kind of fantasized about what if I was given the opportunity to like speak at a church or something like that and just spring like a 45 minute presentation on people, and, yeah, I guess, I guess. Eventually I came to accept that that's probably not going to happen, so I'm just gonna like make a YouTube video about it, so it's a resource for people that they're curious. I ended up being able to edit it down to three and a half minutes, so it's not a very long video pretty punchy curious so yeah, so I'll plug that, that's.
Speaker 2:You know, I'm at Jeff Kane on YouTube so you can watch that video if you're curious.
Speaker 1:Nice, I would. I would love to attend a vegan sermon. The church says, yes, here you go, jeff. Here's the pulpit for 45 minutes. Talk about veganism. That would be. I don't know. I would just come to the reactions. That would be awesome.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, if you want to see the reactions, you can like look at the comments on on my social media, because I post. I posted like kind of short, like one minute version of just the first argument basically, which, again, like that might have been a terrible decision. You're just just like being needlessly divisive and, you know, no one really cares about my opinion on these things anyway, but I've got to speak my truth.
Speaker 2:No, I don't know. I mean I guess I got a lot of likes. Most of the comments were were people who disagreed with me, but again, that's good, that's reasonable. That's what social discourse is for right.
Speaker 1:Well, jeff, dude, I appreciate you. It is great to check in with you. I think we're gonna have to do this again and just periodically check in, see where you're at, where your van life is taking you, what, what new things you've cut out of your life and you know how it's all working for you and what it what it's producing, and you're kind of to me like a I don't mean this kind of suddenly like a walking experiment, like what happens if you try that. You know it's like I watch you and like I don't know, I'm gonna see, see what happens to Jeff, like Just fascinating to follow someone who's trying these things and being, you know, transparent about the experience, the good and the bad, and you do a great job of that.
Speaker 1:So thank you for taking the time to drive your van over to my place and and drink that final glass with me. So Cheers to you, to to a memorable glass that you can remember as being documented in this episode for a long time, and wherever your van takes you in the road ahead. So thank you from from all of us and to all the listeners and watchers of Cabernet and pray. Thank you, guys, for being a part of this. Hopefully this was an enjoyable conversation for you. As we get to explore Christianity and wine through all different aspects will catch up with all of you next time.