Returning to Eden (with Heather Hamilton)

As we pop the cork on a bottle of conversation with Heather Hamilton, bestselling author of "Returning to Eden," our glasses aren't the only full things—our hearts and minds brim with insights into the ever-evolving journey of faith. Heather brings us her compelling story of transformation, from a rigid adherence to literal belief to an expansive embrace of mystical spirituality, a metamorphosis born of personal crisis and profound self-discovery. Together, we traverse the landscapes of biblical narratives and their psychological depths, finding striking correlations between the epic tales of ancient scripture and the mythological themes woven into our favorite Disney movies. It's a tapestry of thoughts that promises to adorn the walls of your understanding with new colors and textures.

Embark on a voyage through the enigmatic nature of the divine as we tackle the paradoxical essence of Jesus and Christ, guided by the insights of thinkers like Richard Rohr. Our dialogue takes us through the transformative realignment of prayer, moving from a distant deity to recognizing God's presence within. As a recovering evangelical, Heather shares the intimate reshaping of her own spiritual posture, navigating the delicate balance of evolving within a faith tradition while honoring the sacredness of its roots. It is a candid reflection on the intricacies of belief, the portrayal of evil in the fabric of our stories, and the challenge of reframing these ancient concepts in a contemporary context.

We culminate our session by pondering the future of Christianity, dissecting the struggles and envisioning the revitalization of communal worship through a synthesis of symbolism, ritual, and a zestful spirit. Our discussion not only questions but also celebrates the possibilities for a faith that resonates with the heartbeat of today's society. And for those thirsty for more, Heather's "Returning to Eden" serves as an invitation to continue the dialogue, to explore and exchange ideas that have the power to reshape our perspectives and enrich our spiritual dialogues. So, fellow inquisitors of the intangible, let us toast to a conversation that offers a divine sip in every word.

Wines we enjoy in the episode:
2019 History Red Blend
2020 Pure Bred Cabernet

Book: https://amzn.to/49oYIWD
Website: www.ReturningtoEden.com

See audio and video episodes at: https://communionwineco.com/podcast/

Find out more at: https://linktr.ee/communionwineco

Transcript

Speaker 1: 1:45

Well, hello again, friends. Welcome to another episode of Cabernet and Pray, the podcast where we dive in to Christianity while we explore the beauty of wine and we mix the two together and we have a lot of fun. And today we get to look at an exciting book that I've recently read. We're going to sit down with the author and go deeper into this discussion, and this is going to be a good one. Today's our guest is Heather Hamilton. She's the bestselling author of Returning to Eden, a field guide for the spiritual journey. She has appeared on television and radio programs, including NPR. She received her BA in journalism from Georgia State University and spent many years doing video production before discovering her love of writing. She's passionate about fostering human connection through storytelling, writing, art and exchanging ideas. Heather lives in Atlanta with her husband and three children. Welcome to the podcast, Heather.

Speaker 2: 2:50

Thanks, jeremy, I'm happy to be here. Cheers, all right.

Speaker 1: 2:54

Anything else we need to know about you that I didn't cover in the intro.

Speaker 2: 2:58

No, I think you got it.

Speaker 1: 3:00

That's it. Okay, yeah, on that note, it's time to talk about what we're drinking. Today, I have got a 2019 history red blend from the Pacific Northwest. This is primarily Cabernet, sauvignon and Malbec. I cracked this thing open and I'm getting some green grass and some red plum. I love a good blend and I love the Pacific Northwest. Normally, I'm drinking Pino from the Pacific Northwest, but changing it up today. Heather, what are you drinking?

Speaker 2: 3:33

Yeah, I've got a 2020 Cabernet Pure Bread. It says it's from Lodi, california, there you go I don't know where that is, but it's great. Yeah, I started out with a cheap wine that tasted so bad that I had to abandon it and crack open this thing.

Speaker 1: 3:56

We get all sorts of wine varieties on this show. Some people just get whatever they've got around, other people go all out. It's always fun to see where the wine journey takes us. Great to have you along. You were one of the guests that eagerly accepted the invitation to drink wine and talk about God.

Speaker 2: 4:16

Yeah, I'm excited.

Speaker 1: 4:18

Thanks for your willingness to do that. All right, I want to start with a question that I like to ask each of our guests on this show to give people a behind the scenes look at how we arrive at the ideas we arrive at. The question is how has your faith changed over the last 10 years?

Speaker 2: 4:35

Yeah, that's such a big question I feel like it would almost be unrecognizable. Not in, yeah, I don't know. The short story I guess would be. It went from conceptualizing faith as a white-knuckled grip on very literal beliefs, as historic events, to a more open-handed, deep inner knowing in terms of my faith in my life, or more one in the same flow. Now I find deep wisdom in stories that I failed to mine in the past because I didn't realize that there was anything deeper there.

Speaker 1: 5:28

What triggered that transition for you?

Speaker 2: 5:31

Yeah, I have to give a short version of my story to answer that question. I grew up very evangelical in the South and was very involved in the church throughout my whole childhood youth groups, church conferences, church camps, et cetera and landed in a really big evangelical mega-church where I ended up meeting my husband and we had our three kids, and he eventually became the music director at this large mega-church. During that time I had just had our third child and essentially I hesitate to call it divine illumination, but it did feel like that in my life. I had just some major revelations about my life personally and some sort of buried trauma that I had never dealt with or acknowledged. I didn't even understand or know what trauma was and certainly there was no conception that it was affecting me in any way.

Speaker 2: 6:38

This sort of just erupted to the surface. When it did, it essentially caused an identity crisis and a nervous breakdown where, pretty much over the course of a few days, I went from this really put together Christian American woman rocking and rolling in church and all of that to this relentless panic attacks that I could not get a hold of. I just descended into this very deep, dark psychological place that I actually recognized as hell. There was a moment where I just felt like my soul was completely untethered out in space, completely cut off from God. In fact, it was this moment of realizing that no one was coming to rescue me. Whenever I had held as a mental conception of what might happen in a moment of desperation like that, it just was obliterated Nobody's coming to help you.

Speaker 2: 7:53

In that moment of going this is hell. I had this sort of illumination come to mind that this is what the Jonah and the whale story was about. I just intuitively knew that where I was was the belly of the whale, that whether Jonah was a historical character or not was irrelevant. I knew that where I was is where that character was. We were in the same place Really for the first time. My concept of hell was very disrupted.

Speaker 2: 8:31

I also was returning to these biblical stories more as mythological maps of meaning that were going to help me navigate my internal world, because I was in a psychological state that I didn't have any reference, for. Nobody at my church or in my family or anywhere in my sphere of resources knew what I was talking about. It was something totally foreign. Really, all I had was my own faith that how I was seeing these stories was essentially as being led to see them by God. I felt like, oh, I'm seeing this in a new way and I sort of have to trust this process, even though no one around me is affirming this path that I'm walking, if that makes sense.

Speaker 1: 9:30

No, this is such a great way, not only to set up your book, which, if you read your book, that's all you're saying makes so much sense. But I encounter more and more people with similar stories where the faith they were raised with works until it doesn't. There can be any number of triggers that somehow you go wait a minute, this isn't going to. This got me here, but it's not going to get me there. Then there's this panic, this loneliness, this what on earth am I doing? And then it's the process of trying to make sense of that, of trying to find something deeper, and that's why I so appreciate your story and your book, because you just bring people along and I imagine there are so many people who are either listening to this or watching this and then will read the book and go oh, me too. I totally understand this. And you talk throughout the book, which, by the way, this is what the book looks like for those on videos called Returning to Eden. I love this book and here's how I think.

Speaker 1: 10:30

I'm an avid reader. I love reading. I think most people they rate a book based on how much of it do they agree with. That's the way I find most people Like did I agree with 100% of the ideas? If so, that was an amazing book. That is a horrible way to rate a book. It's a great way not to grow.

Speaker 1: 10:46

For me, a great book is did this book cause me to rethink things? Did it challenge ideas that I have from a different point of view? Did it cause me to put the book down and go for a walk and go? I got to process this and from that vantage point, your book is killer. I mean, there's so much there that I found myself just laying in bed at night thinking through, going wow, that is something I want to process and I want to see it. And you bring it from a lot of different points of view. You talk about the perspective of myth, like you had just said, the power of this and seeing so much of life through this Throughout that you really weave this idea of the true self versus the false self. So if someone's not familiar with this work, that's kind of the setup. Why do you think this lens of the true self, the false self, interpreting myth in the way that you do? Why is this lens so helpful in making sense of life?

Speaker 2: 11:43

Well, I think it's helpful. I'm a pretty pragmatic person and so I do spend a lot of time up in my head thinking and analyzing and yada yada. But I'm also interested in something that works and is helpful and so I think growing up to use the word myth in a church context was extremely insulting and offensive. When I was kind of marketing the book or trying to come up with a 30 second sales pitch, it was like what I'm really diving into is what myth is, how it functions and why you should care about it because it is affecting you whether you're aware of it or not. But I couldn't say the word because so much of my audience I knew was either going to be evangelical or former evangelical. But somewhere in that context where myth basically to say, like I was just talking about the Jonah and the whale story to say I think Jonah and the whale is a mythological story, it is like you can imagine saying to a devout believer I think that your belief is complete fairy tale. That's really insulting to someone who has a very deeply held belief and an emotional attachment to their interpretation of stories. So I wanted to clarify what I meant by it and how.

Speaker 2: 13:15

For me, the mythological patterns that are revealed in the Bible are like truer and I take them more seriously than just like a CNN headline that a lot of these stories weren't meant to be read like a CNN scrolling banner, like man gets burped up out of the belly of a whale. But what we're taught is that that is literally what happened. This unbelievable event of fantastical proportion literally happened. And in order to prove your belief in God, you have to believe that that doesn't make sense, it's not rational, but I believe that God can do anything, so I choose to believe that that's the way that the story happened.

Speaker 2: 14:12

And my life experience, like this really foolish experience that I had, sort of revealed to me that there was this world inside of me that I had never turned inward to really examine.

Speaker 2: 14:29

I didn't really know that it existed and I didn't, I had no idea that so much of this unconscious world was completely driving the trajectory of my life, like all my decisions, all my thoughts. You know, everything that I thought was unique to me was actually like prescribed. You know, like I don't know predestined is the right word, but it was so predictable, like someone could have written an autobiography of my life with all my thoughts, all my feelings, all the way that I, you know, interpreted my experiences before I was even born. You know, it was like I kind of got my robotic programming and got sent off on my way and so kind of coming to understand that I was like living inside of this mythological story already, and then coming to understand, like the deep wisdom that is, that these stories of mythical proportion are symbolizing, like it's not a fairy tale that someone just made up and brushed away. It's actually like something more profound and more real than what, like the events that we see on the surface.

Speaker 1: 15:48

Love that you draw numerous analogies in the book to Disney movies, and a couple that stood out to me were the way you break down Moana and then the way you break down the Lion King. Are you a huge Disney fan or this just happened to be stories that you thought were useful?

Speaker 2: 16:07

I wouldn't say that I'm a huge Disney fan. Like, we live in Georgia and we certainly have some friends around us that are, like you know, Disney evangelists. I actually have a lot of friends that do the travel nation thing and you know, know everything about Disney and we've been down there once with our kids and I actually felt like really overwhelmed by the whole thing. It's like, okay, I hope you liked that, I don't know. Forever going back again. Um, I would say there's like a handful of the movies that I feel really kind of spoke to me, Although I it's not like I like thought about them a lot until I started to understand them as mythological maps and the patterns that I was seeing in scripture I saw reflected in in some of these different movies and in a lot of different art forms. So one of them, for instance, like the Lion King, you know, I do love that movie and it's kind of silly to say, or it sounds silly to be like I think it's the gospel, you know, you know, because you think you're just watching this, the silly movie. But yeah, I, I kind of overlay that story on top of my chapter about original sin because I think it does a really good job of.

Speaker 2: 17:27

You know, in the movie there's, there's a little Simba who is, you know, a wild, adventurous little kid. He's, he's good, he's inherently good, and he's a normal, like little lion, cub, and then he witnesses this awful, awful thing his father dying. And then the shift in the movie comes when Scar tells him that this is his fault and he believes that and internalizes that. And that's essentially the moment where he like falls asleep to himself, where he's internalized this shame and fear that if he makes any move, like if he takes responsibility or, you know, follows his instincts anymore, then he's going to continue to cause harm. And so his solution is like I'm essentially going to fall asleep to my destiny and who I am, and you know, kind of go hide away. And so we sort of see that in the garden, you know where it's like.

Speaker 2: 18:31

You know the lie that's believed, that you're like your necked and ashamed and you've done something like so awful and that makes you inherently awful. And so, you know, actually in the story it says that Adam falls asleep and it never says that he woke up, and so it's almost like the you know the rest of the story from there on out is him kind of in this dream world that's instigated by this pain of separation from who you really are, and like a disconnection from his father and his family and his legacy, you know, and so essentially by him, like abdicating his responsibility. The whole kingdom is, you know, withering, and it's not until he has this mystical experience where, you know, Mufasa says remember who you are Like, you were always mine. There was never a time in this whole story that you weren't my son and this, you know, was not your destiny to fulfill. And so it's more about Simba's perception changing, you know, and him finding the courage in himself to say, like I think I do have a destiny that's rooted in something really good inside of me, and so I, I love that story because it is the mythological pattern that's being revealed in in scripture and, theologically, or I'll say, we all fall asleep like that, we all sort of buy into the lie.

Speaker 2: 20:02

You know that we're guilty and we're ashamed and we're inherently pieces of crap. You know that whatever we touch is just kind of like go to shit, you know, because we're inherently bad and when bad behavior would happen, it's like oh, it's just sin. It's just sin, you know, like this is who we are. And so for me, it was actually this really Heretical shift of going like I don't think that I'm inherently evil, I think that I am inherently good and beautiful and that I've always been a part of my father's family, and it's actually like by not believing that that I've really abdicated my responsibility. So anyway, that's a long answer to say like I love that movie. You know, I don't know if every Disney movie is Is communicating that, but I definitely see like those mythological stories kind of carrying the thread in our culture.

Speaker 1: 21:03

Can I just say, as a Jesus follower and a diehard Disney fan, that is such an incredible answer. I mean I just want you to watch every Disney movie and then break it down, and I think you need to create a series or maybe a book where you just analyze Disney movies through the lens of the gospel, and I'm here for it and we'll just we'll market it to all the Disney fanatics and it's going to be brilliant. But that it's so good you do the same thing with Moana. I mean it is like so fun. Oh, I just love it and I love the way you take these massive, monumental things about life and you're like, oh yeah, this is what Simba's going through. Like yeah, oh my gosh.

Speaker 2: 21:46

Yeah Well, once you see it, it's like, oh my God, like I've seen it in Disney movies. But then I would see it like in the life cycle of a tree or something. You know what I mean. And I would just be like, oh my God, it's the gospel, you know, like just this pattern, repeated and repeated, and it's almost like you either don't see it or you see it everywhere. That was my experience, is I couldn't see it at all. I don't know if anyone had ever tried to explain this to me like the way that I'm saying it. I don't recall, but I definitely didn't have ears to hear. Those phrases like eyes to see or ears to hear really started to make sense to me, because I knew that it was really a matter of being blind, not being evil, it was just I couldn't see what I couldn't see. And then, when the blindfold came off, it was like you know, a whole new world. So what's, what's that movie from? Yes Aladdin, thank you.

Speaker 1: 22:46

Oh, such a good answer. Ok, in the book you mentioned the Enneagram, but you tease us and you do not tell us your number in the book when inquiring minds want to know. This is where the podcast, we get to the deeper story what, what's your Enneagram number?

Speaker 2: 23:03

Yeah, well, I guess I'll set it up by saying that the reason why I mentioned the Enneagram I kind of overlay it in this chapter about carrying your cross, and what I'm, what I kind of try to drive home in the book, is that faith doesn't have to be, you know, as I mentioned, like a white knuckled grip on these literal beliefs or historic things. And from a pragmatic point of view as well, like there's a lot of people now who it's just, you know, trying to say, like in order to be a Christian, you have to believe in a literal six day creation, that's just going to be a non starter for a lot of people, and I think it's completely but beside the point. For me, you know, looking at these stories mythologically, in inherently means that you're looking at them from a psychological perspective. What are these telling me about myself? What is this telling me about my personality? Or the story or the narrative that I'm living out, unconsciously, you know, like I think that I'm the one making all these decisions, but really there's kind of a narrative track that's being played and I'm sort of just along for the ride. So so that's how the stories became significant to me.

Speaker 2: 24:25

I mentioned the Enneagram because I think to really awaken to this for me, kind of awakening to the fact that I had sort of laid down my autonomy and my agency in my life in exchange for this sort of pre programmed personality, was a really devastating realization for me, you know, and that, like with the Enneagram, I think if it's, if it is not really wrecking you in terms of making you step back and go like whoa, like who's running the show in my life, then I don't think that you've really like discovered it. And so for me, the kind of the Enneagram and the carrying your cross thing, or picking up your cross and trying to get yourself and understand what am I motivated by? How much of my life is really just being run by my instinctual drives, like what I'm afraid of, what I need, what I feel like I need to consume for survival, you know sexual drives or what is you know, what is my, what are my social anxieties that kind of lead me to make decisions, you know, like am I offering to like offer my service to this church out of a really altruistic place, or is this like sort of a way to gain like social acceptance, because I have, you know, an instinctual need for social belonging Not that either one of those are bad but to kind of go I'm giving my life energy to something, telling myself that you know I'm doing this for God or whatever only to kind of realize, oh, I think I'm doing all of this in order to, like, maintain safety within a tribe. That feels like a lot shittier reason, you know, and to kind of go like, okay, that was why I was doing it. Have I ever taken the time to like turn inward and really tap into, like, what my life's desires are, what is my heart's desire, you know? And to kind of sit in that silence long enough to let something really real come up and then try to live that out. All that to say.

Speaker 2: 26:53

To answer your question, I'm an Enneagram 9, and kind of a caveat I'll put into that is, in the theory of the Enneagram there's like three primary instincts a self-preservation instinct, a social instinct and a sexual instinct, and each person is usually dominant in one of those instincts and whichever one you're dominant one is actually the one that you're probably the most injured in, like that you have the most wounding around. So I'm a social 9, which basically means I can sort of walk into a room and my whole body kind of feels like it picks up vibrations reflexively. So if I walk into a room and there's, like you know, conflicting energy, you know, happening over here between a few people, I'll sort of instinctually feel like someone's playing, like a disharmonious note or something. It's like a symphony of vibrations is always playing in the energy and I can, if you can sorry, I'm kind of rambling like if you're listening to a beautiful symphony and then someone just strikes a wrong note, you feel it in your body like you know, that felt not right. So I'll feel those kind of things and then sort of adapt myself to try to smooth it out, to kind of create harmony or whatever, which is like a really useful skill to have, but kind of awakening to that's what I'm doing all the time is, I'm constantly adapting to the other instruments in the symphony, trying to like harmonize with all of them so that it sounds nice.

Speaker 2: 28:47

I realized I don't know what my note is, I don't know what I'm supposed to be playing, and that was really a huge part of what I talk about in the book with the true self.

Speaker 2: 28:59

In my own journey was going like oh my God, if I play my note, the one that is, you know, intuitive and beautiful to me.

Speaker 2: 29:12

I know that it is going to disrupt this entire symphony and that doing that is really difficult for my nervous system to tolerate, and so a lot of the spiritual journey has been working with my nervous system to go like okay, I can help myself, be at ease when all this disruption around me is happening and I don't have to, you know, bend and shape shift myself in order to, you know, make everybody else here feel uncomfortable.

Speaker 2: 29:47

And in fact, when I do play my note, sometimes people hear it and go like oh, you know, that sounds beautiful and wonderful, like I'm going to come over here and harmonize with you. So, anyways, that was a very long-winded answer to say that that's an example of like the gift and also the sorrow and the wounding of the nine is, if you are a nine and you don't know that about yourself, or you've misidentified as a wrong number or something, and that is in fact what you are doing throughout your whole life, you will get to the end of your life with this deep sorrow and regret that you did not live your life. You know, you kind of simply adapted and shape shifted and harmonized with everyone else and it ended up being like this waste of your incarnation, which is like a really tragic thing. So yeah, that's the task of the nine in life is to sort of identify and figure out the true self and then bring it forth.

Speaker 1: 30:52

Shout out to the nines.

Speaker 2: 30:55

Shout out to the nines. They don't get enough credit. They're way more interesting and intriguing than I think the popular literature gives them credit for.

Speaker 1: 31:04

My mother is a nine, so I am familiar. In the book you include a picture that I absolutely love, and this will be self-explanatory. You include a picture of an artwork called Christ in the Wine Press. This is obviously a perfect connection for a podcast called Cabernet in Prey. What can you tell us about this depiction of Jesus?

Speaker 2: 31:28

Yeah, so I will hold it up for the viewers.

Speaker 1: 31:32

For those on video, you're getting a little out of the book here.

Speaker 2: 31:38

Okay. So in this picture you see the typical. We see Christ on the cross. You know, we've seen that for forever, we're all very familiar, but in here he's actually like standing in a wine press, and his body would be like what would be happening to the grapes, okay, and then the cross is bearing down on him like a wine press, and then you actually see right here this picture of what would represent God, the Father, being the one that's pressing him. And so, symbolically, what this is representing is, you know, if you picture grapes before they're pressed, in order to get like the wine and like the lifeblood inside of the grapes to flow, you have to crush them, and so it's actually like the crushing which extracts the lifeblood. You know where we get this, and the spirit can flow, like you know, we call this spirits or whatever, but it's the crushing of the outer form that has to happen before the lifeblood can flow, and so you're viewing this from like a psychological lens.

Speaker 2: 33:01

What I try to do here is instead of, you know, growing up evangelical, the orientation towards the sacrifice on the cross was like cross Jesus took my suffering. It was supposed to be mine, but it was the substitute, and now I don't have to suffer what he did. I'm saying no, what Jesus is actually doing is demonstrating what we are to do with our own suffering, not to try to get out from under it, but to let it bear down on us consciously enough so that this, like psychic lifeblood is extracted from us and, like new wine, can flow. So you know, I spent a lot of my own life, you know, suffering in different ways, but none of it was really productive. You know like I might have gone through a situation and learn something from it, and mostly tried to just avoid making the same mistake again. Or when something you know, really difficult, that was out of my control, was happening, it was like begging God to take it away, you know, and then when it would finally resolve, I would feel that peace or whatever. And so it wasn't. There was nothing really like productive happening with the suffering.

Speaker 2: 34:23

And then you know the story that I explained in the beginning, where it was such an overwhelming amount of suffering that it was like crushing my nervous system. It wasn't something that I could escape or get out from under. I I understood that by sort of crushing the I call it the false self in the book, but it's, it's what we've been kind of trying to get at this sort of manufactured, pre programmed personality that was taking up all my life energy, like all my energy was kind of going towards sustaining this personality or ego, or essentially trying to keep my inner nervous system in a harmonious state, you know. And when that was all finally crushed and I understood that it was, there was this like lifeblood or vital life force inside of me that was then able to flow. And so then my task was essentially making the two become one flesh, like making this wine, this blood and this body or this bread, like move in one accord with one another, like one incarnation. And so I have like the human and divine sort of collapsing into one form.

Speaker 2: 35:45

And so, yeah, I noticed that pictures like these this was done in 1619, but the understanding of what Jesus was doing and what he represented on the cross was much more in line with with something as opposed to this avoidance of suffering or Jesus taking away this, your suffering, you know that so that you wouldn't have to deal with it.

Speaker 2: 36:11

Instead, it was like oh yeah, you are going to be dealing with your own suffering and I'm going to show you the way through. So the whole concept of like pick up your cross and follow me, and all of that. When I started to look at it through a psychological perspective, I was like this makes way more sense, you know. And so constantly what I was doing before was sort of doing a bunch of stuff I didn't want to do because I just thought I was supposed to be suffering in some way for the gospel, whereas, yeah, I came to find out, no, like once. I sort of went through the psychological crushing. The things that I can devote myself to now just have a lot more vital life energy behind them, because it's really what I want to be doing.

Speaker 1: 37:05

You have a great metaphor in the book and this this might be maybe my favorite quote of the whole book. This is the one I I've thought back to. I've looked it up a few times. I read it to my wife laying in bed because I was like this is such a great image. You say this Jesus's temporal incarnation on earth gives concrete definition to the nature of Christ. Jesus makes visible the Christ which is invisible.

Speaker 1: 37:32

Jesus and Christ are paradoxically distinct and also one. An imperfect metaphor for this is thinking of air in a balloon. The air representing Christ is constantly present, but by filling a balloon representing Jesus, we can better understand the properties and characteristics of the air Christ. The balloon Jesus temporarily embodies the air Christ and through that embodiment we realize that the air Christ has always been here and will continue to be. It reminds me we had Thomas J Orton on this and he said the line that that I just I had in my head when I read this quote from you. As he said you know one of the great disservices we do at Christmas time, as we talk about the incarnation as if it happened once and that was, you know, an anomaly, and what you're pointing out is so powerful. Why is this distinction so important?

Speaker 2: 38:30

Hmm, that's a good question, dear listeners, if I talked about like Richard, richard roar and the universal Christ, do you have any reference point for that yet?

Speaker 1: 38:40

I did a whole episode on a Richard roar phrase that like moved me so much I didn't. It was just me on episode. So they have some familiarity if they have religiously followed this podcast thus far. But I don't know how much it's a person.

Speaker 2: 38:56

Yeah, yeah. So in the sort of, in the mystical experience that I ended up having having, which, which started with that very hellish experience and then kind of transitioned into a very heavenly experience, something that was paradigm shifting, was this sort of experience of Christ on the horizontal plane, like emanating from all of creation. I sort of my recognition of like divinity and Christ in Jesus. It like expanded to essentially everything. So you know, the idea that Thomas Ortt is talking about, and what I'm trying to describe is Christ being like the animating spirit of all physical form, so it's like the spirit of God that is animating everything all around us. So, from that perspective, like there's, there's nowhere where you could go to not be in Christ, you know, saying that, like in Christ we live and move and have our being, or to say, like you know, christ was present from the beginning, like, what does that mean?

Speaker 2: 40:20

You know, does what does it mean to say like 33 year old Jesus? Or, you know, or was it infant Jesus? Or was it eight year old Jesus? Like he is in everything you know? Like when you take that very literally, talking about a historical man, it doesn't exactly make sense to say like, what does it mean to say Christ is all in, is in all, or Christ fills all things in Ephesians, as Christ fills all things, what does it mean to say? Like 33 year old Jesus is like filling this wine cup right now. That doesn't make sense unless you understand Christ to be the animating spirit of God that is incarnate in all things. So, like Richard war would say, like the universe, is God giving birth to God. So once you start to see that, it's like you understand that literally everything is like this physical manifestation of Christ Jesus. To go back to that metaphor about the air and the balloon, jesus makes that reality, the reality that like is then, now and forever. It makes it fully transparent so we can understand the reality that we're living in.

Speaker 2: 41:40

So I love this little story from. I'll go back to this Disney movie. Have you seen soul?

Speaker 1: 41:46

I have not actually.

Speaker 2: 41:47

Oh my gosh, okay, you got to. You got to go watch it. I won't interrupt it for you, but there is this scene where the protagonist kind of has this, has this experience, like we all do, where he's like if I get to this point in my life, then I'm going to feel fulfilled. It's almost like we have this acute heavenly dream for our life here, like when I get all these things, or I accomplish these goals, or I get to this.

Speaker 1: 42:16

Player. Yes, yeah, as you're talking, I'm like wait a minute, I have Okay yeah, the jazz player.

Speaker 2: 42:21

Well, he finally plays like his dream show with his dream artist. And he comes out and he's feeling like this disappointment, saying like I thought that I would feel differently, like once this was over, and instead I still feel the same way. And the artist, ages play played with, tells this story about a fish swimming around in the ocean. The fish swims up to this older fish and is like excuse me, sir, I am looking for the ocean, can you help me? And the older fish is like you're in it. And the little fish goes like oh no, this is the water. I'm looking for the ocean, and it's.

Speaker 2: 43:07

That is the blindness that that we're talking about is that when you start to understand Christ as filling all things, you understand like oh no, heaven's not some destination I'm going to arrive at in the future, I'm already in it right now. And so when Jesus says you know the kingdom of God is within you, it becomes heaven's not this place that we attain later. Heaven is a place from which we see everything else. And so you understand like, oh, it's, it's not. I got to find Jesus or believe this certain doctrine or whatever it's awakening to you couldn't ever be separate. If you're a fish, you can never be separate from the ocean. You couldn't. You know it's.

Speaker 2: 43:57

It's, it's the silliness of looking for the ocean when you're in the water, and so it's really becomes this, this shift in perspective where you start experiencing heaven and earth as one like it. That's the experience of kingdom life is. It is all just one thing which you know opens the door to like yes, that means the suffering and the ecstasy and the joys and the sorrows, like it is all part of the one, and so you know you include all of it, it all belongs and there's nothing to resist anymore. And so it's not that we stop feeling pain, it's that we stop resisting pain, and so there's not, we don't inflict all this necessary, unnecessary suffering on ourselves.

Speaker 1: 44:49

You tell the story in the book about getting an ear infection and then you have this super interesting line you say I was praying in the wrong direction. What do you mean by that?

Speaker 2: 45:02

Yeah, I, I meant that part of my hellish Jonah in the whale story was sort of this devastating realization that who or whatever I was praying to didn't exist. And, before I freak everybody out, my new orientation became that by being sort of swallowed into the belly of the whale, it this whole concept of rebirth made sense and came alive to me. It was like I was like sucked back into the womb of God to discover that it was. The suffering I was feeling was more like being a child in utero, like being a child in its mother's belly searching for its mother, like, if you think about that, that would be so sad and tragic for a mother to be carrying a child and the child inside being convinced like where's my mother, you know? Being convinced that it's separate from her or not a part of her, or it has to find her or try to get close to her, when in reality it's like you and the mother are one, like the mother's nutrients is literally like what's flowing through your body and creating your body, like there is no separation from her. And so it was this reorientation of going like I'm praying and searching for something or someone out there that I call God that I've projected all of these characteristics and a certain personality onto that I want to come down and rescue me.

Speaker 2: 46:51

And so that God concept died for me and it became more of a God is in me and moving me and breathing in me and crying through me and loving through me.

Speaker 2: 47:07

And when I could see like that it became you know essentially me getting up from the foot of the cross and getting on the cross and it's like you start to understand that God is seeing the world through your eyes.

Speaker 2: 47:24

And so prayer for me became less asking and begging for something to change and more going like how can I still myself enough to be with what is exactly as it is without resisting?

Speaker 2: 47:44

And when I stopped resisting everything, then I can kind of see, like I can see clearly the things that I either want to move or can change or can do something about, or the things that I can't and I have to be okay with. And so it was more about, I don't know, orienting myself around a sense of peace with reality and what was happening and you know how it all is, as opposed to like sort of pleading and begging and hoping to change someone's mind, and that concept of prayer sort of died. And it's not that I don't have desires I do but it's more kind of going like oh, if I have a really pure and intense desire for something like yeah, then that is God in me desiring for that to happen. And so I'm going to, like you know, live my life in that trajectory to try to like see it through and then also trust that if it's meant to happen, that it's going to happen.

Speaker 1: 49:00

You refer to yourself in the book as a recovering evangelical, which obviously speaks to where you've been, and you've referenced a bit of that story. How would you describe the posture that you're embracing these days?

Speaker 2: 49:15

Yeah, I say a recovering evangelical because I do think, for better or worse, the definition of evangelical is like you know, I believe all the Bible is historically literal, you know, and there's really not a lot of room to venture outside of that interpretation within evangelicalism. But I say recovering because I do, I do kind of tend to look at not just evangelicals or faith spaces, but really everyone on this journey of human development and kind of going. I think that it is normal, even though we hate to admit it, but I think it's normal for people to start out believing sort of magical, nonsensical versions of these stories. You know, and I know, for me, when I sort of kind of woke up to some other interpretations that I felt were better, you know, I was kind of hard on myself, like I was so, like how could you believe that? You know what I mean? I was so dumb, doesn't make sense, or whatever, and kind of going like no, I think that we all start there, you know, and learning to understand. Like yeah, I did take all of this literally, but because those stories were so deeply embedded in my psyche, they were the maps that saw me through to the other side, and so it's.

Speaker 2: 50:48

It's more about like trying to look back on the whole journey as stages of development. And then you know some of the frustration that I feel trying to connect and keep my attachments with people that I love who feel very threatened by my new way of seeing things going like, oh, that totally makes sense. You know, I know what I had to go through to get over here and I completely understand why nobody would want to push a red button and just instigate that complete disruption in their life. You know, it's really like it's really a moment of grace that each person has to have and for at least in the Bible. You know, any person who ends up having this moment of grace, like you look at like Paul, for instance, I'm like he had to leave his entire life behind.

Speaker 2: 51:45

You know he has this encounter with Christ which changes his whole perception and his whole identity, so much so that he changes his name, like he disappears for three years. You know he goes from like being the leader of this army to like peace out. You know, like I'll see you guys in three years, and so it's like this destruction of everything old and a lot of times what was old was something good. You know, as you said at the beginning, like it sustained us to here, and so it's really difficult to like build a good life and then say like all right, I'm going to push the self destruct button, like why would anybody want to do that? And so, um, so I think for me it it is recovering, evangelical, but also going like, I think, in terms of you know, kind of taking a stick and trying to beat the dead horse behind us.

Speaker 2: 52:43

It's like how can we make this faith tradition more beautiful and re enticing and you know, brilliant and and all these things, like all of that potential is still there to move forward, and that's really like what ends up attracting people.

Speaker 1: 53:03

You have a quote in the book that, uh, I love doing these podcasts where I get to read the book, ask my own questions and then save them, cause I know I actually get the chance to sit down with you. So, uh, there's two questions I had that I'm like reading your book on. I can't wait to ask you this. Uh, cause these are questions I I walked away with. You have this quote. You say a person who believes he has an enemy such as Satan outside of himself has not yet turned inward to face himself. His outward enemies are a projection of what he can't yet face inside of himself. The projections reflect the inner, denied parts of himself back to himself. Now, my question on this is do you believe there is any objective sense of evil in the world outside of us? Uh, and then another kind of way of thinking about angels and demons. Is this all metaphorical? Uh, how do you, from your lens of myth, make sense of evil?

Speaker 2: 53:59

Yeah, that's a. That's a really good and deep question. Okay, um, let me answer it with kind of a story. I let's say that you had a dog that was bitten by rabies and absolutely made the dog go mad and insane and violent, like if I had, um, a dog infected by rabies living next door.

Speaker 1: 54:29

I'm at home here with my three kids running around and that dog is running into my yard like trying to attack my kids.

Speaker 2: 54:37

Um, I absolutely the dogs got to go, you know, um, but also I understand how the dog ended up that way, if that makes sense. And so I think that I do think that there is, there is objective good and evil.

Speaker 2: 55:03

I don't think that it is as far removed from us as we would like to think, um, and so most of the time I can see it sort of in the terms that I just described, where it was like oh, there was a process for how this perfectly normal and natural animal, through through a natural process, ended up the way that it did, um, and so I can have like compassion and understanding and also go like how do we prevent dogs?

Speaker 2: 55:34

from getting rabies in the first place, you know, as opposed to like just dealing with this rabid animal and saying, like it's so evil, like we got to kill it and and then move on. It's like how do, if we understand the process, how do we go back up, follow the stream back up to the headwaters and and figure out where this is flowing from? So I think in terms of like you know, um othering, or projecting a sense of like this group or these people are just evil and there's some evil agenda, that's, that's coming to get us or whatever, I don't think that that's helpful in terms of like getting us anywhere in the future, that we can approach those things with a lot more understanding and compassion.

Speaker 2: 56:24

Um, with that being said, um, I oftentimes feel like we can unconsciously contribute to the problem of evil that we are so afraid of by projecting our unconscious fears from within. So, you know, if I'm, if I'm, dealing with some sort of internal anxieties you know just my own fear, or whatever that's causing, like you know, disruption and distrust within my body, it's very difficult for me to recognize this is coming from me, you know. But if you've ever been approached by someone who's on edge or seems unstable or whatever, even before that person interacts with you or opens their mouth, like, just that energy is something that I can pick up intuitively. And so then it becomes like this looping cycle, right when it's like why are you acting like that? Now I'm on defense and now like there's this building friction that's happening. And so I think, if we don't recognize that, a lot of the times, like the fear that we think is coming from outside is something that we're projecting onto someone externally and then reacting to it.

Speaker 2: 57:48

It's just an unconscious reaction that builds and builds and builds to really like turn inward and go like. How can I deal with my own fears?

Speaker 2: 57:58

primarily I think it mostly comes back to the sphere of death you know where, especially as Christians, we don't deal with this because it's like I said the prayer, so I'm going to heaven when I die, you know. So I don't need to be afraid of death and in reality, some of the people that I've seen just have like the most tragic, fearful, saddest time at the end of their life have been like deeply religious people who've?

Speaker 1: 58:28

never, you know, taken enough pause to like look into the void and be like okay this is, this is going to end, you know, and so they meet that moment with like a lot of fear and trepidation. And what?

Speaker 2: 58:42

we don't realize is like we kind of spend our whole lives trying to avoid that final moment of fear, you know. So it's like how do you kind of die before you die? How do you face that fear and look into it, turn around and look into it, as opposed to running away from it your whole life.

Speaker 2: 59:04

So, anyways, all that to say is I think a lot of what we call evil is something that we're all really contributing to unconsciously, and it's stuff that we don't want to look at inside, and so we project it outside and then try to work it out outside, like the internal battles that we're fighting with our fathers, our mothers, our family. You know our dreams. That didn't happen. It's like instead of instead of recognizing that those wars are being fought internally we turn them out externally.

Speaker 2: 59:39

So I hope that that's an answer to your question In terms of like I don't even know if we have time for this, but just on, like a metaphysical level, I actually listened to this wonderful wisdom teacher named Cynthia Bourgeois talk about evil several months ago and she talked about it from like a metaphysical perspective, in that like you know, God is the one and contains everything within.

Speaker 2: 1:00:09

God's self, but for there to actually be like creation and incarnation, there has to be like a split, like there has to be light and dark or two forces that kind of interact with each other in order to create and for there to be incarnation. And so those two forces are intermingling and you know, and flowing throughout the universe like in a proper balance, and it's the reason why we're here and there is creation. And so her take on, you know, evil was that it was what we call evil. This sort of secondary force is like a valid force in the universe for there to even be creation. So really it's the mistake that we make is when we say like we want to eliminate evil, it would basically just be saying we want to eliminate everything, we want to eliminate all form, because it couldn't exist without, you know, these, these two forces coming together and there being like a third thing coming from it. I think that that's probably deeper than we can keep going, but it's more about keeping it in balance when it starts to spin out of control.

Speaker 1: 1:01:32

So angels and demons, literal metaphor.

Speaker 2: 1:01:39

I think that it's most helpful to us to think of them as metaphors. Okay, so all right.

Speaker 1: 1:01:46

Another question I had, and then then we're going to take a drink break here because you've been, you have been pouring wisdom upon us. You do such a poetic job of walking through scripture, which is these beautiful understandings of the false self and the true self and the role of myth and these you know, bigger themes. And there was a, there was a reaction I find myself having when I was reading the book and I'm like I don't know if we're giving these, these writers, too much credit, and that was just kind of like this is beautiful, Like the what, what you're doing with this beautiful? But then I'm like is that really what they were doing? What were they trying to write, these beautifully poetic myths, you know? And so I just was wondering are we giving too much credit to the ancient Near Eastern biblical writers by assuming all of these metaphors of true self and false self are in the Old Testament?

Speaker 2: 1:02:46

I don't think so.

Speaker 2: 1:02:48

I wouldn't have written a book about it if I thought it was too much credit. You know, I was super grateful to have David Bentley Hart read my book and write an endorsement for it, and something that he articulated which, yeah, again, I was just really grateful for was that in, in the early church, there were really like different levels of reading the scripture and the spiritual or allegorical level was considered like the highest level of reading. And then over the centuries, and especially after the Enlightenment, it all we collapsed it all into this, you know, into this literal reading, where we don't even, it's not even part of our conscious awareness anymore, that there's anything like deeper psychological, mythological to be gleaned from the stories. And so I think that an authentic spiritual journey will eventually open up into an allegorical or metaphorical reading of the text.

Speaker 2: 1:03:56

That's not to say that none of it was historic, like some of it was, but when, a lot of times when we're talking about events, like some events are so profound and carry such deep meaning that it's necessary to kind of try to contain the energy of what happened into something mythological or metaphorical and so like, when I say, you know, in my life I was swallowed by the whale. I'm telling you the truth, you know it doesn't mean that I, you know, went and dove off into the Atlantic Ocean and spent, and literally spent, some time there. But I'm trying to convey, like the intensity and significance of this experience that I really don't have words for, and so it's these symbolic pictures that penetrate more deeply into our psyches, penetrate like into a place that's more real than we can get with just language. You know, language really isn't adequate, and so that's the role of myths is to kind of go beyond our language and to a deeper place in our psyches and our souls.

Speaker 1: 1:05:21

It's beautiful. On that note, it's time for a drink break.

Speaker 2: 1:05:36

Okay.

Speaker 1: 1:05:42

Heather. Now we're going to get to some rapid fire questions that we ask everybody on the show. I want to begin total change. We're going to switch it up a little bit. I want to hear a favorite story you have about wine. I love hearing those stories, those moments people go about this was it. This was when. That was the best I've ever tasted wine, or everything aligned. Do you have a moment like that?

Speaker 2: 1:06:12

Oh my gosh. Okay, I should have spent some more time with these rapid fire questions so I could answer more quickly. I wish that I had a beautiful answer to this. To be honest, I feel like all of my wine stories. Okay, I'll say this. My introduction to drinking alcohol in college came off of, like you know, super Christian put together. Never had a sip of alcohol until I went to college, and so my first introduction to alcohol was like hunch punch at a frat party. Okay, so when someone said, do you want to drink something, that meant do you want to blackout and get drunk Like there was no, a cup out of this cooler.

Speaker 2: 1:07:07

Yes, and it tasted so good that you know it got the job done. So, anyways, that was my introduction to drinking, and I do remember. Putting that aside, going like this is not sustainable. You know, I need to take a break from this. And then, a few years later, discovering wine and I won't say it's a moment, but I do remember I had this sort of Eureka thought of going like, oh, I can just have a glass of wine and it can just that, can be it, you know. And so it was this like reorientation towards like I can appreciate this and savor it and, you know, have it be a part of the experience, as opposed to, like a high speed rail train, to non experience.

Speaker 1: 1:08:01

We all have to start somewhere, right.

Speaker 2: 1:08:03

Yes.

Speaker 1: 1:08:04

And then you've, that was your false self drinking.

Speaker 2: 1:08:06

Yes, yeah, or it was an attempt to escape from the false self.

Speaker 1: 1:08:11

There you go.

Speaker 2: 1:08:12

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 1:08:13

I love it. What is something that's blowing your mind right now?

Speaker 2: 1:08:19

Right now, something that is sort of blowing my mind is yeah, I tend to have problems that I kind of percolate over for a very long time just trying to think about it and work it out, and it's some of the lopsidedness in our culture and how specifically, like in Eastern Orthodox liturgies and their pageantries and their ceremonies, that they kind of act out every Sunday in their church services, how the symbolism reflects a certain proper order, if you would say. And so part of that is you know when, when you have like an Orthodox ceremony set up, you have like the high altar where you're worshiping like the highest thing which is Christ, but then at the edges of of the church you'll have gargoyles or strange, or weird creatures that are there and belong there.

Speaker 2: 1:09:29

And so something I've been thinking about is not striving for perfection but for completion and in that completion to have everything in its proper order. And so something that you know I noticed with more conservatives but in the evangelical church, is this intolerance for anything imperfect, so metaphorically, like an intolerance for the gargoyles and the demons on the edges of the church and the things that are weird and strange and disgust us and make us uncomfortable.

Speaker 2: 1:10:07

It's like we have to get rid of those and so we sort of sever that part of the whole off of ourselves and then there's a giant compensation for that, because you can't just repress one part of yourself without there being an overcompensation. And so then you know, once you kind of swing over to the left and go like, hey, we've really, you know, severed these people out of the hole or we've ostracized these people, and there's a very heartfelt desire and an overflowing of compassion to bring like everybody into the fold. You know, like everybody belongs, everyone is part of this and you know you don't have to change your identity and all that sort of thing. And I think I've been thinking about how that really pure and holy desire to bring it all into the hole We've kind of taken some of what's on the edges, like our identities, which we all if you get granular enough, we all have really quirky identities, like there's this this works on like a micro and a macro level, but where you kind of take something really strange and weird or whatever about yourself and you make it like the center thing that you worship and then your whole identity has to become about that, that one thing.

Speaker 2: 1:11:36

And I think that we've done that like on the personal level. You know like I need to to bring up this really unique thing about myself, and then I need to make everybody around me see it and affirm it and validate it. You know worship it, and so we do that like on the individual level. And then we've kind of done it on a societal level and like when you put what's supposed to be along the edges on the highest altar then, like just the whole ground starts to disintegrate underneath you.

Speaker 2: 1:12:13

And so I think that I I kind of have seen that, like in so many different spaces, you know just in kind of going like, oh wow, I think that in an effort to include everything in the whole, which is like a good and sacred and holy endeavor, we've missed the part about like proper order and we're sort of all suffering for it, and I I'm not exactly sure how to. I don't know how to bring that forward, Because this is actually the first time that I've talked about that out loud, but it's something that I've been thinking about a lot.

Speaker 1: 1:12:56

Bringing the gargles back to church.

Speaker 2: 1:12:58

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 1:12:59

Love it. What do you see as the main issues facing Christianity in America today?

Speaker 2: 1:13:09

The main issues facing Christianity. I think it's unnecessary litmus tests really. Like you know, I I've I've struggled with this personally because, like Christianity is my mother tongue.

Speaker 1: 1:13:30

It's the language that I speak, you know, to.

Speaker 2: 1:13:34

it's the symbols and metaphors and stories that I use as like a portal portal to the transcendent and I feel like I know that about myself and I also can't bring that forward in most churches like at all. I probably hold some opinion that would like offend almost every church, you know.

Speaker 2: 1:14:02

And so I think I, yeah, I think that we have sort of abandoned what our highest values are and those things that I think most people could subscribe to and rally around, and we've abandoned that for like a litmus test of dogma and you know, I think that, that you know that that response, that kind of trying to make dogma really concrete and drill down on that, you know, is natural when people feel like afraid or threatened or whatever it's to kind of like hunker down and protect the tribe, which I understand, but I think I think that we still do need a strong and robust Christianity, like as a society and the world would be better for my kids.

Speaker 2: 1:14:54

you know if, if it was the vital lifeblood, like pulsing through through our world? But I don't think that we're going to get there with litmus tests you know as in terms of like who's in and who's out, and that kind of goes for conservative and progressive Christianity, like I see that on both sides, you know. So I think that the boundaries need to be a lot more porous.

Speaker 1: 1:15:24

Nice. So kind of the practical aspect of that. What do you see as some of the issues facing the church in America, the way we do church?

Speaker 2: 1:15:36

Yeah, I think on the conservative end, because I guess when we say we, it's like you know, there's so many different groups on the conservative end.

Speaker 2: 1:15:48

I would love to see more symbolism, more openness to you know the different lenses through which we can view scripture a little bit more like ritual and pageantry, because I think that that I mean this has already been in the church for thousands of years and was just stripped of anything that I experienced in my tradition. You know, my tradition was basically four white walls. You know there was no like architectural beauty to anything that was. There was nothing like therapeutic in the environment that was happening, like my senses were engaged, aside from just like my face being blasted off with music, you know. And so there's like a lot that the evangelical or more conservative church can learn from, like orthodoxy and all of that, and that, you know, our understanding of the gospel isn't just like head knowledge, it has to be this bodily experience.

Speaker 2: 1:16:53

And then, on the progressive side, you know, I've been to several, like you know, or like Episcopal, catholic or Orthodox churches who kind of do put a high value on that beauty and the ritual of it, but sort of lack that evangelical fervor to say like come be a part of this, you know. And so it sort of ends up where, you know, it's me in the back row with my kids and coloring books trying to get them to like not kick the back of the pew and and all this kind of thing and you know, we sort of end up being like the youngest ones in the church, you know, and so you can. You really can see the divorce of the two and you can see like, oh, everything that you're lacking over here, they've got over here, and vice versa, and it would be like lovely for the two to come together and learn from one another. You know.

Speaker 1: 1:17:54

I have found the exact same thing. I 100% echo that. What's the problem you're trying to solve right now?

Speaker 2: 1:18:01

A problem I'm trying to solve personally. What I just kind of fleshed out in terms of order and again what I just described like with with the two I don't know the two opposites that I see like in the different churches that I go to is is how to, how to kind of create that for my kids.

Speaker 2: 1:18:31

So I've struggled a lot with that where you know, a lot of times it's kind of ended up with something just in our home with me, you know putting out a blanket and some candles and you know doing a little ritual with them and you know, trying to to make it a sensory experience and also going like this is like a lot of work for a mom with three little kids.

Speaker 2: 1:18:57

You know what I mean. Yeah, and so I I know this about myself, that I can kind of be an idealist and that you know I'm not going to find somewhere. That's just like nailing it in the way that I think it should go all the time. But I really don't. I haven't seen a lot that feels like accessible to me as a mom with three little kids.

Speaker 2: 1:19:22

Even just like you know, the places that I feel most enriched or I feel are most therapeutic or whatever can sometimes be like a logistical nightmare for me to try to get to with the three kids, and so it's kind of going like oh man, there's been this influx of wisdom for me, but how do I set my kids up in a way that feels healthy and like I'm not depriving them from some of the enrichment that I got as a kid, even though it came with a lot of baggage?

Speaker 1: 1:19:53

Right, right. What's something you're excited about right now?

Speaker 2: 1:20:01

What I am excited about is probably also what I am sort of most scared about is, you know, societally I think we've reached sort of a critical mass in terms of, you know, everyone's on their individual journeys but on the whole as a society, it's like you know, a lot of this pointing fingers and blame and trying to go back and undo and unravel all that was done is not working you know, and I think that we're kind of at a place where, you know, we can put our heads in the sand and try to keep going in that direction.

Speaker 2: 1:20:57

And I don't like what I think about when I think about going in that direction, or we can kind of say, like this isn't working, you know, and that would pave the way for something for a rebuild, you know, and so I'm excited about you know, the potential of kind of hitting a brick wall societally in terms of, like, our division and all that you know, in terms of leaders who have, you know, kind of taken a step back and done their work and feel, like you know, I'm ready to step back and lead with, like, some healthy and new vitality in me. Now. It's like all right, I'm ready for some new leaders to rise up and, like, try to put some new lifeblood into the withering kingdom. You know, I think that a lot of people would be receptive to that at this point. So I feel hopeful about that.

Speaker 2: 1:21:56

I think that that's the pattern of things, you know is, when the kingdom starts to wither and you have, you know, the knights that have to go out and slay the dragon and capture the fire and then bring that back and restore the kingdom. Like that's the pattern of things. I think we're at the point where we're kind of waiting for people to say like, okay, you know, I might not have this perfect, I might not have this all figured out, but like I think I've captured enough wisdom here that I'm ready to, like you know, reenter some of these spaces that we left and like and replenish the kingdom, so to speak. You know.

Speaker 1: 1:22:38

That's beautiful. Is there anything else you'd like to add that we didn't get to? I didn't ask you about.

Speaker 2: 1:22:43

We covered a lot of ground, Jeremy.

Speaker 1: 1:22:47

You have an incredible ability to take a very simple question and give a very profound answer to it, so this was a very easy podcast interview.

Speaker 2: 1:22:57

I'm glad I'm going to tell that to my husband, because he tries to ask me a simple question and then gets like stranded for 30 minutes Right.

Speaker 1: 1:23:07

It may not be as appreciated in that environment. On a podcast, though you know it's, you want to dive into things and use you. Go for it. I appreciate it.

Speaker 2: 1:23:16

Yeah, yeah. Well, thanks for having me. No, we're good. Thanks for reading the book and for taking like thinking of such thoughtful questions. I appreciate it.

Speaker 1: 1:23:25

Okay, so if people want to check out what you're doing, you've got the website. Returning to Edencom, is that the best place? Where else can they check this out?

Speaker 2: 1:23:34

Yeah, returning to Edencom. You can find my books there. My social media channels are Heather Hamilton, one on Instagram, or Heather Hamilton author on Facebook, and then also on my website. I write a monthly newsletter called unorthodox that you can sign up for, and when you sign up you can actually read the introduction for returning to. Eden for free. So, yeah, so that's there.

Speaker 1: 1:23:58

Little bonus perk for you there.

Speaker 2: 1:23:59

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 1:24:01

Well, hey, heather, I just want to thank you for taking the time to sit down today. You know, hearing all that you are bringing out and putting into the world, especially as a nine, I have immense respect for you because I know a lot of what you're sharing has to be very vulnerable and has to come with a sense of oh no. You know, like you said, most churches would have a reaction to something you know and and yet you're doing this work. You're giving the rest of us a chance to wrap our minds around this, to envision Jesus in new ways, and so I applaud that work and I just want to say thank you for all that you're doing. We really appreciate it.

Speaker 2: 1:24:43

Thanks, Jeremy.

Speaker 1: 1:24:45

All right, everybody, this has been a fantastic episode and hopefully you've got lots of new thoughts. If you want to dive into this more and you're like, wow, this is intriguing, you've got to check out this book returning to Eden. It is incredible, it is worth your time. You will have to go slowly through it, because Heather is going to walk you through a bunch of stuff that's going to cause you to rethink some things, and that's a good thing, and so I want to encourage you to do that. Thanks, as always, for listening or watching or however you're joining us and passing these on to other people that you think would benefit from these conversations as well. We'll see you all next time.