[00:00:00] Joshua Minden: Hi there. Welcome to another episode of Stories and Other Things Holy. This week, we're invited to take a leap of faith. And that might sound a bit quaint, but our principal storyteller, Dr. Terry Nelson Johnson, shares a story that challenges our way of understanding that notion. and invites us to think about Jesus having taken the ultimate leap and now inviting us to join it.

[00:00:29] The story he shares also helps us to reflect on some of the ways in which our own fears and anxieties and insecurities prevent us from leaping in to the loving arms of God. So I invite you to join me as we leap into another episode of Stories and Other Things Holy.

[00:00:56] Terry Nelson-Johnson: Stories and Other Things Holy.

[00:01:02] You know those, um, I don't even know what you call them. Those common phrases that, that carry some wisdom presumably, but they also can end up like sounding trite or, or hallmarky as the case may be. So this is a story that redeems one of those phrases, at least for me and puts teeth back into it. It's also a pretty funny, joyful, tender story.

[00:01:30] Story involves the trapeze, I had gone to a retreat center in New York and done the trapeze for a week with Sam Keen. Beautiful man, just stunningly beautiful and brilliant. Did a lot of men's work and he fell in love with the trapeze when he was like in his mid to late 60s. Went to San Francisco to do a freelance article on, um, Um, a circus school in San Francisco.

[00:01:59] Like where else would they have a circus school than in San Francisco? Nothing personal. So San Keane goes to the circus school, he's interviewing them. And at the conclusion of his interview, they said, Mr. Keane, would you like to go up in the trapeze? And he said, I'm underdressed. Um, I have a little thing in sciatica, you know, we would all do.

[00:02:19] Eventually they convinced him to go up. And the dude falls in love with the trapeze. Unless you become like one of these little children, you won't know what it's like to enter into the, into Holy communion or to swing in the trapeze. So falls in love with the trapeze, uh, ends up purchasing a used trapeze.

[00:02:38] First of all, just the concepts fascinating to me. And it's in his backyard. So, you know, first of all, you have to have a big backyard. I've always wondered like, did he tell his wife it was coming? Like, You know, honey, the tomatoes might not get as much sun. I don't know, whatever, but he loved it. And he had a school in his backyard and his thesis was that you could find a moment in the trapeze that corresponds with your life.

[00:03:02] And, uh, having done the trapeze with him for a week, it proved to be unbelievably prescient and beautiful. And we would trapeze for eight hours and then do spiritual direction for an hour. It was the richest spiritual direction because everyone was talking out of their body. The learning that came from feeling it in your body was so powerful.

[00:03:24] So, um, while I'm in, uh, doing at the end of the, the trapeze week, the guys come up to me who were running the trapeze part. They're like, Hey, you're from Chicago. Are you right? I'm like, Oh, it's like, well, we're coming there and we're going to set up our rig at a day camp for like six weeks. And we're going to fly, um, two or three days a week.

[00:03:43] You know, at the end of the camp day, if you have friends that you would like to have come, just tell them to come. You know, throw in 20 bucks and they can fly with us. I'm like, first, let me get this straight. You're putting up the trapeze rig at a day camp, right? Are you kidding me? No. And then it turns out it's in Bannockburn, which is a pretty hoity doity little, you know, Northern suburb thing.

[00:04:04] So of course they have day camps with trapeze. I went to day camp. I made ashtrays. And you know, did the archery thing, these guys have trapeze, inline skating, the whole thing. So, I invite everybody I know, like, you gotta come trapeze, it's the greatest thing in the world, you're gonna love it, blah, blah, blah.

[00:04:21] Friend of mine, who's a massage therapist, says, calls me and says, hey, that trapeze thing, can my kids come? You know, I think they carry more fear than I would hope, and I'm always looking for things that might mitigate their fear. And I'm like, it's a day camp, so I can't imagine that your adolescent kids are not invited.

[00:04:38] She has three kids, two girls and a boy. They come. The kids are not happy. They are undergoing mandatory fun. And they're not, they don't think it's funny whatsoever. They're going to have to go trapeze with old chubby people, and, you know, they don't want to do it. The two girls are a little more intrigued when they see the guys that will be doing the catching.

[00:04:59] And they're like, well, if it involves leaping into the arms of that guy, maybe I will consider this. So, they do the instruction, which isn't very long. And they introduce you to the safety system, which isn't overwhelming. It's like a belt with two little half moon, um, steel things on it. And then it's a pulley system.

[00:05:22] So two hooks come down and they go around the, the aforementioned half moons, and that's it basically. It's, you know, when you go rock climbing, you have all the webbing, nothing, just this little belt. It doesn't imbue a great deal of confidence in your safety. So. They go like, who wants to go first? The kids point to their mom like, she does.

[00:05:41] So she goes up, and I don't know why they do this, but the ladders that they use for the trapeze are sort of comically, you know, because the circus, narrow. And when you go up, if you have any, you know, body weight, they start to sway a little bit. So she's going up. She's going slower and slower. She gets to the top, and the top is just this platform.

[00:06:00] There's nothing up there that That screams to you like, we're going to take care of you. This is all fine. It's very secure. Like, it doesn't feel like very secure at all. You're standing, you know, uh, really high on this two by four little platform thing, holding onto a cable. So they hook her up into the, um, safety deal.

[00:06:20] And then it's her turn to go. So the way this goes is you hold the trapeze bar with one hand, which is way heavier than you would imagine. And then they say, ready, hep, which is like trapeze word for go, and you're supposed to swing the trapeze bar up while you're reaching with your other hand and then hop simultaneously.

[00:06:38] And they told you to imagine that you're like hopping into a manhole cover, like, I don't know, that was stupid. But um, that's what they told you to do. So it's her turn to go. There's a guy in back of her giving her a little sense of confidence by, or security by holding her. And then she, it becomes. Clear that she's scared.

[00:06:58] And the kids initially think this is the hilarious, just hilarious. Like, that's great. Mom who wanted to like, get rid of our fear is now scared. Like, good. Way to go, mom. Way to be scared. So she's up there. She's almost shaky. And then the guy in back of her says, ready? Hep, which is her cue to like you swing, hop, you know, go.

[00:07:15] There's seven elements of the swing. It's very complicated. And you know, I was on the ground looking up at her and, uh, she didn't say anything verbally. But when he said. Ready, hep, she basically just with her face, facial thing said, hep you, I am not leaving this platform, ever. So then she starts to dialogue, it's a one way dialogue, with the kid who's holding the safety lines.

[00:07:41] I don't know, if I was going to guess, he's 20 years old. And if I was going to guess further, I'd say he's from California. Looks very relaxed. Has like the curly, sandy blonde hair, no shirt, cutoffs, Birkenstocks, are you tracking me here? And if you were further to suggest that he may be high, I would not bet against this.

[00:07:59] I mean, he was relaxed, one way or the other. So, she starts to say to him, You can't hold me. You can't hold me. And he's like, well, ma'am, it's not a matter of holding you, it's a matter of breaking your fall. I've done this with football players. We've done this a lot. You're going to be fine. She will have none of it.

[00:08:16] You know when you're scared, you're just not really listening? You can't hold me. You can't hold me. And it's a pulley system. So she's sort of working the physics of this. And this guy is You know, he's obviously strong, but he's also sort of small and she's, I don't know how to, you know, what you're supposed to say, bigger, muscular.

[00:08:33] And, uh, she's thinking if she goes down, he's going up, he's going to like turn into Gumby, you know, like go through the whole pulley thing and come out like stretched out. So she says, you can't hold me. You can't hold me. You can't hold me. And then the kid from California, you know, in the, in the cutoffs and the hair and, and high, he starts to get frustrated, which was sort of cool.

[00:08:54] I mean, cause you got to go far to frustrate a kid who's already high and relaxed from California. So finally he looks up at her and he just says, well, lady, you'll never know unless you go. Will you?

[00:09:10] The root word of the word mystery comes from a cluster of words, which means shut up. And somehow his declaration to her shut her up, not so much in shame as much as like, I think she knew intuitively he was right. Well, lady, you'll never know unless you go, will you? And then she turns forward. She takes a bunch of deep breaths, which is fascinating into her.

[00:09:37] I blew the breath of life. How is it that we don't have access to our breath? And then something in life tells us you better breathe. From someplace deep in you, a whole bunch of vertebrae down that you have no access to right now. She takes some breaths from that place. Then she turns to the guy, just nods.

[00:09:58] He knows, she knows. He says, ready, hep. She awkwardly and beautifully swings the bar up. She grabs the other end of the bar. She hops. She swings out. And she's holding her breath, which they tell you not to do. And she swings back. And then on that second swing, she does that like seven year old.

[00:10:22] The kids are laughing. She's laughing. She drops into the net. Kids are cheering for their mom. So I began this story with saying, you know, there's those phrases that become trite. And one of those phrases is. We need to take a leap of faith.

[00:10:45] I think we need to take leaps of faith. And that we'll never know if there is a God prepared to hold us. If there is a future after the divorce. If there's anybody poised to catch us, to cheer for us. If there's a net. We'll never know any of that unless we leap. One of my favorite images of Jesus is transposing or translating those last words of his into your hands.

[00:11:19] I commend my spirit into him saying, daddy, here I come. Please catch me. I'm going to take a leap of faith. I'm going to take the leap of faith into the ambiguous, certain arms of love

[00:11:35] stories and other things. Holy.

[00:11:45] Joshua Minden: Bless us, O Lord, 

[00:11:47] Terry Nelson-Johnson: for these Thy gifts, 

[00:11:49] Joshua Minden: which we are about to receive 

[00:11:52] Terry Nelson-Johnson: from Thy bounty, 

[00:11:53] Joshua Minden: through Christ our Lord. Amen. 

[00:11:56] Terry Nelson-Johnson: Amen. 

[00:11:58] Joshua Minden: Amen, brother. Well, lady, you'll never know if you don't go, will you? 

[00:12:05] Terry Nelson-Johnson: Never know unless you go, baby. 

[00:12:06] Joshua Minden: Yeah.

[00:12:12] In the end of your, in the end of your story, you, you make this reference to Jesus. And, um, in the picture in my mind, let me connect a couple of pictures. The opening slide of one, one of the opening slides for your confirmation retreat is this picture of a, of a little boy leaping off of a large rock into a body of water with absolute abandonment and.

[00:12:38] I kind of superimposed that, that image of Jesus or that image of the boy with Jesus kind of like leaping off the cross again with that similar kind of, here I go. So inverted from my upbringing, from like how I learned to think of that story growing up and incredibly life giving. 

[00:13:02] Terry Nelson-Johnson: Yeah. 

[00:13:02] Joshua Minden: Help me, help me understand that connection, specifically Jesus saying, Daddy, here I come.

[00:13:08] And how it ties to the story. 

[00:13:11] Terry Nelson-Johnson: Yeah, it's really powerful. It struck me when I retold the story, how many of the stories that completely capture my imagination sort of crescendo in a line or a moment. And that it's that little bit of Terry Nelson Johnson like, ha, ha, ha, ha, hi, guy, California, um, Gumby, you know, all of that.

[00:13:38] And then, She, he says, well lady, you'll never know unless you go. And I'm sitting, I'm standing on the ground listening to all this, watching it, and it's not like, the interior experience happens before the intellectual experience. The interior experience is, um, something profound just happened, uh, and then, then in the next week or month or.

[00:14:07] year, or the rest of my life, I am, uh, burdened and gifted with, like, what does that mean? Well, lady, unless you know it, you'll never go. So, some of the fruits of that contemplation, long loving look, for me, is to reimagine, and you sort of, um, referenced it. It's not the way. I was ushered into the story of the crucifixion and the resurrection, and there was no leap involved, et cetera, um, and no abandon, you know?

[00:14:45] But I think it was Ed Foley who introduced this notion of what if the resurrection is a decision never thought of it as it as There was any volition in the resurrection. It's like well, he did his duty the guy died There was a lot of suffering and then he had to wait for a little bit And then God finished the story.

[00:15:06] Like, in a way, Jesus had nothing to do with it. Once he was faithful to suffering on our behalf, if we use that, uh, atonement theology, which we don't really want to do, but that's the common understanding, then Jesus job was done. And then God does everything else. And so when Foley introduced this notion of like, Holy Saturday was Jesus opportunity to make a decision whether he was going to keep going, And so then, to put Jesus on the platform, wondering, like, hey, it's been a long run, I'm really tired, uh, my body's pretty beat up, I was pretty faithful, I think, I don't even know for sure.

[00:15:54] And I never imagined that something else would be asked of me after that. 

[00:15:59] Joshua Minden: Mmm 

[00:16:01] Terry Nelson-Johnson: now, I'm being asked. To go, to leap, to enter into something, and it demands a kind of abandon of everything I knew. He's in liminal space, I mean, Holy Saturday is liminal space, it's the in between space. And the in between means it's after I died, before this, I'm welcomed into something.

[00:16:29] But that I have to. cooperate to get there. And, you know, we go back to that line we've used previously, God can't do anything here without our cooperation, which means the resurrection is not impositional. Like, I'm going to resurrect you whether you like it or not, because you went and died on me. Like, no, that you are invited to make, uh, the penultimate, the quintessential gesture of cooperation with new life.

[00:17:01] by leaping, post dying leaping. Um, it's just so compelling to me. Um, and then it makes so much sense to me that, you know, in the spiritual direction work that I do, that there are people that don't leap. 

[00:17:22] Joshua Minden: Yeah. 

[00:17:23] Terry Nelson-Johnson: That the, the resurrection is awaiting them after their divorce. The resurrection is awaiting them after the mastectomy.

[00:17:31] The resurrection is awaiting them after they've lost the job, after the bankruptcy, whatever it is. And there's a gazillion things. 

[00:17:38] Yeah. 

[00:17:39] Terry Nelson-Johnson: The new life is there to be had. But you have to, you and God have to dance, have to leap, have to, and to imagine, you God, as the California kid, may be high, which is, you know, just a very, very fascinating concept and we could get fired for that.

[00:17:56] They're gonna send this portion of the tape downtown somewhere, um, to imagine God saying to us, Well, Joshua, you'll never know unless you go, will you? You'll never know unless you leap. Yeah. The resurrection is awaiting you. And to imagine Jesus having to do that, it just makes Jesus so much more noble, in my like little humble estimation.

[00:18:22] Like oh God, oh God, oh Jesus. You leapt one more time. And then when I'm on the thresholds of all those almost resurrections, like, do you think your marriage could resurrect again? Like, well, it did a couple times. I don't know if it'll do it again. Do you think your vocation will resurrect? resurrect again?

[00:18:45] Do you think your body, which is diminishing, will, how is a, how is a diminishing body to resurrect? Like, I don't know. You think your relationship with the church will resurrect? Do you think like the United States and its current manifestation will resurrect? Well, what if the God says to the United States, you will, you'll never know unless you go, never know unless you leap into something different, into something more, into something transform, transformational?

[00:19:12] Yeah. Oh. All from a kid in Cut Offs and Birkenstocks. Well, lady, you'll never know unless you go. And then her response was so, like, you got me on that one. And so the line in the story of the root word of the word mystery comes from roots meaning shut up. And that line just shut her up. Again, not in shame, but in like, uh, yeah, you're right.

[00:19:41] And then she turned inward. And, you know, for millenia, we've been told that breathing is somehow central to the brain function. realm of the soul. And then there's some people that that's their soul spiritual exercise. But those of us who don't do that that well, we do it too when these moments come in our lives.

[00:20:04] So nobody told her, you might want to take a couple really deep breaths to connect your spirit and your body and the mystery of the divine, which is somehow with you on this platform. She just knew, like, closes her eyes, that classic thing, and then she enters into a dialogue Um, with the mystery of an entity beckoning her, like, and she does it through taking deep breaths just like the spiritual teachers have been teaching people for thousands and thousands of years.

[00:20:36] It's a correlation between your breath and the presence of the spirit. Okay. 

[00:20:41] Joshua Minden: Mm. Yeah. I love that Ed Foley reference, that resurrection is a decision. Um, My wife and I use this, use this, we're very intentional about the way we use the word decision because of a comedian that we both appreciate who did a bit about the idea of decision.

[00:21:01] So like when you see a medieval painting and, and a person is portrayed in a particular way, and, um, this is going to sound a little, Strange, but like when, when a piece of fabric finds its way to a part of the body in a way that is like That was a decision That didn't just happen as some whimsy of the brush like you put that piece of tulle fabric In their posterior place that way And and it's part of a bit But anyway, though the idea is is like no there there are decisions like someone made a conscious decision to do a thing and it Although we use that in kind of a wry and playful way.

[00:21:50] I really loved it too What that allowed me to do in this space when you shared that reference because it's like no it was intention. Mm hmm. There was there was I don't want to I don't want to minimize it by saying preparation, but there was There was a foreknowing and and kind of a getting oneself ready for and knowing that no one around me Really knows what I'm about to do.

[00:22:17] Yeah, 

[00:22:17] Joshua Minden: and it was And no one, even after it's happened, will fully comprehend the implications of it for a long time. Um, and how extraordinary that is and how, how incredible that is and all the more causes me to feel a level of appreciation and humbleness. We talked about in a previous episode, like sometimes you teach a concept, you've taught a concept.

[00:22:49] For years, but like that caused you to receive it in a little different way, right? Yes Yeah, that's good. And I just heard this in a little different. I was like, oh That was a decision he chose Yeah, the resurrection 

[00:23:06] Terry Nelson-Johnson: the the piece that is also intriguing in there is that The decision is to risk. It's not a decision to, Okay, so this is the contract.

[00:23:17] If I do this, you're going to do this, and then I'll resurrect? 

[00:23:20] Joshua Minden: Right. 

[00:23:21] Terry Nelson-Johnson: Okay. I'm in. It's not transactional? No, it wasn't transactional. It was, there's more. There's more. There's more love. There's more communion. There's more, uh, unitive consciousness. There's more holy communion with the source of all of this.

[00:23:38] And you have to leap. You have to go and you know the whoever said risk is God's aphrodisiac and then Alfred Adler, perhaps our greatest danger is we take too many precautions Yes, and then the most repeated line in Scripture apparently be not afraid They're all clustered around this like do you want to?

[00:24:04] Allow yourself to be ushered into more life and will you take that risk? 

[00:24:08] Joshua Minden: Yeah 

[00:24:09] Terry Nelson-Johnson: without any guarantees or any roadmap or any certainties. Leap. Well, Jesus, you'll never know unless you go. Yeah. And then the other dimension of that is, like, Jesus can't leap for us. Like, Jesus in spirit may have been with my friend on the platform, but he can't leap for her.

[00:24:32] Like, he leaped already. 

[00:24:33] Yeah. 

[00:24:34] Terry Nelson-Johnson: Um, but the fact that he went first is significant. First is a little theologically iffy because it suggests that This wasn't happening prior to Jesus, but it was. But Jesus is like the crescendo of the symphony of this experience of the paschal mystery. And I have this just delightful image in my head of Jesus and his pals.

[00:25:02] Uh, going out to just hang out, they're like 13 or 14, they find a quarry at the, uh, very steep thing, and they, they, just as an invitation to 14 year old boys, like, let's just run and leap into that quarry, and they're like, yeah, yeah, yeah, let's do that. And then, you know, they go to the, they go look, and it's a lot higher than they thought, and then they all begin to.

[00:25:27] And they come up with like, I'd love to, but, you know, I can't, um, swim after eating, you know, for two hours. And I got a little thing in my back and, uh, my mom says that I need, you know, uh, nose plugs, whatever. And pretty soon everybody has absented themselves except for Jesus. And he says like, I'll go. And they're like, yeah, yeah, you go, Jesus, that sounds great.

[00:25:53] So they all go to the edge of the quarry and Jesus goes 20 yards back and they're like, come on, yeah, go. Jesus starts to sprint and he's, you know, does that classic like sprints off the edge of the quarry, uh, or the cliff. And then his legs, you know, keep going as he's just sort of running forward and they're all like, everybody's, all his pals are cheering.

[00:26:12] Hits the water. Or it makes that like. Um, sound that somebody hitting the water way far below makes. And then he's under the water for way too long. And all the guys are like, I told him not to go. That was the stupidest. I don't know what he was thinking. Like, what? Why? Oh my God, we've lost him. And then his head just pops up and he does the like, you know, and he's got that Jesus hair thing.

[00:26:34] So this is going back. And then he just does like, come on in, the water is great. And then we're left on the precipice overlooking the quorum, quarry, and Jesus is like, really? Come to the resurrection. Join me in the resurrection. But you'll never know unless you go. So you can go talk about, you can go home and tell this story without going and et cetera, et cetera.

[00:27:01] But, it's a. It's a cooperative venture, like, come on. 

[00:27:05] Oh, 

[00:27:06] Terry Nelson-Johnson: man. I

[00:27:12] Joshua Minden: guess in a sense I'm asking, then what? Like Jesus jumps, we, we, we have the realization, and then what? If I'm stuck in the birth canal, metaphorically, or if I'm sitting in the metaphorical dentist So, if I'm the one on that platform not jumping, what's, like, take me the next step?

[00:27:49] Terry Nelson-Johnson: Yeah, that's the question. Sort of two things come to mind. One is, God's capacity to re tender the invitation is inexhaustible, which I think, for me, engenders a lot of hope. Like, so, you want to jump tomorrow? We'll all come back tomorrow, Corey will be here. And that jumping demands a certain amount of momentum, and to the extent that you frustrate that momentum, it's less likely that you're going to do it.

[00:28:25] So if you get up on that story that I tell about Claire, get up on that high dive and you do the one, two, one, two, one. By about the fourth one, two, you sort of know the person's not going. And then they, you know, they call it the walk of shame, which is fascinating, which means now you're, you have to go back down the, the ladder of the high dive because you're not going, you know, from a personal perspective, when I'm have the privilege to hang out with people who are hoping to enrich their lives and from, in my humble perspective, which means cooperating with the Paschal Mystery more robustly, and they don't, there is a deep sadness in me.

[00:29:14] Um, and I can only imagine a grief on God's part of like, come on. And that, that, it's not the nature of God to stand behind you and push you off the platform. But forever invite, like, just jump. Trust me. And that's the, that's the, uh, element in there of risk. There's a correlation between risk and trust. If you're a crazy adolescent, you just do stupid things, then there's not, then, then you don't have that trust because you're just gonna go do it regardless of how ridiculous it is.

[00:29:48] But if you know that there's potential harm here, if you know that you don't know how this is gonna turn out, I mean, risk isn't a risk if you know like, oh, this is all gonna be fine. Like, no, you don't know. That's what makes it a risk. And so. There's a deep correlation between risk and trust, and come on, come to the resurrection.

[00:30:08] The resurrection is trustworthy. That's sort of what we're, you know, the bottom line here. And it's just, the importance for me of Jesus quote unquote going first is that it engenders trust. Like, well, he did it. And maybe I can do it too. I don't know. Um, even though he can't do it for me. And I think the, the atonement theology is precisely putting all the burden on Jesus.

[00:30:35] Well, Jesus did all this for us, so now we are mere, you know, in the way we, the language we use as cheerleaders for Jesus, like, Jesus jumped, like, resurrection's done. And no, the resurrection is made manifest in Jesus's leap. And then Jesus says, come on, come on in, the water's great. But you'll never know unless you go, lady.

[00:30:58] Joshua Minden: It's interesting, I, I realized like that, that last point really made it clear to me. It astounds me how easily I lose sight of some of these core concepts that we grapple with regularly. Like as I'm trying to listen to your own podcast, dude, I mean, yeah, right. I mean, why not? Um, well I do because it. In retrospect, the answer, we'd already answered the question that I was wrestling to find a way to ask.

[00:31:31] And it was back to that idea of risk and this connection with engendering trust, and the, it's not atonement theology, it's not putting all of the burden on Jesus, it's Jesus Made it possible, Jesus led the way for us to participate more fully in that, in that life of love and service and, and the paschal mystery and to be life and love in the world.

[00:31:58] To not just mimic it or piously emulate it, but to actually, to be transformed into the one in whom led, in who led the way. 

[00:32:10] Amen. Amen. 

[00:32:12] Joshua Minden: And to, and to bear, and we get back to what Holy Communion actually means, which we really should get back to at some point. Yeah. But like, to be that deeper reality in the world.

[00:32:30] Yeah. 

[00:32:32] Joshua Minden: Yeah, and it's almost embarrassing to realize like how quickly I like, it's like, tell me the step, like I've got my, I've got my blueprint, like, okay, I did step one through three and now I, okay, what is step four, you know? And I'm not, I'm, I'm not belittling anyone, but me in this case, but like, it, it does feel like I catch myself.

[00:32:55] I'm like, wow, Joshua, like. How easily it gets away from me that to say risk trust hope 

[00:33:07] Terry Nelson-Johnson: yeah, 

[00:33:08] Joshua Minden: there's also honesty like that was the other one that jumped out to me is like The woman on the trapeze like the comment that the young man made Forced her or invited her maybe is a better way to say it to be honest with yourself Honest about her fear.

[00:33:26] Yeah 

[00:33:27] Joshua Minden: honest about where she was And what was being asked of her. 

[00:33:32] Yeah, that's right 

[00:33:35] Joshua Minden: And so that combination of like trust and hope and risk and honesty, 

[00:33:42] yeah 

[00:33:43] Joshua Minden: All those things make it possible to 

[00:33:46] yeah 

[00:33:47] Joshua Minden: join in 

[00:33:50] Terry Nelson-Johnson: The uh That piece you did was so good on. I don't know how quickly You How quickly I forget. Oh.

[00:33:58] You know? Uh, and one of my, uh, joyful, playful, hopeful notions about God is that I cannot imagine God like in it with deep frustration saying, Haven't we been over this? Like, we, we covered this yesterday. You know, the teachers that are pissed off because you're asking them like, yeah, how do you do the equation?

[00:34:24] They're like, we did this yesterday. As though, like, you know, where were you? And with respect to, you know, the Paschal Mystery and risk and trust and Lee Bean, we just are not in relationship with a God who says like, Yeah, we went over this yesterday. Yeah, which sort of there's that element of like eternal patience For those of us who will forget this tomorrow Which we think this is the hottest thing going and we're like, oh, yeah risk trust honesty hope Uh, which obviously Would have us return to 

[00:35:09] Bless us, O Lord.

[00:35:10] Joshua Minden: And these, your many gifts. 

[00:35:13] Which we have just received. From thy bounty. Through Christ our Lord, Amen. Amen.

[00:35:25] Joshua Minden: Thank you for joining us for this episode of Stories and Other Things Holy. If this is your first time with us, we encourage you to go to our website, storiesandotherthingsholy. com And sign up for our email newsletter. If you've been with us for a while, I encourage you to discern becoming a supporting member of Stories and Other Things Holy.

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