In the green Colombian mountains stands a magical place called
Casita. In this vibrant house lives the
extraordinary Madrigal family. Every child in the Madrigal
family receives a magical gift on their 5th birthday.
For one sister it was superhuman strength, for another, the
ability to make flowers bloom with a touch.
Until one day on Mirabelle's 5th birthday, when her ceremony
arrived, no magical door appeared and no gift was
bestowed. For years afterward, Mirabelle
watched her cousins and siblings used their spectacular abilities
to serve the community while she remained ordinary.
She smiled and helped wherever she could, organizing family
functions, assisting her mother, playing with the local children.
But that question always lingered in her heart.
What is my gift? When do I enter the story?
Then one day, cracks began to appear in Casita's walls and the
family's magic started to falter.
As disbelief gave way to panic, everyone scrambled to preserve
their powers. Mirabel, with no magic to lose,
was the only one who saw truly what was happening while the
others fought to maintain their special abilities, feeling
intensely the pressure of what was going on, she alone noticed
how her family was fracturing beneath the weight of the
expectations their gifts created.
Mirabelle was determined to save the house, to save the family,
so she offered the only thing she had, her love.
She listened as her sister Louisa confessed how her
strength made her think she could never be weak.
She listened as Isabella confessed her flowery touch had
become hollow and fake to her, and Mirabel did what no one else
was willing or able to do, offer herself in all her flaws, not
merely her gifts, to save the family.
When the house finally crumbled completely, it was Mirabel who
pulled the family back together. And as the grateful village
joined them in rebuilding their house, it was the family, not
just the house, that was rebuilt.
And when Mirabelle was handed the new dorno, the final piece
of the rebuilt casita, she saw in her reflection herself all of
herself. Like Mirabelle's sisters, we
have a tendency to put all the pressure on ourselves.
Like Mirabelle, we tend to wonder how we could possibly
enter the great story. But the Christian vision of the
relationship between great and ordinary isn't what you'd think.
And not only can we find the great story in the kitchen sink,
it's the first place we have to learn to look.
Welcome to the Imagination Redeemed podcast where we follow
the great stories further up and further in In Pursuit of the
Life of Christ. Welcome everyone to the
Imagination Redeemed podcast. I'm Brian Brown joins today by
Sarah Howell, Matthew Clark and Jeremiah England.
And we are going to talk today about finding the great story in
the kitchen sink. But before we do a little
housekeeping on June 4th, so that is days not weeks away, we
will be beginning our summer reading group.
We will be discussing the character of Tom Bombadil, that
great enigma from the Lord of the Rings books, and we will
also be talking about mastery, vocation, and calling.
We will be reading together the book In the House of Tom
Bombedell by CR Wiley, which is short, easy read, non
threatening, and was so good when I read it a few months ago
that I started storming around saying we had to do a reading
group because it was an introduction to so many concepts
that are integral to a Christian imagination, a full orb
Christianity, and so new to most of us in the way that we have
been conditioned to live our lives.
So we're going to do 4 evenings for consecutive weeks.
The first one will be with the author, CR Wiley, and we're
going to do them live so you can participate.
We're going to put the first episode on the podcast, but the
rest of it is all only if you sign up.
So head over to anselmsociety.org/bombadil,
pause the episode. Go do that right now because
space is limited if you can't join any given session live.
We have chat functions. We have the ability to watch the
recording. Basically, we can keep the
conversation going the whole the whole month long and beyond.
So well worth your time for the book alone, let alone the
conversation. All right, lady and gentlemen,
moving from our story, Disney's and Kanto, I should probably
mention before we jump in, we have typically on this show done
little known stories and that's probably going to remain our MO
more more often than not. We want to introduce you, the
listeners gradually to more and more of the stories that have
come from the Christian imagination and have shaped the
Christian imagination. However, whatever my feelings
about the current state of the Walt Disney Corporation might
be, there are also great stories that you can look for that may
or may not have come from a Christian place.
But all truth is God's truth, and we can see good and true and
beautiful things and recognize them for what they are, where
they are. And In Kanto is.
I don't think it's just one of the best movies that Disney has
ever made. I think it's one of the best
movies of the last 10 years and it's a good kick off for a
discussion of really how much we have been conditioned by
stories, among other things, to have actually an outlook on life
that doesn't match the Christian one.
But before we get into any of that, let's just start guys with
the obvious. We, I, I would be shocked if we
had a listener who was older than about 9 who didn't feel
inadequate and pressured a lot of the time.
That seems to be the human condition on some level.
And it's certainly the modern condition.
But we all want our lives to mean something.
We all want that, that quest for meaning.
It might be, it might be sort of greatness in some sense, but
it's certainly meaning in some sense.
We want to matter. So let me just start with that
tension point between greatness and and the ordinary, and
especially the ordinary us. I think that Encanto is kind of
an interesting movie, especially to come out right now because I
think more than ever in American culture, having some kind of a
superpower or super gift or magical gift is pretty dominant
in all of their main stories. Like if you look at the highest
grossing movies in the last 30 years, I bet 70% of them are
about some kind of a person with superpowers, whether it's, you
know, Marvel, obviously, Harry Potter or Frozen or anything
else like that. I mean, it's really just seems
like something that in our specific kind of culture today
is something everyone's desperately looking for.
And why that is whether it's kind of like you were saying,
Brian, a feeling of inadequacy. If I could only have my
superpower, if I could only get my letter from Hogwarts and be
able to do magic or, you know, inherit my superpower, you know,
then I could have meaning in my life or I could then be, you
know, a recognized person. Why do you guys think that the
superhero in one way or another form is the dominant stories,
the dominant story of the last 30 years?
I really like that question, Jeremiah.
I had not thought about it that way before.
I think something that you might be tapping into with your
question is the fact that we all desire to be who we feel like we
were made to be. And ultimately we as Christians
believe that that is in union with God.
Athanasius, a great church father, says that God became man
so that man could become God. Not for us to be equal with God,
but that through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, we could be
his Co laborers participating in the vision and the the purpose
for his creation the way that we were supposed to be.
And I think superheroes are the maybe potentially A secular way
at trying to grasp at what it would mean to not have the
inadequacies, not have the failures, not have the finitude
of humanity, but instead step into the greatness that we we
feel exists in our future as the way God has intended it with our
union with him. So maybe that's hyper
spiritualizing it a little bit too much.
But I wonder if all that to say is that the inadequacy is real
because we are inadequate and we're seeking a way to alleviate
that inadequacy. And I think we often look in the
wrong places. It's such an interesting thing
because most of the stories are about, you know, Luke Skywalker
is just this poor farm boy. And then, aha, no, you have
special amazing connection to the Force that nobody else has,
you know, and on and on. But with, with Mirabelle, it
was, oh, yeah, everybody else has a really cool magical gift
except for you. And she's like, no, no, it's
totally fine. I'm special the way I am.
And one of the kids is like, is your superpower just denial?
You know, like being in denial is your magical gift.
I think that's the the normal cop out is that, yeah, you don't
have superpowers, but you are special just the way you are.
And I think maybe the deeper meaning of Encanto is actually
the thing that you have that might seem ordinary to everybody
else is actually a more powerful magical gift than anybody else.
Like the ability to love someone else and to listen to them and
to be humble. These are forces in the universe
that are much stronger. It's the deep magic, like Aslan
said, that the people with the swords and sorcery could never
really understand it's true power.
I thought of a movie called Perfect Days.
I don't know if you've seen this movie.
It's it's kind of an indie film. And this, the story is about
this guy who is a toilet cleaner in Japan.
And you just follow him through his really kind of boring,
ordinary routines. Day after day after day.
He gets up and he does the same thing every day.
And he waters his little plants and he puts on his uniform and
he trims his mustache. And he gets the same coffee out
of the vending machine every day.
And he goes and he cleans the toilets and he eats his little
sandwich in the park. And he takes a picture of a tree
every day that with the sun coming through it.
But it is such a captivating and beautiful movie.
But what you see is his superpower is to is willing to
be a nobody. And that's, that opens up this
possibility for him to he can afford to pay a certain kind of
attention and and be present in a way in the world that ends up
kind of spilling over to people around him.
Why is that so difficult for us? Why do we bring back so much of
our perspective on life, though, back to I'm I'm not enough and
the things that I am doing on a daily basis are not enough.
And particularly they might be the category issue, right?
It's not just that I'm not a good enough parent.
It's that I'm spending all this time on parenting when I should
be saving the world, or I'm spending this time on the dishes
in the kitchen sink when I ought to be writing that Symphony.
So it can, it can be a how we spend our time thing.
It can be how we see ourselves thing.
It can also just be a type of thing I'm spending so much time
doing issue. Why do we do that to ourselves?
Where does that come from? In in Kanto, right, where
Maribel really wanted to be able to help and do all the great
things that she saw around her. So when I was younger growing
up, I was like a Baptist Christian School.
And they were kind of like, you've got a lot of things that
you need to do to be a successful Christian.
You got to go to Sunday morning service, Sunday evening service
and Wednesday night service. Anything less is not OK.
And you need to be preparing for mission work and all these great
things. And I was captivated by that.
I was like, yeah, I really want to do this type of thing.
It's funny when it the actual moment that I kind of learned
something was we were going over in the book of Revelations where
there's talks about the throne of God and what's happening,
right? And then there's basically these
angels that are just 24/7 night and day.
They're just holy, holy, holy. That's all they're doing type of
thing. And you know, there's like this
chorus that is doing nothing but praise God.
And I had kind of this moment because my classmates were like,
Oh yeah, it would be so great to just, you know, do nothing but
praise God. And I was kind of like, oh man,
I don't want to do that. That sounds awful having to do
that over and over and over again all day today and tomorrow
and for a year and for 20 years and 1000 years.
Remember I talked to my dad about it and he was like, well,
it makes sense for the angels to do that because and those
particular angels to do it because that's what they were
created for. That was their purpose.
But that's not your purpose. That's not what God created you
to do. And he brought up to me, you
know, being one of my favorite verses.
It's in Micah 6 and the the question is, you know, kind of
what are you supposed to be doing with your life and says
with what should I come before the Lord and bow down before God
on high? Shall I come before him with
burnt offerings, with calves a year old?
Will the Lord be pleased with a thousands of Rams 10,000 rivers
of oil, which is a lot of oil and these are the the great
sacrifices in the great, you know outward amazing, you know
Christian things of the Old Testament you can do he has told
you, oh man, what is good and what does the Lord require of
you but to do justice to love kindness and to walk humbly with
your God like that's it. That's, that's what our purpose
is. And that's such a simple thing
and it has none of the kind of trappings and stuff.
And there is like a real amazing power and obedience of doing
those three things. And that when you do those three
things, it's like it can, it can change the world, it can change
the people around you, it can change you.
And that's kind of more of what God designed us to do is to live
in the Garden of Eden, tend to his creation, and walk with God.
And that's it. So interesting that that the
mindset we're talking about struggling with is not some
brand new thing. Obviously the person writing
that felt that way too, like I should be doing all these
impressive things, right? Right, yeah, and I should have
these great accomplishments. And another story I really love
is Chariots of Fire, which if you guys have seen it before,
the basic story is that there's a guy that kind of comes from a
Christian home, Christian dynasty, almost right?
And his parents are very much preaching him, pushing him to go
into ministry, be a missionary, but he wants to run.
He's a sprinter and he ends up going to the Olympics.
And one of the quotes in there that he says, this guy Eric, he
says that I know that God has like a purpose, like a
spiritual, you know, purpose for me.
But God also made me fast and I feel his pleasure when I run.
And Eric, if you read his book and kind of his biography, he
does go on to be a missionary and, and, and do a lot of those
things. But I think that he, he kind of
understood that like a lot of what, you know, we are created
for can be as simple as as running in that, that God
actually finds real pleasure in, you know, kind of our our daily
activities that might not seem so spiritually on the surface.
And, and I just think of my own life, you know what God made me,
you know, to do, you know, like he made me a good dad.
And, you know, I can make my kids laugh.
I can help my kids with their chemistry homework.
And I do, I feel God's pleasure when I do those things.
I feel it's pleasure when I'm cleaning the house and I'm just
kind of spending time with him in the normal everyday things.
I think there's a real power to that.
It boils down to what does it mean to be human?
In our modern day, I would maybe argue that we have a poor
understanding of what it means to exist versus what does it
mean to do what to produce specifically.
We often think about events or great actions, but we forget the
kind of person that has to come to those actions.
I think we often forget that doing a courageous act doesn't
make you courageous. You have to be the kind of
person who is courageous so that when you come to a a point of
great struggle, you are the kind of person who will make the
choice to be courageous. And that doesn't happen within
that one moment. Thomas Aquinas says that all
great, great courageous acts come from something that you
love, you're trying to protect or you care about something that
you love. So you sacrifice maybe your own
safety for the safety or the protection of something that you
love. And so cultivating what it means
to love, I think ultimately takes presence first.
And that's really what I would love to kind of dive into more
with you guys is wondering what are the things that we do that
steal our presents, steal our attentiveness to the present?
Yeah, yeah. Let me put a little bit of
historical frosting on that question because I think that's
a perfect next place to go. Historical Frosting.
Delicious.
My favorite kind of birthday cake has historical frosting.
What have we done? OK, I remember, oh, probably 20
years ago, I read a a book by Hannah Arendt called Between
past and Future and it was it's not a not a Christian author,
but this is a woman who had escaped Nazi Germany, knew a lot
about totalitarianism is mostly is best known for a book that
she wrote on totalitarianism. But this between past and future
book wrestles with the question of how we live in time.
She recognized that humans have this instinct to pursue
immortality. And the the bow that I might tie
on most of what we all said in the 1st 10 minutes of our
conversation today is that we know that in our souls, we know
that we know we were made for immortality.
And so we have this instinct to to long for it at at the very
least, if not strive for it. And Arendt pointed out that the
ancient Greeks saw this striving for immortality as this is
something that you do because you won't last forever.
Your objective is to do deeds that will last forever.
You want to be remembered for what you did because you're just
this kind of passing shadow. That's what greatness is.
It's doing something great enough so that your your memory
or the memory of what you did goes into eternity, right.
We like, we still read the funeral oration of Pericles and
so on. That's actually influenced a lot
of contemporary Christian thinking on calling and purpose,
not because we all study the ancient Greeks or something, but
because we've absorbed a lot of ideas that filtered through
history into the water that we swim in, culturally speaking.
And Jeremiah brought up something from from his history
that's kind of the other the Christian piece of this.
And I think that if we combine the two, we get a pretty good
idea of. The the circumstances we're
wrestling with the secular side, you have this this idea that
you've got to do something great and so many of our not just how
we spend our time, but our vocational instincts are
constantly having pressure put on them by other people, if not
ourselves, right like, oh, why would you be fill in the blank
to the young teenager. You need to be a doctor, right
Like whatever it whatever it is, do the great thing.
Then on the Christian side, we have this legacy, if
particularly in the United States from what's traditionally
called the Second Great Awakening, where you have these
these revival meetings. It was almost like Burning Man
or something. But for preachers, like
everybody just flocks to this field in the middle of nowhere.
Sometimes there are 6 preachers going at once in different
directions. You're just, you're there to
hear the famous preacher and Charles Finney, who's at the
center of it and influences a lot of the other preachers is,
is pushing this idea of of basically, you know, hell, Hell
is scary. You got to check the box to go
to heaven. You're a horrible Sinner.
Puts a ton of pressure on the present, but fundamentally it
it's a wrong headed understanding of the passage in
Micah that you quoted Jeremiah that this idea that, you know,
you just need to kind of pray the the sinner's prayer.
You can't earn your way to God. You got to just do this.
The problem is when you get a version of Christianity that has
no follow up. It has no, what have I gotten
myself into? It's just pray the prayer and
yeah, now I can go to heaven. That altar call sort of model of
gathering is it's baked into a lot of contemporary Christian
worship. It's baked into a lot of the
contemporary Christian mentality, but it's really,
really light on the specifics. It's really, really light on how
shall I then live? Because we're so afraid of doing
this workspace thing. And what happens is we then
instinctively fill in the works because we know there's got to
be something. And so in the absence of rules
and structures and something that makes sense of it all
handed down from history, we make up new ones like, oh, you
got to read your Bible often enough and you got to be the
missionary to wherever and you got to have the dramatic
testimony. And you have this constant
anxiety that I haven't found the one big thing.
And what ends up happening by certainly the 80s is these two
things, the secular kind of Greek thing and the second Great
Awakening thing. Get married and we we get this
notion of calling that is the secular idea that's just been
baptized. We need to find the one big
thing and that's your calling. That's the thing that God has
made you to do. That's why you're on the planet.
I talked to a lot of women who wrestle with this.
Am I called to be a mother or am I called to have a career?
Because you can only pick one because you have to just throw
your entire being into that thing.
But now, long roundabout thing, I'm circling back to you, Sarah.
What we have done is we've made one crucial error in all of that
besides the little ones we might have made.
And that is that we've recognized.
Yeah, there's this hero's journey dynamic to life.
We want to strive for immortality.
The the, the Hogwarts letter and everything.
We feel like Luke Skywalker looking into the binary sunset.
We feel like Ariel, longing for that other place.
And the reason that the hero's journey is in the middle of
everything is not because we're all made to be the hero.
It's because it's the the meta narrative of everything.
It is Christ's story. The hero's journey is the story
of Christ. And we've accidentally, without
even realizing it, put ourselves in his shoes.
And we're trying, we're trying to do that to ourselves.
That pressure that we feel that manifests as a tiny bit of
stress over a, a piece of homework or a job related thing
or household chores or the diaper or the dishes.
Is is actually us just making this little micro decision to
try to make ourselves the hero of the story.
We don't know we're doing it, but that's that's what we've
done to ourselves. And at that point, no wonder we
feel pressure. But yeah, the weird thing is
that puts us in that awkward place where the here and the now
are the only place we've been given to live.
And we have this urge to try to get out of it, to get to
something else, to get to somewhere else.
So what do we do? What's missing in all of that?
Because you can't just you can't just say, oh, the answer is
Jesus, Yeah, I have a nice life. We can stop recording now.
It's true, but it's not, it's not enough for us to actually
walk away and do something with. So if, as Athanasius frames it,
Christ is the story of everything, and it's he that
comes and slays the dragon and all of that, and the invitation
is into his life and into his body, what does that mean for
the kitchen sink? What do we do with it?
I definitely agree with the idea that, you know, Christ is the
hero of the story, but I think there is kind of a natural pull
for us to to be like Christ in that way.
And maybe that's one of the reasons we're so attracted to
kind of the magical gifts and superpower kind of concept.
But even like, you know, when Peter saw Jesus walking on the
water, he was like, let me go walk on the water too.
I want to be like you in that respect.
And Jesus said, come do it, walk on the water, have the
superpower type of a thing. Maybe there's a it's a balance.
They're trying to figure out where it is humility and where
it is that we want to also be like Christ and slay the dragon
as well, because I think God does want us to slay Dragons
and, and be the hero. But I mean, to kind of bring it
back to Encanto, I think it's an interesting question.
Why was Mirabel the only new one that was able to save her
family? You know, the Super strength,
the Super hearing, the Super healing talk with animals, all
that stuff. It couldn't do it.
None of that could save her family.
Why was Mirabelle able to save the family when everybody else
wasn't? How simple this potential answer
to your question is, Jeremiah. So I, I shy away from it even as
we talk about ordinary things. But she's the only one, as
Brian, you alluded to in the opening story and how you framed
it is that she was the only one who could pay attention because
she wasn't stuck inside of herself thinking about her
gifts, her expectations for herself.
And so the question is, if God is a triune God, fool of
fellowship even within himself, that out pours into creating and
wanting to dwell with his people.
That's the main thrust of the entire narrative of the Bible,
Old and New Testament. If fellowship, union, knowing
one another presence is the answer of why we are here, then
maybe that's where we start. There was a couple of
researchers. It was a husband and wife.
These researchers had spent 40 or 50 years researching what
makes relationships work. And basically they came down to
this point of saying most people have the wrong idea of what
actually makes a marriage, what makes a friendship work.
Because we overshoot. We think it's all these big
difficult things like you got to have the amazing 10 day vacation
in the most beautiful spot and that's what's going to make your
your relationship really, really work.
Or you got to be really good looking and then shit, you know,
all these things. Talk worthy proposal scene.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And they said actually what the
research that they had done shows over their research group
was something huge, like 50 or 60,000 people over 40 years.
It's crazy. So a lot of lot of data.
And they said the most important things are the things that
people underestimate, the things that people tend to think, oh,
that's too easy. That's not that big of a deal.
One of the things was they called it bids for connection.
So if somebody, you know, if your friend says, wow, look at
that bird, that's a cool bird. Or do you hear that bird song?
And you say you just put a little bit of a crack in the
relationship. You just missed an opportunity
to build connection and a tet to be present.
Sarah, what you're talking about.
You just missed an opportunity to show up with that person and
and build a little more, weave yourself into that person's life
a little bit more. But if you if they say, Hey,
look at that bird and you say, what, where is it now?
Can you point it out to me? It's right there on that on the
bird feeder. Oh, wow, that is a pretty bird.
I do like that sound. And they were saying it's those
things. Or do you, do you kiss your
spouse goodbye on the way out the door?
Do you give him a hug? Do you smile at them?
They're like, these are the things that people think.
That's so that's too easy. But he said that's what
relationships are actually made out of day in, day out, hour by
hour. Just did you look at the bird
that your that your friend thought was cool or did you
ignore them or, you know, or what was the tone of your voice
in the way that you responded? You know, did you respond
dismissively or with interest or did you actually care?
Like that stuff really accumulates.
And I think it's the same in our relationship with God.
And yeah. Matthew I think I have found in
my life and it's I'm very ashamed and embarrassed to say
it, but I think it's something that we probably all struggle
with to some extent is the reason why I don't go for bids
of connection while I'm even the connection I have with the
window next to my kitchen sink as I'm doing the dishes.
Whatever the bit of connection is the the the beauty of God's
creation and the fellowship. But with all creation is my
desire to distract myself with being busy, whether that's being
busy with the constant noise of media and podcasts, or whether
that is the busyness of thinking about my future, planning my To
Do List, feeling stressed about things that actually don't
matter. Whatever the distraction is,
it's a distraction, a a grasp, a reach to be omnipresent and
omniscient over my life. Because that feels much more
like I'm in control, like I'm doing something important, when
in reality I have to acknowledge the pains that come with being
present. And I think that's something I
want to bring up with your bits of connection.
Because when I, so I have a 15 month old.
And so this whole entire conversation keeps going back
for me to the concept of what do I do when I change a diaper?
I've changed, I think I've calculated like at least 3000 at
this point or something. And it's lonely, it's boring.
It's, it's, I feel that inadequacy and emptiness that I
have to confront in order to be present.
And so there's something inside of me that's blocking my
connection and I'd rather not deal with it and I'd rather
distract myself. So I think the pain of meeting
yourself where you are and the enticement of distraction are
two really important things to kind of consider and for us to
kind of dive into as we think about what it means to accept
these bits of connection. The framing that I have for that
same idea is Sarah will of us, because it's from Aquinas.
It's it's turning toward so medieval, what 12th century,
13th century Aquinas is, is writing about the virtues and
he's writing about, yeah, sloth, this tendency to kind of turn
away from what's right in front of you, either because you don't
want to do the work, you're too lazy, or because, yeah, it's too
hard or you're too busy. You're not fully present.
The antidote from a not from a moral standpoint, but from a
just a, a habit standpoint is turning toward.
And that's been helpful to me to the the point where I literally
have those two words on the home screen of my phone because it's
that constant 10/20/50 times a day reminder, turn toward the
wife, the kids, the person I'm having a conversation with,
whatever, whatever it is, you have an opportunity and then
this second to make a decision to turn toward them and not turn
away from them. And a ton of the time that is a
harder thing. It is.
It's it's ask that follow up question about the thing you
don't care about the bird or some some variation on on that.
But it's it's choosing to it's, it's recognizing that the way I
invest in this relationship or this task or this moment,
whatever it is, and, and being fully human, being the image of
God, whatever, whatever the meta narrative is that I have at the
back of my head, the way I invest in that is is actually
being fully present in this moment right now.
In Encanto, the storytellers plant the answer to the whole
question. In the first song, you're
introduced to Abuela, the grandmother, who is accidentally
putting tons of pressure on herself and everyone else.
When she's introducing, hey, this is our role as the as the,
the magical family. She uses the phrase we have to
earn the miracle that somehow found us.
She recognizes it was a miracle. She recognizes it just somehow
found them. It was a gift.
But the response to that is that she has to earn it now.
It's very easy, I think, for us Christians to kind of go, oh,
tut, tut, tut, you know, the gift of God is a free gift of
love. But if we are absorbing some of
these ideas from the world around us, if we don't actually
have a healthy way to enter into the miracle, to inhabit the
miracle, to be fully present, that is what we will try to do.
We will try to earn the miracle that somehow found us.
This is the fallacy of the Second Great Awakening and tons
of heresies and cults that came out of it, and it's the fallacy
of busyness. It's the fallacy of inadequacy.
We have to earn the miracle that somehow found us, even when we
recognize it as a miracle. Yeah.
And I think within Kanto, the like you were saying, the
importance of turning towards and listening and and being
present that the gifts, the magical, fantastical kind of
superpower gifts are often what kept them from being able to
listen and to see if you're super strength.
And all you're thinking about is, oh, I got to build these
houses and do all of these things or with the blooming
flowers and all the other things.
I mean, basically that's what kept all the other characters
from seeing Bruno was an outcast and all the other problems and
hurts that everyone else has had.
And I think that's, I mean, that's the thing about kind of
the fantastical powers is they almost do make you blind to
things. I mean, there's so many examples
of the very famous and what we would say, quote UN quote, great
Christian leaders. And then you find out that
marriages are, you know, completely right, because I mean
that they're focused on this big outward great thing rather than
the, you know, kind of live justly, love mercy and walk
humbly with God. And like, even like, if you look
in the Bible where I was thinking about this, right, like
who are the characters in the Bible that got the most like
kind of super powers? You look at like Samson, who
literally got the Super strength.
His life ended in tragedy. He wasn't, you know, able to,
you know, fulfill his purpose as a judge and Solomon, it was
granted with superhuman intelligence and wisdom and
then, you know, basically died horribly depressed and unable
to, you know, be the king that he needed to be.
Corinthians 13, right? What does it say this, you know,
basically, if you have these great things, if I can speak
with tongues and have the gifts of prophecy, the superpowers.
But I have love don't have love. I have nothing, right?
If I can use do all these great, you know, amazing things, but
don't have love, I have nothing. That's the whole story of
Venkanto, right? Is that these people with their
amazing great gifts, they didn't have the love and Mirabelle did
and that's why she was able to save her family and no one else.
Good. And she made some turning toward
decisions that were pretty hard. I mean the the look of revulsion
on her face when she's when she realizes she has to go make up
with with Isabelle, who is always.
Talking down to her like, yeah, I mean, I guess we have to
mention Tolkien by obligation, right, since it's an handsome
thing, but. And Lord of the Rings, right,
it's the hobbits are the only ones that can carry the ring to
to Mordor, right. Because, you know, the great
soldiers can't do it. The powerful Wizards can't do
it. The mythical elves can't do it.
It takes someone whose main goal in life is to have tea with a
friend and make maps and. You know.
Garden and things like that. You know, Sam Wise is 11 the
movie, you know, where they're like, you know, what are you,
his bodyguards? No, I'm his gardener.
But in Lord of the Rings, there's like almost like a
magical strength to being a gardener that will be able to
defeat, you know, the great spider monster where maybe the
more flashy people couldn't. I don't know.
Well, there's nowhere to grip. It's kind of like John the
Baptist. Like, how do you threaten this
guy? He's already given up
everything, so you can't like get a grip on him.
You can't really threaten them. And like the hobbits, that's
that's why that the power just doesn't have any appeal because
they're they're already happy where they are and they're glad
to be doing what they're doing. I was thinking, Sarah, about the
distraction thing and you mentioned control.
I think that's really interesting to connect the
desire for distraction with a sense of control and then to
say, well, what is the fear that drives the desire for control?
It almost feels like if I stop long enough, I'll be exposed in
some way. I'll be exposed as a fraud.
And I think that ultimately goes back to the original mistrust in
the garden. You know, God doesn't actually
love you that much. And if you, if you sit here and
wait to find out what things are really like, what's going to
happen is you're going to find out that you're, he doesn't
really love you. And so I think we're always
trying to cover for that and, and not leave ourselves room to,
to be disappointed to, to find out that we're not OK, that
we're not loved. And I was just the other day, I
was camping in Alabama and it was raining like crazy.
So I kept getting caught in the rain, But I would make it to 1
little like shelter with a roof and and it would stop raining
long enough for me to get to another one.
And at one I was sitting there and it was just pouring down
rain and I had my phone with me and I was like, Oh, I'm just
going to listen to David Suchet read the Bible while I'm in this
rainstorm. And I actually felt like, no,
I'm just going to. I kind of felt like the Lord
said, why can't you just enjoy the rain?
Just just put the phone and I was like, I've got time.
I can afford. I like the language of
affording, being able to afford like, because I've been loved so
well and I don't really have to worry about that.
Then I can afford to sit still and I can afford to not do
anything or be getting anything done and I can just enjoy this
rainstorm. I can turn toward it.
I think it's really important, your story implicitly there you
recognize the good of the rain. Going back to Aquinas, he says
that the will only acts on the good, but the good is provided
to the will by the intellect. So what do we see as good?
I think there's a catch 22 here that we've been talking about.
Yeah, we need to habituate ourselves.
We need to have the habit of turning towards we need to make
the right choices, but we're not going to want to make the right
choices unless we behold the good and we already see so that
we want to go do that thing that's that's putting the cart
before the horse to think about, oh, I can habituate myself to
have the right character. Only the Holy Spirit can come in
and transform from your affections towards what is good.
And so I say that just because at the end of the day, when I'm
doing dishes in the kitchen sink, I don't have a really
beautiful rainfall storm I'm caught in with nothing to do.
It's really easy for me to say what's the good here?
Why? Why wouldn't I fill it with
something better? But to realize that God has
given you this moment and there is goodness there.
So my question is, how do we begin to behold the good in the
kitchen sink so that we can habituate ourselves to turn
towards? Yep.
And I think you did, you did the right thing there, Sarah, by
calling out that tension because there's, I think this is one of
those things where we in our finite understanding put tension
on it, But there's less, there's less tension between those two
things than we realize when we want to create nice little tidy,
bullet pointy doctrines. Then we look at the the free
gift of grace on the one hand and works on the other.
And we go, oh gosh, got to be clear.
We're talking about this one, not this one.
Or we miss that and go straight into the the works, right.
And we get all pressure filled about them.
But sometimes I think it's, it's helpful with some of these
conversations to go back to the what were we made for?
Because that helps to then push forward to what were we redeemed
for? And we were made to glorify God.
We were made to mobilize the world for the worship of God.
We couldn't spend the whole episode just unpacking that
idea. But I think the the key of it is
we can we can have this tendency to think that free gift of
grace. Great.
I don't have to do that. No, we can also think, Oh gosh,
mobilizing the whole world for the worship of God pressure.
But I there's a there's a why behind everything we've been
talking about in this conversation that we haven't
quite crossed the finish line of this why.
And in that why, we see that our entry point into this great
cosmic battle of good and evil into mobilizing the world for
the worship of God, transforming the world through his grace into
a temple fit for him. Our entry point is the kitchen
sink. I just finished reading Josh
Nadeau's book, Room for Good Things to Run Wild, which was a
recommendation from one of our listeners.
Actually really good book and one of the many things that I
underlined in that book was he said a life of virtue in the
normalcy of life is priceless, for it imbues that which is
finite and temporal with the infinite and eternal.
A life of virtue in the normalcy of life is priceless, for it
imbues that which is finite and temporal with the infinite and
eternal. We do feel that sort of that
pull of immortality, but when we think about mobilizing the world
for the worship of God, we can be tempted to feel that sense
of, gosh, if I don't, if I don't bring eternity to this, this
now, no one will. And that's actually true.
If, if, if you do not bring eternity to the doing the
dishes, the dinner dishes right now, tonight, no one will
because you're the one doing them.
That is true. However, that's not supposed to
be pressure. That's supposed to be
permission. And how beautiful that God gives
us this moment. Peterson has a song called
Centering Prayer, and one of his verses says, I chase my worries,
I flee my sorrows, but what you give me is now.
So take my burdens and my tomorrow's.
I want to be where my feet are. And it's funny that the Second
Great Awakening's pressure is now, now, now you got to do
something now, when really it that's the truth.
To your point, it is now all we have to do is bring eternity to
now. But there's not a pressure that
we have to manufacture some greatness.
It is the fact that God has given us now.
He knows exactly what we need. It's the gift of right now that
he's asking us to walk into and if there be a great act in the
now that is presented to you, the faithfulness of you
continuingly turning towards God and saying, what will you have
me do? How can I love my baby girl on
the floor as she's getting her diaper changed to doing
something that might seem really cool later, right?
It's the now and you so you don't have to worry about
there's no pressure. It's just fellowship with God in
the now, with the gift of life that He has given us in front of
our eyes to imbue with eternity for His glory.
The beginning of that sentence being really important
fellowship with God. That's that's that's the the end
right beyond this world of what we were made for union with God.
You started our conversation with that union with God.
Christ is right there with you in the here and now, and He's
inviting you into his work in those dishes.
That's crazy stuff. I think too, it's sometimes
easier to be in fellowship with God when doing the dishes or and
I used to mow lawns all the time and I found some of the best,
most close times I've ever had with God was mowing lawns as you
can sing and pray. And I find that much, much
easier to connect with God in that type of activity than, you
know, a lot of the really great, spectacular, supernatural, you
know, type things. Yeah, I'm, I just started
reading The Beauty of Everyday Things by Suetsu Yanagi.
I've only read the first chapter, but in the 1st chapter
he talks about how when you think about people who are,
let's say, fine artists, right Matthew, you write music or
somebody's paints paintings like that kind of creating.
And he makes the observation that part of the reason that
those people with those vocations feel so much pressure
to create masterworks to bring all this incredible amount of
beauty into the world is because for a variety of reasons, we
don't need to talk about in this conversation, We, we inhabit a
world where the things that we see and touch on a minute to
minute basis are ugly, mass produced and not worth caring
about. So because my spoon came from a
factory and I'm, I touch it every morning, That little tiny
interaction, even being fully present to that little tiny
interaction trains me a little micro step away from being fully
present, away from beauty because the thing itself is not
worth caring about. Similarly, I think we have this,
this constant temptation we're we're we're filled with a lot of
stuff that, yeah, isn't worth caring about.
You know, the doom scrolling on social media, not worth caring
about the the hideous building maybe that we work in not worth
caring. But there are ways in which the
world is sickened by sin and it can be harder to be fully
present to turn towards whatever the situation might call for.
But it's such a good example, Jeremiah.
There's there's always an answer to the question of what it looks
like to turn toward, to be fully present, to be in union with
Christ in in that moment, even if it's some some of those
moments are harder than others in those contexts are harder
than others. Yeah, I appreciate you bringing
up art making because there's, there is a lot of pressure to be
famous or successful. And like how, what are the ways
that you find out if you've actually arrived there?
It's like you're looking at how many people are liking my posts
or how many people are what are the what's the little number on
Spotify? And it, that stuff is so
exhausting. And one of the things that one
of the ways that I was kind of processing that some years ago
and trying to get a grip on like how, how do I need to live in
this kind of a space? And I wrote a song called
Beautiful Secret Life. And part of the story that I
tell when in concerts is that Jesus had this.
Jesus came to earth, became a human tabernacled among us to
show us the Father, to show us the life of the Trinity and to
invite us into that life, to incorporate us into himself, to
draw us up into that life. And only three years of that
ministry are public versus 30 years which are totally hidden
and private where he's just doing ordinary things like
helping mom with the dishes and like feeding the dog and taking
out the trash. Like that's actually most of
what he does with his earthly life Ministry is like stuff that
is so boring, nobody even took much time to write about it.
But I think that that's deliberate.
I think that's this way that in his earthly life, Jesus was
deliberate to actually have most of it be what life is really
like. And then he goes and he has
these three concentrated years of unhidden or public ministry.
But that's all I mean, and that's incredibly important.
He he we're so thankful for that.
But I don't think that that 30 years like doesn't count like I
think it and, and I wonder if sometimes that ratio is like
given to us as a realistic expectation.
Maybe 10% of your life is going to be sort of acknowledged
externally or seen. Hopefully it won't get you
killed, like it got Jesus killed.
But hopefully, but but you're, but you're 30 years, you're the
rest of that 90%. Don't miss that.
Don't don't dismiss that because it, it actually really matters.
So that's, that just kind of helps me.
I've come back to that again and again to to try to stay
oriented. And it matters for the thing,
for the situation, but it also matters for you because that the
repetition of those those moments is, is God working on
you? The we talked a while back about
a few a few months ago about story of the Bishop in Les Mis.
And there's a great little quote in that story about how his
character was formed by this little like this drips of water
and the the rock formations that are formed by drips of water
over millennia are, are just indestructible.
They're so hard, they're so difficult to ruin by in in in a
human's case that that moment of temptation or sin or whatever it
is, he has this deeply formed character through the repetition
of the transformative power of minute to minute faithfulness
and seemingly mundane tasks. The kitchen sink activities are
necessary to prepare you for the hero's journey.
You know, I mean, if you look back to Encanto, right, you
know, when she's five years old, you know, she's about to get her
amazing room, which I mean, if you think about all the
different rooms that are in there, I mean, they're, you
know, way bigger on the inside than the outside.
There's amazing, fantastic things.
She goes up to her door and it just like, goes away.
And so she goes back into the nursery where she like has to
share a room with, you know, like another kid.
But like, right at the beginning of the movie, you see that her
having to live in that tiny little room shared with that
other boy was what made her prepared to listen.
And that was like, her whole thing is she could listen and
love where other people weren't and they weren't weren't hearing
that. And from the very moment where
she kind of, you know, like, encourages the, the other board
of, you know, go through the ceremony and, you know, hold his
hand through it and, you know, immediately, you know, the boy,
you know, turns to her, you know, help me.
I'm embarrassed and nervous. Help me down here.
And it was already that she had formed that relationship by
doing the boring thing of having to live in the nursery and, you
know, be with this kid every single day.
And yeah, that's what fostered that amazing superpower that she
had, which was just to listen and be observant and be present
and love. If I could read from Fedor
Dostoevsky's brother's kid Father Zosama talks about active
love and the and the difference between that and love and
dreams. He calls.
He says active love is a harsh and fearful thing compared to
love with in compared with love and dreams.
Love and Dreams thirsts for immediate action, quickly
performed and with everyone watching.
Indeed, it will go as far as giving even one's life, provided
it does not take long, but as soon over as on stage and
everyone is looking on and praising.
Whereas act of love is labor and perseverance, he says.
But I predict that even in that very moment when you see with
horror that despite all your efforts, you not only have come
not nearer your goal, but seem to have gotten farther from it,
at that very moment I predict this to you, you will suddenly
reach your goal and will clearly behold over you the wonder
working power of the Lord, who all the while has been loving
you and all the while has been mysteriously guiding you.
Yes. A George Eliot in Middlemarch,
one of her novels, says that the growing good of the world is
partly dependent on unhistoric acts, and that things are not so
I'll with you and me as they might have been, is half owing
to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life.
And I kind of wonder if the most courageous, heroic story that we
can have is the work of a hidden life, so that Christ's life may
increase and we decrease. John Adams said something
similar to the Dostoevsky quote, that he contrasted the desire
for fame with the desire to be respected by the people who know
you best. And ambition in the bad sense is
the first. But what you should want is for
the people who know you best, the people who are most likely
to have seen those hidden moments, which starts with God,
who has seen all of them. You know, yeah, it may be that
the thing you're best at is something that your, even your
relatively immediate social circle never sees.
But that doesn't mean it's not you.
It doesn't mean it's not seen in a huge sense.
And it certainly doesn't mean that those that that doesn't
matter in the end of Encanto is Mirabelle's family literally
singing to her. We we see you.
We see how brave you've been. We see like it's, it's not, it's
not. I see your gifts.
It's like I see who you are. And they had to lose their
superpowers to not be so distracted that they could.
Yep. Well, we have barely scratched
the surface of this, but the good news is, first of all, we
continue in our next episode, coming very shortly, diving into
very practical questions related to calling and vocation through
the lens of Tom Bombadil, that jolly old fellow.
So join us at anselmsociety.org/bombadil to
join us for that. And our episode after that in
July will actually both our episodes in July are also going
to pick up on this theme. So we will have a lot more time
to meditate on the meaning of all of this and more
importantly, picking up from this point and going into all
right, great. What, what are the, the
practices that help us more fully feel and enter into God's
presence in these kinds of moments?
I want to end with a little hat tip to Jeremiah for bringing up
Chariots of Fire. Because in Chariots of Fire, my
friends, there is a song where Eric Little or a scene where
Eric Little is singing in the choir in church.
And those scenes are juxtaposed with scenes of people running in
the rain. That melody is best known for
for a hymn called Jesus Shall Reign.
But the words they're singing are a hymn called Fight the Good
Fight and which I think is a Wesley ham, come to think of it.
And there is a verse in that hymn that will just make you.
It is just a chef's kiss from the director because if you have
seen this movie, you know that when Eric Little is fully
entering into the love of God in the moment, that is when he runs
his fastest. And we'd as the viewers know
that he has hit that moment when his head goes up.
Listen to this first from the hymn.
Run the straight race through God's good grace.
Lift up thine eyes and seek his face.
Life with its way before us lies.
Christ is the path and Christ the prize.
Thank you everyone for spending this time with us and we will
see you next time. The Imagination Redeemed podcast
is the production of the Anselm Society.
It's easy to see this world as disenchanted and to give up hope
that there's more. But you were made to see the
world with the eyes of heaven and to live a bountiful life
that participates in the life of God like in the great stories.
To help us make this show possible, go to
anselmsociety.org/podcast 25 and make a donation.
The Anselm Society is a place where you can come in and
experience that beauty, joyful celebration, and ancient wisdom
and go out renewed, bringing that life to your vocation,
home, and church. Learn more at anselmsociety.org
and join us next time as we pursue a renaissance of the
Christian imagination together. Bonus episode of the Imagination
Redeemed Podcast comes courtesy of an event we Co sponsored with
the NICAEA Study Center in Colorado Springs.
The NICAEA Study Center works on and around the campuses of
Colorado Springs universities, cultivating the good and
abundant life by encouraging followers of Christ to love God
with their minds as well as their strengths, souls, and
hearts through reflection on an engagement with the intellectual
heritage of the historical Christian faith.
Then I See a Study Center offers academic activities such as
seminars, colloquies, and lectures to introduce students
to the vital heritage of Christian thought.
It trains students to integrate their faith and their learning
by providing opportunities to engage in thoughtful, honest
discussions around life's most important and meaningful
questions. It also provides resources to
help students and faculty think Christianly about their
scholarship and teaching. All of this is carried out on a
foundation of intellectual and practical hospitality.
You can learn more at nicaeastudycenter.org.
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