Revisioning Christian Spirituality in America – with Michael Ceragioli

[00:00:00] Well, friends, it's great to be with you. Thank you for listening to The Theology Mill, where we have the privilege of getting to host conversations, bookish conversations, I should say, or nerdy conversations perhaps on theology, philosophy, and Christian faith.

[00:00:16] I am joined today in this episode by a dear friend of mine and a fellow Portlander, a fellow by the name of Michael Ceragioli, to speak about his book, which is entitled Revisioning Spirituality, Human Transformation, and the Communal Imagination. And this book is sort of his and his co-author, Father John Markey, who I should also mention. It's their kind of provocative proposal for a renewed approach to spirituality in the American context.

[00:00:45] So especially for a spirituality that's maybe more kind of communally oriented. And also for, you know, it's a proposal and argument for an understanding and a sense of conversion, right? Religious or spiritual conversion that actually bleeds deeper into our lives than just simply sort of a, you know, kind of an altar call experience or a mountaintop conversion experience,

[00:01:11] even though those things, of course, can be important and necessary for, you know, our spiritual lives. And just a quick note in case you're wondering, yes, Michael really does always talk like this. So let the listener understand that he conducted this whole interview without any reference to notes, which I maybe shouldn't mention because it might embarrass him a little bit. But I think it's worth saying because truly I think his intellect and his kind of basic spiritual impulses are really a gift to the church.

[00:01:40] And so I'm very confident that anybody, any of you out there who are listening to this episode will reap both theological and spiritual fruit from this conversation. So as always, and in a special way, because it's a dear friend of mine, I hope you enjoy this conversation. And thank you as always for listening.

[00:02:27] Okay. Welcome to the Theology Mill. I am here with my good friend, Michael Ceragioli. This is a particularly fun episode. One, because it's with an old and good buddy of mine. Well, he's not old, but our friendship is old-ish for someone our age. We're all getting older. But it's fun because it's a good friend of mine and also because we're doing it in person, which this is the first time I've ever done one of these episodes in person. They've always been held on Zoom.

[00:02:54] So we're actually in Michael's house right now and enjoying some afternoon light coffee. So we're here to talk about his new-ish book with Fortress Press called Revisioning Spirituality, Human Transformation, and the Communal Imagination. Michael, obviously I know you very well, but our listeners might not know you as well. So I wanted to give you a chance, as we start, to introduce yourself. Anything you'd like to share about yourself to our listeners? Yeah, let's see.

[00:03:19] So I come from, this will be helpful for the book, in that I come from the discipline of Christian spirituality, which I guess you could call, especially in the broad sweep of time, a relatively newfangled field out there. The idea is that Christian spirituality seeks to get back to the roots of human experience. You can see it as a reform movement within theology, perhaps, or its own thing.

[00:03:49] There's a debate about that. But in any case, that's what brought me out to San Antonio to do my doctoral work. This book, Revisioning Spirituality, is a project that I undertook with the director of the program at Oblate School of Theology, John Markey, to attempt to provide some, this is kind of the ongoing conversation,

[00:04:13] not just disciplinary foundations for Christian spirituality, but to show others what we see in this mode of approach. So I work both at the intersection, picking up some previous interests as well, of Christian spirituality and psychology, specifically depth psychology, that whole Jungian school,

[00:04:39] and also with this philosophical background. So the idea of my work is to attempt to sort of illuminate the contours of this discipline, but also to demonstrate with these experiential foundations what exactly is going on, why there is the need for this new line of inquiry, if you will.

[00:05:05] I'm also, at the current moment, the executive director of the Heaven Human Earth Institute, which is a new organization out here in Portland, Oregon. We're working to do the kind of interdisciplinary work that we hope would happen in Christian spirituality. So it'll be a teaching institute, an organization that attempts to unite theory and practice,

[00:05:34] as pragmatism does best, and we'll get to that. But also providing conversations between Christian spirituality, classical Chinese medicine, and the depth psychology piece that I've spoken about, along with providing sort of treatments and communal practices in each of those spheres. So in some ways, that's a next step emerging from this book,

[00:05:58] to attempt to reconcile on the ground some of these ideas that we feel like are kind of prominent in the expression of Christian spirituality for the future. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you mentioned it already, how the book is sort of situated within the academic field of spirituality, and our listeners may or may not be super aware of that field. So I wanted to give you a chance, especially because it's a fairly new discipline,

[00:06:28] right, as far as academic disciplines go. I wanted to kind of give you a chance to describe this academic field and sort of its sort of early development, its first few decades, how you would kind of make sense of its early development or kind of trace that lineage that you sort of see yourself being a part of in this book being a contribution to. Yeah, there are a lot of ways to go about answering that question. There's kind of the official narrative that we work through in the book,

[00:06:56] and then we try to get behind that a little bit as well. So each time I have that question posed to me, I think I take a different tack. In some ways, I spoke about the experience component. I spoke about it as a bit of a reform of theology. That's definitely there. The founder, the most explicit founder of the discipline of Christian spirituality, Sandra Schneiders, whose work prior to that point was as a biblical scholar,

[00:07:25] and in some ways an early feminist in the Catholic Church in that very sort of rough period when Sandra and others dealt with, you know, the full brunt of a kind of patriarchal consciousness, if you will, with all sorts of prejudices.

[00:07:49] And so she went and faced that in her own work, previously established herself as a productive and insightful scholar. And you could say in some ways that here I'm getting into a bit of a Jungian way of speaking, that spirituality provides the compensation or what can be an overly rationalistic,

[00:08:14] sometimes a overly sort of one-pointed sort of flighty approach to our Christian faith and attempts to kind of bring out the suppressed voice of practitioners, in other words, real people who live out this Christian life.

[00:08:41] And to kind of, I put it in the book, John and I did, as sort of overspilling the boundaries of the farm or something like that, to kind of get beyond what had been a somewhat, for Sandra's experience, that's why I go back to her, a kind of oppressive container, right? Right. And this is something that she recognized in her efforts to break through in that field,

[00:09:08] but it's also a much bigger and broader call. So let me say one more word about that. Some of the early framing of Christian spirituality was in terms of these polarities, and you can already feel the compensation as I say this, instead of being a deductive approach, it's an inductive approach. Instead of being prescriptive in its fundamental orientation, it's descriptive.

[00:09:37] And so you could say, a good theologian today will say, well, that's basically what we're doing. You know, maybe that's a bit of a wooden binary that's created there. At the same time, as in some ways, it clearly wasn't. And so there's an impetus in this field to get out of an academic bubble,

[00:10:04] as well as an impetus to kind of change the conversation within the academy. And I'm shocked in some ways, given that the attraction that this approach had for me, and kind of going to Oblate, it was a no brainer for me, that the inroads haven't been greater, which is why we're always kind of going back and not necessarily trying to start over, but reframing the necessity of this starting point for the conversation.

[00:10:33] And so you'll hear, it will be the refrain, and we'll see when it happens. What is the new face of theology? Will be spirituality, perhaps is spirituality. And we, our approach here is, okay, if that's the case, let's stop trying to take this long way around. Let's cut to the chase. And let's talk about what spirituality actually means. Sure, sure. So in a way, it's a form of theology.

[00:10:59] I wonder too, like, spiritual theology, right? It's sort of a moniker you hear a lot for a certain type of theology that's attuned to the spiritual life. So I wonder, is the academic study of spirituality, is that sort of distinct from more like classical spiritual theology? And if so, how, or in what ways are they similar? Yeah, and that's a conversation. So you had the early conversation, this was Sandra Schneider's,

[00:11:27] and Philip Sheldrake, who has also been a faculty member at the Salt Lake School of Theology, who, you know, he was a kind of big figure abroad. And Philip wanted to say basically, well, it's going to be reintegrated as a sort of subdiscipline of theology. I think Philip is a far more cautious soul than Sandra in the first place.

[00:11:55] So I wouldn't be surprised if he would take that. Sandra wants to say, no, where spirituality really belongs is along with, alongside, as these experiential inquiries, something like, if it's a proper name for it or not, we could argue, but Buddhist spirituality or Hindu spirituality or Taoist spirituality.

[00:12:15] And theology is a necessary conversation partner, may even be foundational to what is going on, but it's a different kind of inquiry. So it can be debated. That's why it's important for me in looking at the future of this field, that people break into it from outside of this kind of,

[00:12:41] a systematic theologian is now re-envisioning their task sort of place. And I think that in an interdisciplinary way, again, that can be borne out, but it takes some fresh voices and fresh spirits entering this conversation and seeing the attraction as opposed to just a sort of rebrand of theology, which is a lot of what you see when the idea is,

[00:13:10] the future is here, or my books are selling better because I'm throwing around the word spirituality more often. And again, that's what this book is trying to accomplish in so many ways, is an inquiry into what it was. So what are the real bases of this conversation? Is it, for instance, Lonergan and Rahner, and for Catholic theologians, he's very familiar figures,

[00:13:39] or Baltazar, if you go in that direction. Baltazar tried to do something on the order of spirituality most definitely. But again, I would say that he's coming at it from a theological direction. So that's why what we're saying here is the project and why this is a kind of spirituality that is emerging. It's emerging in the United States, first of all.

[00:14:06] It's emerging from these female voices who are paramount to this conversation. That the genuine background, where do you want to look? How do you want to coordinate this thing? We want to look back to the foundations of an American philosophy of experience. William James' book, The Varieties of Religious Experience, which has often been taken to be the conversations starter in religious studies. Well, what's the difference here?

[00:14:34] I know we can get in the, you know, we can be up high in this disciplinary conversation, but what's the difference here? And what is William James really trying to do? He's trying to evaluate the transformative potential of religious experience, of spiritual experience. He's not trying to study it from a distance. Sure. Religious studies kind of moves more in that direction. So spirituality is saying coming at it from the basis of conversion, from the basis of the potentiality and the lived experience of transformation,

[00:15:05] this is how we're kind of going at this field. So we want to give it what we don't think is a kind of imputation or some kind of like extrinsic reading of spirituality. We want to go back to what seemed to be some genuine American roots of the development of this discipline, by the way, within the American Academy.

[00:15:29] And I think that provides the appropriate vitality for what this field can truly be. Sure. Sure. Yeah. So, I mean, of course, as you're saying, this book is, right, you're sort of imagining it as a revisioning or a contribution to the academic field of spirituality. Yes. Right. So I'm curious, like, what do you see as sort of the unique contribution that it's making to that field? Right.

[00:15:58] So I don't think we mentioned your co-author yet, by the way. Maybe you did. I can't remember. Oh, John Markey. Co-author's father, John Markey. But what is the like sort of unique contribution? I wonder if you could say more about this. I think you're already starting to unravel that a little bit. Yeah. What's the unique contribution this book's trying to make to that field? And then especially, I think, because the communal dimension of spirituality is such a central focus of this book, I wonder if you could say something about what you all are trying to highlight with that. Yes.

[00:16:27] So we're going back to this group of American philosophers who had a far broader scope in their understanding of philosophy. This was a moment when you still had that kind of integration between philosophy and religion. um, before the kind of analytic cliff, if you will.

[00:16:48] But, but, um, and, and we're looking for the, the touchstones that define the field. And I think we've, we've found them in, in, in this group as sort of proto founders. The first one, uh, that I spoke about briefly is this idea of conversion. Okay. The fundamental orientation of the discipline of spirituality.

[00:17:13] We're not talking about spiritual experience in too fuzzy of a way in the sense that we understand that there's this telos, right? And even, even Lonergan, you know, uh, established philosophy or theology, I should say to some degree on the basis of conversion. But, but our argument here is that, well, given the recent experience of, of this discipline, um,

[00:17:40] given this kind of descriptive potentiality that we're talking about, isn't this actually the, the better fit? So, so James, um, provides that, that, uh, focal point of conversion. But now the, the other two figures, these are the early American pragmatists are Josiah Royce and Charles Sanders Peirce. And they're in direct conversation with William James.

[00:18:05] Uh, in fact, Royce's book, um, the sources of religious insight was, uh, he, he, he wrote the book, delivered these lectures as a rejoinder to the varieties of religious experience. And okay, there's a lot of good in there, but what William James is doing is basically interpreting religious experience as the experience of an individual, right? In their solitude.

[00:18:32] He even uses that kind of language and an individual in a space of solitude. Um, that's the epitome. So, so mystical experiment experience is the, uh, sort of apotheosis. We can see it as an apotheosis of religious experience, but in some ways it's a kind of mystical foundationalism, um, that, that James can, can rest upon, which also, by the way,

[00:18:57] ties into the worst sort of instincts or worst, uh, cultural phenomenon in, in the United States. Right. Um, and can tie into what, what, what is a, uh, a kind of common misunderstanding of what spirituality entails. Like I don't get what I want in the institutional religious landscape. Right.

[00:19:19] So I go off on my own and I have these ecstatic experiences and, um, there's something authentic about that, that I'm finding a true source of life that I don't find in my religious community. Mm-hmm. But there's also that same potentiality for the splintering, the fragmentation that we talk about that is so problematically rooted in the, in the American psyche, um, whereby

[00:19:46] the community is perceived as an obstacle to the full flourishing of the individual. And what Royce wants to say is no, no, no, there's, there's, there's a path of transformation that may begin with, with individual experience, but its culmination lies in what he calls service to, or loyalty to the beloved community. So it's, it's actually a communal journey. This is why early on in the book, what we do is we reread James's varieties of religious

[00:20:15] experience through a communal matrix. We almost bring out these hidden figures, which if you read it with these eyes, you see how they're led along by this kind of, you know, semi invisible partner who brings, uh, the friend to the revival where the transformation happens. And they, they sort of wake up and come to their feet surrounded by, um, a group that they see in a whole new light. Right. So we're saying a part of that transformation, it's both mediated by community and, uh,

[00:20:44] genuine conversion, um, instills in the person, uh, a desire to participate in, in community. This is, this is in, in kind of classic Catholic language, why the charisms come into the picture. Because if we're, if we're reading Paul and understanding Paul in a kind of more direct fashion, I want to say in some ways, not an over the, theologized sort of fashion, what he's

[00:21:12] talking about is that people come alive through a gift that is given to them as individuals that is only given for the sake of the whole. Right. And that's why the kind of experiences that people can have in community are conversion experiences because they see, are able to see themselves in a new light in the service that they render to that community. Right. And they know that what they give to the community, their own flourishing in that space would be

[00:21:41] impossible if they were sort of cut off, um, from that, from that vital network. So, so Royce provides that it's a, it's a communal metaphysics that both Royce and Purse develop in some ways together as friends in their own, right. You know, James, uh, I didn't mention this, but, but James and, uh, Royce were best of friends and, uh, literally neighbors. They shared a backyard fence, right.

[00:22:08] Um, so you can picture these conversations as sort of held across the fence, um, in some ways, but in, but in an amicable, with an amicable spirit. So, um, so yeah, that's why this is important to me in some ways is, is like, isn't it interesting that the roots of the conversation about religious experience in the United States are hitting upon

[00:22:34] the need for a conversion towards community and are also correcting what is the first voice, the most prominent voice, the most famous person in William James, um, whose initial conception is, is, is about experience and solitude. So doesn't that frame our American experience on the whole and, and, and give us a sense of the drama of fragmentation on one side, genuine communal participation on the other.

[00:23:04] Yeah, for sure. So, yeah, I mean, you've kind of, you've kind of laid out the importance of pragmatism for kind of understanding the American situation, American culture up to the present, right. And some of the differences between person Royce on the one hand and James on the other and the ways in particular, a sort of James-esque, um, approach to experience in general, but

[00:23:29] spiritual experience in particular is sunk itself so deeply into like the sub train of American life. Yeah, it's a good way to put it. Um, but I'm, I guess I'm curious, right. Of course, you've got less sort of like importance of the, um, kind of cultural situatedness of the American pragmatists and why it's them in particular that might speak to the American situation. But I'm also, I'm also wondering like why, I'm also still kind of wondering why the American

[00:23:58] pragmatists, like, I think at first glance, it feels like they're, they, they have this kind of abstract, um, they kind of tend towards abstraction, right? Yes. Or at least upon first reading, right? It's a style of philosophy that can feel very, uh, theory heavy. Right. So, and especially as that's being applied to like the field of spirituality, which you're

[00:24:26] saying you're really trying to start from experience, but are the sort of rigorous thinking of experience. Right. So why, how do these, how do these two fit and why, why are the pragmatists? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting. The, the term pragmatism, of course, in other cultures or even within the United States, that's often sort of a first line of criticism of the overly pragmatic, right?

[00:24:54] You know, don't have, um, time for, uh, sort of greater intellectual concerns. They just want to sort of produce their toys, vehicles, et cetera, et cetera, whatever gets them there. Sure. Um, and you're also pointing to the other side of it, which is that when you get into purse, this polymathic genius, uh, he, he, in points can be impossible to follow, you know,

[00:25:21] like James described it as listening to purse was like just flashes of light in a Sumerian darkness. Darkness. Right. And, uh, and, and, and then we have the battle between them that I spoke to a little bit, the battle, the friendly battle. It truly is of that nature. You know, James saved purse from Penery later in life. So, so there's, there's that pathos to it as well.

[00:25:44] But the, um, the idea here, and we, I talked earlier about uniting theory and practice as like not just a cliche. Right. Right. And when people listen to pragmatism on that superficial level, I guess you can hear it as the series of, um, sort of hopeful, uh, intellectual practices. Let's unite theory and practice for one. Okay.

[00:26:12] Let's break down false dichotomies, which pragmatism is all about. Um, let's find a way to the heart of experience, but, but what it is, and this is why James participates despite purse being very negative about James's assessment of pragmatism and wanting to save pragmatism from, from James and renaming it pragm, pragmatism. Yeah. So that people could think of it differently is that there is this basic way in which as

[00:26:42] this American tradition, pragmatism attempts to cut through the. Recondite if you will, or the overly abstractive practice of philosophy whereby nobody really knows what they're talking about at the end, because you haven't lent true precision to the terms of the conversation. So how it gets you grounded pragmatism is to step away from a priori ideas, right?

[00:27:12] That is we build from the basis of these ideas that haven't been checked out or haven't been verified experientially. And so the heart of it is this pragmatic maxim, which is that the meaning of an idea lies in its experiential consequences. So to really know what we mean, we have to trace out the, the implications in experience.

[00:27:37] We have the abduction, which is the first level of the hypothesis of a certain idea of the deductions, which are the whole set of potential consequences. And then you have that final inductive step. Like what does it really mean in practice? So purse will always be going around and saying, okay, these two ideas, any two ideas are presented as different ideas. It's a distinction without a difference, right? And at that point, it's really the same idea.

[00:28:04] So the point is, it's, it's a pragmatism as this kind of philosophy in the way that purse understands it is a tool of clarification. And the way that it clarifies ideas is to make that return to the concrete of experience. It's a necessity in that methodology. So if you follow it through and kind of work with any particular paradigm from that basis, you should have this, you could call it a streamlined approach.

[00:28:34] You could call it a way of like sort of taking out the weeds or what have you. But it's, it's taking everything that, that, that, that could otherwise get lost in a, in a kind of Byzantine conceptual matrix that is not fully understood and settling it, you know, like in soccer, settling the ball or whatever, bringing it to the ground and trying to impart some meaning from that basis.

[00:28:59] So that's what, that's why we turn to this group because in some ways, this is the resistance to theology, by the way, by and large, it was James's resistance to theology. It was Purse's sense that theology is often ignoring the modes of approach to its object, to God or the experience of God that are lying in plain sight.

[00:29:28] And so that's why we're trying to translate this, this, this kind of weddedness to certain a priori ideas. And this is where it gets tricky in, in Christianity is, well, aren't the a priori ideas dogma? And so how then do you evaluate dogma? I don't think we need to get into this today. But the idea is, is that this brings a different kind of lens that is nonetheless exacting, but

[00:29:56] can do exactly what Sandra Schneider's was saying, saying needs to happen. Let's bring this to the ground, right? Let's return to these, to these neglected or suppressed voices in this experience. And let's, let's study their experience in a descriptive fashion. Mm-hmm. For sure. Okay. Okay. I'm, yeah, with, with James in particular, I'm wondering with what he's doing is, I mean, does that in some way mirror sort of the American transcendentalists in a way?

[00:30:23] Like, are there, are there sort of common features to what he's doing with what the transcendentalists are doing? Because I think with this sort of approach of the field of spirituality, it almost seems at first glance that the transcendentalists would be a more natural, naturally suited partner, perhaps than the pragmatists, particularly for Forrest and Royce. But we could also kind of maybe see a sort of, I don't know, a fork in the road in American

[00:30:50] intellectual history where we have the pragmatists and the transcendentalists, or we could see it as both sort of sinking into the culture, right? So we have a highly pragmatic, practical sort of working culture. Yes. But we also have a highly individualistic culture that really believes in self-reliance and almost just kind of like frontier mentality. Yeah. But I'm wondering if what James is doing mirrors in any way, like Thoreau and Emerson. Oh, definitely. And so forth. Yes, yes, yes.

[00:31:18] And then how you might kind of. No, it's a good insight. Like how you might kind of frame your own project in light of sort of that, that history. Yeah. Well, getting back to some of what we've been talking about, this sort of small world in the, you know, Harvard base, as much as I hate to say it, intellectual culture in the, you know, in the Northeast, in the U.S.

[00:31:41] So, you know, James's father was, was a philosopher, incredibly eccentric philosopher. And so Emerson would be over for dinner, you know, James grew up around the sort of kitchen table with, with Emerson around. This is definitely coming out of transcendentalism. And what, what Peirce says, again, Peirce is critical of what he would call the, he saw

[00:32:11] nominalism everywhere, what he would call the nominalism of transcendentalism. So again, he's attempting to, to, to clarify and make sense of, of, of some of these earlier ideas to refine what he understands to be this sort of philosophical mistakes made left and right. But, but, but the point is, what Peirce would say is as much as I'm kind of taking, moving

[00:32:37] in this, in, in this direction of, of, of, of grounding these intellectual traditions, I find out, find that like again and again, as like a virus that has been latent for a while, right. Transcendentalism emerges, you know, maybe, maybe at the last turn. So I do think that, that we can look at it in that way too, as, as pragmatism is trying

[00:33:05] to sort of shape these, these early, you know, kind of transcendentalist thinkers and Emerson and Thoreau, but Thoreau getting back to this fork in the road, as you put it, and James and Emerson in some way in terms of what we could call the development of radical individualism. There's a bit of a more direct route from, from their thoughts of that.

[00:33:32] And, and, and the idea being like picture throw at, at Walden pond, right. The idea being that to come into your own, to become yourself, to experience the fullness of life, however you want to put it, you need to sever those sort of social roots. Um, and the response from, from person and from Royce is not only that, that, that the

[00:33:59] full flourishing of the human person comes in a network of community, but we're always like implicitly, we, we, we, we fail to recognize how much we depend upon this communal network of meaning. So that's where it's philosophical. It's not just exhortative is, is that this is the very structure, the very structure of reality is communal. Right. And so the mistake is, is, is not just that you're abandoning your brothers and sisters by going out of the woods or something like that.

[00:34:28] And that can be a part of, by the way, that can be a part of the communal trajectory. It's not to say that there's not a place for solitude, but the basic setup, the basic understanding of the human person and of all life depends upon the precedence of community. Um, prior to the call it, the development of, of, of the individual consciousness. So community is both the precedence.

[00:34:56] It's both an origin and a return point. Yes. Yeah. And that's what's so beautiful. Like what I was saying earlier about Royce's sources of religious insight is you find all kinds of sort of angst, you know, personal angst at early stages would may even require, you know, leaving a community that's problematic. That's that fails to be a genuine community. That's what Thoreau is doing. You can reinterpret Thoreau and his civil disobedience, right?

[00:35:26] That's, that's an action on behalf of the community. Not just saying that salvation lies in the individual in that way. But again, the culmination of it is this return through all stages of mysticism and what have you, is this, um, return to that, those communal foundations, but in a, in a new light, right? So sometimes it's progressing beyond and coming back and like the Buddha, if you will. Right. Sure.

[00:35:49] But, um, but, but, but as much as you think you're, um, apart from it in these various stages, you're still somehow joined and there's still, I, I like to imagine it, um, in terms of, we, we talk about this with spiritual transformation, um, in like terms of the Enneagram sometimes, you know, for those who are familiar with it, there's like the, the idea, if you want to use Merton's terms of the, of the false self and the true self, right.

[00:36:18] And the whole idea of the Enneagram is from a spiritual perspective is basically that there's a kind of eco-ic frame of reference that can give you like a little bit of juice and that you're kind of addicted to and that define your compulsive patterns and you can stay there forever. But there's, there's, there is a deeper energy field that comes from a, a, a greater connectedness. I think of it as a saying in the same terms with, with community, right.

[00:36:47] There's a deeper network of meaning and potentiality for even the power of the expressiveness of the human person when they're, when they're configured to that. And as Roy says, when the individual's cut off, I like this quote, I always try to get it in because I, I, I think it's such a good image. You're just like a pot that, that bubbles until it bubbles dry.

[00:37:09] Um, and I think a lot of people in the American, um, experience have that, have been there. And that is like the awakening to community that happens, right. Even coming back into these forms of community that are highly imperfect, but to be so completely

[00:37:33] cut off to, to, to really rebel in that way can be salutary because you've recognized what you've given up and you've recognized in some ways how you can go back and participate, um, in a way that's good, good for the whole. Yeah. No, I think that's a great way to put it. Yeah. I mean, it's very clear to me from the book and even from this conversation so far, how sort of thickly situated this, your project is within the sort of, um, the American context, right. Sure.

[00:38:03] Writing from and for the American landscape, especially the religious landscape in the country. Yeah. Um, I'm wondering why, right. We've talked sort of about sort of the intellectual history, uh, some, like some roots you could say of sort of American culture, but I'm curious why American Christianity in particular has tended, um, so much towards this sort of hyper individualism, this kind of individualistic piety and why there's been such a strong emphasis and continues, I would say to be such

[00:38:33] a strong emphasis on sort of sublime experiences of, of the divine or these, these sort of really emotionally charged experiences or encounters with the divine. Yeah, it's a very good question. Um, again, one of these questions were there are a number of directions, uh, to go in. And it's always actually, you know, somewhat mystifying, um, to me, uh, the, the way that

[00:39:02] American religion has, has developed. Um, and I think again, we're sort of poised on the, um, we're always sort of poised on the knife's edge of this, of this dialectic. So as much as I would consent to the idea that American religiosity is hampered by an excessive individualism, um, as the entire country is, is, is hampered by an excessive individualism.

[00:39:31] I also look back to like the great roots of, uh, transformation of conversion and the, you know, these old revival movements and what have you, the big 10 sort of thing. Um, where the experience is profoundly communal. Um, and in, in, in some ways I would, my first answer would be, um, that it has to do a lot

[00:39:57] with prosperity, the process, the relative prosperity of, of the United States, obviously, despite there being huge gulfs between, uh, demographics in the United States, because when you think about, I mean, I just, let's just go back to the scriptures and Jesus's warnings warnings against wealth, but it's, it's, it's, it's a warning that has to do with the awareness of reality, um, that is possible for a person who is wealthy in some ways. Right.

[00:40:25] So, you know, that whether it be talking about, you know, building the second barn when, uh, you know, when your very life may be asked of you to like, like what, what, what is that idea in the context of the United States? Oh, that's so simple. That's like, maybe your second house, you know what I mean? Like I'm, I'm, I, I, I, I can see how, like, well, I don't need people anymore. Right.

[00:40:50] Like, and, and that second house is going to be on an Island or, you know, it, it, it, I'm going to find my freedom in that space. It's, it's the perennial temptation to take what you have and to use that as a means of isolating yourself. And I think that, um, becomes, and has become in some ways a little more hardwired in the, in the United States. When you look at our patterns of suburban sprawl, like I came from San Antonio and I'm like, why,

[00:41:18] as you move out in this city, first of all, why does it go on for so, so far beyond the, beyond the center of the cities is freeway culture and everything else because everybody wants, you know, quarter acre, half acre, what have you, but why are we building gated community, like middle-class gated communities that are only accessible by the freeway anyway? Like, what are you all afraid of? But also, um, what, what is, what is that dynamic of taking what used to be communal goods?

[00:41:48] Now you have the private swimming pool, the playroom, the pool table, whatever, and, um, individualizing them. So, so that's my sense of things. The private piety is tied into the prosperity of, of, of the nation to just sort of gloss that, that briefly. And that itself has to do with what I would call a kind of perennial temptation to isolate through wants wealth.

[00:42:13] Um, and it's always, the conception is that it's like an eradication of problems or a, um, capacity to, uh, essentially, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, to actually protect yourself from potential dangers in the environment. That's why we find such a like safety first mentality amongst this group as well. Um, but, uh, but it's, it's manifested at a broad, broad scale in the United States

[00:42:41] as was in some ways impossible to conceive of and in prior periods. Yeah. I think too, like kind of riffing on what you were saying about isolation. I think it's, it's also a bit of like isolating from isolating oneself from sort of the frictions and the difficulties that come with sort of really embedded, um, kind of communal, exactly. A communal matrix that you find in like an urban center or even like a small town.

[00:43:08] Um, and especially I think the difficulties of like, uh, the frictions and difficulties that come with like pretty profound social difference. Yes. Which of course cities are hotbeds of significant social difference. Definitely. Some people are moving to the suburbs where everybody sort of looks similar and of a similar socioeconomic status and so forth. Yeah. I, sorry. I think you're right in the, in the city center, right. If you, if you're able to remove yourself from, I mean, this especially applies in a place

[00:43:37] like Portland, right. Where I think the temptation is to get away from some of the things you might see in urban core, right. So you don't want to have to deal with homeless people or even see homeless people. Right. You don't want to have to deal with your kids seeing people shooting up drugs. Right. Right. And you don't, there's even, you know, you don't want to see poverty, right. Right. Or the difficulties of sort of, uh, coming right up against poverty.

[00:44:07] Yeah. So I don't, I don't know if you want to say something about. Yeah. No, in some ways. So this could become a conversation about grace as well, because in some ways what you're saying is that that's just like a very natural choice. Right. Right. To want to continue to distance yourself from that. You don't want to put your kids at risk. Sure. You want a pleasant environment, everything else. Um, so that's in some ways where great.

[00:44:37] And when we talk about conversion stories in the United States come in and say Dorothy Day and the Catholic worker is when we talk about a little bit, right. There is a move against these kinds of inclinations in the light of the gospels and in the light of the way you're, you know, your own heart has been so moved, um, to resist that, that, that, that's one thing. Um, but, but I also think we're talking about a kind of an entropic pattern, if you will, or a disintegrative pattern.

[00:45:06] And I don't want to say like, I live in suburban Portland. So, uh, but, and you don't want to say that community has to be the exact kind of grit that, that, um, that we imagine. Uh, I do think it's very interesting that in the United States, Fox news and what have you focuses like precise, we're talking about Portland precisely there.

[00:45:34] Like why, why, why, why do you have this, um, entirely, I wouldn't say fabricated, but pretty conjured image of Portland. Like we were talking about what downtown Portland is like the other day. Yeah. Like it's a pretty nice place to be as a Portlander. It's an area that you can feel proud of with a restaurant culture and even the vibrancy of that downtown area. Um, so we can ask that, why does this have to be the fantasy in the first place?

[00:46:02] Because the fantasy will exist in some ways it'll be connected to the reality, but they will make the most out of it. Right. And I'm not saying it's, it's a partisan thing. I'm saying that's something inherent to the human spirit. We want to be in, in this flight from tough circumstances in this fear over our own wellbeing and safety. We're just going to build up this nightmarish vision of, of, of what's on the other side. Um, but that to me points to the fact that, okay, there's something, if we think

[00:46:31] as whatever progressives in the United States or as younger people or what have you, that this is the, this way of thinking is the height of, um, a certain kind of selfishness as it is right. That, that this is what continues to feed that selfishness, these narratives. This is what allows people to continue to feel justified and being cut off from their neighbor in failing to sort of participate in the common wheel and so on and so forth. There's a reason for that.

[00:47:00] So I'll say that in the first place, but to turn to the more like progressive side where I've been writing about San Francisco on my subset and, um, where you look at the tech tycoons side of things, because that's another version. This is like middle-class common person, whatever. Like I'm, I'm, I'm going to be safe with the people I love away from these gritty streets. Well, let's talk about like Musk and Zuckerberg and Teal, who's apparently a Christian and all that. Yeah.

[00:47:29] And I think what the story is basically, and I, I, I, I think it's inherent to this, this way of thinking in community life is hard and, and, and will be hard. And of course you can say, it'll be messy, whatever you're going to come home and complain about your fellow community members. And so the fantasy will emerge. I've got to like, I want freedom from them. You know, that, that, that, that, that's a part of things. But what we see in community life is hard.

[00:47:58] When you are cut off, you become insane. These people are insane. Like in, and becoming more insane. I mean, maybe there's a latent psychosis if you see Elon Musk jump around and everything else. Maybe in some ways they've just become themselves, but I don't think so. Right. I, I, I, I think there's a movement to the worst version of yourself when you, when you become that pot, the bubbles dry and so on and so forth.

[00:48:25] And how does Peter Thiel end up with the most unique vision of Christianity that I've almost ever seen. Right. It's laden with this sort of conspiratorial sort of apocalyptic matching to figures in American culture today. It's a terrible reading of René Girard. I mean, these are supposed to be the smartest people in our country and they're incredibly poor theorists.

[00:48:52] So the point is that that emerges, I think, from the level of insulation that they've experienced. They are at the, at the, the edge of that bell curve and we can see what comes on the other side. So the way of saying, yeah, I would go back to that in a community. Life is hard outside of community. If you get all the way to the edge, if you get all the way to the edge of that, life is characterized by a kind of stewing in your own juices that produces a sort of insanity. So. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:49:21] I like that way of putting it a lot. Something we haven't talked much about yet, but that's a really important part of your book is, is this convert, right? This topic of conversion. Right. Right. And the, and Donald Jelpie sort of being in the background, which probably not many listeners have heard of Donald Jelpie, but he's been an important figure I know for you, but also for the field of spirituality. How does his account in particular of conversion kind of differ from some of the most prominent

[00:49:50] understandings of conversion, especially I'm thinking of some of the sort of ideas of conversion that are so prominent in America today. Right. So this is kind of, you talked about revivals, but the sort of like revivalists, right? So I grew up with a lot of like altar calls and a lot of sinners prayer and stuff like that. So I'm wondering how does Jelpie's account, how is his different from that sort of framing of conversion?

[00:50:20] Yeah. So for him, I think the first thing to say is that Jelpie's understanding of conversion is a differentiated and multimodal account of conversion. So in other words, what this kind of revivalists alter call model, the way that conversion is understood is there's one way to convert, right?

[00:50:47] You, you renounce your past life in some way or another, and you accept the salvation, the personal salvation of Jesus Christ. Something like that. For Jelpie, and again, Lonergan deserves some credit here. This is working out of a Lonerganian framework where you're saying, okay, there are, and it's even to mystic in its roots if we get into that, but, but, but you have a distinction

[00:51:15] between kind of natural modes of conversion and a supernatural mode of conversion, if you will. So what Jelpie wants to say is what you're experiencing. It's not, it's not to sort of definitely denounce this whole idea of like coming to the grace and love of Jesus Christ. Because basically he would say Christian conversion or religious conversion, but in a, in a Christian

[00:51:41] modality is a mode of conversion that sublates to use a, I think a Hegelian word that you'd be familiar with all these other modes of conversion. So to come, to, to come truly into the sort of light of truth that you experience as a Christian, to have your heart moved in that way makes you a better person, not like instantaneously magically, but in a way it produces a different moral orientation. Right.

[00:52:09] And you can think of conversion in this way as the kind of lens through which you apprehend reality. William James talks about conversion as a, as your transformation in your primary center of energy. You're coming from a new center in some way or another. But so to be, to, if, if something is truly happening on that level, alter call and so on, then you become a better person with respect to your family.

[00:52:35] You become more open to the poor and you feel that you recognize you have an obligation to them. By the way, Christianity is all about that, right? You likewise find yourself healed actually on what you could call the affective or the psychological level. I mean, that's a lot of what's happening in a conversion. When you say, I can finally forgive myself or something like that, or I can finally forgive my father for what he's done to me. I'm over these hard feelings.

[00:53:01] It may still be a part of my background, but there's a new focus that I can have with respect to them. So what Jelpy does is he says, this is good and true, but we also have these, these different modes of conversion that need to be taken into consideration. And they can even be a rubric for evaluating whether conversion has truly taken place. Because if you feel this overpowering sentiment that you have been transformed by the love of

[00:53:28] God, then the only way that's actually happening, and here's the, the pragmatism part of it, right, is it has to be verified by the consequences in your behavior. There are practical consequences to this. This is, this is something we can look through and observe in a person's life. Yeah. And so if you, you know, spit on the homeless or something, then that conversion has not taken place. So it's, it's, it's this kind of idea.

[00:53:56] It gives us a more holistic frame of reference for understanding conversion. It sees the different ways in which it happens and it sees how those ways are related to one another. So it's a bit of a map, if you will. Sure. Yeah. And I think that, that understanding of conversion is especially important in the American context where so much of, so much faith is sort of ensnared in ideology and the sort of culture warring mentality. Yes.

[00:54:26] Right. Um, so you're saying with Jelpie, right, conversions actually, the conversion actually extends, um, into the sort of social and political terrain in a way that we don't typically think of conversion as, as extending into. Exactly. So it's, it's also like a conversion of your affections, uh, your political affections towards others, especially perhaps towards kind of political enemies. Yeah. Yeah. Something very different from what we see going on. Exactly. No, no, no, definitely.

[00:54:55] And I'd say just to clarify what I had jumbled a little bit there, he, you can see it in these two domains. So it's possible to speak without talking about being converted as a Christian. It's possible to speak about someone being, to use your only word, sociopolitically converted. What does that, what does that mean to, to approach reality in a way beyond sort of ordinary selfishness? Right.

[00:55:21] But also whenever we speak about Christian conversion that has these effects, these practical or pragmatic consequences down the line, which is truly happening that resonate in all these spheres as well. Okay. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. No, that's, that's super helpful. Okay. I want to talk about Thomas Merton because I know again, another important piece of your book and we haven't talked too much about him. I don't know if we've talked about him yet at all. Um, right. But super interesting figure. He's a monk, he's a contemplative, but he's also a social activist.

[00:55:50] And for him, these things are not sort of separated from each other. Um, yeah, I think, I think he's interesting, right? But, um, because he's not pitting his own, his own sort of personal spirituality, um, uh, his own contemplation, uh, but also his own sort of enmeshment within the Catholic church and the Catholic religious order. He's not pitting that against sort of social, you know, his sociopolitical life or his ethical life.

[00:56:18] Um, but I, what I'm interested in is what you would say about sort of the dialectic of these two things, um, these two sort of dimensions of his spirituality. What does that look like for someone like Thomas Merton? Yeah. With Merton, the important point, what were the reason I, we wanted to work with Merton. Um, yeah, twofold. One is a lot of people, at least in the Catholic church, but I think beyond as well are attracted to his work and know him. Right.

[00:56:46] So we, we, we want a figure that's, that's recognized that people can sort of validate based on what they know of Merton's experiences, whether we're kind of telling the truth about him. And so he works, uh, basically as our major case study, we've given you all these ideas about conversion, uh, the journey of conversion, the nature of this journey towards community.

[00:57:12] We've talked about these modes of, of conversion through Jalpi, uh, the importance of why does pragmatism matter, these concrete consequences and what have you. And finally, what is conversion about, but this ideal of the beloved community, right? This is, this is what is, is there at the end of the road. So what's important to see with Merton is not just the fully formed Merton as it were in

[00:57:36] the last stage of his life where he writes, uh, that letter, Thich Nhat Hanh is my brother, right. And sees across what may be perceived by others to be a religious divide, sees, uh, you know, something similar, having, having some, some love in, in this human being that is laudatory. Um, and that for Merton draws him a lot closer to Thich Nhat Hanh than many of his fellow Catholics. Right.

[00:58:06] Um, but, and, and not only this, this kind of final mystical realization, if you want, that is a communal realization, uh, which is to say we are already one and we just don't know it yet. Right. And here's, let me show you how this, how even on the corner of fourth and Walnut, right. Yeah. He sees that sort of radiance in each person. He sees this oneness. Right. And, and it's important that that, that, that mystical realization of Merton, by the way,

[00:58:35] as a monk happens outside of the monastic walls, happens when he's almost caught off guard, wandering, uh, you know, into Louisville to pick up a hammer or something like that. Right. Um, and, and it's, it's that not only in these religiously realized people who I share life with on this common contemplative journey, can I see it, but in the ordinary people on the street. Right. So that's, that's key. But also for Merton, he went through a process of transformation. Right.

[00:59:03] Um, of course we talk about the early days, um, when he was just sort of off the wall. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, you know, wild young Merton, uh, who wants to be an artist, um, and is possessed of all these gifts, but kind of can't get himself centered. Anyway, it comes into the Catholic church and you have still a beautiful story. Seven story mountain. You do have this sort of triumphalist Merton, right. Where salvation lies in the Catholic church. Yeah.

[00:59:30] Uh, I want to, you can see the way what, what I was struck by the first time I read that story is like, man, he is harsh on whatever the Lutheran or these groups, these people who so influenced him and were so good to him, but he really wants to, to make it be known that this path that he discovered is the right path. Yeah. And the thing about the beloved community, the ideal of the beloved community is we understand it as I would say, Martin Luther King understood it.

[01:00:00] Um, what Roy sets out is it lies beyond this kind of final step beyond all sectarianism, right? Roy has to say, and it's not to say that you have to leave your tradition. Martin didn't come close to doing that as much as a certain group wants to paint him. So with the notion of the beloved community as a philosophical ideal, it's a beautiful idea, but of course it's, it's not just a beautiful idea.

[01:00:29] There's some substance to it. It makes it pragmatic, real consequences, participating in the beloved community, ways in which you can be true to the beloved community or fail to be true to it. Right. And, um, a major criterion for Roy's is that you cannot hope for the triumph of any particular sect. So the vision of the beloved community, this is a little bit Martin self overcoming, you could

[01:00:59] say, um, within that vision, you can recognize the goodness that lies in other traditions. And it is not this pattern, um, by which you understand your tradition as absorbing everything else. There's a, there's a kind of pluralism is why it works as an American idea as well, a pluralism

[01:01:23] to this vision and attention that needs to be maintained between the kind of security that you would like to have in belonging to the one true way as it were. Um, and the reality that we can observe that there are others who come from different standpoints who are nonetheless participants, loyal participants in the coming about of, of what we could call

[01:01:51] the kingdom of God, um, of the life that, that transcends, uh, our selfish interests of, of, of the true birth of, of community in the world. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Sure. Sure. So then what does the, what does enacting the beloved community actually look like? Because I think, you know, as you said, it's a beautiful idea, but it's also an ideal, right?

[01:02:17] So what does enacting that ideal, what might that enacting that ideal like sort of look like, especially at, at, at, at kind of a local church level and thinking like, how can communities of faith, um, kind of push back against some of the like fragmentation that we experienced in our culture? And what do you think would have to happen in order for these communities to actually

[01:02:41] become more communal to do, to sort of do this differently, um, that it's maybe being done at the moment? Yes. So in other words, what would have to happen for certain groups to become genuine communities? Correct. Yeah. Um, because these are, that we discuss in the book, these are other criteria.

[01:03:04] There are conditions that have to be met in order to, to suffice as a, as a genuine community. Yeah. I, I, I think this is tricky in our current context. And I would want to point to the prophetic strain that exists to a certain degree in pragmatism, but that we're also alluding to in Merton's life and Dorothy Day's life and King's life,

[01:03:33] uh, which for me requires taking a stand. I think where our communities can struggle. And I don't envy the pastor who, you know, has a duty in some ways to reconcile these communities. But as far as if we're truly understanding this philosophy, I, I think we can see that there are figures in the United States, uh, that there are movements in the United States,

[01:04:02] that certain pastors or religious groups for whatever reason feel they have to sanction or even throw their weight behind that are absolutely trespassing upon this ideal of the beloved community that can very easily be shown to be displaying the precise opposite of the coming together of this kind of community.

[01:04:23] So it's not to say that a genuine community today has to be intolerant of different belief systems of, um, different approaches, but it is to say that I believe it to be the obligation of coming to serve in this way.

[01:04:43] When we see the, the sort of vigor that comes across both in Martin Luther King, but also in Thomas Merton's political writings, um, where we have to assess in the light of the gospel, um, what fidelity to the gospel actually means and be willing to preach that at whatever cost.

[01:05:09] Right. So I don't think a way of saying that this kind of mediation of, um, what purse would call the gospel of greed, right. Which obviously is on display in the white house. We don't need to say that, but in all sorts of places that, because there's no way to bring this kind of gospel of greed into alignment with the ideal of the beloved community. Mm-hmm.

[01:05:34] So how do you work from there? You don't force a fit. You say, this is, this is, it's, it's clear as can be, um, what the Christian perspective is here. And, and, and to be honest, that's what we have to continue to serve.

[01:06:13] Mm-hmm. Yeah. Of a beloved community. Yeah. I think the necessary polarity actually is the polarity between beloved community, which is inclusive of, so it's not the community versus the individual. Right. Right.

[01:06:39] It's commonly understood. It's not a sort of communism in the way that we can understand that negatively or what have you. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Um, because this whole idea, as we talked about far earlier in the podcast, includes in not a pathway, but the flourishing of the individual through the approach by way of these charisms and what have you. Mm-hmm.

[01:07:02] So it's that, but, but the, the genuine opposite of the beloved community is this ideology of radical individualism. Mm-hmm. Right. Right. So the failure to respond to your neighbor, obviously, but the economic, the way that economic forces are arranged in the United States, if we talk about the most radical variant of capitalism, if we talk about the big winners in, in that kind of game, um, that's a pretty direct opposite.

[01:07:43] Mm-hmm. And have betrayed their mission is in, in, you know, in my judgment is a failure to wade into that economic dimension. Mm-hmm. Um, and which is economic dimension and political dimension in, in that regard, because I hate when I hear, you know, I mean, the Democrats are failures.

[01:08:09] Of course, I don't know. I'm not saying that you become a Democrat and all this, but I hate when, uh, I hear in churches that I really didn't like what the pastor said because the pastor became political or something like that. Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah. Um, because obviously, like, that's putting the cart before the horse. There are political implications. That's what, that's what a pragmatic communal spirituality means.

[01:08:33] We don't live this severed life where you have your piety that does nothing but, like, you know, tumbleweed of the soul kind of thing. Mm-hmm. And then you live a public life in contradiction to that, and that's good enough. Yeah. I mean, that's why American Christianity or world Christianity or whatever, that, that's, that's the site as much as anything of this kind of patterns of a moribund faith practice. That's, that's the death of genuine religiosity, not its, its greatest expression or what have you. Mm-hmm.

[01:09:02] So, yeah, this preservation of a false peace, of a false harmony at the cost of pursuing the genuine ideal, I think that communities have to step up in that way. Mm-hmm. Um, if that means the revisioning of, of community, that may be critical. Mm-hmm. But how can we revision that, that sense of community without, and this is where I think polarization makes sense, just creating some kind of like-minded demographic group, right?

[01:09:32] Yeah. Yeah. Where the, you know, um, you get exactly what I'm saying. And what I, what I loved about this, um, church in Portland that I've been a part of for a while, St. Michael the Archangel, is it was not a self-selecting community. Mm-hmm. And it's like across age groups, uh, across a political spectrum. Yeah. Um, there's something to that.

[01:09:55] But where, where the difficulty can come in is when you say, okay, we've preserved this sort of, uh, beautifully diverse community in the, in the true sense of diverse. Mm-hmm. Um, and yet now we fear that we can't speak the truth because we're going to offend some people who, who, who, who think a certain way. So, so how do you reckon that as a beloved community for me? Mm-hmm.

[01:10:21] Reconciling both, um, that kind of community that just gets beyond the socioeconomic bubbles that so dictate in America. Yeah. Um, but also is willing to, to prophetically speak the truth. Sure. Sure. Sure. I'm just stuck on this tumbleweed spirituality. I think that's a nice, a nice little phrase. Yeah. You just stumbled into it right there. Um, I think that's a good, good place for us to, to stop. Um, I do though. I want to give you a chance to share about anything you might like to plug.

[01:10:50] You, you spoke about your heaven, human, earth, and student. I don't know if there's anything else you want to say about that. You briefly mentioned your sub stack. I want to promote your sub stack here. So if you want to say a little something about your sub stack, you're more welcome to, or anything else you might want to share about. Yeah. Sub stack is easy because it's the same, uh, name as the book, but with a little dash between re envision. So it's re envisioning spirituality.

[01:11:14] Um, is where I, you know, try to present some of the ideas of the book definitely, but try to take up, um, as a good pragmatist should their implications. And you can see some of the other, uh, research and work I'm involved in. As I talked about this depth psychology, um, work that we haven't touched upon much today. Uh, so there's that, that's a fun, you know, a fun thing for me to kind of, um, continue to be creative in that regard.

[01:11:42] And then the other thing is, um, the formation that's just coming into being, we hope that it represents the incarnation of the beloved community. That will take some time to prove it or make it happen. But this is a heaven, human, earth Institute, um, that, uh, we're doing this, uh, along with another theologian spirituality scholar, I should say in the Portland area, Rachel Wheeler.

[01:12:11] And, uh, whose specialty is an eco spirituality as well as a desert tradition. But we're also working with scholar practitioners of classical Chinese medicine, scholar practitioners of depth psychology and attempting to create a community that will be birthed around the corner.

[01:12:30] We're going to have a big conference in July of next year and create these multiple pathways of entry, whether it be through receiving, you know, treatments in these various domains to come to understand them also through adult education. Um, and hopefully can, can, as I said, um, bring about something that I hope is true to the ideals that we've discussed in this book. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah, for sure.

[01:12:59] We'll be sure to leave, uh, links to all that stuff in the show notes. And you're also, we haven't mentioned this at all, but you're finishing a dissertation on James Hillman and Christian spirituality, which you're turning in very soon here. And I hope someday we'll see it in the book form. Um, but Michael, Michael Sergioli, thanks so much. It's been a pleasure. Uh, been a lot of fun being able to hang out with you and have this conversation today. So thank you. Thank you. Fantastic conversation.