Shiloh Logan and Riley Risto open up about their experiences and what led them to starting down a path of Christian contemplation. They talk about their interests in the Beatitudes and the Sermon on the Mount and in how the Savior’s teachings have brought them peace in their lives.
Shiloh, Riley, and Christopher Hurtado all open up space for a conversation about the healing power of mourning. A part of the baptismal covenant is to “mourn with those who mourn” (Mosiah 18:9), but do we really comprehend the incredibly healing power that mourning has on our fellow man? What does “mourning” here even mean? In the Beatitudes, after we empty ourselves and are poor in spirit, we experience a mourning from letting go of those false identities and ego. This personal step allows us the ability of being able to mourn with others. Mourning with the other, at least in part, is an experience of being with and seeing the other person without judgment, without guile, and without ridicule. It is not a moment to correct or adjust the other, but it is an experience where we are able to see the other person as God sees them in their true self. We have all had the common experience of not being or feeling seen, heard, or understood, but mourning with another offers that moment of grace in seeing, hearing, and understanding one another. We are always seeking for our own comfort, and really seeing, hearing, and understanding another person is often uncomfortable. Mourning with the other bridges the gap or chasm of separateness, and by allowing ourselves the possibility to connect with another we find new ways of connecting with ourselves. In a world wrought in social, religious, and political pain and anguish, the only way that we can truly begin to heal with those we perceive as our “enemy” is to learn how to mourn with them. All of the reasons and justifications against mourning ...
In this episode Riley and Christopher are joined by Ben Peterson, co-host of Latter-day Peace Studies Presents: Come, Follow Me, for a conversation on how we read the scriptures and how that determines the meaning we get out of them. In the course of the conversation, they examine a few of the hermeneutics (i.e., ways of reading the scriptures) they have been using in their respective podcasts, and the exegesis (i.e., meaning) each hermeneutic produces. At the end of this episode, Christopher makes an announcement about the future of Ben’s podcast. ...
Christopher and Riley talk about the esoteric (inner) and exoteric (outer) experience of religion and finding a balance between the two. On the one hand, there’s holding so tightly to the letter of the word of God that’s the iron rod that we can’t let go long enough to take a step forward in the darkness in faith to walk the path the iron rod is meant to lead us down to the presence of God. On the other hand, there’s failing to hold to the rod at all and getting lost in the mists of darkness that are the temptations of the devil. How does the church support us in walking the path back to the presence of God? Much like the iron rod helps us stay on the path to God, the Church acts as scaffolding, as Stephen R. Covey put it in his book, The Divine Center, for the family where we learn how to and are supported in waking the path that ultimately we must walk alone in faith, trusting in God, according to our agency. Thus our church experience is an outer experience that is meant to support our inner experience of transformation. When we see the outer shell as the kernel itself, we may fail to do the inner necessary work to build the Kingdom of God Jesus Christ said is within us, satisfied with “working on the scaffolding” as Covey put it. At the same time, the path back to God, the Covenant Path, is paved with ordinances the Church serves to prepare us for and to provide us. But just going through the motions of the transactional “Checklist Gospel” (the ...
