Christopher, Riley, and guest, Jana Spangler, a seasoned faith transitions coach, talk about healthy ways of dealing with doubt, difficult questions, and supporting those in a faith crisis. They talk about opening a space for those in doubt to express their doubts and be heard without judgment or attempts to fix them. If we are not to “rehearse [our] doubts with doubters,” where can we turn for validation? Jana explains the mindset of those in a faith crisis. They don’t choose their crisis and want to remain in the fold, but often feel they don’t belong. Jana helps us frame doubt and even faith crisis as necessary steps in the growth, evolution, and long-term endurance of faith. She provides a framework for mutual, relational grace to help us grow towards a healthier discovery and acceptance of our own and others’ spirituality given different types and levels of faith and approaches to seeking truth.
In this episode, Christopher and Riley discuss the contemplative practice of fasting. Beginning with the usual notion of fasting as abstaining from food and drink, they expand it to include abstaining from any appetite with the potential to be taken to excess or to become an unhealthy coping mechanism or even an addiction for lack of communion with God. Riley and Christopher describe indulgence in excess as a way we try to fill the emptiness in us resulting from a lack of communion with God, with food, sex, or the compulsive consumption of products or media, and draw upon examples and teachings from the Buddha, Aristotle, the Stoics, the Epicureans, Jesus, and al-Ghazali, to expand the scope of fasting as a way of becoming more aware of ourselves, our family, our neighbors, and our wider world. ...
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 ...
Riley and Shiloh talk about being born again as an emptying that is necessary to being filled with all that God has waiting for us to experience. What is waiting for us when we're able to empty ourselves every day? Is there a way to start over, even emptying our very concepts of God to allow the divine to work within us into something new and wondrous every day? The LDS Bible Dictionary's definition of repentance is "a change of mind, a fresh view about God, about oneself, and about the world." As repentance is a daily process, then we must learn to see God, ourselves, and the world anew every day. Although we may have been "born again" yesterday and the day before that, as Alma asks, "if ye have experienced a change of heart, and if ye have felt to sing the song of redeeming love, I would ask, can ye feel so now?" (Alma 5:26). We hope you enjoy! ...
