00:02:02.000The rebellion in the spiritual realm and the rebellion of our kind and our refusal to turn towards your readily available grace has caused our suffering.
00:02:45.000Chaz and Dave were a couple of near contemporaries, funny.
00:02:48.000I think they were session musicians and probably done sessions for pretty good bands, but they were always regarded as because they did songs that were about.
00:03:03.000Because we're coached to hate our indigenous and native culture and to consider.
00:03:09.000The elevated culture of, e.g., academia to be somehow superior to us, people kind of are encouraged to loathe themselves.
00:03:17.000Anyway, Chesnay had something of a renaissance in the late 90s when Peter Doherty and Carl Barat of the Libertines, a very cool British band, like made plain their reverence, a bit like when Kurt Cobain was openly very reverent and the.
00:03:39.000Devoted to or at least reverential of Daniel Johnston, yes, yes, Texan folk singer.
00:03:44.000We mentioned him a couple of weeks ago, actually.
00:03:46.000We're talking about uh, what are we talking about?
00:03:50.000Genius, we were talking about genius, and we were likely talking about madness, and we were likely talking about how both of those components require a sort of decoupling from the dominant system of the realm of our kind, whether you call it civilization or society or materialism.
00:04:10.000And Laura, I've been reading a lot, learning a lot lately.
00:05:42.000We, on the day we would normally record Sunday service, we happened to be travelling and Russell really wanted to record it in the airport.
00:06:33.000But I'm gonna, while you're doing that, I'm gonna embark on what I consider to be a narrative journey of more value.
00:06:39.000But we'll see as the show unfolds, whether I was right or wrong.
00:06:42.000If I'm wrong, it won't be the first, and I imagine the last time.
00:06:46.000During the time that we were separated, like our family, like me and my own, for me, it was a very rich and encouraging spiritual time where I was forced to confront the nature of codependency and how.
00:07:05.000Invert commas, addiction, which is in a sense a near synonym of dependency, can happily nest in circumstances where it is not exposed by being obviously malign.
00:07:17.000Easily, if you drink all the time and you're puking up and you're beating up your family members, problem.
00:07:22.000Or if you're becoming unhealthy as a result of your eating habits or your behavior around, I don't know, pornography to name but one obvious thing, it's highlighted.
00:07:33.000But codependency is probably a baseline of addiction and dependency.
00:07:38.000And when I was away from my family, I had to rely more heavily on God.
00:07:44.000You know, the comfort, the comfort that being with you and our children brings, stripped away.
00:07:53.000And I went from being, as you know, in a very, very beautiful, peaceful, but powerful environment where you don't know, actually, in the same way that if you're in a garden, the garden, or in the same way if you're in a womb with all your needs met, until you're expelled.
00:08:12.000You don't know what it is that you may have garnered, if it is indeed a second womb, a second birth.
00:08:19.000And I actually did pretty well in London, had a pretty amazing time spiritually.
00:08:23.000Like I was obviously there for some important meetings with regards to what's happening in October in our country.
00:08:32.000And I was also, took the opportunity by God's grace to go on some, I met up with Jay, John, and Killy, our friends.
00:10:48.000Yeah, but Bill Sight, especially when played by Ollie Reid, what a catch.
00:10:51.000But yes, I do feel like we're still Chaz and Dave ink our way through the Sunday service.
00:10:56.000Well, part of the beauty of Sunday service is that here, hopefully, we can hold esoteric theological points, such as one might learn when at the.
00:11:04.000Tomb of St. Philip Neri of Rome, a early Renaissance or mid Renaissance saint who, through his carooming, picaresque travels through Rome, gathered a coterie and flock of vagabonds.
00:11:25.000The oratory began when he would bring them back to his place where there was a priestly order where each priest just done their own thing.
00:11:31.000Like one priest might be doing, I don't know, food kitchen, one priest might be doing something for orphans and widows.
00:11:36.000And our man, St. Philip Neri, He would just get everyone to hang out, chat, sing some prayers, like have a hymnal.
00:11:45.000People might doze off, people get up and wander off.
00:11:48.000And I thought, wow, this is the Catholic Church, which we know of.
00:11:53.000Where does tradition, and this is a good question for you guys, where does tradition and rigidity intersect?
00:11:58.000And where, as I saw NT Wright saying, how do we, as the Apostle Paul advocates, ensure unity and holiness?
00:12:09.000And the tension between unity and holiness, i.e., you can have unity if you have a very permissive church because you just go, yeah, everyone do what you want.
00:12:22.000Or if you have holiness, you could just keep splitting the church again and again as people focus on some individual principle, become more and more mendicant, more and more renunciate, more and more devout.
00:12:35.000But how do you, as Paul, the great saint, And many say, man and saint who established Christian theology, how do you hold together holiness and unity?
00:12:48.000Well, I would say, with a kind of a decentralized model of subsidiarity where each community is populated by people to participate in it willingly, volitionally, giving their labors, like Romans 12 style, each of us being some person being the ears, someone being the eyes, people bringing what they got to it.
00:13:10.000Is made up of many, many communities that have their own focus.
00:13:13.000Obviously, the central, the plain things are the main things type stuff.
00:13:16.000I think one week I might have mentioned that an acquaintance in Australia had told me that in her community she's doing something that's something called something like kitchen table church or something where they sort of meet up, share a meal, have discussions, and it's led by presumably whoever's hosting that week.
00:13:48.000We never went, but that would have been nice.
00:13:50.000This actually reminds me when I was younger, and I really can't remember where this is, but maybe someone, but it would have to be someone in England might remember this.
00:16:55.000Like a glass chapel in the middle of some woods, just as wouldn't it be nice if you could see nature?
00:17:01.000Not to, not in, I don't mean this in the pagans.
00:17:04.000Yeah, no, I know you said it on the way to, wouldn't it be nice if there were like windows and a root?
00:17:08.000And anyway, I can't remember exactly what we're talking about.
00:17:10.000And then I actually did find there is apparently a chapel somewhere in America on the maybe it's on the west side of America.
00:17:18.000There is a glass chapel that you can visit somewhere in beautiful woodland where you can go and go to services and it's absolutely stunning.
00:17:27.000I'll have to find it unless someone in the comments knows what I'm talking about.
00:17:31.000Apparently, you can go and visit it and it's unbelievably beautiful and it's glass and you can see nature around you.
00:17:38.000So, really, what I'm talking about is the positioning of that meeting of nature and God, but not paganism, but the appreciation of God's creation all around you.
00:17:49.000And what, when the reason I say this and this idea of tabletop, kitchen table sermons, and you saying that Philip Neary is it?
00:18:30.000His intimacy while wandering them streets.
00:18:33.000And the key point it was making about him is that people thought because he was warm and garrulous and playful that he might lack ascetic kudos, i.e., he might be a little too flamboyant and not taking God seriously.
00:18:46.000But those that lived in his house knew that by day.
00:18:50.000He only ate like a little handful of grain every day and a handful of olives, and all night he prayed down in the catacombs with the dead Christian martyrs down there underneath Rome.
00:19:00.000Yeah, so he lived a life that was wholly devout.
00:19:02.000I was very inspired by reading about this man, and the reason it was good was because me and brother Joe there we went.
00:19:09.000Isn't it the oratory is near Holy Trinity Brompton, one of the most important churches, one might say, in contemporary British Christianity and maybe even beyond, because the Alpha movement substantially generated and at least popularized by Nicky Gumball.
00:19:23.000Was like revitalized Christianity in the 90s in prisons, in a variety of places, and actually worldwide.
00:19:31.000And he's been a significant influence also in our faith journey as Nikki and Pippa, and some people that are around him, like Michael Emmett, God rest his soul.
00:19:38.000And these two churches, the Brompton Oratory, very traditional in its way, Catholic order, and the Protestant, very progressive guitars, kind of nice, open, come as you are type version of a church.
00:19:50.000The two of them, we parked behind them off Brompton Road, it was pretty near where Harrods is in Knightsbridge, and Joe said, I think the front door's this way, let's walk around.
00:19:58.000And I said, I think the front door's this way, let's go this way.
00:20:01.000And we walked off in the way that I suggested.
00:20:10.000And climbed over the wall, we jumped in and we were in an astonishing garden back there, like the size of half a football field, which always is a joy, isn't it, in the midst of a city to encounter an open space.
00:20:22.000Do you remember when we used to do As the Crow Flies?
00:20:24.000We would walk, walk, walk just straight.
00:20:28.000Even if it meant you had to walk straight over a wall, we went into the Barbican, didn't we?
00:21:52.000So, like that moment there, I remember because I just then got a flash of a thing that still exists in the dynamic of our relationship.
00:21:59.000And remember the theme that I've established or like was hoping to explore was that in our separation, I learned to love you more, learn to love our family more, learn to realize what it is that the family does for me, as well as allowing God to heal some of the wounds and abrasions that sometimes don't get uncovered because they're.
00:22:15.000Swaived in the love and distractions of family life to have them exposed to the coruscating sun just for a moment brought to the forefront these wounds and gave them a chance to heal.
00:22:24.000When you and I first got back together there and did things like, as the crow flies, walk in a straight line, see where you end up, and we ended up in peculiar places.
00:22:32.000I lived in East London then, and we would end up in the Barbican, a sort of a somewhat modern cultural centre and set of controlled rent houses in London.
00:22:40.000And we ended up in places with ducks and whatnot.
00:22:42.000And one time while doing it in Chelsea, we came across the Chelsea. Flower show, which as I recall was not set up yet, was being set up and went home to the public yet.
00:22:57.000And I would have, instead of being able to put my focus into the present moment, would have been assuaging continually, You're unnecessary, in my view, fears.
00:23:05.000But this is the tension within which our relationship exists and within which, praise God, our children are happily raised because they have a protective, diligent, and observant mother and a father that's like, Well, what about if we do this?
00:23:52.000I think you were a bit upset that I had a laptop in my bag, but I think I might have come from work.
00:23:57.000And it was like, you know, I do remember the whole thing, but it was magical.
00:24:00.000The point was that through these, it was a magical experience to discover this sort of garden, if you, you know, whatever it was, especially something like the Chelsea Flower Show, which obviously is orchestrated to look a certain way, but it was being set up.
00:24:14.000It was nighttime and it just looked stunning.
00:24:17.000And it was in these walls and fences and it was magical.
00:25:06.000Obviously, safety and respect for other people's property and other people's personal sovereignty.
00:25:10.000Those are principles that are absolutely clear and, in a sense, fueled entirely by love your neighbor as you love yourself and be willing to love one another up to the point of death.
00:25:20.000But notice how the world smuggles rules in all the time via pretend compassion.
00:25:48.000So, like, what I wanted to say is that it was, and I've kind of said it in that little riff a minute ago, that that time where we were apart, it allowed God in very brightly.
00:25:57.000And that time in Brompton Oratory, which was somewhat elevated because we couldn't have known, Joe and I, that when we jumped into that back garden to see a priest neatly and sweetly reading under a tree and a gardener with a wheelbarrow, that the establishing and foundation.
00:26:23.000Bob D, who's a great AA speaker, I'm a member, I may or may not be a member of 12 step groups, says that if you were at a circus and you saw a trapeze artist walking across, he says, you've got to know the difference between trust and faith.
00:26:41.000If you went to a circus and you saw a trapeze artist walking across a tightrope, you would have faith that he would get to the other side.
00:26:49.000If you had trust, you would then push you across that tightrope in a wheelbarrow.
00:27:12.000And acknowledge unconventional, but conform not to the patterns of this world.
00:27:16.000And sometimes, also, don't you say, like, you can really be in your flow?
00:27:20.000It's always with children, anyway, there are different set of parameters to what you can do because you've got, you know, I remember we tried to listen to like music.
00:27:33.000We tried to listen to Morrissey in the car once because, you know, great devout.
00:27:38.000And one of our kids just didn't really, yeah, Peggy really did not like the music.
00:27:43.000And that's just an example of like, oh, you can't listen to Morrissey in the car because of the screaming.
00:27:49.000Like, she really took a Version to it.
00:28:20.000But when you're out and about without.
00:28:23.000Family members, and it's you and Joe bombing around.
00:28:25.000You're like, you know, you're just doing your thing, aren't you?
00:28:29.000In priestly gardens, in a matter of moments, learning new prayers, learning about new saints, learning the prayer of the Sacred Heart, which is, in a sense, where I was guiding us throughout this.
00:28:42.000And indeed, second to this, accompanying this, this rapid and radical and glorious enhancing of my inner spiritual life, not that feeling good is the sole aim of spiritual pursuits.
00:28:54.000But no, allowing him to love you and making more room in yourself for him to be present.
00:28:59.000In this state, some other things have happened concomitantly, Lord.
00:29:02.000One, reading non canonical scripture, specifically the book of Enoch.
00:29:44.000And in that time, I do feel restored by that.
00:29:47.000But I also know that when we come back together, we have to find the balance of, okay, we can't go out all the time doing spontaneous adventures and going and doing this thing.
00:30:50.000And what I mean by that, that either means we don't analyze stuff or it means we talk because we do spend a lot of time with our kids, don't we?
00:30:56.000And sometimes I'm trying to tell Russell something I'm interested in that's maybe not something I want to tell the kids or I don't care.
00:31:02.000Because it was about a mother who'd murdered her children.
00:32:40.000I've, I, this is me when I'm talking, when we're talking in front of our kids, I feel, All right, about subjects and finding ways to make it either appropriate to them or include their participation through linguistic dexterity.
00:32:54.000But what I'm more irritated by is someone not letting me cultivate and develop an idea.
00:33:00.000So, like, this is what I'm trying to say.
00:33:01.000I'm trying to say this and I'm trying to pull from a whole different range of references.
00:33:04.000And a child might be like, well, yeah, sometimes the other day, I think I had to actually tell one of the kids not to tell the punchline of something because the punchline was the only thing the whole story was hanging on.
00:33:16.000Anyway, the point being about really what we both experienced separately was that I came back and felt like I really, really had to bring the peace and serenity I had experienced when we were away and I had to really empower.
00:33:35.000Almost like self impose a type of laziness.
00:33:41.000It wasn't really a lazy, but not immediately putting things away, not immediately having to be on top of.
00:34:04.000Yeah, I don't sit down, I don't chill, I don't, you know, take many restful moments.
00:34:09.000So, really, the thing I was interested in is after the rest happens, and everyone, it doesn't matter whether you've taken a month off, or whether you've taken a week off, or whether you've taken a weekend off, or whether you've had a date night and you've gone out and then you've come home and been thrown in the deep end with whatever it is that you're dealing with in your life, is how to continue the state of serenity and restfulness
00:34:31.000without it becoming, without going slipping right into perfectionism and right into, you know, and we did spend a lot of time in prayer when we were away.
00:34:40.000So, I think that finding that restfulness and that gratitude and that peace with God in the mornings and with prayers at night before bed, that's the thing we're trying to reinstate, isn't it?
00:34:54.000In scripture, two examples that come to mind for what you're describing, Laura, is one what's life like inside the garden before the fall of man?
00:35:00.000Perfect, beautiful, all your needs met.
00:35:02.000Like being in utero, suspended, amniotic, all your needs met.
00:35:07.000And also, like our Lord was continually saying, Like while you're with me, it's all cool.
00:35:13.000Like, you know, when you're with the bridegroom, the guests are all cool.
00:35:16.000But once the bridegroom goes, then there will be time for weeping and stuff.
00:35:21.000So, we had a lot of time with God, a lot of time where we were very, very present with God.
00:35:26.000And how I'm noticing, and what's perhaps for the challenge for all of us, let us know in the comments and chat if you agree with this that as the stimulation increases, how do you like me now?
00:35:37.000How can you, Matthew 6 33, how can you seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness?
00:35:44.000To you when you are provoked, when you are, when someone pulls your beard, then you've got to get into those earlier Beatitudes of turn the other cheek, walk the extra mile, offer him your capers.
00:35:57.000What Christ, I think, part of the message of Christ and maybe the ongoing apostolate of Paul is about how do we then live as expressions of him in a world that is.
00:36:15.000Now, what has fascinated me, Laura, scripturally and non canonically, is that I've, as you know, the other day when we went to the old good old Books of Million, stuck in Russell's book, How to Come Christine in Seven Days.
00:36:28.000Click the link in the description and get your copy.
00:36:31.000If you want the audiobook, we've made it available for free.
00:36:34.000Click this link and get it for nothing.
00:36:37.000I got, Laura found it for me, the book of Enoch there.
00:36:40.000What I've discovered from reading what I've read so far of the book of Enoch is it's not like it's Is a separate or parallel account.
00:36:49.000It's like a helpful backstory, like a prequel to things in the Bible that are pretty real curios and super significant.
00:37:00.000And let me give you a little bit of a framework that focuses on spiritual rebellion preceding human rebellion, put in scriptural terms.
00:37:09.000What was the serpent doing to tempt Adam and Eve?
00:37:14.000Was that in what comes first, spiritual rebellion or human rebellion?
00:37:20.000Well, the fact that the serpent, whatever we mean by serpent, did that is an indication that spiritual rebellion precedes human rebellion.
00:37:27.000Now, we obviously are creating categories here.
00:37:31.000That might not withstand robust analysis because where do these taxonomies begin and end?
00:37:37.000Human, spiritual, surely, maybe, perhaps it's all one.
00:37:40.000Before you carry on, something like the book of Enoch, would some people, sorry to play devil's advocate here, would some people think it's not right to read other books other than the Bible?
00:38:17.000Now, why the book of Enoch is interesting historically is when they found the Dead Sea Scrolls, like 80 years ago or 100, whatever it is now, and they found a copy of the book of Isaiah, 98% identical to the canonical Hebrew version of Isaiah, meaning, oh, wow, this thing.
00:38:42.000So the book of Enoch, they say, belongs to the second temple Jewish literary and theological tradition.
00:38:51.000So to say, it's not just like some crazy book, like some new age book.
00:38:56.000So there are probably reasons of geography and politics, coincidence, and who knows what else that mean that Enoch is not included.
00:39:03.000However, Enoch is referred to in the Bible, he features as a character.
00:39:07.000In the book of Genesis, he also is referred to in Jude, which is the penultimate book in the New Testament, right before Revelation, right before he goes into this great big mad cosmic battle between angels and devils and beasts and dragons and a woman and becomes some very high, high mad thing where people eat scrolls.
00:39:26.000And I was struck today by the word, in fact, scrolling, that we're scrolling.
00:39:56.000When human beings began to increase in number on the earth and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that the daughters of humans were beautiful and they married any of them they chose.
00:40:08.000Then the Lord said, My spirit will not contend with humans forever, for they are mortal.
00:40:16.000The Nephilim were on earth in those days, and also afterwards, when the sons of God went to the daughters of humans and had children by them, they were the heroes of old, men of renown, maybe mythic characters, maybe they are Hercules, maybe they are Gilgamesh, maybe they are the mythic heroes that appear across literature, historical literature throughout the world.
00:40:36.000The Lord saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart, interestingly, not the head, was only evil.
00:41:29.000Then the book of Jude, we're going right way to the other end of the canon, the book before Revelation.
00:41:35.000It says in the first chapter of Jude, it's a very short book, for certain individuals whose condemnation was written about long ago have secretly slipped in among you.
00:41:46.000Who are these certain individuals whose condemnation was written about?
00:41:50.000So he's referring back to scripture, right?
00:41:52.000Then a little bit later in Jude, he says, and the angels who did not keep their positions of authority but abandoned their proper dwelling.
00:41:59.000These he has kept in darkness, bound with everlasting chains for judgment on the great day.
00:42:05.000Who are these angels bound in chains just there in the Bible?
00:42:12.000He goes on to say, reject authority and heap abuse on celestial beings.
00:42:16.000But even the archangel Michael, when he was disputing with the devil about the body of Moses, what?
00:42:21.000There was a fight for the body of Moses between angelic beards, did not himself dare to condemn him for slander, but said, The Lord rebuke you.
00:42:30.000It goes on then later in the chapter to specifically and explicitly say, Enoch, the seventh from Adam, prophesied about them.
00:42:42.000Chapter six from the book of Enoch, verse one.
00:42:46.000And it came to pass when the children of men had multiplied that in those days were born unto them beautiful and comely daughters.
00:42:53.000And the angels, the children of heaven, saw and lusted after them and said to one another, Come, let's choose wives from the children of men and begat us children.
00:43:01.000Notice that their motivation appears to be sexual.
00:43:06.000This has become more significant in a minute.
00:43:08.000And Semjaza, who was their leader, said to them, I fear you will not indeed agree to do this deed, and I alone shall have to pay the penalty of a great sin.
00:43:15.000And they all answered him and said, Let us, all these angelic beings, these fallen angels, let us swear an oath and all bind ourselves by mutual implication.
00:43:22.000Implication means a sort of a pact to do a cursed thing, not to abandon this plan, but to do this thing.
00:43:51.000I wondered if it was the same thing, mutual.
00:43:53.000And then it lists the names of these angels.
00:43:55.000And then it says that these angels all had different skills that they taught to the human beings.
00:43:59.000Now, the idea of this is very ancient aliens meets Epstein files and meets these recent UAP and UFO disclosures from the FBI where celestial bodies are now being investigated in a different way.
00:44:20.000We don't know how time and space works.
00:44:22.000The more you analyze material, the very thing you use to illustrate that something simple, matter of fact, I'm living in a material world and I'm a material girl, you analyze it at its basest level and it doesn't make sense anymore.
00:44:33.000It starts disappearing and turning away formations and doing all sorts of crazy stuff.
00:45:21.000The ultimate God, Yahweh, makes all things.
00:45:23.000Whether you consider that ultimate God to be a single moment in time, 13.8 billion years ago, when all the rules of the universe were packed into a sub molecular pinhead and unfolded into love and poetry and rainbows and light and all that stuff, or you consider it to be some sort of personal creative force, doesn't matter.
00:45:39.000But at some point, it's saying in this sort of history and mythology of the book of Enoch that Azazel taught men to make these things, taught them mining and metal making, the art of working on bracelets and ornaments, and the use of antimony.
00:45:53.000If you investigate antimony, It's a mineral in the earth that's used to this day, or at least it's an ancient word for a mineral that's used to this day, in semiconductors, which is the central point in the conflict between China, the United States of America, and Taiwan.
00:46:08.000Taiwan has access to the materials and the manufacture, therefore, of semiconductors.
00:46:13.000So not only is this Azazel teaching them weapons, he's teaching them power.
00:46:16.000Of course, the history is redolent with these great mysteries of whether or not the Egyptians had access to technology, the Babylonians or Atlantis, or what the story is with Atlantis.
00:46:25.000And these things are, by their nature, difficult to corroborate.
00:46:28.000But when approaching the book of Enoch, one can say this there's the providence issue.
00:46:33.000It's found in the Dead Sea Scrolls, so alongside the book of Isaiah.
00:46:58.000We do that to engage in a holy war in spiritual realms.
00:47:02.000Ephesians 6 12, therefore put on the full armament of God to engage in this battle.
00:47:08.000Note too that the Catholics, with whom I'm becoming more enchanted by the day, revere Mother Mary.
00:47:15.000In particular, what happens with Mary?
00:47:17.000She conceives a baby, the Son of God, without coitus, without sexual activity, meaning that God comes to earth in a way that is redeeming of the very sin that brings about the death of our kind, brings decay and time and death.
00:47:35.000Notice too that our times are defined by this idea of sexual defilement, peculiar ceremony.
00:47:42.000So that's what the book of Enoch has done for me.
00:47:46.000It's brought to the forefront of my mind, at least, Laura, the idea that we're participants in a spiritual holy war, that it's the duty of those of us to follow Christ to become like him, but not just the meek and mild Jesus Christ, that kind of meekness that means in a very literal Hebrew sense, and I think the Greek word that I found where there's corroboration.
00:48:05.000Means take the energy of God and control it and direct it, not me.
00:48:11.000Like, oh, do what you want if I don't mind.
00:48:46.000And then, salt of the earth led me to then thinking the trail of my thoughts were going towards that thing that we were talking to someone about the other day about bread and how it's like the hot in the Bible.
00:49:36.000And when we say they, who do we mean now?
00:49:38.000Well, these fallen beings that seem to have an extreme interest in anointing and appointing leaders over nations, the nations that must rest on Christ's shoulders.
00:49:46.000So, holy war, holy war is what we're participating in.
00:49:50.000And in this moment where we're Reaching through technology, a kind of new singularity, even if that singularity means us all having access at the same time to the same information potentially, we're approaching the point where it sounds to me like, yeah, some of these prophetic visions of both Daniel and Ezekiel and John on Patmos are all starting to, they're coming.
00:50:59.000Listen, because we're moving to a season where people are going back to work, it's not just us who've taken a month off, but it's other people.
00:51:12.000When you're talking about the Book of Enoch and you're talking, I might be thinking about salts of the earth and minerals, but I am listening and concentrating.
00:51:50.000Right, Habits of the Household Practicing the Story of God in Everyday Family Rhythms.
00:51:55.000And it's a really, really, really nice book with some very.
00:51:59.000Good advice, frankly, but also it's really bringing in like how to deal with mealtimes and all the sort of bedtimes and sort of discipline and work.
00:52:12.000Well, here's what I want to just read I wanted to read a bit from this, and the reason I'm reading it is because I know that there might be some homeschooling mums.
00:52:20.000Don't get bored when I'm talking about this.
00:53:16.000In the passing of dishes, this is about mealtimes.
00:53:18.000In the passing of dishes, we practice delayed gratification.
00:53:21.000In complimenting the meal, we practice the power of spoken encouragement.
00:53:26.000In withholding criticisms, we practice the virtue of silence.
00:53:29.000We are reminded that lots of things we think aren't worth saying.
00:53:32.000In roses and thorns and questions and pepper games.
00:53:35.000Now we do, uh, likey no likey gratitudio, which we'll talk about another time, but it's a game we play at mealtimes and we make everyone that eats with us at dinner time play the same Well, let's just say it now.
00:54:19.000I started reading it a couple of years ago when we started homeschooling, and now I am going to go back into it again because I think this will help me and guide me a little bit in those moments.
00:54:29.000Because, especially the bit where it says, when someone spills something, I do hate that.
00:54:53.000Finally, as we help clean and reset the kitchen for the next day, we practice the truth that the gift of communal living takes the ethic of communal labour.
00:55:02.000We grow accustomed to the rhythms of work, of the work it takes to produce the relationships we desperately need.
00:55:09.000Behold then the way a noisy dinner table echoes with the gospel.
00:55:13.000Light from darkness and prayers from the mouths of babes, forgiveness and gratefulness, reconciliation and discipline, but none of it sanctimonious and all of it real liturgy.
00:55:37.000So that's one thing I wanted to say to anyone that's embarking on the new time of whether it's going back to school, whether it's the challenges of parenting at home, things like that.
00:59:53.000It said here it would be an honour of my lifetime if you'd consider reading these words on the show, praying over them and telling me honestly what you think.
01:00:00.000We're obviously not going to read the whole book on the show, but we'll read this letter on the show and we will pray over these words, praying over them and telling me honestly what you see, what comes from this.
01:00:12.000May we all learn to steward this light with the beauty that you two do.
01:00:17.000The book is called The Pond We're Swimming in What a Doctorate in Psychology Taught Me and What Jesus Had to Unteach Me.
01:00:25.000What she says, just to say what this book is about, is that she was looking through having a, seems like having a kind of mid life crisis of sorts, flipped frantically through textbooks in a field that she'd built her career on, only to find no better answer than to thine own self be true.
01:00:43.000It's the tune the entire mental health field marches to proudly, and it's taking us under.
01:00:47.000So it's now my life's work to help others see that.
01:00:50.000So what this book is, is talking about, it's almost, I guess, self help, but a godly perspective on it.
01:00:55.000Because sometimes you can pick up a self help book and it does seem like it's focused on a sort of unhelpful self centeredness.
01:01:01.000And do you recall, of course, that self is the pitfall where we, the quicksand into which we fall when the enemy has ensnared us?
01:02:02.000We like this because I would like to do more of this.
01:02:05.000And if it's God's will, and uh, going forward, we would like to do more of this.
01:02:10.000And your support means that it'll be possible for us to maybe we'll go and do it under an oak tree someday, under an oak tree in some catacombs.
01:02:16.000Maybe create some crystal church in the middle of a woodland, create communities, bring people together in holiness and healing.
01:02:23.000Conform not to the patterns of this world, not think with everything, how do you turn this into money?
01:03:03.000Because I was just thinking, I'm actually going to be going to a codependence meeting soon, and I'm going to actually look at the song lyrics to that Oliver Twist song, and I'm going to really analyse it.
01:03:12.000This is Justin Whitmull Early Habits of the Household Practicing the Story of God in Everyday Family Rhythms, a helpful book for the season.
01:03:22.000Russell, will you pray us out of the show?
01:05:27.000Thank you for my husband and his spirit and the joy that these little moments will bring and for the laughter because it's okay.
01:05:38.000It's okay to feel that spirit and for it to be different, I think, than people would expect because, gosh, like we discussed before coming on Sunday, we are not normal and I wouldn't want to be normal.
01:05:53.000And I'm grateful for my family and For who we are in this world.
01:05:57.000And I'm grateful that you've put us in this position that we can share some of this not normalness with everybody listening here to Sunday service.
01:06:05.000Thank you for the congregants of Sunday service.
01:06:10.000And I pray that peace and that there's peace for families and individuals going into the new season that we are, although it's very much still summer.
01:06:21.000I know people are talking about, you know, that people will be going back to work and people will be parenting and homeschooling and doing school.
01:06:30.000School carpools, taking their kids off, dropping them off somewhere.
01:06:33.000That means separation will be happening.
01:06:34.000That means that there'll be concerns and anxieties and all the things I want to bless, bless people going through those things right now.
01:06:42.000And I pray for grace in handling difficulties and challenges and, and, and rhythm, God, God in our rhythms of every day.
01:06:55.000Like it says in that book, finding God in our little moments and the rhythms of our normal every day.
01:07:12.000O most holy heart of Jesus, fountain of every blessing, I adore you, I love you, and with a lively sorrow for my sin, I offer you this poor heart of mine.
01:07:29.000Make me humble, patient, pure, and wholly obedient to your will.