Speaker 1: If you feed children beauty, they grow into a love
Speaker 1: of beauty, and you will find beauty yourself in the
Speaker 1: things and the people that you look at. Welcome to
Speaker 1: the one you feed. Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized
Speaker 1: the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes like garbage in,
Speaker 1: garbage out, or you are what you think ring true.
Speaker 1: And yet for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen
Speaker 1: or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy,
Speaker 1: or fear. We see what we don't have instead of
Speaker 1: what we do. We think things that hold us back
Speaker 1: and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking.
Speaker 1: Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort
Speaker 1: to make a life worth living. This podcast is about
Speaker 1: how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction,
Speaker 1: how they feed their and wolf Thanks for joining us.
Speaker 1: On this episode, we interview Sister Joan Chittister, a Benedictine
Speaker 1: sister of Erie, Pennsylvania. She's the author of over fifty
Speaker 1: books and is the winner of fourteen Catholic Press Association awards.
Speaker 1: Sister Joan is an international speaker who inspires both her
Speaker 1: audiences and readers with her passion for justice, equality and peace,
Speaker 1: especially for women in both society and the church. On
Speaker 1: this episode, Eric and Sister Joan discussed her book Radical
Speaker 1: Spirit Twelve Ways to Live a Free and Authentic Life. Hi,
Speaker 1: Sister Joan, Welcome to the show. Thanks Cherrich. I'm happy
Speaker 1: to be here. It's a real honor to have you on.
Speaker 1: You've written over fifty books. We're gonna be touchy on
Speaker 1: highlights from, uh, some of them, but a lot of
Speaker 1: the time we're going to spend on your most recent book,
Speaker 1: which is called Radical Spirit, Twelve Ways to Live a
Speaker 1: Free and Authentic Life. Yes, wonderful, But before we get
Speaker 1: into that, let's start like we always do with the parable.
Speaker 1: There's a grandmother who's talking with her granddaughter and she says,
Speaker 1: in life, there are two wolves inside of us that
Speaker 1: are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which
Speaker 1: represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the
Speaker 1: other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed
Speaker 1: and hatred and fear. And the granddaughter stops and thinks
Speaker 1: about it for a second and looks up at her
Speaker 1: grandmother and she says, well, grandmother, which one wins? And
Speaker 1: the grandmother says the one you feed. So I'd like
Speaker 1: to start off by asking you what that parable means
Speaker 1: to you in your life and in the work that
Speaker 1: you do well In the first place, it happens to
Speaker 1: be one of my favorite parables too. I've used it
Speaker 1: often in public because I consider it both productive and cautionary.
Speaker 1: If we don't learn the lesson of this parable, we're
Speaker 1: going to extend where we are, and God help us
Speaker 1: if we do that. For instance, when you talk about
Speaker 1: the soul being developed by the part of it that
Speaker 1: you feed, if you feed it beauty. If you feed
Speaker 1: children beauty, then they grow into a love of beauty.
Speaker 1: And you will find beauty yourself in the things and
Speaker 1: the people that you look at if you feed those
Speaker 1: same people. If you feed yourself, for instance, with the
Speaker 1: kind of crude, rude, lewd language that we're being subjected
Speaker 1: to now in the name of freeing ourselves from political correctness,
Speaker 1: we will shape our souls into exactly the contorted, diminish
Speaker 1: attitude toward one another on which brink we now stand this.
Speaker 1: This is the lived expression and experience of what we
Speaker 1: mean when we say words matter, Experiences matter. Our neurologists
Speaker 1: tell us that experience actually shapes the brain, and therefore
Speaker 1: the personality what we're feeding into the air waves today
Speaker 1: is going to affect this country, uh, this generation, and
Speaker 1: our own perspective on life ten years to come. I
Speaker 1: frankly don't think Eric, that you could start this program
Speaker 1: with any more important piece of information. And if this
Speaker 1: was all you did, it would have uh such an impact,
Speaker 1: such a gift in this culture, that we might really
Speaker 1: save ourselves from our worst selves. That's beautiful. I love that,
Speaker 1: and we're going to do so much more than just that.
Speaker 1: So we've got that great answer, and we're gonna go
Speaker 1: into a lot of other things that you've done. So
Speaker 1: but I want to start by saying, you know, sometimes
Speaker 1: different things come together at different times, which is interesting.
Speaker 1: So I knew I was interviewing you, but and I
Speaker 1: knew a little bit about you, but I didn't know
Speaker 1: a lot about you. So that put that on on
Speaker 1: one side. And I split my time between Columbus, Ohio
Speaker 1: and Atlanta, Georgia, and I decided I needed a couple
Speaker 1: of days of silence, so I went to the Monastery
Speaker 1: of the Holy Spirit, which is in Conyer's, Georgia, for
Speaker 1: a couple of days sort of personal retreat, which is
Speaker 1: a Benedictine monastery, of which is the same order that
Speaker 1: you are from. And Um, sitting in the drawer of
Speaker 1: the little desk in my room was the Rule of St. Benedict,
Speaker 1: which is a lot of what your most recent book
Speaker 1: is about. It explores the Rule of Saint Benedict. And
Speaker 1: I just was sort of so come back from that,
Speaker 1: and I now start getting into your work to prepare
Speaker 1: for the interview, and I'm like, well, be damned there.
Speaker 1: It is so really really interesting confluence for me there. Um,
Speaker 1: the new book really focuses on the idea of humility.
Speaker 1: You say that humility in the Rule of Benedict is
Speaker 1: the spiritual hinge on which the rest of life depends.
Speaker 1: Could you expand on that for me? Yeah, I'd love to. Actually,
Speaker 1: the book is built on chapter seven of this short
Speaker 1: rule seventy two small chapters, probably one of the smallest
Speaker 1: spiritual documents in history, and but chapter seven is the
Speaker 1: longest of them all. Uh. This I take to indicate
Speaker 1: that this is really Benedict and spirituality as Benedict understood it,
Speaker 1: meaning this is the portion of life that he wants
Speaker 1: us as people to concentrate on to build our own
Speaker 1: impact on the world and the world's impact on us.
Speaker 1: This this spirituality, interestingly enough, hardly uses a single theological term,
Speaker 1: if any. It's all built around who you become as
Speaker 1: a human being and how you can become the human
Speaker 1: being to be. It's it's simplicity is overwhelming. Having said
Speaker 1: all that, I have to also admit, Eric that though
Speaker 1: I believe, I genuinely believe that this book, in this
Speaker 1: topic will determine the nature of life, certainly in this
Speaker 1: country and maybe on this planet for the next hundred years,
Speaker 1: certainly for the next several generations, but I also know
Speaker 1: that it's a risky interview that you are bold enough
Speaker 1: to have because humility has not been an American thing.
Speaker 1: This whole notion of humility has in our culture been
Speaker 1: infused with humiliations. There is no relationship whatsoever to the
Speaker 1: debasement of the spirit and the sanctification of the humble spirit.
Speaker 1: They are too unlike, badly confused, and therefore um I think,
Speaker 1: resisted by the modern mind, and it's a shame because
Speaker 1: it's holding us back from our own best development. So
Speaker 1: you say that humility ironically is about coming to understand
Speaker 1: that spiritual simplicity is not about the debasement of the self,
Speaker 1: nor is it about the grandizement of the self. So
Speaker 1: what is it? So I'm going to ask you your
Speaker 1: own question back to you, So talk to me about
Speaker 1: what humility is. If it's not either of those extremes. Well,
Speaker 1: it's the ability to understand my place in the universe,
Speaker 1: in our relationship, in my work, and to neither distort
Speaker 1: it for its greatness or overlook its import comes from
Speaker 1: a Latin word meaning humus or earth. It's it's taking
Speaker 1: taking a genuine photograph of yourself, knowing who you are
Speaker 1: and how you have become that and what you need
Speaker 1: to do if if you know that some part of
Speaker 1: you is how do you reclaim that? How do you
Speaker 1: chart your own growth to fullness? Of Our culture has
Speaker 1: in its Remember where we were a pioneer nation. Um.
Speaker 1: We we only we've only had a government for two
Speaker 1: hundred years. And when you compare that to the Egyptians
Speaker 1: and five thousand years, Uh, that in itself is humbling. Uh.
Speaker 1: And yet in order to do that, we have called
Speaker 1: ourselves to greatness. If you listen to the New today,
Speaker 1: you will hear your president, say that he has done
Speaker 1: better than any other president. He is smarter than anybody.
Speaker 1: He knows, he is more experienced and prepared for this
Speaker 1: than any president we've ever had. In the past, our
Speaker 1: tendency has been toward self superiority. Humility says, be who
Speaker 1: you are, I know who you are, respect those around
Speaker 1: you who are also worthy of that, and take your
Speaker 1: place in the human race so that we can all profit.
Speaker 1: Are not just others from me, but me from others.
Speaker 1: That makes us a strong community when we are recognizing
Speaker 1: and developing everybody's talents in the group. We are a
Speaker 1: group then that that simply can't be broken. It's a
Speaker 1: it's a very power insight into human community and the
Speaker 1: human condition within it. I love that a lot of
Speaker 1: my spiritual development happened within a twelve step program, and
Speaker 1: there's a fair amount of humility discussed in twelve step programs.
Speaker 1: One of the things that was said to me then
Speaker 1: that just always resonated with me was that, you know,
Speaker 1: humility is not about you know how good you are,
Speaker 1: how bad you are. It's about having an accurate picture
Speaker 1: of who you are, of your strengths, of your weaknesses.
Speaker 1: That's it. Yes, that's the truth. I'm thrilled to hear
Speaker 1: you say that you have had some experience with a
Speaker 1: twelve step program. I have been talking about humility as
Speaker 1: a bed edict and to Benedictuans as well as to
Speaker 1: other groups in spiritual exercises and conferences for literally years. Literally,
Speaker 1: I have really been convinced that this is the cornerstone
Speaker 1: of Benedictine spirituality, and Benedictine spirituality remembers the oldest institutionalized
Speaker 1: spirituality in the church. The only thing that's older in
Speaker 1: the Church that addiction ism is the church itself. This
Speaker 1: this document is written in the sixth century five eight
Speaker 1: and is still seen as a centerpiece of the spiritual
Speaker 1: life fIF hundred years later. We can't minimize anything like that.
Speaker 1: So when you come along and say I understand these steps,
Speaker 1: my heart rose, because in conference after conference I have
Speaker 1: been told over the years, people will come up to
Speaker 1: the to the microphone before I get a chance to
Speaker 1: to leave it and say something like this, Uh, do
Speaker 1: you know the twelve step program? And I didn't, and
Speaker 1: I had I was asked so many times that I
Speaker 1: finally decided I had to know what that was myself.
Speaker 1: And when I compared the two programs. I began to
Speaker 1: wonder whether or not the founder of a A Bill
Speaker 1: might not himself have been a Benedictine, or certainly been
Speaker 1: trained by Benedictines to come so close to understand so
Speaker 1: completely this same attitude toward life. And then as I discovered,
Speaker 1: I studied and I researched. No, there isn't a sign
Speaker 1: in anything I found that he knew this material. And
Speaker 1: so I sat down and I thought about it for
Speaker 1: a long time, and I said to myself, first the
Speaker 1: question was how can that be? And the answer was,
Speaker 1: because holiness is the same everywhere. When a person has
Speaker 1: had the courage to look at themselves and every aspect
Speaker 1: of their attitudes and their behaviors in the world around them,
Speaker 1: that's the beginner's step to the fullness of spiritual development.
Speaker 1: And of course he knows these steps because he was
Speaker 1: that holy, he was that honest, he was that real
Speaker 1: about himself, and he has brought thousands of us to
Speaker 1: the same consciousness. So it seems to me that it's
Speaker 1: a it's a wedding of insights at the world badly needs.
Speaker 1: Let me pose a question to you that comes to
Speaker 1: me with twelve step programs or a A in this
Speaker 1: case with with Bill, and I think some of this
Speaker 1: is probably just the distortion that happens when humans get
Speaker 1: ahold of anything, because it's not, you know, thinking we're
Speaker 1: everything in the world, and it's also not thinking we're
Speaker 1: the worst thing in the world. And and a lot
Speaker 1: of times what can happen in UM twelve step programs
Speaker 1: when they're interpreting correctly is that people get all hung
Speaker 1: up on all the things that are bad about them.
Speaker 1: I'm you know, I'm this, I'm that. And I think
Speaker 1: that you talk often about that narcissism is really a
Speaker 1: a disease in our culture, right, and I couldn't agree more.
Speaker 1: I think it's everywhere. But I also work with a
Speaker 1: lot of people individually, one on one, who have the
Speaker 1: sort of polar opposite of that, which is I'm just
Speaker 1: a you know, a piece of you know what, UM
Speaker 1: And And so I'm kind of curious, how do people
Speaker 1: who who look at the narcissism peace UM and maybe
Speaker 1: that's not them I'm not you know, they're not saying
Speaker 1: I'm the best at this there ever was. Maybe they're
Speaker 1: saying I'm the worst at this there ever was talk
Speaker 1: to me about how humility helps someone who's sort of
Speaker 1: coming from that orientation. It seems to me, Eric that
Speaker 1: they're the same thing. They're just a different approach. It's
Speaker 1: when when you have debasement instead of uh aggrandisement self aggrandisement,
Speaker 1: you still have a false self at both ends of
Speaker 1: the scared Joel there, And that's as equally unreal as
Speaker 1: self aggrandizement. Is it just what it does. As long
Speaker 1: as I'm crawling along on my belly saying, well, but
Speaker 1: I know I'm not that. No, I couldn't do that. No,
Speaker 1: I wouldn't understand that. No, No, I couldn't be caught. No, No,
Speaker 1: I couldn't even think of volunteering myself as as as
Speaker 1: chairman of the church committee. No no, I'm not that
Speaker 1: break or that or that smart. That's that's also an
Speaker 1: excuse for not being willing to face myself. It's it's
Speaker 1: as protective as the other is unreal. As long as
Speaker 1: I separate myself from my own talents, from my own insights,
Speaker 1: from the strength of my own experiences, then really don't
Speaker 1: have to produce, do I? And as long as I
Speaker 1: exaggerate my talents and I, and I assume that I
Speaker 1: have that I own all the strength and all the intelligence.
Speaker 1: I am completely separating myself from the responsibility of recognizing
Speaker 1: my failures. So one way I escape all responsibility by
Speaker 1: refusing it on the basis of the fact that I'm
Speaker 1: not capable of it, and the other way, I assume
Speaker 1: all responsibilities on the basis of the fact that I'm
Speaker 1: the brightest person here and therefore no one can question me.
Speaker 1: There's there's there's terrible loss on both ends here. The
Speaker 1: one may seem humble and is self protective, and the
Speaker 1: other may seem to be nothing but narcissism, but is
Speaker 1: equally self protective. Yeah, you say that humility is the
Speaker 1: virtue of liberation from the tyranny of the self. To
Speaker 1: your point, both those positions, the common theme is that
Speaker 1: I'm thinking about myself all the time. You know, it's
Speaker 1: all about how myself fits into all of this. And um,
Speaker 1: you know that's certainly been you know, one of the
Speaker 1: things that you know, my spiritual path has been a
Speaker 1: lot about is I recognized nothing like being a homeless
Speaker 1: heroin addict at twenty four to sort of help wake
Speaker 1: you up. Um, but you know, I realized very early
Speaker 1: on that like it was that burden of self, whether
Speaker 1: it was thinking I'm great or thinking I'm terrible or
Speaker 1: all that it was. It's that burden of self that
Speaker 1: I've really worked too and continue to work to, you know,
Speaker 1: to try and find some freedom from you said it all.
Speaker 1: What we're looking for is freedom. That's what the book
Speaker 1: is about. How to live an authentic and free life
Speaker 1: so that we aren't hiding from ourselves or rejecting others
Speaker 1: who have as a great deal to teach us and
Speaker 1: uh and the support we need if we'll only admit
Speaker 1: it exactly. So, I want to just change directions slightly here,
Speaker 1: and I want to talk about the role of obedience.
Speaker 1: And that's a term that comes up a fair amount
Speaker 1: in your book. It's certainly threads its way through the
Speaker 1: rule of St. Benedict. Is this idea of of obedience.
Speaker 1: And yet at the same time, you are a person who,
Speaker 1: although I'm sure huge parts of your life have been
Speaker 1: founded on obedience, you've certainly found times where obedience to
Speaker 1: the church was not your highest calling. So talk to
Speaker 1: me about how you balance those two things. The one
Speaker 1: the obedience that is well, maybe first let's have you
Speaker 1: define obedience a little bit better, because I think a
Speaker 1: lot of us have a mis aim notion of it.
Speaker 1: But maybe then just talk about that idea in general.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, that's an important one, because I think, um,
Speaker 1: we have distorted that word considerably. Obedience comes from the
Speaker 1: Latin word obdre, meaning to listen to listen. Now we
Speaker 1: say to our children, you'll listen to me because I
Speaker 1: told you too, But that doesn't mean that the child listens.
Speaker 1: It just means you get to oppress somebody else. Each
Speaker 1: of us grows into the ability to listen. Listen to
Speaker 1: the will of God for the world. Listen to what
Speaker 1: nature is trying to tell us right now. Listen to
Speaker 1: the animals and their care for the earth. Listen to
Speaker 1: an older generation who has been through a depression or
Speaker 1: a breakdown of the economy. Listen to all of the
Speaker 1: information and insight and wisdom around you, and then then
Speaker 1: follow the best turn of your life in this moment,
Speaker 1: at this time in history. Listen. Obedience does not mean
Speaker 1: that we simply submit our conscience and our brains and
Speaker 1: our souls and our responsibilities to an authority. Figure that's
Speaker 1: a military obedience. It means when I say, halt that
Speaker 1: I'm keeping you six inches away from falling down into
Speaker 1: a thousand foot gorge. That's that's a very different and
Speaker 1: frankly of faults of philosophical notion of obedience. It was
Speaker 1: never right, and it never applied to the upper classes.
Speaker 1: It applied only to the slaves. And we bring that
Speaker 1: with us into a modern world and say, this person
Speaker 1: is the center. No, this person is a thinker. This
Speaker 1: person has a question and is inviting you into the
Speaker 1: conversation to answer it. U the very notion that you
Speaker 1: go online for how many times two d and fifty
Speaker 1: times you told me you go on, you listen to
Speaker 1: people who come into your studio with different experiences in life,
Speaker 1: and you share that with with a public that is
Speaker 1: also eager to listen so that they can make up
Speaker 1: their own minds about who they are and how they
Speaker 1: get there. To to put obedience into the realm of
Speaker 1: some sort of of slave master relationship or of child
Speaker 1: adult relationship is absolutely the worst thing we can do
Speaker 1: to the development of full human beings around us. Wow,
Speaker 1: that's powerful. I couldn't agree more this notion that we
Speaker 1: use obedience to oppress the very people we should be
Speaker 1: developing as parents know instinctively that every year of a
Speaker 1: child's life they let out more rope, they throw the
Speaker 1: chains away one at a time. Why Because they want
Speaker 1: these children to be capable of making good decisions about
Speaker 1: their own lives and their relationships with others. So what
Speaker 1: are we saying The old notion, the false notion of obedience,
Speaker 1: then has got to be thrown away if we're going
Speaker 1: to bring our children to the fullness of their own
Speaker 1: lives and minds and souls. That makes total sense and
Speaker 1: is a great example. Let's change direction just a little bit,
Speaker 1: and I want to talk about two other words that
Speaker 1: show up in your writing an awful lot. And I'm
Speaker 1: just going to put them next to each other. And
Speaker 1: maybe you're headed towards the same thing with with both
Speaker 1: of them, or maybe you want to talk about them
Speaker 1: slightly differently. But those words are endurance and stability. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I believe that most things are solved by endurance and
Speaker 1: by perseverance and persistence. I doubt that much of anything,
Speaker 1: include great intellectual ability, is ever ever comes full from
Speaker 1: from the kernel. All things, including great talent, need to
Speaker 1: be developed, practiced, maintained, or they'll never they'll never be
Speaker 1: what they're meant to be. So endurance, perseverance, persistence is
Speaker 1: what I see as the basis of both spiritual and
Speaker 1: intellectual and a social life. We learn how to relate
Speaker 1: to people. We don't get at anything in toto at once.
Speaker 1: So the word means a lot to me because we
Speaker 1: are a fast food generation. We want everything now, and
Speaker 1: we we get a lot of now. But what you
Speaker 1: can't rush is is your is your own cooking. You
Speaker 1: can't rush your own development. You can only face the
Speaker 1: need for various stages of it and find the help
Speaker 1: you're looking for to bring it uh to ripeness. Without this,
Speaker 1: the greatest of efforts will fail. We have to be prepared.
Speaker 1: We we we read stories constantly, especially coming out of science,
Speaker 1: scientists who worked on a minuscule problem and spent their
Speaker 1: lives working on it until they finally figured it out.
Speaker 1: We do the same thing with our marriages. Our relationships
Speaker 1: are intellectual development. We persist, We stay in the relationship,
Speaker 1: we stay at the question, We stay with the the
Speaker 1: development it takes to bring our own abilities to to
Speaker 1: to their ripest level. Why so that we can be
Speaker 1: of service to others. That's that's why we become, and
Speaker 1: if we become for any lesser reason, they will never
Speaker 1: be the fullness of what they should be. One of
Speaker 1: the things that you speak so eloquently to in that
Speaker 1: exact same arena is you know what you just said
Speaker 1: is so spot on everything that's worthwhile. We need to
Speaker 1: stick with you also talk about how, and I think
Speaker 1: this is really thought of best and spiritual condition, is
Speaker 1: that some of the things that we need to develop
Speaker 1: only come to us through the practice of endurance, almost
Speaker 1: for its own sake, for the ability to go through
Speaker 1: the fallow times, the low times, and going through that
Speaker 1: develops a capacity in us that um is so important exactly.
Speaker 1: That's what I was trying to say early here, that
Speaker 1: we simply have to understand that nothing of any value, intellectually, spiritually,
Speaker 1: or socially comes overnight and whole at at the same time,
Speaker 1: every single element of our lives are things that that
Speaker 1: grow from small portions to full portions. And for instance,
Speaker 1: I knew at the age of fourteen, literally knew at
Speaker 1: the age of fourteen that I was a writer and
Speaker 1: I would never be completely happy without it. That was
Speaker 1: so certain to me. Now having said that, as you
Speaker 1: pointed out earlier. I've been writing and writing and writing,
Speaker 1: and I still consider every day of it new practice.
Speaker 1: I don't consider that that it has come to wholeness.
Speaker 1: I don't I don't think for a minute that I
Speaker 1: shouldn't be developing other part so that other other elements
Speaker 1: of my writing, or even of my understanding other people's writings.
Speaker 1: So we we have as much capacity as we have life.
Speaker 1: The important thing is not to not to quit in
Speaker 1: mid air, to take what we love and main and
Speaker 1: give it what it deserves so that it can give
Speaker 1: back to us what we are. Let's change directions one
Speaker 1: more time here too. Well, it's not really a total
Speaker 1: change of direction. But you have a book, um that
Speaker 1: focuses a lot on the role of darkness in our lives.
Speaker 1: You say darkness deserves gratitude. It's the allelujah point at
Speaker 1: which we learned to understand that all growth does not
Speaker 1: take place in the sunlight. And you know, my own
Speaker 1: experience in life has confirmed this over and over and
Speaker 1: over again. That you know, the most difficult dark times
Speaker 1: for me have often been some of the most important times.
Speaker 1: The question that I wonder about a lot, though, and
Speaker 1: I've asked multiple times of many people on this show,
Speaker 1: is that real suffering seems to do one of two
Speaker 1: things with people. For some people, they emerge stronger, better,
Speaker 1: more compassionate, strong kind people from it, and other people
Speaker 1: seem to be broken by it. And I'm curious in
Speaker 1: your experience, what what are the characteristics or what are
Speaker 1: the things that allows some people to be transformed by
Speaker 1: it and other people to be broken by it. I
Speaker 1: have another book, Eric, one of probably one of my
Speaker 1: five favorite books myself, called Scarred by Struggle Transformed by Hope.
Speaker 1: And in that book I lay out nine phases of
Speaker 1: of what I call the freedom from struggle, the freedom
Speaker 1: from depression, the freedom for the sense of loss or failure,
Speaker 1: and and those elements are are kind of way stations
Speaker 1: on the way to fullness of life I've I've just
Speaker 1: gone through. For instance, let's say, um, my children were
Speaker 1: killed in an automobile crash. The the effect of that
Speaker 1: is overwhelming on me. I really am losing my grip
Speaker 1: on life, nor do I want to live anymore? Now?
Speaker 1: What what do I do there? How do I maintain myself?
Speaker 1: How do I survive well? In the first place, we
Speaker 1: survive because we have no other option, because life goes
Speaker 1: on around us and we must we must somehow or
Speaker 1: other fit ourselves into that. But that can take a
Speaker 1: long time unless someone sits with us and helps us
Speaker 1: figure out how life has become distorted at this moment.
Speaker 1: It isn't that some people can't make it. It is
Speaker 1: that they can't get the help or the insight that
Speaker 1: they need to make it. So what they're suffering, what
Speaker 1: they're dealing with is a pressure on the soul so
Speaker 1: severe that if they cannot find a helping hand or
Speaker 1: away through this forest, if nobody puts up the stop
Speaker 1: signs that enables them to say I got through that one,
Speaker 1: I can go through the next, then they're left. They're abandoned.
Speaker 1: It's one of the reasons that psychologists are so important
Speaker 1: in this society, because society moves so quickly here that
Speaker 1: you can hardly grow into anything calmly or quietly or slowly.
Speaker 1: So we we if we find a good psychologist, a
Speaker 1: good spiritual director, a good wisdom fig year, we they
Speaker 1: can give us the time to examine each phase of
Speaker 1: this new world that we're facing. Some people have it.
Speaker 1: Some people have it because their own educations have prepared
Speaker 1: them for it, or they are in a very tight
Speaker 1: knit community that that surrounds them at the time of
Speaker 1: great pain, doesn't allow the abandonment to eat at their soul,
Speaker 1: doesn't allow them to think that they might not continue
Speaker 1: breathing in the next moment. So it's not it's neither
Speaker 1: great strength, excuse me, nor great weakness that we're talking about.
Speaker 1: We're talking about community, support, understanding, care. All of those
Speaker 1: items are terribly important at the time of great breakdown.
Speaker 1: So when you every time you go to a funeral home,
Speaker 1: you know how that is. You don't want to go
Speaker 1: because you don't know what to say until you've been
Speaker 1: there yourself, until you know how important it was that
Speaker 1: somebody walked up to that to that coffin, put a
Speaker 1: hand on your shoulder and said, we'll be calling you
Speaker 1: next week. I'm sorry about this. I know this pain
Speaker 1: must be terrible, will will be We'll be getting together
Speaker 1: struggling with the connection here as listeners can probably here.
Speaker 1: And it sounds like we've got some weather moving in
Speaker 1: that's causing some trouble. So I think we're going to
Speaker 1: wrap up. But thank you so much, such beautiful work.
Speaker 1: I've enjoyed learning about it, and thank you so much
Speaker 1: for taking the time to talk with us. Oh you're
Speaker 1: more than welcome, Eric, I can only thank you for
Speaker 1: producing this kind of a quality program. I have no
Speaker 1: doubt that your listeners wait for your materials, and I'm
Speaker 1: grateful to you for the time and effort you've put
Speaker 1: into that. Thank you very Thank you so much, and
Speaker 1: we'll try this again another time. If what you just
Speaker 1: heard was helpful to you, please consider making a donation
Speaker 1: to the One You Feed podcast. Head over to one
Speaker 1: you Feed dot net slash support. The One You Feed
Speaker 1: podcast would like to sincerely thank our sponsors for supporting
Speaker 1: the show.