Soul School – Lesson 4

This episode is called Shift for Homecoming

When the people closest to us don’t seem to understand us at our deepest level and in other ways we can start to feel deeply disconnected and become weary in our soul.

We are actually longing for something we might not realize…homecoming.

If you think I should continue these short weekly lessons, please let me know. I’m testing out this format until the end of 2015 and letting you decided.



This Friday will be an interview with famed author Mary DeMuth.

Also, this week is the slow roll out release of my new book on making wise decisions at the forks in our roads called FORKED: A Discernment Pocket Guide (for Choosing Between Two Good Things).

Click the image for more info.

coverFORKED

EPS 35: Sarah Bessey talks about “Out of Sorts”

People in over 149 countries listen to SPARK MY MUSE!

And you do too.

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A big welcome back to Sarah Bessey!

You will LOVE this conversation about Sarah’s new book which involves a spiritual homecoming. Her message of love and hope oozes from every decibel of this episode.

Scroll down for shownotes and please do look around at the other episodes. Psst, subscribe for extra awesomeness.

Make sure you stop back HERE to join us for a Live conversation about the book November 10th at 8pm EST/GMT-4.

Her new book is HERE!

Sarah Bessey “Out of Sorts”

The difference between this book and the last one.

8:00
Six years away from church.
Finding friends outside of a church community context and the loneliness of that.

Making friends in the neighborhood and having more time because church obligations didn’t take so much time.

11:30
Programing church can take away the organic way people can become bonded.

“Maybe community is a really churchy word for being a really good friend.”

13:30
Obey the Sadness is her favorite chapter

Barbara Brown Taylor
“Learning to Walk in the Dark”

Solar and Lunar Christians

15:30
What unanswered prayers teach.

16:20
I didn’t know how to be sad. I didn’t know how to say [things weren’t] right and that I was longing for wholeness and longing for resolution and redemption. And make peace with that and sit in that tension well.

Holding space for unfinished business.

18:00
The lamenting psalms are meant to be sung in community.

The sacred work of listening when people are hurting.

19:30
When people are uncomfortable with our pain.

The winnowing times when friendships don’t stay provide comfort during the painful times.

22:00
The Ash Wednesday breakthrough story.

27:00
on not knowing how to pray anymore.

The Book of Common prayer

The daily offices

The 28:00
The papal visit in Philly

LINK for the videos of all the U.S. papal messages

Priests move to distribute Communion at the closing Mass of the World Meeting of Families in Philadelphia Sept. 27. (CNS photo/Teak Phillips, St. Louis Review) See POPE-FAMILY-MASS Sept. 27, 2015.
Priests move to distribute Communion at the closing Mass of the World Meeting of Families in Philadelphia Sept. 27. (CNS photo/Teak Phillips, St. Louis Review) See POPE-FAMILY-MASS Sept. 27, 2015.

Open communion in the street

The World Meeting of Families

Sarah’s interaction with liturgy now and underestimating her spiritual roots and homesickness.

Missing the unscripted script of her church.

34:00
Recognizing the global church and its expressions.

35:30
Sushi forever or the many expressions of Christianity.

If your hands are open you can have many ways to encounter God.

37:00
Understanding the wrath of God and sovereignty of God.

46:00
The pain and relief of the dross getting burning away.

“Can God Be Trusted”
by John Stackhouse


49:00
Being okay with growing pains.

The one message she hopes people get from the book.
(She takes us to church! ENJOY!)

Soul School – Lesson 3

Soul School Lesson 3 – Infectious Hurried Syndrome

For the rest of the year Soul School a new Soul School episode will be released on Hump Day (Wednesday). If you enjoy this short episodes meant to increase mindfulness and soul care, let me know and I’ll continue them in 2016.

Have you have noticed how a whole day can go by and you were so hurried that it’s hard to remember what even happened in your day?

The Many Lives of the Hippest Street in America

What if YOU lived on the coolest street in America?

Ada Calhoun writes for the New York Times, (and has written for O magazine, The New Republican, The Atlantic, and Cosmopolitan, among others). She grew up as the daughter of 1960s Bohemians who came to live in the East Village during the Bob Dylan era.

Maybe the most ubiquitous thing about the most famous (and infamous) hip section of New York City is how commonly people declare that it’s not as cool as it was before. And strangely, there’s a 100 year- history of just that thing.

Calhoun researched the 400 year history of New York in the St Marks area and she has written a fascinating book called St Marks is Dead which is an excellent commentary on the idea of “cool” as well as a glimpse into one of the most culturally powerful streets in the U.S.

Ada Calhoun / Author
Ada Calhoun / Author

Her book “St Marks is Dead” can be found here.


A peek at The East Village

SHOWNOTES:

MIN 1:00
The background for her article that went viral “The Wedding Toast I’ll never Give”

1:30
Realism for love and marriage.

2:30
The “and yet” philosophy of paradox in life and love.

3:00
The big flight fight.

4:00
Ada’s mother says, “The way you stay married is you don’t get divorced.”

5:00
The marriage “toolbox” for staying together only had a bent screwdriver and tweezers.

6:30
How her parents’ marriage defied the odds.

6:50
Thinking of a spouse as “family”.

8:00
Thinking of marriage, not as a dating phase, but as becoming family.

9:00
There’s going to be joy and pain both.

11:30
Ada’s parenting book about how you should ignore all the parenting books and look at your kid and figure out who they are, instead of worrying about being the perfect parent:
“Instinctive Parenting: Trusting Ourselves to Raise Good Kids”

12:00
On growing up as the child of 1960’s Bohemians of the Bob Dylan era in New York City’s East Village in the St Mark’s Place neighborhood and being one of the only kids in the neighborhood during a time when it was not child-friendly. (Many fires, the AIDS epidemic hit the area hard, drugs, junkies, homelessness and tent cities, prostitution were all nearby).

18:00
Working at the Austin Chronicle

19:00
On being a journalist in New York City

On her new book “St Marks is Dead: The Many Lives of America’s Hippest Street”

20:30 High rent, and neighborhood changes to St Marks Place cause people to wish for the way it was. They feel betrayed.

Ada researched and found that each generation had the same experience throughout the last century.

21:30
Malcolm Cowley: “Bohemia is always yesterday.”

22:00
What St Marks Place is like in 2015.

23:30
(Lisa) My first experience in New York City.

24:30
Complaining is the one constant in NYC neighborhoods.

25:30
Hippy boom, punk era, DIY art scene, then the GAP moved in in the late 1980s, then the tv show Kids era, then the Bloomsburg era.

26:30
Answering: Where in Manhattan is the artistic cultural hot spot now?

27:30
once a franchise moves in….

29:00
The franchises that opened and then closed in the East Village.

31:00
Places she recommends on St Marks Place. 3rd Avenue to Avenue A: 3 blocks that ends at Thomkins Square Park.

33:30
The median apartment costs more than a million dollars.

36:00
Neil Patrick Harris in Harlem and the upswing of that area.

37:00
Music, and art and going outside can happen in NYC public schools now.

39:00
What was St Marks Place like 400 years ago?

39:30
St Marks Place, the church, is the oldest place of continuous worship in New York City.

40:00
About the racial tension and the hippy priest in 1969, named Michael Allen who was kicked out of St Marks Place.

Soul School – Lesson 2

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This is the second Soul School.

It’s a short episode with a few things to think about for the week. If you listen in let me know. If you have questions or suggestions, lay ’em on me.