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Experiencing the Oneness with Brady Young · Tomorrow's American Catholic Podcast

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[music]
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SPEAKER_03: Welcome to Tomorrow's American Catholic.
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SPEAKER_03: This is the official podcast of Tomorrow's American Catholic,
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SPEAKER_03: a journal and publishing platform animated by a central question.
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SPEAKER_03: Who is Tomorrow's American Catholic,
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SPEAKER_03: and how is their understanding of themselves,
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SPEAKER_03: In each episode,
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SPEAKER_03: we speak with a spiritual practitioner who helps us envision new forms
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SPEAKER_03: tomorrowsamericancatholic.org.
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SPEAKER_03: And now on to today's conversation.
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[music]
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SPEAKER_03: Brady Young is the Manager of Member Engagement and Communications at
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SPEAKER_03: the Franciscan Federation,
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SPEAKER_03: where he helps build a nationwide community of Franciscans
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SPEAKER_03: and Franciscan-hearted people through spaces like the Piazza,
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SPEAKER_03: the Federation's free online community.
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SPEAKER_03: Brady is active in the political peacebuilding movement through braver angels,
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SPEAKER_03: equipping communities as they navigate polarization and rediscovering what it means
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SPEAKER_03: to work together.
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SPEAKER_03: His spiritual life is rooted in incarnational theology,
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SPEAKER_03: the belief that a good God only creates good things,
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SPEAKER_03: and he's committed to sharing that goodness with whoever crosses his path.
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SPEAKER_03: Brady is an adventure seeker who feels most alive on the mountain bike trail,
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SPEAKER_03: a ski run, or hip-hop on his headphones, and he's also a very proud uncle.
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SPEAKER_03: So Brady Young, welcome to Tomorrow's American Catholic.
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SPEAKER_02: Thank you.
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SPEAKER_02: It's a pleasure.
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SPEAKER_02: It's an honor.
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SPEAKER_02: I really appreciate you all creating the space for everyday people to share a bit
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SPEAKER_02: of their journey.
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SPEAKER_03: That's it.
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SPEAKER_03: And you just led right into our opening question, which is to share a bit of your journey.
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SPEAKER_03: So maybe you could tell us a bit about your background and any teachers or mentors
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SPEAKER_03: who are influential to you.
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SPEAKER_03: And I know you are with the Franciscan Federation now,
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SPEAKER_03: so we'd love to hear how you became involved with Franciscan Spirituality.
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SPEAKER_03: Right on.
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SPEAKER_02: Well, it all started 34 years ago in the hospital room.
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SPEAKER_02: But seriously,
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SPEAKER_02: I was very grateful to grow up in such a loving household with two parents and
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SPEAKER_02: a long lineage of ancestors that really embodied their spirituality
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SPEAKER_02: and Christianity was soaking in our household.
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SPEAKER_02: So we grew up in...
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SPEAKER_02: I guess you'd call it the non-denominational Protestant space, evangelical.
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SPEAKER_02: I know that word carries a lot of different meaning these days,
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SPEAKER_02: but for us, it was pretty simple that Jesus is who he says he is.
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SPEAKER_02: And if you put your belief and trust in him through prayer and discernment
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SPEAKER_02: that Jesus, You will live forever and after with Him.
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SPEAKER_02: The goal of our lives is to share that good news with everyone we come across.
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SPEAKER_02: And so that is the flavor,
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SPEAKER_02: that is the household that I grew up in and it came through in amazing ways.
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SPEAKER_02: Like I just could not be more grateful for the love that was shown to me
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SPEAKER_02: through people in the church and my parents and And then,
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SPEAKER_02: of course,
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SPEAKER_02: you know,
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SPEAKER_02: as I grow older,
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SPEAKER_02: I think it was St. Augustine that said, God just showed me a different way.
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SPEAKER_02: And so I know,
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SPEAKER_02: especially for millennials,
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SPEAKER_02: there's kind of this trend of like deconstruction and there's this kind of blast
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SPEAKER_02: against the evangelical church.
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SPEAKER_02: And there's certainly parts of that that.
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SPEAKER_02: I really had to do some questioning and things on,
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SPEAKER_02: but I'm only grateful for the experiences I had in that church,
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SPEAKER_02: even if there are things I fundamentally disagree with now.
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SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I'm just grateful for my upbringing in that space.
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SPEAKER_02: And maybe another thing I'll share that's important for my kind
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SPEAKER_02: of spiritual journey was two moments, two historical moments early in my life.
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SPEAKER_02: One was when I was in kindergarten.
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SPEAKER_02: I grew up in Littleton, Colorado.
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SPEAKER_02: Where the Columbine shooting was.
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SPEAKER_02: So it was at a very young age that one,
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SPEAKER_02: I'm like five years old,
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SPEAKER_02: which is important when you start like Kind of knowing who you are,
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SPEAKER_02: you remember things from that period.
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SPEAKER_02: You're not just in the void of being a little baby toddler anymore.
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SPEAKER_02: And so, so many things of that day and those moments afterward were very salient for me.
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SPEAKER_02: And so I'm like starting to understand what I'm learning at church,
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SPEAKER_02: but then I'm also learning like what this tragedy was.
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SPEAKER_02: And so then those big questions of like, why do bad things happen to good people?
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SPEAKER_02: You know,
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SPEAKER_02: like all of those things,
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SPEAKER_02: I didn't realize it till later in life,
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SPEAKER_02: but like I was asking those questions At that age.
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SPEAKER_02: And I wasn't quite getting answers to those questions.
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SPEAKER_02: And so it kind of turned into like a lifelong pursuit of trying to get answers
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SPEAKER_02: to those questions.
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SPEAKER_02: And I just naturally became one of those people that like,
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SPEAKER_02: what I find myself thinking and talking about all the time is who is God?
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SPEAKER_02: Who am I?
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SPEAKER_02: What is the relationship between the two?
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SPEAKER_02: When you go to choose your major in college, I didn't really see one there.
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SPEAKER_02: I was like, I don't know what to do.
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SPEAKER_02: Like, this is what I think and talk about all the time.
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SPEAKER_02: So God's saying it was both the church,
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SPEAKER_02: my upbringing,
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SPEAKER_02: but then some personal experiences early on out in 9-11 when I was in third grade.
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SPEAKER_02: Those historical moments for our generation that have all kind of led me
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SPEAKER_02: into this path of where we are now.
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SPEAKER_00: It's interesting to hear you say that because,
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SPEAKER_00: you know,
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SPEAKER_00: I'm from another generation,
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SPEAKER_00: but Similarly, you know, when JFK was shot, I was in the third grade.
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SPEAKER_00: And I mean, that was huge.
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SPEAKER_00: It was huge.
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SPEAKER_00: I remember as a little girl seeing him in a parade,
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SPEAKER_00: like a campaign parade in Connecticut, sitting on my father's shoulders.
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SPEAKER_00: And then to have that followed by Martin Luther King and then his brother,
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SPEAKER_00: those are hugely impactful in forming you and the way you look at the world
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SPEAKER_00: and what you wonder about the world.
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SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's like how much of the church or even what you're taught in school,
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SPEAKER_02: there's all this that you're taught and that you're told and there's things on paper
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SPEAKER_02: and there's beliefs and there's doctrine.
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SPEAKER_02: And then there's your life experience.
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SPEAKER_02: And then it's like,
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SPEAKER_02: as you get older,
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SPEAKER_02: just in what ways are those sinking and in what ways are those fundamentally off?
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SPEAKER_02: You know,
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SPEAKER_02: so it took really getting into college and Exploring these things on my own
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SPEAKER_02: and like, okay,
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SPEAKER_02: I'm not just someone that does what my parents tells me to do as much
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SPEAKER_02: as they may have wanted me to be that way.
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SPEAKER_02: I'm like, what do I believe?
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SPEAKER_02: What do I feel?
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SPEAKER_02: What is my experience?
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SPEAKER_02: That's what kind of really ushered me into the many different paths in spirituality
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SPEAKER_02: that have now resonated so deeply with me.
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SPEAKER_02: And there's always a piece of my background that I hold near and dear and
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SPEAKER_02: in some ways still grounds who I am, but it's also opened me up.
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SPEAKER_02: How do you make sense of this world?
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SPEAKER_01: Brady, I want to follow up a bit with you on your spirituality.
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SPEAKER_01: And, you know, you work for the Franciscan Federation.
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SPEAKER_01: A lot of your spirituality, I believe, is centered in Franciscan spirituality.
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SPEAKER_01: You were raised evangelical, so it's sort of kind of an interesting perspective.
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SPEAKER_01: I followed a similar path.
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SPEAKER_01: I was Catholic, but I wasn't Franciscan until I went to work for the Franciscans.
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SPEAKER_01: And I'm curious as to first, how did you first get involved in Franciscan spirituality?
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SPEAKER_01: And I'm also just kind of curious in how you feel and how you've been welcomed
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SPEAKER_01: as somebody who's not a professed Franciscan.
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SPEAKER_01: Franciscans are, you know, there's...
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SPEAKER_01: You're a friar, you're a sister, you're a secular, you're one of these waters.
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SPEAKER_01: I was asked that all the time.
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SPEAKER_01: Which part of the Franciscan family do you belong to?
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SPEAKER_01: And I would always tell people, I belong to the fourth order Franciscans.
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SPEAKER_01: Share with us a little bit about your experience of connecting with the Franciscans,
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SPEAKER_01: how that happened and how that guides you today.
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SPEAKER_01: I love that question.
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SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's beautifully organic.
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SPEAKER_02: It was during this time,
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SPEAKER_02: right in between my undergrad and my graduate studies when I was really reading
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SPEAKER_02: the Bible for the first time because as a good evangelical kid and you have
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SPEAKER_02: the big questions, you know, what's the first thing you're supposed to do?
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SPEAKER_02: Pick up the Bible.
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SPEAKER_02: So I started to do that seriously.
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SPEAKER_02: And that's when I started to have kind of what I consider like a faith crisis.
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SPEAKER_02: I was like a lot of what I'm reading here.
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SPEAKER_02: One doesn't sit right with me, but also it's not squaring with my life experience.
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SPEAKER_02: So I was just in this period of questioning.
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SPEAKER_02: Doubt, not wanting to throw out the baby with the bathwater,
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SPEAKER_02: but like really sinking my heels in and like figuring out a different way
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SPEAKER_02: of understanding this stuff.
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SPEAKER_02: And a spiritual mentor at the time had sent me the prayer that's famously attributed
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SPEAKER_02: to Francis,
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SPEAKER_02: but I've learned from my Franciscan scholar friends, it may not be his exact words.
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SPEAKER_02: But the peace prayer, Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.
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SPEAKER_02: And this prayer was just glued to my desk for a long time enough so that I was like,
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SPEAKER_02: wait, I should probably look into who this guy is.
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SPEAKER_02: You know, I had never even heard of St. Francis of Assisi.
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SPEAKER_02: So I kind of go down this rabbit hole of research and YouTube videos and podcasts
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SPEAKER_02: and all kinds of things.
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SPEAKER_02: And it was at that same time that I moved to San Diego.
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SPEAKER_02: I was just finishing my master's degree.
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SPEAKER_02: I was kind of in the middle of looking for what's next for a job.
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SPEAKER_02: And I get a call from a recruiter.
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SPEAKER_02: And she says,
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SPEAKER_02: your background fits this role I'm looking for with the Franciscan School
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SPEAKER_02: of Theology.
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SPEAKER_02: And I'm like, Franciscan like St. Francis?
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SPEAKER_02: I don't have many like big burning bush God moments,
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SPEAKER_02: but that was one where I was like,
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SPEAKER_02: I didn't hear anything else she said about the job or how much it paid or anything.
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SPEAKER_02: I was like, yeah, get me an interview.
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SPEAKER_02: So I go in and after an interview and a great conversation
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SPEAKER_02: with Father Garrett Galvin and Sister Juliette Mousseau there,
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SPEAKER_02: decided we're going to move forward with it.
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SPEAKER_02: So I was at the Franciscan School of Theology for just about three,
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SPEAKER_02: four years and got to just sow.
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SPEAKER_02: Soak and sit in on a few classes and run into the professor's offices
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SPEAKER_02: and dump these big questions onto them and expect concrete answers and those things.
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SPEAKER_02: So, and then that parallel with,
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SPEAKER_02: you know,
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SPEAKER_02: I want to give a huge nod to one of my spiritual mentors,
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SPEAKER_02: Richard Rohr in the Center for Action and Contemplation.
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SPEAKER_02: Going through their living school program,
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SPEAKER_02: learning more about Christian mysticism and engaged contemplation.
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SPEAKER_02: And I just started drinking all this up from a firing hose and trying to embody it in my life.
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SPEAKER_02: To the second part of your question,
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SPEAKER_02: I could not have been embraced more wholly and fully from the Franciscan world.
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SPEAKER_02: I think one of my first questions to Father Garrett was, Telling him, I'm not Catholic.
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SPEAKER_02: I'm not sure what Franciscan is, but I don't think I'm it.
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SPEAKER_02: And he's like, you are.
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SPEAKER_02: I've met you for 10 minutes now.
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SPEAKER_02: You are.
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SPEAKER_02: You're here.
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SPEAKER_02: You're welcomed.
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SPEAKER_02: You're loved.
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SPEAKER_02: And that's how it's felt this whole time, no matter who I come across.
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SPEAKER_02: And there's something about that inclusiveness that I think keeps me here.
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SPEAKER_02: And some of my friar friends, they're like, yeah, you're our stepbrother.
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SPEAKER_02: I keep that one close.
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SPEAKER_02: I'm like, I'm a stepbrother.
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SPEAKER_02: Fourth order, Franciscan hearted, Franciscan spirited.
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SPEAKER_02: I don't know.
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SPEAKER_02: I'm Franciscan, but not in the vowed religious kind of church way, I guess.
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SPEAKER_00: It says a lot about Franciscans in general.
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SPEAKER_00: And, you know,
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SPEAKER_00: I have a question for any of you,
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SPEAKER_00: because I'm certainly familiar with Franciscan spirituality.
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SPEAKER_00: But I get a little bit stuck in the, like,
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SPEAKER_00: you have secular Franciscans,
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SPEAKER_00: you have lay Franciscans,
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SPEAKER_00: you have vowed religious Franciscans,
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SPEAKER_00: there's like, I don't know, third order Franciscans.
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SPEAKER_00: Ecumenical Franciscans.
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SPEAKER_01: Barbara, there's even Episcopalian Franciscans, just in case you...
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SPEAKER_00: I do know that.
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SPEAKER_00: But...
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SPEAKER_00: I don't know,
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SPEAKER_00: you know, Brady,
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SPEAKER_00: Patrick,
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SPEAKER_00: maybe even for our listeners,
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SPEAKER_00: I've got to believe that there's people out there like me who are aware
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SPEAKER_00: of what Franciscans are all about.
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SPEAKER_00: But what are the differences in all of these?
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SPEAKER_00: I don't know whether you'd call it, I don't think you call it levels.
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SPEAKER_01: I'll jump in, Brady, and then you can follow.
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SPEAKER_01: So I'll just suggest that everybody has to wait until my book comes out.
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SPEAKER_01: It's time for Franciscan Renaissance because I talk about that in my book.
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SPEAKER_01: So let me also just say that your story, Brady, is the same as my story about me.
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SPEAKER_01: When I first took the job at the Franciscan Action Network, and it was the exact same thing.
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SPEAKER_01: I had no connection to the Franciscans, very little.
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SPEAKER_01: I mean,
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SPEAKER_01: my only connection to the Franciscans was I had an uncle who was a Franciscan
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SPEAKER_01: who was in Belfast who I never met because he died before I was born.
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SPEAKER_01: That was my only real connection to them.
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SPEAKER_01: And I was a big follower of Richard Rohr at that point in time, too, when I got hired.
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SPEAKER_00: A little bit like who's choosing who, right?
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SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
14:46
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I know it was.
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SPEAKER_01: But there are,
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SPEAKER_01: as Barbara asked the question, there are a lot of different orders of Franciscans.
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SPEAKER_01: They all have different charisms,
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SPEAKER_01: but they all sort of focus on the same spirituality,
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SPEAKER_01: which is,
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SPEAKER_01: from my perspective,
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SPEAKER_01: the understanding of what Duns Godis wrote about the univocity of being,
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SPEAKER_01: the uniqueness of each of us coming together to form the oneness of all of us.
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SPEAKER_02: Well, I think it's it's a beautiful challenge and blessing to try
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SPEAKER_02: and wrap your head around the Franciscan world that I'm still always trying to do.
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SPEAKER_02: But, you know, I think of it like a family tree rather than maybe like levels of things.
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SPEAKER_02: But yeah, the first order is the order that's directly connected to St. Francis of Assisi.
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SPEAKER_02: And so those are the friars.
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SPEAKER_02: And then they have their split into three different.
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SPEAKER_02: So it's like for each split,
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SPEAKER_02: for each order, there's a little bit of a runoff from each of those.
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SPEAKER_02: So there's just branches everywhere.
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SPEAKER_02: And then the second order is directly connected to St.
15:48
SPEAKER_02: Clair of Assisi,
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SPEAKER_02: and those are the four Clairs today who live a little more of a cloistered,
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SPEAKER_02: contemplative life.
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SPEAKER_02: Some of them certainly have a little more public focus or ministry.
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SPEAKER_02: And then the third order is deeply inspired by Francis St.
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SPEAKER_02: Clair, but there's not like a direct tie to one of them.
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SPEAKER_02: And then The third order regular,
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SPEAKER_02: so there's the third order regular,
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SPEAKER_02: and then there's third order secular Franciscans are a part of the third order.
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SPEAKER_02: And the third order regular religious men and women are who founded the Franciscan Federation.
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SPEAKER_02: So our organization is deeply tied to that third order.
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SPEAKER_02: But then,
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SPEAKER_02: you know,
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SPEAKER_02: Patrick,
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SPEAKER_02: kind of jokingly,
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SPEAKER_02: but it is becoming a term that we're hearing more Is there an emerging space?
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SPEAKER_02: Is there another branch that's growing of Franciscan-hearted people?
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SPEAKER_02: People who may not be Catholic, but may really deeply resonate with Franciscan spirituality.
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SPEAKER_02: And I think Patrick named two of the things that I think really are the cornerstones
16:53
SPEAKER_02: of Franciscan spirituality.
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SPEAKER_02: But the huge one for me and really what drew me in Is the incarnational theology of,
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SPEAKER_02: first of all,
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SPEAKER_02: God, if God is good, then that means everything God creates must be good.
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SPEAKER_02: And if it's not, then there's either something wrong with God or there's something else there.
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SPEAKER_02: But it was so different from my upbringing of I'm human, so I'm born bad.
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SPEAKER_02: I'm born in sin.
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SPEAKER_02: And so therefore I need Jesus to save me from hell.
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SPEAKER_02: And that's not exactly how it was taught to me, but that's how it felt.
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SPEAKER_02: That's how it resonated with me.
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SPEAKER_02: I was like, this isn't working for me.
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SPEAKER_02: I only believe in Jesus because I'm afraid of hell.
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SPEAKER_02: But when this shift of incarnational theology came in of like, God is good.
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SPEAKER_02: Everything is unshakenably good at its core.
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SPEAKER_02: It is good.
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SPEAKER_02: And we mess up and my behavior doesn't always line up with my unshakable goodness.
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SPEAKER_02: So there is evil in the world.
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SPEAKER_02: There is sin that we don't dismiss those things, but at its core, God is good.
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SPEAKER_02: Everything is created good.
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SPEAKER_02: That opened my eyes to, I mean, just seeing the whole
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SPEAKER_01: world in a whole different way.
18:11
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
18:11
SPEAKER_01: And the other part of it is again, and this comes from Scotus.
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SPEAKER_01: So Scotus wrote about the incarnation.
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SPEAKER_01: And he wrote that the,
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SPEAKER_01: you know,
18:19
SPEAKER_01: our understanding and our whole teaching in Christianity is that the purpose
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SPEAKER_01: of incarnation was to save us from sin.
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SPEAKER_01: And Scotus said, no, that wasn't the purpose of the incarnation.
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SPEAKER_01: That's kind of arrogant of us to think that the incarnation was about us.
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SPEAKER_01: The incarnation was about Jesus and it was part of God's plan from the beginning,
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SPEAKER_01: but about Jesus coming to create heaven on earth.
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SPEAKER_01: Not to teach us how to get to heaven.
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SPEAKER_01: And this was something that set Francis aside from all of the other saints
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SPEAKER_01: and mystics of that time,
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SPEAKER_01: Aquinas and all those people,
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SPEAKER_01: was that Francis and the Franciscans were the first one,
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SPEAKER_01: first Catholic group to believe and teach that our purpose wasn't to get to heaven.
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SPEAKER_01: Our purpose was to create heaven here on earth.
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SPEAKER_01: And that's,
19:03
SPEAKER_01: I think,
19:03
SPEAKER_01: why the Franciscan movement grew so rapidly as it did in that point in time,
19:07
SPEAKER_01: because of that understanding that we're not here to get to heaven.
19:10
SPEAKER_01: We're here to create heaven here on earth.
19:13
SPEAKER_03: A little follow up on that and ties to your spiritual journey, Brady,
19:16
SPEAKER_03: you mentioned Christian mysticism earlier is formative to you,
19:19
SPEAKER_03: especially in your time with Richard Wark.
19:20
SPEAKER_03: You just speak a bit about what moved you in those texts,
19:22
SPEAKER_03: because I think you see some early iterations of Franciscan heartedness and
19:26
SPEAKER_03: the teachings of the Desert Fathers, for instance.
19:28
SPEAKER_03: So if you could just speak to that experience.
19:31
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
19:31
SPEAKER_02: Wow.
19:32
SPEAKER_02: There's a lot there.
19:33
SPEAKER_02: I would say first that it is experience is the word that's coming to mind.
19:39
SPEAKER_02: It kind of got me from this place of studying and reading and scripture and theology
19:49
SPEAKER_02: and these things to where I'm like, okay,
19:50
SPEAKER_02: I feel really good about what I believe,
19:53
SPEAKER_02: but like, in what ways am I experiencing God?
19:57
SPEAKER_02: In what ways am I feeling that God?
20:00
SPEAKER_02: I believe that I'm unconditionally loved, but have I ever felt that?
20:05
SPEAKER_02: What does that feel like?
20:06
SPEAKER_02: And I must say,
20:08
SPEAKER_02: it still is really tough for me to read the original sources of many of
20:12
SPEAKER_02: the desert Mothers and Fathers,
20:14
SPEAKER_02: but the translators we have in our day and age right now is just amazing.
20:20
SPEAKER_02: Like you brought up Scotus, Patrick.
20:22
SPEAKER_02: I can't even really touch his writings,
20:25
SPEAKER_02: but Sister Mary Beth Ingham is the best voice for understanding Scotus.
20:30
SPEAKER_02: And then so many of the teachers at the Center for Action and Contemplation are so similar.
20:36
SPEAKER_02: I feel so deeply connected with Brother Lawrence.
20:39
SPEAKER_02: But I feel connected with Brother Lawrence through Carmen Officedo Butcher through
20:44
SPEAKER_02: the CAC and her helping me or Jim Finley and his Turning to the Mystics podcast.
20:49
SPEAKER_02: It's like I consider them all mystics in their own right.
20:52
SPEAKER_02: But when we're talking about medieval kind of ancient mystics,
20:57
SPEAKER_02: that is my access point is to them.
20:58
SPEAKER_02: But it's the experience.
21:00
SPEAKER_02: It's the experience.
21:01
SPEAKER_02: The oneness and the interconnectedness that I believe on paper,
21:06
SPEAKER_02: but it took through practice,
21:09
SPEAKER_02: actually experiencing deep meditation and prayer being something where I sit
21:14
SPEAKER_02: in silence and listen rather than me rattle off my laundry list of sins and concerns
21:20
SPEAKER_02: to God.
21:21
SPEAKER_02: That I have felt,
21:23
SPEAKER_02: I've had moments on retreat of sitting there and feeling like I am one with it all.
21:29
SPEAKER_02: I am me and you are one.
21:32
SPEAKER_02: Me and you and God and that tree.
21:34
SPEAKER_02: It's like just this unitive consciousness that I have now experienced that it's
21:41
SPEAKER_02: so hard to put words to.
21:43
SPEAKER_02: And Finley talks about that as well.
21:46
SPEAKER_02: Sometimes these things,
21:49
SPEAKER_02: love is hard because your heart breaks when you try to put words to what love is.
21:56
SPEAKER_02: And even in a podcast type format,
21:58
SPEAKER_02: I get a little nervous because I'm like, These things are so important to me.
22:02
SPEAKER_02: I can't share them.
22:04
SPEAKER_02: I don't have words for them.
22:07
SPEAKER_02: And so my heart breaks and that's love.
22:10
SPEAKER_02: That's tethering all of that.
22:12
SPEAKER_02: But the mystics have definitely opened my eyes to ways that you can experience God
22:19
SPEAKER_02: in just looking at someone, a stranger in the eyes and seeing Christ in them.
22:25
SPEAKER_02: And now in everywhere I go,
22:27
SPEAKER_02: like some of my greatest teachers have been The clerk at the gas station
22:30
SPEAKER_02: or something or a guy having a beer at the bar,
22:34
SPEAKER_02: you know,
22:34
SPEAKER_02: and it's like all of those moments can become mystical experiences
22:40
SPEAKER_02: to encounter Christ in it all.
22:43
SPEAKER_02: My church being up in the mountains now some days.
22:46
SPEAKER_02: Some days I still go to,
22:48
SPEAKER_02: you know, brick and mortar church, but a lot of days it's me skiing in the trees.
22:52
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
22:54
SPEAKER_02: I can experience that oneness, but it's through practice.
22:57
SPEAKER_02: And I think the contemplation, the mystics talk a lot about that.
23:01
SPEAKER_02: Merton talks a lot about that.
23:03
SPEAKER_02: Having practices is important for me or else I lose sight of this and I drift into
23:09
SPEAKER_02: the culture and the divisiveness of our day if I'm not grounded in those practices.
23:16
SPEAKER_01: Another saying that's often attributed to St.
23:19
SPEAKER_01: Francis, though,
23:19
SPEAKER_01: we're not really sure he actually said this either,
23:22
SPEAKER_01: preach the gospel, but use words only when necessary.
23:25
SPEAKER_01: But what Francis did talk about and say is to live the gospel,
23:29
SPEAKER_01: not to preach the gospel,
23:30
SPEAKER_01: but to live the gospel and to live it every moment of every day.
23:34
SPEAKER_01: You sort of just expressed that a little bit.
23:36
SPEAKER_01: I'm an activist and I,
23:37
SPEAKER_01: you know, when I'm out protesting, I feel that's my calling to live the gospel.
23:43
SPEAKER_01: Can you reflect on that a little bit in terms of What it means
23:47
SPEAKER_01: for not just you personally,
23:49
SPEAKER_01: which is important,
23:50
SPEAKER_01: but for all of us as society,
23:52
SPEAKER_01: if we actually all live the gospel every day, what do you think that would mean?
23:56
SPEAKER_02: It's showing rather than telling.
23:59
SPEAKER_02: There's not many things somebody has just Told me that then changed my mind about something.
24:06
SPEAKER_02: It was through seeing how they lived and like, oh, something's different there.
24:10
SPEAKER_02: What's up with that?
24:11
SPEAKER_02: And living through example for sure.
24:13
SPEAKER_02: And I realize I'm kind of setting up some dualistic part of my upbringing and
24:18
SPEAKER_02: where I am now today,
24:19
SPEAKER_02: but in some ways it's true of like,
24:22
SPEAKER_02: The most important thing that I could have done in the first 18 years of my life is
24:28
SPEAKER_02: to tell somebody who doesn't believe in Jesus why they should believe in Jesus.
24:33
SPEAKER_02: I start with that.
24:35
SPEAKER_02: I share the good news with them.
24:38
SPEAKER_02: In my experiences and my friendships, that wasn't very effective.
24:43
SPEAKER_02: It didn't work.
24:44
SPEAKER_02: What has worked is first kind of dropping that as a priority for me.
24:51
SPEAKER_02: And saying, yeah,
24:52
SPEAKER_02: it's not about making sure everybody's getting into heaven through my small,
24:56
SPEAKER_02: narrow gates of belief system,
24:58
SPEAKER_02: but it's how can I share this expansive love with every person I come across?
25:05
SPEAKER_02: How this love that I'm feeling,
25:08
SPEAKER_02: how can I share that with someone else,
25:10
SPEAKER_02: regardless of their beliefs, regardless of their tradition?
25:15
SPEAKER_02: And that, just doing that in the last...
25:18
SPEAKER_02: Six to seven years or so has opened the door for conversations
25:22
SPEAKER_02: that I would have never,
25:25
SPEAKER_02: I don't think I would have had if I just started by telling them the gospel.
25:28
SPEAKER_02: But somebody saying, well, why do you do that?
25:30
SPEAKER_02: Why are you part of this group?
25:33
SPEAKER_02: Why do you meditate?
25:34
SPEAKER_02: What is prayer to you?
25:35
SPEAKER_02: Those conversations have opened up.
25:38
SPEAKER_02: To now a lot of my friends are curious about these things or people
25:43
SPEAKER_02: that have been hurt by the church and have decided for themselves,
25:47
SPEAKER_02: I'll never go back to church.
25:48
SPEAKER_02: My family's not going to be in the church.
25:51
SPEAKER_02: To now they're like,
25:52
SPEAKER_02: maybe there's a different way of thinking about God that's maybe a little different
25:57
SPEAKER_02: than...
25:58
SPEAKER_02: What I thought,
25:59
SPEAKER_02: you know,
25:59
SPEAKER_02: is what I was told, you know, there's different ways of thinking about this.
26:04
SPEAKER_02: And in fact, there's thousands of years of people who thought, you know, differently.
26:08
SPEAKER_02: And so, yeah, I can't say more about embodying what we believe.
26:13
SPEAKER_02: That's the whole point.
26:15
SPEAKER_02: I don't really care much anymore to talk about, like, what do you believe?
26:19
SPEAKER_02: I care about why.
26:21
SPEAKER_02: Why does your life look different?
26:22
SPEAKER_02: Why do you believe what you believe?
26:24
SPEAKER_02: Not what do you believe?
26:26
SPEAKER_02: And a lot of that is an embodied way of living and sharing the gospel.
26:30
SPEAKER_00: What I find interesting, Brady,
26:32
SPEAKER_00: about what you said is that intellectual knowing,
26:37
SPEAKER_00: like I've learned a lot about Jesus.
26:42
SPEAKER_00: I have this creed that I believe.
26:45
SPEAKER_00: And you learn,
26:46
SPEAKER_00: I think,
26:46
SPEAKER_00: as you get older,
26:48
SPEAKER_00: that it's one thing to be able to say, yes, these are the things I believe.
26:54
SPEAKER_00: It's a different thing to say what I know for sure inside of me.
26:59
SPEAKER_00: And that's the experiential part.
27:02
SPEAKER_00: I know like in my own life,
27:04
SPEAKER_00: I reached a point where I realized,
27:07
SPEAKER_00: well, there was a book by Thomas Green called When the Well Runs Dry.
27:11
SPEAKER_00: It talks about when your prayer kind of dries up and you realize that it's been
27:18
SPEAKER_00: so much more me and It's what I'm doing to get God somehow,
27:26
SPEAKER_00: as opposed to just letting go and opening up so that God can do some work in and
27:33
SPEAKER_00: through you.
27:33
SPEAKER_00: And it may seem like a subtle difference, but it's really radically different.
27:38
SPEAKER_00: And it allowed, at least in my life, it allowed me to relax a little bit.
27:44
SPEAKER_00: I didn't have to worry about What am I doing?
27:47
SPEAKER_00: And am I doing enough of this kind of practice?
27:49
SPEAKER_00: Or am I doing that?
27:52
SPEAKER_00: And to just say, yeah, I'm good.
27:55
SPEAKER_00: I'm good with God.
27:56
SPEAKER_00: God loves me and I'm open to it.
28:00
SPEAKER_00: And that's one of the things that I kind of really like about
28:03
SPEAKER_00: the whole Franciscan thing is that it seems a gentler,
28:08
SPEAKER_00: more expansive, welcoming place where people can come, lots of different people.
28:16
SPEAKER_02: When I get a question about what is Franciscan spiritual art or something,
28:20
SPEAKER_02: I want to point to people rather than pointing to a phrase or something.
28:28
SPEAKER_02: There's so many others.
28:29
SPEAKER_02: I've loved learning more and meeting more people in this third order, regular way.
28:35
SPEAKER_02: Charism, because there's so many examples of people that just embody this way of life.
28:40
SPEAKER_01: And I think part of it is the understanding of,
28:44
SPEAKER_01: we all know as Christians and as people of faith,
28:47
SPEAKER_01: the concept of doing charity and working at soup kitchens.
28:52
SPEAKER_01: But in the Franciscan, and this goes back to St. Francis, it wasn't just about feeding the poor.
28:59
SPEAKER_01: It was asking the question of why are the poor?
29:02
SPEAKER_01: And how can we stop having the poor?
29:04
SPEAKER_01: What can we do to help the poor not be poor?
29:07
SPEAKER_01: As opposed to just saying, let's feed the poor.
29:10
SPEAKER_01: How do we transform so that we don't have poor?
29:14
SPEAKER_01: Or to put it another way, how do we create heaven on earth?
29:17
SPEAKER_02: Or so much of what I've seen.
29:20
SPEAKER_02: Tell me if you've heard this phrase of, we just want to go in there and love on them.
29:24
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
29:26
SPEAKER_02: And for some reason,
29:28
SPEAKER_02: I get the intent behind it,
29:29
SPEAKER_02: but for some reason that's always been prickly for me because I'm like loving
29:33
SPEAKER_02: on someone creates this like hierarchical.
29:37
SPEAKER_02: Like I have something that you don't have that I'm putting on to you,
29:41
SPEAKER_02: whether you like it or not.
29:43
SPEAKER_02: So I'm going to go love on these people.
29:45
SPEAKER_02: When the shift for me and Patrick,
29:48
SPEAKER_02: I think you just named it really well is if I feel this deep sense
29:53
SPEAKER_02: of interconnectedness with the stranger.
29:56
SPEAKER_02: That could be super rich, super poor, whoever.
29:59
SPEAKER_02: But if there are people on the street who need help, I'm not okay unless they're okay.
30:06
SPEAKER_02: That interconnectedness piece is like,
30:09
SPEAKER_02: I can't really go to bed at night feeling good about my situation
30:13
SPEAKER_02: if I know other people aren't.
30:15
SPEAKER_02: So charity for me is no longer like, okay, I'm comfortable and I have resources.
30:20
SPEAKER_02: I can go help out at the soup kitchen.
30:22
SPEAKER_02: It's like,
30:23
SPEAKER_02: in order for me to be okay with My situation,
30:27
SPEAKER_02: I got to go make sure my brother down the street has what he needs.
30:31
SPEAKER_02: And then our community,
30:32
SPEAKER_02: we can work to a thriving place where hopefully we don't have that problem anymore.
30:38
SPEAKER_02: But I think we will for a long time.
30:40
SPEAKER_02: But it totally shifted that charity perspective.
30:45
SPEAKER_01: And it's about being in relationship with.
30:48
SPEAKER_01: Relationship.
30:49
SPEAKER_01: And that's what Francis was all about,
30:50
SPEAKER_01: was being in relationship with all creation, understanding the oneness.
30:54
SPEAKER_01: But the difference between charity and justice is the relationship part of it.
30:59
SPEAKER_02: Barbara, I don't want to skip over it because it's just so on my mind right now.
31:03
SPEAKER_02: You're talking about knowing.
31:05
SPEAKER_02: That word itself was so huge,
31:07
SPEAKER_02: and it kind of answers,
31:08
SPEAKER_02: Michael,
31:08
SPEAKER_02: your question about the mystics, too,
31:10
SPEAKER_02: of in our English translation of that word,
31:14
SPEAKER_02: From my understanding, in Western civilization, the knowing was a very heady word.
31:21
SPEAKER_02: But in the Hebrew, it's an experiential word.
31:25
SPEAKER_02: It's like, I know I'm talking to you guys right now.
31:28
SPEAKER_02: I don't have to believe that.
31:30
SPEAKER_02: I know I'm sitting at my desk.
31:32
SPEAKER_02: It's an experiential.
31:34
SPEAKER_02: It's not something you can take away.
31:35
SPEAKER_02: It's not something that can be debated.
31:38
SPEAKER_02: It's this deeper level of knowing.
31:40
SPEAKER_02: And I think that's what the mystics, a lot of mystics are tapping into.
31:44
SPEAKER_02: They're not talking about this enlightenment period level of knowing.
31:49
SPEAKER_02: It's this deep sense, this intuition, this knowing that's in your womb.
31:57
SPEAKER_02: And that can't be taken away from you.
31:59
SPEAKER_02: And when you feel that and you know that, that love...
32:04
SPEAKER_02: That's what ideally we're sharing.
32:06
SPEAKER_02: You know, it's not the, I know this way to heaven, here's how you do it.
32:11
SPEAKER_02: It's like an embodied love that you're living out.
32:16
SPEAKER_02: And that's the level
32:18
SPEAKER_03: of knowing.
32:18
SPEAKER_03: I think there's a term in the Desert Fathers, cardionosis, like heart knowledge.
32:23
SPEAKER_03: You know, it's what you're speaking to.
32:24
SPEAKER_03: It comes from the head, descends to the heart.
32:26
SPEAKER_03: And that's, nobody can take that from you.
32:28
SPEAKER_03: And that's the true way of communion.
32:30
SPEAKER_03: Mm.
32:31
SPEAKER_03: You know, Brady,
32:32
SPEAKER_03: maybe pivoting a bit to your current work,
32:34
SPEAKER_03: I'm interested in your evangelical background informing the fact
32:38
SPEAKER_03: that you're now director of communication.
32:40
SPEAKER_03: So I'm thinking about you're still,
32:42
SPEAKER_03: this idea of sharing the good news is like a through line in your life so far.
32:45
SPEAKER_03: So could you talk to us a bit about just the Franciscan Federation
32:49
SPEAKER_03: where you're directing communication?
32:51
SPEAKER_03: You gave us a bit of the history with the Third Order's regular,
32:54
SPEAKER_03: the connection there,
32:55
SPEAKER_03: but maybe the mission of the organization,
32:57
SPEAKER_03: who you're serving, how it's structured, just give us a little background.
33:01
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I'd love to.
33:02
SPEAKER_02: I mean, the communications piece, real quickly, for me, it's really storytelling.
33:08
SPEAKER_02: It's how do we tell this story?
33:09
SPEAKER_02: So much of what we've been talking about with Franciscan spirituality,
33:12
SPEAKER_02: like how do we tell that story in the language in the day of our time?
33:18
SPEAKER_02: And so that's constantly evolving.
33:20
SPEAKER_02: And so communications as a field,
33:24
SPEAKER_02: that's what I love about being in that line of work is how do we share this story
33:28
SPEAKER_02: and the tradition of The Franciscan Federation,
33:31
SPEAKER_02: one of the pillars of our mission is to preserve the legacy of
33:36
SPEAKER_02: the third-order regular charism.
33:38
SPEAKER_02: For many different reasons,
33:41
SPEAKER_02: a lot of these congregations are facing really tough questions about their future.
33:46
SPEAKER_02: And they're looking around and saying, where is the legacy?
33:49
SPEAKER_02: Where are these stories going to be stored?
33:52
SPEAKER_02: And so there's groups like the Federation,
33:55
SPEAKER_02: groups like the Franciscan Central Archives Project that...
34:00
SPEAKER_02: I could go on.
34:00
SPEAKER_02: You could do a whole episode on the stories in this tradition,
34:04
SPEAKER_02: things like the Mayo Clinic, Sister Marianne Cope.
34:07
SPEAKER_02: There's big ones that you've heard of, and there's so many little ones.
34:11
SPEAKER_02: These stories through World War II,
34:13
SPEAKER_02: these ladies put the whole country on their back and put clothes on people's backs
34:18
SPEAKER_02: while the men were out at war.
34:19
SPEAKER_02: There's so many stories.
34:22
SPEAKER_02: One huge part of our mission is to help preserve history.
34:26
SPEAKER_02: Share and amplify the stories from that tradition.
34:31
SPEAKER_02: So that's one big piece.
34:32
SPEAKER_02: But then also being a community of Franciscans and Franciscan hearted people,
34:38
SPEAKER_02: a network of belonging.
34:41
SPEAKER_02: These are words that it's kind of tough because it's hard to kind of hold.
34:44
SPEAKER_02: It can feel a little bit like vapor at times.
34:46
SPEAKER_02: Like, well, what do you mean by community?
34:48
SPEAKER_02: What do you mean by network?
34:50
SPEAKER_02: But we're in that space and exploring that together.
34:53
SPEAKER_02: But it really is people, it's connections.
34:56
SPEAKER_02: We recently launched an online community space called the Piazza.
35:02
SPEAKER_02: And it's named after the Piazza del Comune in Assisi, Italy.
35:07
SPEAKER_02: It's really a space for anyone who's interested or already deeply engaged
35:14
SPEAKER_02: in Franciscan spirituality to come to one central location online.
35:20
SPEAKER_02: So we're hoping to use technology in the best of ways to bring people together.
35:25
SPEAKER_02: And explore what Franciscan life looks like for them.
35:28
SPEAKER_02: A lot of that is live gatherings, conferences, events.
35:33
SPEAKER_02: But then it's also sharing content,
35:35
SPEAKER_02: sharing reflections, sharing these stories that we're talking about.
35:38
SPEAKER_02: And then networks.
35:40
SPEAKER_02: Are a big part of who the Federation is.
35:42
SPEAKER_02: So I mentioned like these third order regular congregations,
35:47
SPEAKER_02: we have networks for their leaders to come together and explore
35:50
SPEAKER_02: and discern these big questions that they're coming up against together.
35:55
SPEAKER_02: There's also a movement of associate or companion or cojourner Franciscans
36:01
SPEAKER_02: that aren't religiously vowed Franciscans themselves,
36:06
SPEAKER_02: but they're like companions too.
36:08
SPEAKER_02: An organization or a congregation, I should say.
36:12
SPEAKER_02: And so we have a network of associates that are like, okay, what does this mean for our future?
36:17
SPEAKER_02: What should we be doing?
36:18
SPEAKER_02: How can we support and collaborate with one another?
36:22
SPEAKER_02: We have an intergenerational eco-justice and spirituality network.
36:26
SPEAKER_02: And so these folks are really concerned with the environment,
36:30
SPEAKER_02: with care for creation and these things.
36:32
SPEAKER_02: And so this is a space where we can really explore those topics together,
36:36
SPEAKER_02: where we've had a webinar series this year with different organizations
36:40
SPEAKER_02: that comprise the network.
36:42
SPEAKER_02: So we have a lot of these different networks that are in kind of tangible ways collaborating.
36:48
SPEAKER_02: So in general,
36:50
SPEAKER_02: it's really trying to share the Franciscan story because we think there's a lot
36:55
SPEAKER_02: to say to our world today in terms of polarization and peace building
37:00
SPEAKER_02: and bringing love to our enemies, love to our neighbors.
37:05
SPEAKER_02: And so how do we amplify this story?
37:07
SPEAKER_02: And then how do we bring people together under that?
37:10
SPEAKER_02: It's kind of hard to talk about it sometimes,
37:11
SPEAKER_02: but it's like, if it's not somewhere, where else would Would it be?
37:16
SPEAKER_02: We need something to contain the Franciscan family.
37:20
SPEAKER_02: And there's a lot of organizations doing it in their own way.
37:23
SPEAKER_02: And we're one of them.
37:25
SPEAKER_02: And I'm just grateful to be a part of it.
37:27
SPEAKER_00: I wonder, Brady,
37:29
SPEAKER_00: as one of the things that I was thinking about ahead of this conversation was,
37:33
SPEAKER_00: you know, like we had spoken with Michelle Dunn.
37:36
SPEAKER_00: And of course, Patrick was a part of the Franciscan Action Network.
37:40
SPEAKER_00: Do you I'm sure there's many more Franciscan organizations.
37:44
SPEAKER_00: Is there a time and a place where all of them come together to kind of rally all
37:50
SPEAKER_00: the troops,
37:51
SPEAKER_00: which is probably not a good choice of words, but you know what I'm saying?
37:56
SPEAKER_00: Are there ways that these organizations can be working together for their shared goals?
38:03
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
38:04
SPEAKER_02: I mean, this past January,
38:05
SPEAKER_02: we held a retreat in Scottsdale at the Franciscan Renewal Center
38:09
SPEAKER_02: with Franciscan leaders of their organization.
38:12
SPEAKER_02: So that was a concrete example of leaders from across the country coming together
38:16
SPEAKER_02: and it's like, all right, we have a lot of shared mission and vision here.
38:20
SPEAKER_02: In what ways can we intersect and really collaborate?
38:23
SPEAKER_02: That's kind of big picture and that's a little bit harder to wrap our head around,
38:27
SPEAKER_02: but there's everyday partnerships,
38:29
SPEAKER_02: whether it's through art networks or through conferences where we're doing that.
38:33
SPEAKER_02: Like, for example,
38:34
SPEAKER_02: this weekend,
38:35
SPEAKER_02: we're having a Western New York Franciscan Day ahead of the world's premiere of
38:40
SPEAKER_02: a new oratorio on St. Francis's life.
38:43
SPEAKER_02: And so this Franciscan Day is a collaboration with the Federation,
38:47
SPEAKER_02: the Association for Franciscan Colleges and Universities.
38:51
SPEAKER_02: So that's a big network of their own Franciscan schools.
38:54
SPEAKER_02: We're kind of co-organizing the event with them.
38:57
SPEAKER_02: Michelle Dunn is actually going to be one of our speakers that morning.
39:01
SPEAKER_02: So the Franciscan Action Network has presence there.
39:04
SPEAKER_02: So it is going to be a beautiful weekend of many of these different parishes,
39:08
SPEAKER_02: schools, organizations coming together.
39:10
SPEAKER_02: And then Franciscan Action Network has their conference at the beginning of November.
39:15
SPEAKER_02: That's another opportunity where those are the moments where you're in a room
39:19
SPEAKER_02: and you see it all.
39:20
SPEAKER_02: You're like, wow, we are all here together.
39:23
SPEAKER_02: But Barbara, you're right.
39:24
SPEAKER_02: It's happening, but there needs to be more of that.
39:28
SPEAKER_02: And I think a big part of the Federation's work is saying,
39:31
SPEAKER_02: how can we be a helper in that space?
39:34
SPEAKER_02: Not that we have to be the container,
39:37
SPEAKER_02: but how can we help provide more opportunities for that collaboration and convening
39:42
SPEAKER_02: between Franciscan organizations?
39:44
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and I think part of it is there are organizations like
39:48
SPEAKER_01: the Franciscan Action Network,
39:49
SPEAKER_01: which sort of is a coalition of all the different parts of the Franciscan family.
39:53
SPEAKER_01: And Franciscans International,
39:56
SPEAKER_01: which does a lot of work around the globe,
39:58
SPEAKER_01: they're sort of the same as the Franciscan Action Network,
40:00
SPEAKER_01: but globally, and they do a lot of work at the United Nations.
40:03
SPEAKER_01: So there are a lot of those different types of Franciscan organizations that are
40:08
SPEAKER_01: a collaboration of all the different parts of the Franciscan family
40:12
SPEAKER_01: that come together.
40:13
SPEAKER_01: There's an awful lot of Franciscans.
40:17
SPEAKER_01: I mentioned my book,
40:18
SPEAKER_01: and there are probably more than 600,000 Franciscans around the globe right now.
40:23
SPEAKER_01: When you think about that, that's an awful lot of people.
40:25
SPEAKER_01: And there's a lot of different Franciscan organizations and communities
40:29
SPEAKER_01: and collaborations and coalitions and all of that.
40:32
SPEAKER_01: And there's no one.
40:33
SPEAKER_01: It's not like the Jesuits that they have one head of the Jesuits that's head of all
40:38
SPEAKER_01: the Franciscans.
40:39
SPEAKER_01: Franciscans don't have that, and that's intentional.
40:42
SPEAKER_01: But they do try to come together and collaborate and work together, I think.
40:46
SPEAKER_00: You know, we have so many churches, so many denominations.
40:50
SPEAKER_00: It seems to me that something like the whole Franciscan movement is,
40:55
SPEAKER_00: again, a really big umbrella.
40:57
SPEAKER_00: And it seems like we're living in times when it's a good thing to have a big umbrella.
41:12
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I know, I think everybody knows Richard Rohr, or at least many, many people do.
41:18
SPEAKER_00: But how does someone,
41:21
SPEAKER_00: you know,
41:21
SPEAKER_00: out in their church and somewhere in the Midwest or in the Northeast or wherever,
41:27
SPEAKER_00: learn more?
41:27
SPEAKER_00: Or how do you reach that person who's just very church focused?
41:32
SPEAKER_00: I'm not even sure I'm asking it right, but get my drift.
41:36
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
41:37
SPEAKER_02: Just because it's on the tip of my tongue, I would plug the Piazza, our online community space.
41:42
SPEAKER_02: It's really intended to be a place for people that are just dipping their toes
41:47
SPEAKER_02: or just curious about Franciscan spirituality or may want to meet someone.
41:52
SPEAKER_02: It's a really low bar way to join.
41:55
SPEAKER_02: It's free and you can join the community and start to poke around
41:58
SPEAKER_02: and see what people are sharing,
42:00
SPEAKER_02: what types of groups, what types of gatherings you could join and just start there.
42:05
SPEAKER_02: It kind of goes back to There are several books or one video.
42:10
SPEAKER_02: If you need those types of things,
42:12
SPEAKER_02: I have a million that I could point to,
42:14
SPEAKER_02: but it really is through relationship and connection.
42:17
SPEAKER_02: We have a monthly connection circle.
42:20
SPEAKER_02: It's a very simple gathering where we come together once a month on a theme.
42:24
SPEAKER_02: We have a volunteer group.
42:26
SPEAKER_02: Lead us through a little meditation and prayer.
42:28
SPEAKER_02: Then they give a short reflection on a Franciscan-like theme.
42:32
SPEAKER_02: And then we go into small groups and a larger group just discussing it.
42:37
SPEAKER_02: And it's in those types of connections that I think people really start
42:40
SPEAKER_02: to understand kind of what Franciscan spirituality is.
42:45
SPEAKER_02: But I think there is a need and we're very much interested in creating kind
42:50
SPEAKER_02: of like self-paced courses, like little like one-on-one type courses.
42:55
SPEAKER_02: I know that would have been helpful for me when I was interested in this instead
42:59
SPEAKER_02: of just searching the black hole of YouTube.
43:02
SPEAKER_02: There's some gems there for sure.
43:03
SPEAKER_02: But yeah, so we're interested in that.
43:06
SPEAKER_02: But the piazza, I would point to as a starting place.
43:09
SPEAKER_00: I have to say, what a great name.
43:11
SPEAKER_00: I just got back from Italy this past week.
43:14
SPEAKER_00: And that's where it's at.
43:17
SPEAKER_00: That's where the energy is.
43:18
SPEAKER_00: That's where everybody meets.
43:20
SPEAKER_00: That's where everybody talks.
43:21
SPEAKER_00: That's where everything happens is at the piazza.
43:24
SPEAKER_00: And the thing is, we don't really have an equivalent of that in our culture.
43:29
SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's kind of...
43:31
SPEAKER_00: A real loss for us.
43:33
SPEAKER_00: I mean, we don't have that kind of a hub.
43:37
SPEAKER_00: We'll come together and are willing to sit and spend time.
43:41
SPEAKER_01: You know,
43:41
SPEAKER_01: that whole idea and what you're talking about, Brady,
43:44
SPEAKER_01: it sort of plays right into Franciscan Month,
43:47
SPEAKER_01: which I know that you're very involved in.
43:49
SPEAKER_01: We've been now collaborating with Brother Greg on that and sort of bringing that awareness.
43:55
SPEAKER_01: So talk a little bit about Franciscan Month for us.
43:58
SPEAKER_01: Tell us a little bit about that.
44:00
SPEAKER_02: Well, it is timely.
44:02
SPEAKER_02: It's the day after the feast of St. Francis.
44:04
SPEAKER_02: And on Saturday, we celebrated the transitus of Francis's passing into eternal life.
44:10
SPEAKER_02: And so October,
44:12
SPEAKER_02: because of the feast day and because of transitus,
44:15
SPEAKER_02: has always had special meaning in the Franciscan world.
44:18
SPEAKER_02: Like October's always just been an especially energetic time.
44:23
SPEAKER_02: For Franciscans.
44:24
SPEAKER_02: And so Brother Greg,
44:26
SPEAKER_02: you know,
44:26
SPEAKER_02: had a great creative idea to like,
44:28
SPEAKER_02: what would it mean to like formalize October as Franciscan month,
44:32
SPEAKER_02: we have several months that celebrate different heritages and traditions and groups
44:38
SPEAKER_02: of people.
44:38
SPEAKER_02: And so I think the Franciscans, we need one, you know, October so big for us with this.
44:44
SPEAKER_02: And so It's looked different.
44:47
SPEAKER_02: I've been involved the past two years,
44:50
SPEAKER_02: and I think it's been going around for about three years, maybe four years.
44:54
SPEAKER_02: And it's been incredible to see the growth in terms of relationship and partnership
44:59
SPEAKER_02: from last year to this year and the amount of organizations,
45:03
SPEAKER_02: the amount of schools and parishes,
45:05
SPEAKER_02: communities that are on board with a really simple mission.
45:09
SPEAKER_02: And it's a lot of what we've shared about is how do we help amplify
45:13
SPEAKER_02: the Educate people that may not know who St.
45:17
SPEAKER_02: Francis is and St. Clair and what they're about.
45:20
SPEAKER_02: So that's one piece.
45:21
SPEAKER_02: But then the second and the part I'm most interested
45:23
SPEAKER_02: in is how do we help people embody this way of life?
45:28
SPEAKER_02: And Barbara,
45:28
SPEAKER_02: kind of to your point,
45:29
SPEAKER_02: like even people that they're like,
45:31
SPEAKER_02: you know, I'm a faithful Jesuit or in my world, I'm a faithful Presbyterian, like.
45:36
SPEAKER_02: I don't want to be Catholic.
45:37
SPEAKER_02: I don't want any.
45:38
SPEAKER_02: It's like, that's fine.
45:39
SPEAKER_02: That's not the point of Franciscan Month.
45:41
SPEAKER_02: The point of Franciscan Month is we believe there's a lot of shared values
45:46
SPEAKER_02: in our culture, in our world.
45:48
SPEAKER_02: And St. Francis put a lot of good words and a lot of his life into them.
45:53
SPEAKER_02: So how can we help share with people that these values are a part of our tradition?
45:59
SPEAKER_02: They may be a part of yours as well.
46:00
SPEAKER_02: And that's the point.
46:02
SPEAKER_02: And so how can we help people embody them either through practices or gatherings?
46:07
SPEAKER_02: We have weekly blogs and reflections on different themes that we've come up with
46:12
SPEAKER_02: and partnering with a lot of organizations.
46:14
SPEAKER_02: So we're just an awareness campaign connected with an embodiment campaign.
46:19
SPEAKER_02: How do we make this education part of our daily lives?
46:24
SPEAKER_03: I know we're kind of coming to time and we generally like to tie the threads
46:27
SPEAKER_03: of our conversation together with this idea of Tomorrow's American Catholic,
46:30
SPEAKER_03: which is, as you know, the name of our journal.
46:33
SPEAKER_03: We just like to get a sense of what that conjures in people,
46:36
SPEAKER_03: what their hopes for the horizon of the small C,
46:39
SPEAKER_03: big C, Catholic Church, however they want to think about it.
46:41
SPEAKER_03: The idea of Catholicity that moves through the whole,
46:44
SPEAKER_03: as Dan Horan told us,
46:45
SPEAKER_03: he explained Catholicity to us on the podcast episode,
46:48
SPEAKER_03: but just this idea of where we're going together
46:51
SPEAKER_03: and maybe how Franciscan spirituality might play into that.
46:54
SPEAKER_03: So the floor is yours.
46:55
SPEAKER_03: You can enlighten us.
46:56
SPEAKER_03: Well, you mentioned Dan and I'm grateful to say he's become a friend more recently
47:01
SPEAKER_02: and I would just say whatever he said, that's what I'd say.
47:06
SPEAKER_03: Like you said, pointing to people.
47:08
SPEAKER_02: Go back to his episode.
47:10
SPEAKER_02: Stop here.
47:10
SPEAKER_02: Go back to his episode.
47:11
SPEAKER_02: However he answered the question, that's how I'd say it.
47:16
SPEAKER_02: No, but seriously, I think...
47:18
SPEAKER_02: You know,
47:19
SPEAKER_02: there is so much that I find wrong with,
47:24
SPEAKER_02: just personally, I think is wrong with the capital C church.
47:28
SPEAKER_02: And I mean that not just in the Catholic world, but Protestant world, just at large.
47:33
SPEAKER_02: And so there's a lot to critique.
47:34
SPEAKER_02: There's a lot of things I don't feel are right.
47:36
SPEAKER_02: I don't like in just our culture or politics.
47:39
SPEAKER_02: There's so many things that I think everyone listening to this,
47:43
SPEAKER_02: you know,
47:43
SPEAKER_02: I don't have to say much more about that,
47:45
SPEAKER_02: but One of the things I hear Richard Rohr's voice all the time is just,
47:49
SPEAKER_02: you know, the best critique of the bad is the practice of the better.
47:53
SPEAKER_02: And so for people who find themselves drawn to this Christian spirituality,
48:00
SPEAKER_02: for us to be contributors in a helpful way of paving a different path.
48:06
SPEAKER_02: Of not slipping into the societal norms of division and shouting at each other,
48:12
SPEAKER_02: but to really embody this level of kinship and belief that love for my neighbor
48:18
SPEAKER_02: and love for my enemy and live into that.
48:21
SPEAKER_02: Let that be real.
48:23
SPEAKER_02: I think there's a lot of room for improvement in our church, in our country, in our community.
48:28
SPEAKER_02: And I don't think we're going anywhere unless we can fix that piece of polarization
48:34
SPEAKER_02: in between us.
48:36
SPEAKER_02: So that's where a lot of my effort and direction I think we need to go is
48:41
SPEAKER_02: that peace building process,
48:42
SPEAKER_02: that healing restoration before we can even start to envision what
48:46
SPEAKER_02: the church might look like down the road.
48:48
SPEAKER_02: Because if we can't do this together,
48:50
SPEAKER_02: if we can't do this with someone with my enemy,
48:53
SPEAKER_02: I have quotation marks up for those listening,
48:57
SPEAKER_02: then I don't think it's even worth envisioning that future
49:01
SPEAKER_02: because we can't do this together.
49:03
SPEAKER_02: So the last thing I'll say is I think the church needs to be a place
49:07
SPEAKER_02: where everybody belongs,
49:10
SPEAKER_02: feels, you know, they feel like they belong to it and that everybody can lead.
49:15
SPEAKER_02: And I mean, everybody full stop, period.
49:20
SPEAKER_02: Can belong, feels like they belong and can lead.
49:24
SPEAKER_02: And the way that looks maybe week to week is a group coming together and sharing
49:29
SPEAKER_02: in some form of Prayer or meditation or music and then some sort of ministry,
49:36
SPEAKER_02: whatever that community has decided to do in ministry and in the local community
49:42
SPEAKER_02: and just kind of having a community.
49:44
SPEAKER_02: I hope that there's always a regular gathering place for people
49:48
SPEAKER_02: and may look different than what we'd consider organized religion these days.
49:53
SPEAKER_02: But I think there's incredible opportunity.
49:56
SPEAKER_02: I have a lot of hope as much as I'm Kind of pessimistic about our current state of things.
50:01
SPEAKER_02: I have a lot of hope of what we can build,
50:04
SPEAKER_02: but there's a lot of work to do with how we view each other
50:08
SPEAKER_02: and how we view this planet before we can really
50:11
SPEAKER_03: get there.
50:12
SPEAKER_03: Kind of goes back to that idea you mentioned earlier about reimagining.
50:16
SPEAKER_03: These words network or community can sometimes be lost and be overused and we kind
50:20
SPEAKER_03: of lose the meaning.
50:21
SPEAKER_03: So we have to work on that together.
50:23
SPEAKER_03: And you're right to bring it back to the base core pieces of loving the enemy,
50:27
SPEAKER_03: the true bedrock gospel principles, and then kind of build out from there.
50:31
SPEAKER_03: So thank you for that.
50:32
SPEAKER_03: And thank you for your time and sharing your story and experience with us.
50:36
SPEAKER_03: We'll definitely be following and collaborating with your work today.
50:40
SPEAKER_03: And look forward to introducing the Franciscan Federation to our listeners
50:44
SPEAKER_03: who might not know about you and will now know about you and follow you.
50:47
SPEAKER_03: So thank you for all you're doing.
50:48
SPEAKER_03: Thank you.
50:50
SPEAKER_02: I so look forward to seeing you guys again, the continued partnership.
50:54
SPEAKER_02: I thank you for not just today, but for giving, I think, like everyday people a voice.
50:59
SPEAKER_02: I think we often look to the most well-known names and things for podcasts
51:05
SPEAKER_02: or articles or whatnot, but there's so many teachers in our midst.
51:08
SPEAKER_02: And so...
51:09
SPEAKER_02: Uplifting those voices.
51:10
SPEAKER_02: And I just love what you all are doing.
51:13
SPEAKER_02: Peace and all good.
51:14
SPEAKER_02: Thank you.
51:15
SPEAKER_02: Talk soon.
51:16
SPEAKER_02: Take care.
51:16
SPEAKER_02: Thank you.
51:17
SPEAKER_00: Bye bye.
51:18
SPEAKER_00: Bye.
51:19
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51:36
SPEAKER_03: You can find additional podcasts as well as our written work at our website,
51:40
SPEAKER_03: tomorrowsamericancatholic.org.
51:55
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52:04
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52:26
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52:28
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52:31
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