Latest / Claymore: Become Who You Are / #767 Christopher Columbus, Catholic Missionaries, and American Indians, In Early America, With Professor Russell Lawson

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#767 Christopher Columbus, Catholic Missionaries, and American Indians, In Early America, With Professor Russell Lawson · Claymore: Become Who You Are

0:00
SPEAKER_00: I'm excited to be back with Russell Lawson.
0:03
SPEAKER_00: He's the author of two dozen books.
0:05
SPEAKER_00: He's a prolific writer.
0:07
SPEAKER_00: He's also a college professor who's taught in New England, Oklahoma, and Ontario.
0:12
SPEAKER_00: Writes on a lot of different subjects and people, including scientists, explorers, missionaries.
0:18
SPEAKER_00: The history of America he writes on, Europe, the world, the history of ideas, particularly Christian ideas.
0:25
SPEAKER_00: He grew up and lives in Oklahoma, is married, has three grown sons, two dogs and two cats, Russell.
0:30
SPEAKER_00: The last time I saw you, you still got them?
0:33
SPEAKER_00: I have three dogs and two cats.
0:35
SPEAKER_00: Unbelievable.
0:36
SPEAKER_00: You're a convert to Catholicism.
0:38
SPEAKER_00: And uh you were married already with three children when you had a born-again experience and became Catholic.
0:44
SPEAKER_00: Your latest project is American Catholicism and Encyclopedic History.
0:50
SPEAKER_00: It's really a wonderful, wonderful book that should really be something that we're teaching in schools right now instead of the 1619 project or whatever we're teaching nowadays, uh Russell.
1:01
SPEAKER_00: Hey, good to be with you.
1:03
SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
1:04
SPEAKER_00: Why don't you tell our audience a little bit about the objective that you had in writing this and where it starts and where it goes, and we'll dive into a couple of things.
1:13
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
1:14
SPEAKER_01: Well, I have been working on missionaries for quite some time.
1:19
SPEAKER_01: About 20 years ago, I was teaching at an American Baptist college, and I was interested in the Baptist missionaries that had come to Oklahoma where I live.
1:31
SPEAKER_01: And I was teaching at a college that was founded by American Baptists.
1:35
SPEAKER_01: And they had an archive in their library that had all sorts of different documents by these Baptist missionaries who lived in the late 1800s and early 1900s.
1:47
SPEAKER_01: And I started to read them and study them.
1:50
SPEAKER_01: And from there, I won an award.
1:53
SPEAKER_01: It's called the Fulk Wright Award, to go to Ontario, and I wanted to study Anglican missionaries there.
2:00
SPEAKER_01: Anglicans were people of the Church of England that brought from the Catholic Church in the 16th century.
2:06
SPEAKER_01: And I studied Anglican missionaries to the American Indians, and these Baptist missionaries were to the American Indians too.
2:12
SPEAKER_01: And as I studied them, I realized that the current mantra today in the academic world that missionaries were trying to hurt the Indians and you know, in some respects, hated the Indians, was just not right.
2:30
SPEAKER_01: That the missionaries actually were trying to help these people and they were trying to convert them to Christianity, and they thought that that was the highest goal a person could achieve.
2:41
SPEAKER_01: And so they were trying to, I think they were trying to show love to them.
2:46
SPEAKER_01: From there, I I realized that, like in Canada, for example, there wasn't a lot of activity from the Anglican missionaries, frankly.
2:56
SPEAKER_01: But the Catholics, well, they were everywhere.
2:59
SPEAKER_01: And the there's volumes and volumes of the accounts of Catholic missionaries in New France, the French settlements there.
3:09
SPEAKER_01: I knew it would take me a long time to go through those.
3:12
SPEAKER_01: So I finally settled upon the idea that I would like to tackle the most prolific missionaries.
3:20
SPEAKER_01: And the most prolific missionaries were not Baptists, and they weren't Anglicans, or they weren't Methodists, or they were Roman Catholic.
3:27
SPEAKER_00: So when you say that about the Catholic missionaries, Russell, uh you're talking about the Americas now as a whole?
3:33
SPEAKER_00: You're talking about North America.
3:36
SPEAKER_00: North America.
3:37
SPEAKER_01: North America includes Mexico and what is today the United States and also Canada.
3:45
SPEAKER_01: So the book covers all of those.
3:47
SPEAKER_00: What we hear all the time is that uh Catholics had a minor role in in early America, right?
3:52
SPEAKER_00: As far as evangelization goes, but you're saying that that's not that's not the whole picture, huh?
3:58
SPEAKER_01: Well, in the 13 British American colonies, yes.
4:02
SPEAKER_01: But if you're talking about the vast territories that Spain controlled, and so that would be the Caribbean, of course, in a good part of South America, Central America, Mexico, the American South, and the American Southwest.
4:16
SPEAKER_01: And if you're talking about the France country, which would be the Great Lakes region, the St.
4:20
SPEAKER_01: Morris region, the Mississippi, and territories of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Quebec, and Ontario today.
4:27
SPEAKER_00: Well, that's quite a quite territory, yeah.
4:30
SPEAKER_01: There was a lot of activity by French Catholics and Spanish Catholics.
4:35
SPEAKER_00: When you say New France or New Spain, that that's what you're referring to, those territories.
4:41
SPEAKER_01: Those are the empires that the Spanish came in, they conquered after Columbus, and then France came in and started to get involved in the St.
4:51
SPEAKER_01: Lawrence River Valley in the 1500s, but they didn't really have an active colony until the 1600s.
4:59
SPEAKER_01: But those colonies grew into modern Quebec and modern Ontario today, and then all the territories that Spain controlled, including Texas and Florida, and what is today California, not only Northern California, but Baja California to the south and all of Mexico.
5:19
SPEAKER_01: And so I trace all of these missionaries.
5:21
SPEAKER_01: It's what I call it an encyclopedic study because I try to include all missionaries that there are records for.
5:30
SPEAKER_01: I focus on the ones that provide the best historical sources.
5:35
SPEAKER_01: Some of the missionaries left behind journals, and they left behind a lot of information, and that allows the historian to go through and recreate their journeys.
5:46
SPEAKER_00: So you were able to find in your research, in your studies, you were able to find some actual personal notes and personal journals.
6:46
SPEAKER_01: They have letters, they have accounts, they tell in detail where they went, what they did, they provide the impressions they have of the American Indian people.
6:56
SPEAKER_01: That's why I became a historian because I like to read these kinds of journals and get into the mind of the people that were involved.
7:03
SPEAKER_01: And I love to look at explorers.
7:05
SPEAKER_01: And these missionaries were explorers.
7:07
SPEAKER_01: Okay, they were just as much explorers as Daniel Boone or anybody else.
7:11
SPEAKER_01: They were explorers.
7:12
SPEAKER_01: They went in and they had tremendous courage because they would go among people who were generally warlike and uh were threatening, and they would go among them and they would try to, with hand language, because sign language, because that's what everybody would use on the American frontier.
7:32
SPEAKER_01: They would try to convey the fact that they were there, not out of aggression, of course, they didn't have any weapons, and they were there to help the people.
7:40
SPEAKER_01: And by and large, they were successful in convincing the American Indians.
7:45
SPEAKER_01: There were some American Indian tribes that were very ferocious.
7:49
SPEAKER_01: And uh, so I provide the accounts of the martyrdoms of these Catholic missionaries, the bravery they had, the courage they had, knowing that they were going to die for the sake of the Great Commission, as I call it, which is when Jesus told his disciples in Matthew, Mark, and Luke to go among all nations and preach the gospel.
8:13
SPEAKER_01: That the Great Commission of what Jesus told his disciples to do has motivated Roman Catholics from the beginning, and it still does today, where spreading the Great Commission is really one of the keys to Catholicism.
8:30
SPEAKER_01: And that's what these men, and there were some women too, that decided they were going to brave the American wilderness, and they were going to go in areas where many of them died because it was just so difficult to live in.
8:44
SPEAKER_01: But they did it anyway, uh, because they wanted to bring the message of Christ.
8:49
SPEAKER_01: And to me, that is an act of love.
8:52
SPEAKER_01: And they're not doing that because they have some sort of ulterior motive of power or wanting to gain wealth or anything like that.
8:58
SPEAKER_01: No.
8:59
SPEAKER_01: And the Roman Catholics were so unique because they would live with these people.
9:04
SPEAKER_01: They'd spend their lives with them, they'd die with them, and uh, they were reluctant to ever leave them.
9:10
SPEAKER_01: And uh sometimes they they died because the Indians became upset with them.
9:15
SPEAKER_01: But they lived with them and they suffered everything that the American Indians suffered, and sometimes more.
9:21
SPEAKER_00: I mean, just for the sake of these people.
9:23
SPEAKER_00: We just celebrated Columbus Day here.
9:26
SPEAKER_00: Of course, some people call it an Indigenous People Day, but and it kind of fits into what we're talking about here, anyways.
9:33
SPEAKER_00: So Columbus Day.
9:34
SPEAKER_00: So Columbus comes and he's exploring the Americas.
9:39
SPEAKER_00: Does he feel an obligation, uh Russell, right off the bat?
9:42
SPEAKER_00: And do these early explorers, you know, uh Columbus is Catholic, right?
9:47
SPEAKER_00: He's sent out by by Spain.
9:49
SPEAKER_00: Does he have an obligation or was he sent out on a mission when he's exploring to also evangelize, or is this just something that came from from his heart, or or or did he even spend the time evangelizing?
10:01
SPEAKER_00: What was that mindset like, is what I'm trying to get at.
10:04
SPEAKER_01: Well, the mindset of Columbus today, uh, the mindset of Columbus that scholars present is one of a man who wanted to go in and enrich himself and to use power to be able to take control of the American Indians.
10:21
SPEAKER_00: But if you look at Columbus's own journals, I mean, the thing about it is Which is kind of just to interrupt for a second, which is kind of absurd because they didn't even know what he was gonna find there, right?
10:31
SPEAKER_00: I mean, he didn't know what he was gonna find when he got here.
10:34
SPEAKER_00: Well, so it's kind of absurd to push that down, isn't it?
10:38
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
10:39
SPEAKER_01: He he thought he was actually gonna find the East India.
10:42
SPEAKER_01: That's right.
10:43
SPEAKER_01: That's right.
10:50
SPEAKER_01: Columbus was someone who was devoted to the teachings of St.
10:53
SPEAKER_01: Francis.
10:54
SPEAKER_01: Uh there's some evidence, and I don't think it's concrete, so I can't really make the claim that he was, but there's some evidence that he was a third order Franciscan, which meant that he would actually live according to the dictates of Saint Francis, even though he would not be a member of a religious order.
11:13
SPEAKER_01: And his son was educated by the Franciscans.
11:16
SPEAKER_01: Columbus had relations with Spanish Franciscans, Franciscans went with him to go among the American Indians.
11:24
SPEAKER_01: Historians, what you have to be able to use as a historian, is the accounts from the time.
11:32
SPEAKER_01: We could, if we wanted to find out Columbus, we could go on and look at the Encyclopedia Britannica and Wikipedia and stuff, but those sources are not valid.
11:41
SPEAKER_01: For to try to understand Columbus, you have to read what he wrote or what his contemporaries wrote, that is, the people that lived at the time, like for example, the Dominican Bertholome de la Casas.
11:54
SPEAKER_01: And in reading the accounts of Columbus, in reading the accounts of the king and queen who gave the instructions, in the accounts of Franciscans at the time, in the accounts of his son who wrote a biography, one gets the impression that Columbus really deeply felt the Great Commission.
12:12
SPEAKER_01: That is, he felt like he was called upon by God to bring Christianity to whoever he came upon.
12:19
SPEAKER_01: And when he came upon the American Indians, he didn't really understand who they were.
12:24
SPEAKER_01: I mean, he didn't really know.
12:26
SPEAKER_01: He wasn't sure where he was, frankly.
12:28
SPEAKER_00: But what he did know was that's nuts in itself.
12:32
SPEAKER_00: You talk about an explorer, an adventure, to go out and not even be sure where you're at.
12:38
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I'm a I'm an old backpacker, Russell.
12:41
SPEAKER_00: And before I go into a forest, you know, I I I look at the sun, right?
12:45
SPEAKER_00: Okay, the sun's going from here to here.
12:47
SPEAKER_00: I get kind of my bearings.
12:48
SPEAKER_00: I look for a landmark, maybe a maybe a mountain peak, maybe with some snow on it or something before I walk in.
12:55
SPEAKER_00: But it doesn't take long, and I'm down in some valley, and the cloud cut coat comes over the top, right?
13:01
SPEAKER_00: And and uh and I and I and I cannot see the sun anymore.
13:05
SPEAKER_00: All of a sudden my landmark is gone.
13:07
SPEAKER_00: And without a map and a compass, I would be in trouble.
13:11
SPEAKER_00: I mean, really in trouble.
13:12
SPEAKER_00: Now, if you think about this, these early explorers did not have that map, did they?
13:18
SPEAKER_00: I mean, they they they knew how to read you know direction and stuff, obviously, for the stars and stuff, but but they didn't have this all mapped out, did they?
13:26
SPEAKER_00: And it was crazy just to think about that.
13:30
SPEAKER_00: So when when Columbus, let's say he he he lands in North America, his mindset, I would think, as an explorer, as a Catholic, as you described him there even briefly, is to do that, right?
13:44
SPEAKER_00: Explore, map out, figure out what's going on.
13:47
SPEAKER_00: He's not there to to destroy the population.
13:51
SPEAKER_00: He doesn't even, like you said, he doesn't even know it's there.
13:53
SPEAKER_00: So take us into that, you know, where do we get this idea from him uh or about him that that he was really anti-indigenous somehow?
14:04
SPEAKER_00: And and you know, I I just want to put that to to to rest a little bit.
14:09
SPEAKER_01: Well, it's it's an extremely complex story because Columbus made four voyages, and Columbus was appointed to be the admiral.
14:18
SPEAKER_01: He was appointed to be the person who would be in charge of these new colonies.
14:23
SPEAKER_01: Columbus was a great sailor and he was a great explorer, he was a devout Catholic, but he was not a commander of them, he was not very good at it, and he lost his way.
14:35
SPEAKER_01: The problem was that most of the Spanish who came to the Americas came from a land that is Spain.
14:44
SPEAKER_01: We're talking about 15th century Spain, okay?
14:47
SPEAKER_01: And Spain had been at war for centuries, they had just been at war against Muslims in Spain, trying to drive them out of Spain.
14:58
SPEAKER_01: This had created a whole group of soldiers, conquistadors we call them.
15:04
SPEAKER_01: And they were men who were greedy, they were hungry, they they wanted power, and when they heard about Columbus's discoveries, they wanted to come along because they wanted gold, they wanted power.
15:19
SPEAKER_01: And Columbus, uh frankly, did not know how to control these people.
15:24
SPEAKER_01: And so if you wanted to accuse them of something, you could accuse him of being unable to direct his men in a proper way, and they he allowed them to destroy people and hurt people, but he himself, I have not seen a whole lot of evidence to see that Columbus himself wanted to hurt these people.
15:49
SPEAKER_01: But a lot of the story is not fully told.
15:53
SPEAKER_01: And so what historians do is they'll go through and they'll read this material and they interpret it.
15:59
SPEAKER_01: Okay, what they make basically do is they make educated guesses.
16:02
SPEAKER_01: And they're educated, the educated guesses that are occurring right now about historians in America is that Columbus wanted these people to go in and hurt the American Indians, that he did not care about converting them at all.
16:17
SPEAKER_01: And he actually wanted to enslave them and he wanted to take control of them.
16:22
SPEAKER_01: I think there's a lot of contrary evidence to show the exact opposite.
16:27
SPEAKER_01: And I think that if you want to do give Columbus his due, we should realize that there's another story about Columbus that's not being told right now.
16:38
SPEAKER_01: It was told a hundred years ago, 150 years ago, before political correctness and the academic world gets a hold of it.
16:46
SPEAKER_01: But now it's not told at all.
16:48
SPEAKER_01: Now it's told someone who was greedy and aggressive and wanted to hurt people.
16:52
SPEAKER_01: And that's what's told about all the Catholic missionaries, frankly.
16:56
SPEAKER_01: That is the mantra right now among scholars about Catholic missionaries and among the general public, too.
17:03
SPEAKER_01: There are a lot of different books written about how horrible the Roman Catholic missionaries were to the American Indians.
17:11
SPEAKER_01: And the people who write them, they just don't understand.
17:15
SPEAKER_01: They have not read their journals, they have not read the primary sources.
17:19
SPEAKER_01: They don't see what I have seen and I've recorded in this book, and that is that these men, mostly men but some women, came upon these people not because they wanted to hurt them and take control of them and enslave them and everything like that.
17:34
SPEAKER_01: They wanted to teach them Christianity.
17:37
SPEAKER_01: Now, the brand of Franciscan Christianity was tough.
17:41
SPEAKER_01: Okay, the Franciscans were people who believed in chastity and they believed in poverty, and they believed in walking barefoot everywhere, and they believed in coarse woolen robes.
17:54
SPEAKER_01: They believed sometimes in self-mortification.
17:58
SPEAKER_01: They believed that the American Indians should practice the same things.
18:03
SPEAKER_01: They wanted to teach the American Indians that this poverty and chastity and living a life according to Christian values was what was important.
18:12
SPEAKER_01: And then a lot of the American Indians didn't want to do that.
18:15
SPEAKER_01: They just simply didn't want to do it.
18:17
SPEAKER_01: They wanted to have more than one wife, and and and you know, they they didn't want to do self-mortification the way the Franciscans wanted to.
18:25
SPEAKER_00: I wonder, I wonder, Russell, when you're saying that the Franciscans, now, first of all, they're not pioneers, right?
18:31
SPEAKER_00: I mean, they're there to be missionaries, and and uh, in other words, are they well one I don't know what you mean by pioneering?
18:37
SPEAKER_00: I mean did they actually establish uh residency here?
18:40
SPEAKER_01: Let's use an example of Juniper of Serra.
18:43
SPEAKER_01: He was from uh the Mediterranean and he came uh as a missionary, he came to uh first Mexico City, and then from there he traveled to Baja, California, and then from there he traveled to Northern California, and that's where he spent the rest of his life.
19:02
SPEAKER_01: He established missions all along the coast of California, and in these missions, the he would assign various missionaries to go and live with the American Indians and teach them.
19:15
SPEAKER_01: They taught them all sorts of things.
19:17
SPEAKER_01: I mean, it wasn't really it wasn't just Christianity, they wanted to teach them the Christian lifestyle.
19:24
SPEAKER_01: But one thing that a lot of people are upset about regarding the missionaries is that to these missionaries and to American Catholics all the way up to you know the 20th century, they believed that a Christian lifestyle meant that you embrace civilization, okay, that you go to church, that you dress according to what's proper, and not just in skin clothing, that you you have practiced monogamy, that you farm, okay.
19:59
SPEAKER_01: That's that's you grow your own food.
20:02
SPEAKER_01: You don't live off the land, you live in settled communities, you go to mass, you go to you do the sacraments.
20:09
SPEAKER_01: Some American Indians wanted to do this and they embraced it.
20:13
SPEAKER_01: Some American Indians did not want to do this, they wanted to live in the ways that they had always lived in.
20:20
SPEAKER_01: They wanted to have multiple wives, they didn't want to farm, they didn't want to wear white clothing, they didn't want to go to mass, they didn't want to do any of that.
20:29
SPEAKER_01: And so they were they resisted.
20:32
SPEAKER_01: The Roman Catholic missionaries in those settlements, in they would sometimes punish the people who would be resistant because they were trying to convince all the other converts that to join them in going against it.
20:49
SPEAKER_01: So what kind of punishments do they do?
20:51
SPEAKER_01: The same kind of punishments that a Franciscan would do to their own person.
20:55
SPEAKER_01: Sometimes they would do corporal punishment on them.
20:59
SPEAKER_01: But then again, okay, today corporal punishment, most of us think is not the right way to discipline a child, right?
21:06
SPEAKER_01: Or discipline a human.
21:08
SPEAKER_01: But 300 years ago, no matter where you were worldwide, corporal punishment was the norm.
21:16
SPEAKER_01: Okay, we can't read into the past our own values and judge people of the past according to our own values.
21:25
SPEAKER_01: I could do that if I wanted to.
21:26
SPEAKER_01: I could say, well, the Franciscans should have never gone in there, and if there was a recalcitrant convert who rejected what the priest told him and wanted to go his own way, and the priest said, I'm sorry, but you're going to have to do extra work or something like that as a penalty for your recalcitrance.
21:47
SPEAKER_01: I might say in the present today, oh, that's not right.
21:51
SPEAKER_01: I would never do that to a child.
21:53
SPEAKER_01: But the problem is that we're talking about a different time period with different ideas, and they A different morality about things.
22:02
SPEAKER_01: Most priests today would not do self-flightation.
22:06
SPEAKER_01: Okay?
22:07
SPEAKER_01: They wouldn't do their own mortification.
22:09
SPEAKER_01: They wouldn't do that.
22:11
SPEAKER_00: But back then they would.
22:13
SPEAKER_00: Well, I mean, you could see why some Indians would get a little upset though.
22:16
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I'm going to just play devil's advocate here, because on the one hand, this is the way I'm living right now, and you know, you're bringing me something really foreign, really alien to me.
22:26
SPEAKER_00: It's you you're going to have to massage this kind of slow.
22:30
SPEAKER_00: And if but if I decide to walk away, Russell, from that, I mean, you know, Jesus, you know, when when he sent out his disciples, and again, I'm I'm playing devil's advocate here a little bit, you know, he just said, hey, if they reject you, just shake off the shake off your sandals and go to the next town.
22:49
SPEAKER_00: He didn't say to pursue them or to beat them or to, you know what I mean?
22:53
SPEAKER_00: So I could see where you come into my space and I'm not used to this and start to tell me what to do.
23:00
SPEAKER_00: And I and I'm sure it wasn't that abrupt, or I'm I'm hoping it wasn't that abrupt, but uh I could see why, you know, you could start some real animosities there.
23:09
SPEAKER_00: And if I'm a if I'm a a warrior and and you try to to to punish me or my brother or my family, I'm gonna fight back, you know.
23:18
SPEAKER_00: Uh that's who I am, that's who I'm bred to be.
23:20
SPEAKER_01: So so I could see where you could create some devil's advocacy your devil's advocacy is is part of that story because that did sometimes happen.
23:29
SPEAKER_01: It did.
23:30
SPEAKER_01: Sometimes, and that's why, because it did happen sometimes, therefore, a lot of people will look will latch on to that and say, Oh my god, they were so horrible to these people.
23:42
SPEAKER_01: You have to look at the whole picture, though.
23:45
SPEAKER_01: I spent 18 years teaching at this college, it was a it was an American Baptist college, and I studied that college.
23:53
SPEAKER_01: I wrote a book about this college when it was founded in 1880.
23:56
SPEAKER_01: And this the American Baptists that founded this college were very similar to what American Catholics experienced.
24:03
SPEAKER_01: And that is they went in and a lot of the American Indians embraced them because they wanted to learn, they wanted to become Christian, they wanted to uh accept a Christian lifestyle.
24:16
SPEAKER_01: Some of the American Indians did not want to, and that's just simply the way it's going to be.
24:22
SPEAKER_01: You can't get 100% of people to participate.
24:26
SPEAKER_01: Now, what do you do with those people?
24:29
SPEAKER_01: The American Catholics, for example, in uh in California around 1700, if they are in a missionary village and they have built a mission and they've converted the people, and the majority of people are living their lifestyle, a Christian lifestyle, but there are some who don't want to, that is a threat, and that's a threat to everyone in that village, because if you have some rebel browsers that decide to convince everyone in the village that the Roman Catholic priest is wrong, and a lot of times in these villages, they hadn't the priests had no protection whatsoever.
25:12
SPEAKER_01: Okay, they were just living on the people.
25:15
SPEAKER_01: And if you have these people starting to teach them that what the priest is saying is wrong and we don't want to do it anymore, what is the priest going to do?
25:23
SPEAKER_01: What is the choice they have?
25:25
SPEAKER_00: That's early Christian teaching is to say, hey, you know, if this comes in, right, heresy comes in, you're gonna have to ask that person to leave.
25:34
SPEAKER_00: I was thinking more that these Indians are out hunting and and gathering and we're pursuing them out there, right, and saying, hey, you have to live this way.
25:42
SPEAKER_00: But that's that's it, that's not what you're saying.
25:45
SPEAKER_01: They're trying to tell them there's a better lifestyle for them.
25:48
SPEAKER_01: Because most of the American Indians the Roman Catholics came in contact with, and you know, it sounds wonderful in movies that they were living in the happy, happy hunting ground.
25:58
SPEAKER_01: How were they living?
25:59
SPEAKER_01: They were living uh in with occasional family, they were not living good lives a lot of times.
26:05
SPEAKER_01: If you the missionaries that came upon the people of Baja, California, it was just astonishing how these people were living.
26:13
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, let's describe, let's describe that a little bit for our audience because I think this is very, very important.
26:18
SPEAKER_00: If there's a young person, right, that says, Well, why would you even share the gospel?
26:23
SPEAKER_00: Just let Indians live like Indians.
26:24
SPEAKER_00: So I want you to describe from your research what were these Indians living like and and and how did Christianity, how did hearing the gospel proclaim to them, how did it improve their lives?
26:35
SPEAKER_00: Because this is what we want to know, right?
26:37
SPEAKER_00: If we want to know, hey, if I'm gonna bring Christianity into the world, I'm doing it because it improved my own life and I saw improved civilization around me.
26:46
SPEAKER_00: Now I say, ooh, you know, the the American Indians could live better, right?
26:51
SPEAKER_00: There's something there that's going to benefit them if they embrace this.
26:55
SPEAKER_00: And and so this is the bridge that I love to have you build for our audience.
27:01
SPEAKER_01: Sure.
27:02
SPEAKER_01: Well, if we use California as an example, a lot of times they they were hardly living in villages at all.
27:09
SPEAKER_01: They were they were digging for food, they were often uh starving.
27:15
SPEAKER_01: The clothes they if they had clothes, hardly any, it was not good.
27:19
SPEAKER_01: And their clothes were filled with vermin.
27:21
SPEAKER_01: And the missionaries were living pretty tough lives too, for frankly.
27:27
SPEAKER_01: You know, they might have lice all over them too.
27:30
SPEAKER_01: But they at least knew that if you don't try to encourage from the land an a plentiful food supply, you're not gonna be able to live a very good life.
27:43
SPEAKER_01: And so they were they were teaching people who did not know how to farm, how to farm.
27:48
SPEAKER_01: And a lot of people realized that this was the key to, I mean, look, the the key to any kind of life is you have to have enough food.
27:57
SPEAKER_01: It's true for anywhere you live.
27:59
SPEAKER_01: And if you don't have enough food, then nothing else follows from it.
28:03
SPEAKER_01: You have to have enough food to exist.
28:06
SPEAKER_01: So if the Catholics could teach these people how to farm, they would slowly be able, it'd take years, but they would slowly be able to improve their lives and be able to actually start to think about other things besides just looking for food every day.
28:24
SPEAKER_01: I mean, that's the key with farming, is it allows you to have the leisure to be able to consider.
28:29
SPEAKER_00: And I suppose, Russell, that if you're just nomadic, right, and there are and there are nomadic people still in the world, you're always in some kind of conflict, in essence, right?
28:40
SPEAKER_00: Because you're always following a food supply or some pattern of nature, but you're always going to come up against other people that are doing the same thing.
28:48
SPEAKER_00: And so when you don't have a civilization built around you, it's difficult to find peace, isn't it?
28:55
SPEAKER_01: Well, for one thing, we're one thing that we're not really taught very well in schools is that it deprives American Indians in North America, we're not living in peace together.
29:05
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
29:06
SPEAKER_01: They were warmly.
29:08
SPEAKER_01: It wasn't Kumbaya, was it all over the world?
29:10
SPEAKER_01: They were constantly fighting with each other.
29:12
SPEAKER_01: And a lot of times the Catholic missionaries got caught up in this.
29:15
SPEAKER_01: I mean, the when the Catholic missionaries that lived around Lake Huron went among the Huron people and converted them, the Iroquois people to the South were extremely jealous of this, and they also had always hated the Hurons.
29:33
SPEAKER_01: And so the Catholic missionaries that went among the Hurons, there were so many of them that were killed because the Iroquois, much stronger than the Hurons, would come in and capture the people, kill them, enslave the children and women, and they'd either kill or they'd take the Catholic missionaries back with them so they could do slow torture to them.
29:54
SPEAKER_01: And we're just with some Franciscans there, they knew that this could happen, but they didn't anyway.
30:00
SPEAKER_00: Let's put myself now in that situation, right, as a missionary.
30:04
SPEAKER_00: At some point, if I know how to defend myself, and I'm assuming some of them did, you're gonna fight on behalf of the people that you've come to know and love, right?
30:13
SPEAKER_01: And and a lot of them, a lot of them didn't fight.
30:16
SPEAKER_01: A lot of them, what they did was they went among the people that were dying, and they tried to give them last drives.
30:24
SPEAKER_01: They were oblivious about their own safety because they knew that the reason why they were there was not to kill an enemy, the reason why they were there was to help the people that they had converted.
30:37
SPEAKER_01: I mean, that's that's what they were doing.
30:39
SPEAKER_01: And so you asked the question of the missionaries' motives, and should a person today, for example, feel like they should go amongst someone and teach them something that they might not want to hear.
30:52
SPEAKER_01: I do that all the time.
30:54
SPEAKER_01: I'm a college professor, I am constantly dealing with young people in my classes, and they don't want to learn.
31:02
SPEAKER_01: Anything I'm telling them, I tell them education is important.
31:07
SPEAKER_01: You might not realize it, but you need to have an education to be able to thrive in life.
31:13
SPEAKER_01: If you take it back 300 years, the missionaries were like teachers going among people who at first would resist them, and the missionaries just had to convince them that look, listen to me and follow my ways, and you're going to have a better life.
31:32
SPEAKER_01: Not only a better life now, but a better life in the future when you die.
31:38
SPEAKER_01: And let me tell you how to do it.
31:40
SPEAKER_01: It's sort of like a modern teacher today or a modern priest today.
31:44
SPEAKER_01: A modern priest might be talking to people and they don't want to hear him.
31:48
SPEAKER_01: What's the priest going to do?
31:49
SPEAKER_00: You don't give up, you just keep doing it.
31:52
SPEAKER_00: Let's jump all the way up to this modern time because we are at this all over again, aren't we?
31:56
SPEAKER_00: I mean, we're living in a decline in Western civilization.
32:00
SPEAKER_00: John Paul used that term, the new evangelization.
32:03
SPEAKER_00: He wasn't the only one.
32:04
SPEAKER_00: It's really going back after those in the civilization that might have even been baptized, many of them unfortunately aren't today, but to really bring the gospel back into a you know into our own civilization, right?
32:19
SPEAKER_00: Otherwise, and and here's the here's the point that you were making earlier.
32:24
SPEAKER_00: Why does this matter?
32:25
SPEAKER_00: Why do we need to do this?
32:27
SPEAKER_00: Because we're seeing the decline in our civilization.
32:29
SPEAKER_00: We're seeing families broken up.
32:31
SPEAKER_00: In other words, you'd say, okay, well, why do we need Christianity today?
32:35
SPEAKER_00: The heck with it.
32:35
SPEAKER_00: We'll be like the indigenous people and live without it.
32:38
SPEAKER_00: Well, I it doesn't look so pretty, does it?
32:41
SPEAKER_00: I'm meeting young people, you know the young people that you're teaching that come from dysfunctional families without a father in their home, or or maybe with two moms or two dads, they're still not experiencing the fullness of a mother and a father, which can really be devastating for the young people.
32:56
SPEAKER_00: Anxiety, depression, all kinds of things come into there.
33:00
SPEAKER_00: We're also seeing overall immorality.
33:02
SPEAKER_00: We're seeing violence on the streets, we're seeing corruption all the way, you know, this deep state and the government being exposed.
33:10
SPEAKER_00: Socialists and communists are coming back, and we know that doesn't end well.
33:14
SPEAKER_00: When Christianity brings up, to your point with the Indians, we have to have a vision that's going to bring them a better life.
33:21
SPEAKER_00: And that's why we do this because we're seeing the meltdown all around us, aren't we?
33:26
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
33:26
SPEAKER_01: Well, it's there's a four-letter word for it, and it's love.
33:30
SPEAKER_01: Thank you for that.
33:32
SPEAKER_01: The theme of my book is love.
33:34
SPEAKER_01: I wrote the book because I wanted to show love.
33:36
SPEAKER_01: I wanted to show that these people were bringing love.
33:40
SPEAKER_01: Okay, they made mistakes, some of them weren't great.
33:42
SPEAKER_01: I I know, but the overall, the overall pattern of Roman Catholic missionaries in America was to bring love to people.
33:51
SPEAKER_01: That's what we have to do today.
33:53
SPEAKER_01: That's what anybody does.
33:55
SPEAKER_01: You can be a lay missionary very quickly and very easily.
33:59
SPEAKER_01: And the way that you do it is you teach love.
34:03
SPEAKER_01: You act with love.
34:04
SPEAKER_01: Everything you do, you do with love.
34:07
SPEAKER_01: You might not have experienced love as a child.
34:10
SPEAKER_01: It might be that you had a horrendous upbringing, but you have to know one thing, and that is Christianity teaches love.
34:18
SPEAKER_01: There is love.
34:19
SPEAKER_01: Jesus loves, God loves, Mary loves.
34:22
SPEAKER_01: And that's what the key to Roman Catholicism is.
34:25
SPEAKER_01: That's why it's needed so badly in this world.
34:28
SPEAKER_01: John Paul knew this.
34:29
SPEAKER_01: You have to bring love to people.
34:31
SPEAKER_01: You can't bring communism, socialism, you can't bring atheism, agnosticism, liberalism, any of that.
34:38
SPEAKER_01: Those aren't important.
34:39
SPEAKER_01: What's important is bringing love to people because that's how you're going to change society.
34:44
SPEAKER_01: And too many people right now have lost that.
34:47
SPEAKER_01: Or they think of love as sex or something like that.
34:50
SPEAKER_01: Love is not about that.
34:53
SPEAKER_01: Love is about how you relate to God and how you relate to other people.
34:58
SPEAKER_01: God made all of us together, and God made all of us in love.
35:03
SPEAKER_01: God is actually asking one thing from us, and that is to treat each other with love.
35:09
SPEAKER_01: And I personally think that God wants us, if you go back to Genesis and the first couple of verses of Genesis, I think God wants us to treat the entire creation with love.
35:21
SPEAKER_01: It means animals, it means plants, it means the entire earth.
35:26
SPEAKER_01: That love is the key.
35:28
SPEAKER_01: And that's why I wrote this book.
35:29
SPEAKER_01: In fact, I think that most of my life I have been trying to teach love to people.
35:35
SPEAKER_01: I don't sit around and start singing songs to them and say, let me tell you all about love.
35:42
SPEAKER_01: I do it subtly.
35:43
SPEAKER_01: I do it in my actions, I do it how I treat animals, I do it when I ride, I do it when I teach.
35:50
SPEAKER_00: Do you find, and that's so beautiful that you said that, and it it you're exactly right.
35:54
SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's exactly what the world needs today.
35:56
SPEAKER_00: It's so much loneliness out there.
35:58
SPEAKER_00: You know, and with our social media and our phones today, it's even worse than it's ever been.
36:03
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
36:03
SPEAKER_00: We don't have these relationships.
36:06
SPEAKER_00: Do you find while you're teaching and you have pushback from students that say don't want to learn, are you getting to any of them, Russell?
36:13
SPEAKER_00: Some of those kids are not going to respond, but I would imagine that some of them would.
36:18
SPEAKER_01: Well, I just want them to know that to be an educated person is something that's very powerful.
36:24
SPEAKER_01: And I think an 18-year-old is not going to all of a sudden think to themselves, hey, I believe that love is everything.
36:31
SPEAKER_01: You have to build as a slow building block.
36:34
SPEAKER_01: It's something that you slowly began to teach them, their reading is important, thinking is important.
36:40
SPEAKER_01: I have confidence that as people go through life and they think and they read and they practice good morals, that they will start to slowly realize, and that is love is the key.
36:55
SPEAKER_01: You can't walk into a group of people and say, okay, everyone, from now on, I want you to love.
37:01
SPEAKER_01: Because most of them are going to say, Are you joking?
37:03
SPEAKER_01: Give me a break.
37:04
SPEAKER_01: It's a slow process.
37:06
SPEAKER_01: It's very slow.
37:07
SPEAKER_01: And it's slow with children as you're raised on.
37:10
SPEAKER_00: I want people to think about this a little bit.
37:11
SPEAKER_00: You know, when we're when we're evangelizing, when we're out spreading the gospel, you know, there's two things that are so important.
37:20
SPEAKER_00: You know, and you you state this right away in your introduction to your your your book.
37:24
SPEAKER_00: You know, you talk about the Middle Ages, and there are times where even someone like St.
37:28
SPEAKER_00: Thomas Aquinas could be become very rational, almost to the point where reason alone and knowledge of God can bring you to your faith.
37:36
SPEAKER_00: And it can to a certain extent.
37:38
SPEAKER_00: But it's also that encounter, right?
37:42
SPEAKER_00: And St.
37:43
SPEAKER_00: Thomas Aquinas knew this.
37:44
SPEAKER_00: You know, this he had he had personal encounters with Christ too.
37:48
SPEAKER_00: And I think this is the beautiful thing that you're talking about.
37:51
SPEAKER_00: When you're talking about love, we express it in our actions and the way we approach another person.
37:56
SPEAKER_00: And and and yet at the other side, there's also knowledge, right?
38:00
SPEAKER_00: So we have history, we have scriptures, we have the tradition being flown down to us, but it's also the possibility of you personally, and this is the difference between our Christian faith, isn't it, and and just any other knowledge, is you can have a personal encounter with the living God, with the person of Jesus Christ.
38:19
SPEAKER_00: And so this is a big deal.
38:21
SPEAKER_00: And they're gonna have that encounter of love often through you, the way you present it, the way you bring it.
38:27
SPEAKER_00: That'll be their first encounter.
38:28
SPEAKER_00: And you're bringing knowledge at the same time.
38:31
SPEAKER_00: And this is the beauty, this is the framework, right?
38:33
SPEAKER_00: Hey, you can encounter Jesus Christ.
38:35
SPEAKER_00: You might encounter him, hopefully, first through maybe me, the way I treat you.
38:40
SPEAKER_00: And then also I'm gonna bring this knowledge.
38:42
SPEAKER_00: Uh, the kingdom of God is at hand, repent and believe in the gospel, you know.
38:46
SPEAKER_00: But I have to do that in a way that that's that's attractive, that's bringing love, you know, right?
38:53
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and uh one way you do it is to encourage readings, and that is people need to sit down and read the Bible, and they need to read other books.
39:04
SPEAKER_01: They need if you can read it, you're going to discover it.
39:08
SPEAKER_01: It you're it's just going to speak to you.
39:11
SPEAKER_01: And that's one way that you can just you can discover the love is by reading it.
39:16
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you know, I it's hard to not read the four gospels and come away with a sense that Jesus is love.
39:22
SPEAKER_01: And that's what John uh said, that's what the apostle John said, Jesus, God is love.
39:27
SPEAKER_01: And it's hard to not read the Bible and come away with that conclusion.
39:32
SPEAKER_01: That's one way that a person starts to realize that God is love, is by reading the scriptures.
39:38
SPEAKER_01: A lot of times, I mean I think you can go to Mass, and my experience of Roman Catholic Mass is I feel the love that's in that mass.
39:45
SPEAKER_01: I feel it.
39:46
SPEAKER_01: And that's something that I it's an emotional thing, it's something that I can't put a finger on.
39:52
SPEAKER_01: I can't sit there and describe it in flowery words, but I know I feel.
39:56
SPEAKER_01: And it's the same way when I read the Bible, I feel it.
39:59
SPEAKER_01: And I know I don't know if I can always put it in doors, but I know it's there.
40:02
SPEAKER_01: And I just would encourage people to be able to open themselves up to it because it's there.
40:10
SPEAKER_01: Just open it up, open yourself up, receive it.
40:13
SPEAKER_01: It's going to be there somewhere.
40:15
SPEAKER_01: Allow it to come in, allow it to take control of you, and it'll change how you behave, it change your life, change how you approach life.
40:25
SPEAKER_01: And that's where a person can become a lay missionary, so to speak, is just by living a life of love.
40:33
SPEAKER_00: C.S.
40:33
SPEAKER_00: Lewis talked a lot about that too.
40:35
SPEAKER_00: He would say, hey, you need to constantly be bringing your faith, knowledge, history, the scriptures, tradition in front of you on a daily basis.
40:44
SPEAKER_00: This is the way we're we're we're built, right?
40:47
SPEAKER_00: So now how about you?
40:48
SPEAKER_00: So you're married, uh, from my understanding.
40:50
SPEAKER_00: You're you already have three children, and now you convert to Roman Catholicism.
40:55
SPEAKER_00: So let's let's take the last few minutes here and say, why did you do that?
40:59
SPEAKER_00: And and what difference did it make?
41:02
SPEAKER_01: Well, for one thing, when I was in high school, I became a tremendous skeptic, and I basically decided that Christianity was just for idiots.
41:12
SPEAKER_01: And when I when I went to the university and I went for my four years as bachelor's degree and master's degree, I noticed that most of the university professors encouraged love.
41:22
SPEAKER_01: But I met a wonderful person and we had a family, and those were all they all they seemed like wonderful gifts of love to me.
41:30
SPEAKER_01: I slowly started to realize that notwithstanding all my academic skepticism and intellectual skepticism, it's really easy to be an intellectual skeptic, by the way.
41:42
SPEAKER_01: It's a lot harder to start to see the other side.
41:45
SPEAKER_01: And as I approached being 40 years old, I had three children.
41:49
SPEAKER_01: I had a brand new baby, and I was experiencing a lot of anxiety and a lot of emotional difficulties.
41:58
SPEAKER_01: And I on July 2nd, 1998, I was in bed and lying next to my wife and my little infant child, and I was experiencing horrible, horrible anxiety.
42:10
SPEAKER_01: And I just I wasn't I wasn't a praying person at all.
42:14
SPEAKER_01: In fact, I thought prayer was nonsense.
42:16
SPEAKER_01: But I decided at that moment I was gonna pray, and I said, Dear God, please help me to accept.
42:22
SPEAKER_01: And when I thought the word accept, I had a flood of peace come all over me.
42:28
SPEAKER_00: Now, when you say accept, what what exactly did you mean by that word when you said that?
42:37
SPEAKER_01: Accept the fact that I'm having emotional problems.
42:40
SPEAKER_01: See it what happens when you have anxiety and these emotional problems is the immediate thing you do is resist.
42:47
SPEAKER_01: You resist, you resist, you resist.
42:50
SPEAKER_01: And I asked for the wrong.
42:51
SPEAKER_00: And somehow that doesn't make it better, does it, Russell?
42:54
SPEAKER_01: No, no, I asked for the opposite.
42:56
SPEAKER_01: I said, help me to accept.
42:58
SPEAKER_01: And when I did that, the peace came over.
43:01
SPEAKER_01: And it was it was physical too.
43:03
SPEAKER_01: It wasn't mental peace, it was a physical process of peace.
43:06
SPEAKER_01: It came all over my body, flooded.
43:09
SPEAKER_01: And I knew that I'd been answered.
43:11
SPEAKER_01: I knew that God had touched me, or the Holy Spirit, or whatever, I don't know what it was, and to this day I'm not sure, but I know something touched me.
43:20
SPEAKER_00: But you had an encounter there with something.
43:22
SPEAKER_00: This gets back to our encounter conversation, doesn't it?
43:26
SPEAKER_00: Some people don't have an encounter.
43:28
SPEAKER_00: That's right.
43:29
SPEAKER_00: Or they miss it.
43:30
SPEAKER_00: They miss it.
43:30
SPEAKER_00: You know, they can miss it too, you know.
43:32
SPEAKER_01: Right.
43:33
SPEAKER_01: But I get the encounter over and over again.
43:36
SPEAKER_01: Not not always the same flood of peace, but just the realization over, because I still have emotional problems.
43:43
SPEAKER_01: And I just get the realization over and over and over again that God is with me, that there is peace.
43:51
SPEAKER_01: And it it reminds me of Thomas Merton.
43:54
SPEAKER_01: If you read his journals, Thomas Merton, the great Trappist monk who lived in the 50s and 60s.
44:00
SPEAKER_01: He experienced the same thing.
44:02
SPEAKER_01: He was constantly experiencing anxiety and emotional problems.
44:06
SPEAKER_01: And he just kept reaching out to God and God keep giving him that peace.
44:11
SPEAKER_01: And it's just something that you have to it's it's really like a daily thing.
44:15
SPEAKER_01: You have to reach out for the peace.
44:17
SPEAKER_01: Sooner or later I'll come to the point when I die where I'll just have the peace.
44:21
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
44:21
SPEAKER_01: But until I'm uh while I'm still alive, I reach out for so that puts you that puts you on the journey.
44:28
SPEAKER_00: Was that the opening then for you that put you on this journey to convert?
44:32
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
44:35
SPEAKER_00: It's so important because for people that have suffered with anxiety or anything else, any other mental illness per se, that's a big umbrella term.
44:44
SPEAKER_00: But when I'm talking to young people, I'm talking about in their late teens, twenties, thirties.
44:50
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes I'll say this, and I and and I'll just say, you know, let's let's embrace this.
44:55
SPEAKER_00: Is why I asked you about accept the word accept.
44:58
SPEAKER_00: I said, let's embrace this anxiety for a few moments.
45:02
SPEAKER_00: I said, you know, what what the world is telling you, we need to take a pill, right?
45:06
SPEAKER_00: We need to suppress our anxiety.
45:08
SPEAKER_00: And and I said, look, it I I'm not your psychiatrist or your therapist here, but I would say this.
45:14
SPEAKER_00: What happens if there's a reason for that?
45:17
SPEAKER_00: What happens if the mental illness is not here within you?
45:21
SPEAKER_00: It's out there trying to get into you and creating anxiety.
45:25
SPEAKER_00: You know, cognitive dissidence is that word, right?
45:27
SPEAKER_00: That psychological term.
45:29
SPEAKER_00: When what's going on in your heart and uh what's going on outside are not are not coexisting very well, and one of them is going to have to go.
45:37
SPEAKER_00: I said, instead of throwing out your heart, let's let's throw this out for a little while, and I take them into prayer, uh Russell.
45:44
SPEAKER_00: And and it's an amazing experience sometimes that'll happen, right?
45:49
SPEAKER_00: So if I'm anxious today, I'll say, okay, what what is going on, right?
45:54
SPEAKER_00: What what is going on?
45:55
SPEAKER_00: Almost like you're you're getting back to Christopher Columbus.
45:58
SPEAKER_00: What is this discovery?
45:59
SPEAKER_00: What is this adventure we're on?
46:01
SPEAKER_00: And you know what?
46:02
SPEAKER_00: There's a lot of darkness out there.
46:04
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I I I think I people could, if they really acknowledge the darkness and the evil that's going on around us, you could be in a perpetual state of anxiety if you don't get into prayer, right?
46:15
SPEAKER_01: I think the the other thing I realized is that God's will is always present.
46:20
SPEAKER_01: I don't think that God allows for things to happen that his will is not a part of.
46:26
SPEAKER_01: I think that he allowed the anxiety uh to take me over because it led me somewhere.
46:33
SPEAKER_01: I think that that anxiety is actually a motivation for people.
46:38
SPEAKER_01: I think that a lot of the things that happened in life is part of God's will.
46:43
SPEAKER_01: We don't always see it, we don't see it, but it's still there.
46:48
SPEAKER_01: And you that's part of that except you're accepting God's will.
46:53
SPEAKER_01: You are saying to yourself, I'm not sure exactly why this is happening, but I know that God is there.
47:00
SPEAKER_01: It's God's will that is happening.
47:02
SPEAKER_01: I have to accept it.
47:04
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and that beats that beats taking that next pill and and having having three shots at tequila to try to get rid of that, right?
47:11
SPEAKER_00: Hey Russell, you're such a you're you're such a pleasure to have on.
47:14
SPEAKER_00: So thank you so much for coming on.
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SPEAKER_00: Tell it tell our audience a little bit about I I know you have a uh a website where they can read your blogs and also where you can get the book.
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SPEAKER_00: So is there one place we should go?
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SPEAKER_00: Are there a couple of different places?
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SPEAKER_01: Well, I think that Amazon.com is good because all my books are there.
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SPEAKER_01: And I've written other books about Christianity.
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SPEAKER_01: I've written a book called Uh The Christian Miracle that's a fictional account of someone who is dying that has a confrontation with God, a wonderful confrontation.
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SPEAKER_01: I wrote another book called Metamorphosis.
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SPEAKER_01: It's all about how Jesus was able to vanquish evil in 2,000 years ago.
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SPEAKER_01: So all my books are at Amazon.com.
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SPEAKER_01: You just put Amazon.com, Russell.lawson, and you can get to my books, and you can see what they are.
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SPEAKER_01: And if you're interested in this book, you can get this book.
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SPEAKER_00: So well, thank you for that.
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SPEAKER_00: And I'll make sure I'll put that Amazon link uh with your name on it.
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SPEAKER_00: I'll put that in the show notes, everybody.
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SPEAKER_00: So go down there, poke at that, take a look at uh what uh Russell's uh written.
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SPEAKER_00: Send me an email if you have any questions, and I'll make sure I forward it on to Russell.
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SPEAKER_00: So God bless you.
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SPEAKER_00: Hey, thanks everybody.
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SPEAKER_00: Thanks for joining us today.