Latest / The Speak Life Podcast / Mothering Sunday VS Mother's Day || SLP401

Transcript

Mothering Sunday VS Mother's Day || SLP401 · The Speak Life Podcast

• 0:06
  SPEAKER_02: Hello and thank you so much for downloading episode 401 of the Speak Life Podcast.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_02: My name is Thomas Thoroughgood.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_02: I work at Speak Life, and today Nate Morganlock and Paul Feasy are talking about Mother's Day or Mothering Sunday.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_02: We'll be talking about those names in the episode.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_02: So enjoy the episode and I will catch you later.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_03: Well, hello and welcome to the Speakeasy.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_03: My name is Paul Feasy, and today I am joined by Nate Morganlock.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_00: Hello, how are you doing?
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: I'm alright.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_00: I'm joining you from well, this seat, obviously, but I've just come back from Norfolk.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: Norfolk.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_00: Norfolk.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: Any particular part of Norfolk?
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: Well I was maybe south east or north.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_00: But I was in I was in Norwich over this weekend with some some of our interns, and we were doing a passion for life kind of mission weekend.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_00: And uh yeah, it was it was loads of fun.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_00: But quite kind of tiring.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_03: I can imagine.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_03: What kind of things did you get up to then?
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_03: What kind of things were they doing?
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_00: Well, we had a workers' lunch, we had a cream tea, we had a live musical evening thing on the Thursday, we had a men's breakfast.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: Don't forget those.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: We had a school assembly, a student lunch bar, and a youth event, and then some inflatable fun for the kids on Saturday morning, and then a film and faith, or film and Christianity thing, on Saturday evening, and then two Sunday sermons on Sunday morning.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_03: And did you speak all of those?
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_00: I did.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: I said words, they came out of my mouth, and I tried as hard as possible to speak life rather than um what I was sort of feeling a bit tired at various points.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_00: But it was loads of fun, and we just and the Lord sustained us through it.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_00: So if anyone was if any of our great audience were praying for us uh through that, um thank you very much.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_00: We it went very well.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_03: Good goo goods.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_03: And uh what's uh do you say a workers' lunch?
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_03: What's the is it just for general what does that mean?
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_00: Workers' lunch does sound a bit like a sort of communist or socialist thing.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_00: A workers' lunch.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_00: No, it was just like uh kind of you know, people who've got time in their work day to come from the office and listen to a talk and bring someone along a work colleague, someone bring a work colleague, eat a bag of Walker's Crisps, listen to a short talk, kind of thing.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_00: So um yeah, it was it was really good.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: Now the f the the funny thing with it with it was that I had been asked to do a little promo promotional video to kind of welcome people to the mission like weeks in advance.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_00: And n having only been to Norwich once and not really knowing much about it, I thought, oh, the only link I have with Norwich in terms of in my head is that I think about Steve Coogan doing his Alan Partridge thing.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_00: And so we made this video, and um yeah, I I I'd been watching a bit too much Partridge.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_00: So I had this very partridge kind of vibe, which wasn't wasn't the best.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_03: Knowing you, the people of Norwich, knowing me, nail.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_00: That was it, but it was really good, yeah.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_00: And uh Sorry Chapel, Norwich were um were sort of hosting our team mostly.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_00: So um, yeah, they were they were great.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_03: And uh it was there with you were there with Andy Reese, is that right?
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_03: That's right.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_03: He's actually online, he says you were superb.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: Oh we see, how'd he do, brother?
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it was a really good time, and um yeah, I had a a a barrel of laughs and uh yeah, we just got to speak to lots of people and have some really good conversation and and talk about Jesus.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_03: Great, sounds really good.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_03: Well we'll keep on uh praying for the follow-up on all that.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, um guys, good to have you on board with us and good to see people kind of uh joining us and commenting there.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_03: Do chip in on the comments, let us know you're there, say hi, and do chip in as we discuss various bits over this.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_03: You may have seen the title today Mothering S Sunday versus Mother's Day.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_03: Um so yesterday, uh at least here in the UK, it was Mothering Sunday.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_03: Do you get up to anything for Mothering Sunday?
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_00: Well, obviously, I was in Norwich, I was away from my both my mother and the mother of my children, because um they were in different parts of the country.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_00: So I basically uh avoided all the responsibilities of of making a breakfast and taking it to my wife in bed and all that sort of stuff.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_00: Fair enough.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_00: Um but they did in the service, which you know is pretty standard practice, I think, for a lot of churches in the UK, is that they handed out daffodils or bouquet of a small bouquet of flowers to mothers and uh other women within the church at a certain point in the and then sort of prayed for people in that context.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_00: Did is that what happened at your church?
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah, and that yeah, same kind of thing.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_03: Every year there's always a kind of everyone, every lady gets some flowers, regardless of whether they're a mother or not, yeah, at the end of the day.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_00: And Thomas, did you you were you all souls yesterday?
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_00: Were you Yeah, I was actually.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_00: And did they also do the daffodils thing as well?
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_02: There were a selection of daffodils in little foil holders.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_02: Nice.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_02: I think I think the the men actually prepared them on Saturday morning and then went for a fry-up afterwards.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_02: So the men had a breakfast.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_00: That's what men do.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_00: Men eat breakfasts in the evangelical world.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, so yeah, the and and it made me think, oh, there's this thing called Mothering Sunday, or in the UK, obviously, lots of people call it Mother's Day as well, but it's a different date than Mother's Day in the US.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_00: So I was thinking, oh, we should do some research on this and find out where they came from, what the origin of these things is.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_00: Is it just another, you know, Hallmark holiday?
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_00: Well, yeah.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_00: Or not.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_00: Is that because that's it?
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, because that's I'll be honest, that's been my kind of opinion.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_03: It's been like it's quite nice to do Mother's Day, Father's Day things, you know, those kind of bits and bobs.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_03: But I've always thought, well, you know, Mother's Day isn't it just like is the thing Hallmark have come up with to sell some more cards and why are we as a church putting it into our church calendar?
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_03: You know, because I'm quite cynical like that.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_00: So well, let's have a little think about have you got something to read from that, or shall I I can't Well, I've got a f I mean we've got a few bits you can chip in.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_00: Basically, what I really discovered was that Mothering Sunday is the fourth Sunday of Lent every year.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_00: So it's 21 days before Christmas.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_00: Uh before Christmas, before Easter.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_00: Yep.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_00: And uh what did I say?
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_00: Twenty-one Sundays.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_00: I can't even speak properly.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_00: I'm so tired.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_00: Um it was twenty-one days before Easter.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_00: Right, because it's the fourth Sunday of Lent and it's the same one every time.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_00: And the reason for that is because there was in the um in in the Middle Ages they would have a Latare Sunday, right?
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_00: Which was like this break in Lent where you could like eat and feast rather than fast.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_00: And particularly Simnol cake, it comes out of that.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sure you're familiar with Simnol Cake.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_00: Can't move a Simol cake in my arms.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_00: So it's like two layers with marzipan and stuff on the top that's supposed to represent the uh the eleven disciples, because it's twelve minus.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_00: So the Simol cake is this kind of part of this kind of liturgical calendar.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_00: But the reason why it was considered to be Mothering Sunday was because the reading for that week, the fourth week of Lent, was Isaiah 66, 10, which begins um by invite uh it's inviting Jerusalem to um to rejoice because the Lord is coming and to gather in Jerusalem and to basically find sort of comfort and and security in the mother uh city, the holy city, yeah.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_00: And so that's then taken to be representative of the mother church and so one of the practices that used to happen, I think, in the in the sixteenth century, yeah, middle eight, yeah, that kind of time was that uh household servants would be or slaves or or whatever they were, but people were free to go and visit their mother church, the church in which they were baptized on that Sunday in the middle of Lent, and then they could obviously visit their their own mums as well.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and it was kind of this sort of bit of respite in the Lenten fast.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_00: So that was the the historic origin of it, but then it sort of died away and people didn't do it for a long time.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_00: Went away until Yep, why did it come back?
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_00: It came back as a response to this is amazing, a response to a lady in the US called I think she was called what was her name, Anna Anna Jarvis.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_03: Anna Jarvis from Philadelphia.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_00: From Philadelphia in 1908, she decided that there ought to be a day of the year that was a mother's day.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_04: Right.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_00: This is in not any way connected to for actual mothers, for actual mothers, earthly mothers, and that should be celebrated.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_00: And she did this campaign to make it a thing, and then President of the United States, Woodrow Wilson, made it a thing in 1914, and it started out this annual celebration of Mother's Day.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_00: So the US start doing this thing, which isn't connected to the sort of medieval practice of just a coincidence very and then a lady named Constance Adelaide Smith thinks it would be a good idea to revive the practice of mothering Sunday.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_00: And so she writes this pamphlet and starts this whole kind of campaign to get churches around the country to celebrate Mothering Sunday and to focus on the church being kind of the mother church in which we all find our kind of comfort and and in instruction and care.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_00: So she does this thing, and it's so wildly successful that today, or sorry, yesterday, we were all celebrating Mothering Sunday without really knowing why we were doing it.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_00: And so I was just kind of slightly baffled and bemused.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_00: The greatest irony, okay, there's a great irony in this.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_00: So the American lady who started out from Philadelphia 1908, she then got so upset because it would became really commercialized in the US that she started a counter-campaign to get rid of Mother's Day because she said now people are being, you know, cheap and th lazy and thoughtless and just buying a card for their mum, and it's a complete waste of time.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_00: So she then like I think she was like arrested.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_00: She was like, you know, she was almost imprisoned for trying to stop this Mother's Day kind of express train that was running roughshod over American culture.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_03: So we've basically got these two types of mothering events then.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_03: There's Mothering Sunday, which is the church calendar event from middle-aged.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_03: And it's it it's a movable feast because obviously it's connected to Yeah, it moves always on the what was it, fourth Sunday of May, and then you've got Mother's Day, which came out of the US, but this lady said, Oh, that's I'm gonna try and bring back the 16th century type meaning in the UK here.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_03: So that's kind of got it back into circulation here in the UK, and it there was partly a response to the commercialization of it as well.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_03: But yet the I another I suppose that the irony is although we do it now because of that, yes, we're kind of back in the same spot, aren't we?
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_00: So most people will say Mother's Day rather than mothering Sunday.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, even though very different.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_00: Even though they have these different kinds of origins.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_03: So it doesn't really have like now the mother what we do on Mother's Day or at what we might call mothering Sunday, yeah, doesn't really bear any resemblance to the 16th century kind of calendar thing at all.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_03: Because we don't even really read well, we didn't even know about it, yeah, quite frankly.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_03: I wasn't not aware.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_00: Well, and that's because I suppose what we're focused on now is the earthly mothers, like the individual mothers that people have or haven't got.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_00: And the desire to be a mother or the struggle of being a mother or or or whatever it is.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_00: And the focus then is this kind of horizontal, you know, human level, whereas the original practice had this kind of theological dimension to it.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_00: It was a kind of vertical, you know, gather to um the kind of spiritual mother, which is the church, to find all the things that you kind of would get in your kind of what you ought to get from your physical mother.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_03: It's a shame, isn't it?
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_03: Because I guess most of what we do in our churches on Mother's Day, or I don't I never know what to call it now anymore, on Mother Ring Sunday, doesn't really look much different to what the rest of the world is doing, what secular society is doing, yeah, apart from we might try and hang a bit of a theological point on mothers somehow.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_00: And yeah, and we we probably think of it in terms of how do you you know use it as an outreach opportunity.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_00: Yep.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_00: It's a kind of oh, let's take every opportunity to share the gospel.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_00: But then the is the gospel that we're sharing actually or is it organically tied to the concept of mothering Sunday?
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_00: And so are we welcoming people into the church as mother through their brother Christ, who's kind of the their our access point to the church, or are we kind of just saying something about, you know, um how we really love our mums and you know, we want to celebrate them and we're aware that other people find Mothering Sunday difficult because their own experiences have been painful or traumatic or or stressful.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_00: Um and but it just sort of feels like it's one of those things that everyone does it because well you've got to do it, haven't you?
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_00: You can't ignore it.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_00: But then if you don't think it through from its kind of origin, like from the ground up, then you kind of you just do it as a bit in the service and then just move on and do something else.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_03: So do you think um do you think the reason we we don't do it like we don't go back to the mothering Sunday tradition?
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, is well I'm gonna some of us probably just don't know what it is, because I certainly wasn't aware of it until today.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_03: Um but also do we feel like the idea of it just sounds a bit kind of out there, like mother nature-y kind of you know, that kind of thing.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_03: It feels quite high church, maybe, and maybe in our circles where we're like, well, we're the Bible people, yeah, you know, it might feel a bit odd like this.
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_00: Well I think it does, but then you sort of want to say, well, if if we we're not gonna kind of embrace the weird, right?
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_00: If we're not gonna say, Oh, there's this spiritual reality that we're kind of aware of, and we just want to do, you know, we're a you know, just a Bible church, and so we just do things that we can find explicitly kind of commanded in in the Bible, then why are a load of those churches still doing a Mother Day bit segment?
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_00: Sure, yeah, yeah.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_00: But not kind of kind of thinking through.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_00: So in that way, I I suppose it's an invitation to kind of be all in and say, oh no, this is actually a thing that you can have a brilliant gospel-oriented conversation about the joy of being in the church and of you know, you it's connected to um the s the the historic practices, it's connected to a kind of national nationwide event rather than it being simply well, did you uh have a good experience of motherhood or not?
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_00: Or of of of do you have a good relationship with your own individual mother or not?
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that means because that's the focus, we end up spending the whole time kind of treading on eggshells awkwardly when we're not really going to address it in more depth within the service, and so we just have this potentially catastrophically awkward bit where children aren't sure which people are supposed to get the flowers and and uh you know, and it just becomes very um almost odd, and and the practicalities of it, right?
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_00: You've got to cut cut all these daffodils, or you've got to prepare all these Signal cakes or whatever.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know, maybe people aren't doing that anymore.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_00: Um maybe the revival of bake-off or is gonna well, maybe bake off will have caused a Signal Cake that didn't.
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_00: Go baked a Signal Cake.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_00: I want someone to tell us they baked.
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_03: Didn't the Signal cake go back to the original tradition though?
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_03: So I doubt anyone is doing that at the moment.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_03: So maybe we need some Symalcakes.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe we need we should have had one.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_00: This is all in preparation because we're a day late.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_03: Well, we're not a day late, we're 364 days early.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_03: That's so you know, ministers, get your notepad out because this is the time to get prepping.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_03: Go on.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_03: I was gonna say, I think so.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_03: This morning, if you'd asked me about Mother's Day in church, I'd have been like, oh, it's just it's just you know, you do it, but it's just a thing, isn't it?
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_03: Like it's cynical, me.
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_03: But I think I'm quite sold on it now.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_03: Like having heard what it was originally about.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_03: But I suppose my question is, given that most churches just do a kind of slight do like a secular thing with a bit of a Christian gloss on the top, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_03: What would it look like for us to actually do Mothering Sunday as it's supposed to be?
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I we are sort of despite being, you know, oh, we're all groovy and we do YouTube live shows and at Speak Life, and we're kind of all about the media and cameras and being cool and stuff.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_00: But we keep on like going back to these practices, like we talked about chalking the door for epiphany that we're becoming so liturgical.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_00: It's insane.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, I I think and what one of the things that's interesting.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_00: Obviously, Glenn Glenn's not here this evening, he's in uh the Wirral doing um uh a Passion for Life mission week there.
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_00: Um so it'd be great if you could be praying for him um as he's doing that this week.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_00: But um, in fact, he's outdone me.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_00: I did 14 talks in four days, he's doing I think sixteen in five.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_00: So he's gonna be one upmanship there.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_00: Oh lost.
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_00: Never try and take you know, but um yeah, the what one of the videos that people I think have appreciated so much from Glenn was the um the Halloween trick or treat video.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_00: Right, yeah, yeah.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_00: And in in a way, we're kind of doing that.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_00: We're saying, let's look at this thing that people just go, oh, it's Mother's Day, and the first thought has got to be, have you phoned your mum or have you arranged to have flowers delivered or whatever it is?
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_00: Rather than thinking, maybe there's some deeper meaning and significance and theological reflection that could come as a result of studying the history of this, and so maybe in the next 364 days we should make uh some sort of viral video about mothering Sunday.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_03: So so because when we talked about this earlier, you talked a bit about Peter Pan.
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, yes.
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_03: So, how do we how do you get from Mothering Sunday to Peter Pan?
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_00: So um this came up um when I was doing a popcorn parenting episode with James Carey, uh, which is a podcast about movies, mythology, and the Messiah, or uh family films and faith in Jesus.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_00: And so we're taking these classic kind of films that you watch with your kids and trying to kind of think through the story, think through the mythology of it, think through what's going on, what's the message, and all that stuff.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_00: And Peter Pan is just uh uh an incredibly kind of sticky film because it's got all these kind of big concepts in it.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_00: You know, the boy who never grew up, Neverland, Captain Hook, a crocodile that swallowed uh an alarm clock, um mermaids and and and Native American Indians.
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_00: Like there's so much going on.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_00: And when we were looking at this um uh at the story I was seeing that really Wendy is the main character, not Peter.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_00: And this and Peter Pan is a story about Wendy growing up.
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_00: At the start of the film, she's told she needs to leave the nursery and move into her own room.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_00: And she says she doesn't want to.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_00: At the end of the film, she's told you can stay in the nursery if you like, but she says, No, actually, I'd like to move into my own room.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_00: So it's a coming-of-age story about Wendy growing up from sort of girlhood into womanhood.
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_00: Now, what's really interesting with the way that Wendy does that is that Peter, as the boy who never grows up, is looking for a mother.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_00: And so he asks Wendy if she'll come with him, along with uh uh John and Michael to Neverland so that Wendy can be the mother of the lost boys.
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_00: I hope this everyone's paying attention so far.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_00: But anyway, what the the key thing that JM Barry puts into the story that uh he wants Wendy uh Peter wants Wendy to do for him is to reattach his shadow.
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_00: And so you look at that and you're like, this is the most it's like a properly bonkers idea that someone could be disconnected from their own shadow.
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_00: It's like not even possible, right?
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_00: It couldn't happen.
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_00: And yet there's something really kind of profound about this idea of being a reattached and Wendy as mother reattaching the shadow, Peter with the shadow.
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_00: So at the time in which JM Barry's writing this, which is 1911, um, is it also the same time that Anna Jarvis is doing Mother's Day in the US and Constantine Adelaide Smith is doing Mothering Sunday, the revival of Mothering Sunday in the UK.
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_00: So the and the suffragette movement is like all going on sort of uh be just before the first world war and stuff as well.
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_00: So you've got these these ideas of motherhood which are kind of going around, and I was starting to think, well, how does if if theologically mothers are a kind of um lived out example of what the church will be, how does Wendy's actions towards Peter how do they does that reflect or represent the the way the church relates to us?
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_00: So I was thinking, well, think about the shadow.
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_00: Try and think, and this is where I probably I'm going off the deep end, but if you call yourself a reform mythologist, you're allowed to.
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_00: So how is the the the image of the shadow used in scripture?
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_00: And I think there are three main ways the first one is the idea of a shadow being the thing that blocks out the light, so it's to do with darkness, so the valley of the shadow of death, so it's to do with darkness and sickness and sin and death.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_00: And the church is the place in which you come to terms with your own sin, sickness, and mortality.
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_00: People who don't understand their own shadow, their own darkness are people who are not kind of fully aware of who they are.
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_00: And the church has this role to teach people who they are, and part of that is to teach them the dark side of themselves, their sinful nature, and and to kind of allow them to see how they can be forgiven their sin.
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_00: So that's the first one.
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_00: The second one is that a shadow is uh well, more properly it would be called a shade because you need to find shade from the heat, or you need to kind of you know, um I had you in the shadow of my wing.
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_00: So it's a kind of protective place of respite, place of of refuge.
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_00: And the church should be that too.
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_00: The church should be the place where you come on a Sunday and you find refuge, you find safety, you find comfort, rest from all the stuff that's going on around.
• 26:25
  SPEAKER_00: And the third one is the idea of a shadow or type, and so as Hebrews talks about these things were a shadow of what was to come, in which case we're thinking about a shadow as a sort of silhouette or a pattern or a shape, and obviously the scriptures are showing us shadows of the gospel, the work of Jesus, and um that's the work of the church too, to to show you the pattern of Christ in all these other places.
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_00: So that's my fairly long-winded hope on well, for what we normally would say on this podcast, on uh on the speakeasy, but I think well, the things all line up in my head.
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_00: It all connects together.
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_00: Church as mother, Wendy growing up, reattaching the shadow.
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_00: The shadow is in these three concepts.
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_00: I I'm selling it, I don't know if anyone's gonna buy it.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_03: Well, I'd buy it.
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah.
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_03: I think if you'd come to me on Friday and said, Could you preach on Sunday morning for Mother's Day?
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_03: I'd have been like, oh no.
• 27:31
  SPEAKER_03: Like I'm gonna have to do some sort of thing, you know, aren't mum's lovely and yada yada yada, you know, just then then, oh and Jesus, you know.
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_03: Um now I'd be like, Great, we can talk shadow, yeah, I'd be all up for that.
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_03: I'm like, how theologically rich is that in comparison to just kind of trying to hang up hang it on a hook somewhere, you know.
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_00: And I and it, yeah, it it properly is.
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_00: It's and it's trying to think through the the sort of the fully orbed understanding of the things that we find in life, and to say what are the spiritual realities that are behind the things that we engage with.
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_00: And more often than not, we probably had too kind of shallow an engagement with with the idea.
• 28:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um and in a way, none of that kind of more theological or more abstract stuff is meant in any way to kind of take the place of or replace the careful pastoral work of helping people with the struggle of being a mum or the struggle of relating to a mum who can who's difficult, or all that sort of stuff.
• 28:41
  SPEAKER_00: So you can do both, and and presumably if someone's sense of trauma about the issues around Mother's Day is so significant that we feel the need to walk on eggshells not to offend anyone, then surely it's worth thinking about at more depth than simply just saying, we'll comment on this, give us a bokeh of flowers, and and uh sort of try not to upset people.
• 29:13
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 29:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um it's like go further into it rather than just kind of Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_03: You know it's interesting, you know, think about that.
• 29:21
  SPEAKER_03: And obviously with the Mothering Sunday originally there was that kind of physical people were going to a different place, yeah.
• 29:27
  SPEAKER_03: And then you talk about the chalking of the door type thing.
• 29:30
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 29:30
  SPEAKER_03: Um Glenn's stuff about Halloween where there was this kind of an almost like an acted drama going on.
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_03: And our our kind of wing of the church is very much, you know, because we think of that as kind of like ritual, yeah, and we think of when we think of ritual, we base even if we just say ritual, we tend we kind of mean empty ritual in our heads.
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_03: But I wonder where there is there is something to going back to some of these things, these enactments, yeah, physical enactments.
• 29:54
  SPEAKER_03: I'm not saying we all have to get up and go to our baptismal church, but there may be in there, maybe there is something in that.
• 30:00
  SPEAKER_03: Maybe maybe the answer to Halloween isn't to just do a light party, but maybe it is to lean we maybe into some of those more enacted things.
• 30:08
  SPEAKER_03: Um because it is so dramatic that people go, what's going on here?
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_03: Rather than just here's the kind of Halloween light version over there, Dice Coke version.
• 30:19
  SPEAKER_00: And when we usually when we're trying to engage y young people or children, we're l we're constantly coming up with craft activities or some kind of game which is supposed to illustrate the teaching point, which is part of the thing.
• 30:36
  SPEAKER_00: And I get it, if you want to do you know, lectio continua and you want to teach from verse one of a book through to the end of the book, then that's a different way of teaching than following a liturgical calendar or something.
• 30:50
  SPEAKER_00: But what one of the nice things about these kind of more you know traditional practices is that they come with various ways for you to engage, yeah.
• 31:06
  SPEAKER_00: And as as um people who are who are inescapably liturgical, we are going to invent these kind of liturgies and practices and rituals for ourselves anyway.
• 31:24
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 31:25
  SPEAKER_00: Um I was always I always think about that, like um oh what's the one like when people do a tequila slammer, right?
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_00: So the idea of lime and and salt and tequila needing to be consumed together in some kind of special order, and like that this is like this corporate moment of celebration and and and partying.
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, this is like one of the most ritualistic things I can imagine.
• 31:59
  SPEAKER_00: Like okay, and then you do the lime, and then it's like, wow, that's incredible that that it's you can't escape it.
• 32:06
  SPEAKER_00: You just can't stop there.
• 32:07
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah, well, fascinating stuff.
• 32:09
  SPEAKER_03: I think um yeah, I'll be interested to see what people think of it in the comments in a moment.
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_03: And uh, but you know, if you're if you're planning for next year, there you go.
• 32:17
  SPEAKER_03: Hopefully that's given you some stuff to think about, and we've given you plenty of heads up on it, so you can't complain.
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_03: Um so so we'll have a look at some of the bits you've been sending in a moment, um, and we'll also dive into the mailbag.
• 32:32
  SPEAKER_02: This conversation went out live on our YouTube channel.
• 32:35
  SPEAKER_02: You can watch it and all of our other conversations at youtube.com forward slash speaklifemedia.
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_02: We're on the other social media platforms, just search for SpeakLife UK.
• 32:46
  SPEAKER_02: That will keep you posted.
• 32:48
  SPEAKER_02: And why not join us when we next go live?
• 32:51
  SPEAKER_02: You can also email comments and questions to infospeaklife.org.uk.
• 32:56
  SPEAKER_03: SpeakLife is supported internally by the generosity of people like you, especially through your prayers.
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_03: If you'd like to contribute financially, regular or one-off donations are much appreciated, and you can do that at speaklife.org.uk forward slash give.
• 33:11
  SPEAKER_03: If you're a regular giver, you can request access to our Discord server where you can join us for more conversation and exclusive behind the scenes content.
• 33:19
  SPEAKER_03: Let's get back to the podcast.
• 33:25
  SPEAKER_03: So, uh, one of the things we were going to mention is sitting on that shelf behind you, actually, isn't it?
• 33:30
  SPEAKER_03: Because we said Glenn isn't here, but we do have something that we've We haven't even mentioned the fact that we've got shelves.
• 33:35
  SPEAKER_03: I don't well, I I did see that was popping up in the comments a little bit.
• 33:38
  SPEAKER_03: I'm not running the comments tonight, so I don't want to jump in there too early.
• 33:40
  SPEAKER_00: But uh So over here, I'm physically holding a copy of Glenn's new book.
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_00: And it is called The Air We Breathe.
• 33:52
  SPEAKER_00: How we all came to believe in freedom, kindness, progress, and equality by Glenn Scrivener.
• 33:58
  SPEAKER_00: So here it is, physical copy.
• 33:59
  SPEAKER_00: He was uh showing pictures of it on on Twitter, I think, uh before the weekend.
• 34:04
  SPEAKER_00: But look, it's got these this sort of groovy Thomas called it a holy book.
• 34:10
  SPEAKER_00: Um not like the other books he's written.
• 34:12
  SPEAKER_00: But it's great.
• 34:12
  SPEAKER_00: No, no, and it's it's it's great.
• 34:15
  SPEAKER_00: Um but yeah, we're he's really, really pleased with it.
• 34:18
  SPEAKER_00: And uh it it is available in June, it will be actually available for people to buy.
• 34:24
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, but I think you could go on to the Good Book Company uh website and you could probably pre-order a copy.
• 34:32
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah.
• 34:32
  SPEAKER_00: I should know that, shouldn't I?
• 34:33
  SPEAKER_00: We probably should know that.
• 34:34
  SPEAKER_03: But uh no, I'm not quite I'm looking forward to reading it.
• 34:36
  SPEAKER_03: Certainly, I know because we uh a few people have said, I know, in comments over the few weeks about our general conversations, they could feel Tom Holland hanging over it.
• 34:45
  SPEAKER_00: Because of course a lot of what comes from Spectre of Tom Holland.
• 34:49
  SPEAKER_03: Tom Holland.
• 34:49
  SPEAKER_00: Um sacral historian who's just above us now.
• 34:54
  SPEAKER_03: Um yeah, so much of that came came from his you know Dominion book, yeah.
• 34:59
  SPEAKER_03: Um which uh I remember I said uh and Glenn is doing this book on it, which is going to be sort of a layman's version of um Tom Holland, and someone said in the comments, Tom Holland is the layman's version.
• 35:10
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, and I was like, Well, I'm clearly not clever enough to understand even the layman, but I've got Scrivener, yeah.
• 35:17
  SPEAKER_03: So thank goodness.
• 35:18
  SPEAKER_00: Well, no, but it yeah, it's great.
• 35:20
  SPEAKER_00: And and I in in the conversations I was having in uh Norwich over the weekend, there were so many people where I thought, actually, I just I really want you to go and get hold of a copy of Flan's book.
• 35:32
  SPEAKER_03: I'm really excited for it.
• 35:32
  SPEAKER_03: I think it's gonna be really good.
• 35:33
  SPEAKER_03: It's gonna be fun.
• 35:34
  SPEAKER_03: Well up for it.
• 35:35
  SPEAKER_03: Um, so just last week we were talking about um Vladimir Putin and uh the conflict with Russia and Ukraine, and we were looking thinking a bit about what are his motivations, is he just a madman or is there something more behind it?
• 35:50
  SPEAKER_03: Is he is there is there some kind of spiritual element?
• 35:52
  SPEAKER_03: And we looked at a bit of that.
• 35:53
  SPEAKER_03: If you haven't seen that one, you can nip back to last week's uh speakeasy on the YouTube channel.
• 35:57
  SPEAKER_03: Um we just pick up a comment from last week that came underneath the video.
• 36:01
  SPEAKER_03: Uh Michael Staperton said, Bear in mind the 2018 schism in the Eastern Orthodox Church.
• 36:07
  SPEAKER_03: When the Patriarch in Constantinople signalled his intent to split the Ukrainian Orthodox Church from the Moscow Patriarchate, the latter broke communion from Constantinople.
• 36:17
  SPEAKER_03: So Russian national identity may play into it.
• 36:20
  SPEAKER_03: Though Putin surely knows that annexing Ukraine cannot resolve the Church schism, his quotation of Jesus would nonetheless resonate with the significant percentage of Christian people in Ukraine and Russia who are by far Eastern Orthodox.
• 36:33
  SPEAKER_03: So we thought that was quite useful there.
• 36:35
  SPEAKER_03: Just a helpful little comment there.
• 36:36
  SPEAKER_03: And I think when we were thinking about this last week, I don't think we mentioned it, but there we had seen that there was this schism that had occurred between the kind of Ukrainian wing, I suppose, of the Orthodox, Eastern Orthodox Church.
• 36:50
  SPEAKER_03: Um but yeah, I mean interesting that Michael says nonetheless the quotation of Jesus would resonate with people.
• 36:57
  SPEAKER_03: So it Putin knows, regardless of where he I suppose he stands himself, he knows that this is a kind of almost like a vote winner in some ways.
• 37:05
  SPEAKER_03: Because we said it was like a rally.
• 37:06
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, he's on the campaign trail out there, so you say the right things to G people up and get them on your side.
• 37:12
  SPEAKER_00: And and we can see he's doing that not just with a you know with uh a Russian or a Ukrainian audience in mind, but in with a Western audience in mind as well, with some of the other comments he's kind of making about um Western cultural values and and well Western cultural decadence.
• 37:33
  SPEAKER_00: And yeah, you can you can totally see that um you know it the phrase what is it 4D chess that people always kind of kind of say, oh, is this 4D chess or is someone just kind of bumbling through?
• 37:48
  SPEAKER_00: But Putin does seem like he's quite conscious of playing a kind of media game.
• 37:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um and perhaps even more so since he's sort of seen the way in which um you know Vladimir Zelensky has been able to to do uh to put out you know the the story and the and and the uh the desire for um support from the nations.
• 38:16
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, yeah.
• 38:17
  unknown: Great.
• 38:18
  SPEAKER_03: Well, like I say, if you're interested in that, do go um back to last week's video and have a look.
• 38:21
  SPEAKER_03: Um and I think Thomas is gonna let us know about some of the things people you guys have been saying down in the uh comment section.
• 38:28
  SPEAKER_02: Hello.
• 38:29
  SPEAKER_02: Oh put the visual up there.
• 38:33
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so we've been uh having a few interesting comments coming in.
• 38:38
  SPEAKER_02: So Christophe Keating in France.
• 38:41
  SPEAKER_02: Do you know how to say that, Paul?
• 38:42
  SPEAKER_03: Uh no, I've never done any French in my life, actually.
• 38:46
  SPEAKER_03: Oh Jack's come comes at any Le Fay de Mers?
• 38:50
  SPEAKER_03: I don't know, just Yeah, we'll go with that.
• 38:51
  SPEAKER_00: Sounds like the Fay Fate.
• 38:56
  SPEAKER_03: I suppose is it just fate?
• 38:58
  SPEAKER_03: Like the way we would say fate.
• 38:59
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 39:00
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 39:01
  SPEAKER_02: Let's go with that.
• 39:02
  SPEAKER_02: So whatever that is, is the last Sunday of May unless that day is Pentecost, in which case it's the first Sunday of June.
• 39:10
  SPEAKER_02: The celebration is officially from the Ministry of Health.
• 39:14
  SPEAKER_02: So kind of this idea of people introducing festivals to the calendar.
• 39:19
  SPEAKER_00: And all the you know, international pet day or something, you know, that sort of stuff.
• 39:24
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 39:25
  SPEAKER_00: You can put anything in now.
• 39:27
  SPEAKER_03: Have we uh just to check?
• 39:28
  SPEAKER_03: Have we got sound?
• 39:29
  SPEAKER_03: Because someone's just said, is it me or did the sound just cut?
• 39:32
  unknown: Oh.
• 39:32
  SPEAKER_03: Let us know other people.
• 39:33
  SPEAKER_03: Oh no, it was just him, we're all good.
• 39:35
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, good.
• 39:36
  SPEAKER_03: Um good to check.
• 39:38
  SPEAKER_03: It's all good, people.
• 39:40
  SPEAKER_02: This one from Phil Moore.
• 39:42
  SPEAKER_02: It's definitely a challenge to make the most of the gospel opportunity to engage folks who can who, in some contexts, will stum still come to church on Mothering Sunday.
• 39:52
  SPEAKER_02: Any thoughts on how to do this well?
• 39:55
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 39:56
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, I hope hopefully we we maybe began to touch on that by thinking what could mothering Sunday look like.
• 40:01
  SPEAKER_03: But you're he's absolutely right that there are people who turn up at church.
• 40:04
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, we drove in yesterday and we've got two kind of car parks, one's right behind the church, and I turned into one behind the church, and Becca was just like, you won't be able to park in here because it's going to be full of just people who've come to church on Mother's Day.
• 40:16
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah.
• 40:16
  SPEAKER_03: Um, so you do still get lots of people who turn up just.
• 40:19
  SPEAKER_00: You said Mothering Sunday.
• 40:22
  SPEAKER_00: I yeah, I I think the fact that people, you know, that still has a cultural cachet or it still has a kind of a attractional value for people.
• 40:31
  SPEAKER_00: Like you do want to make the opportunity for that.
• 40:34
  SPEAKER_00: And in a way, I suppose embracing you know, it embracing some of the weird, yeah, which we've been very reluctant to do in in in our, you know, again, uh well-intentioned desire to be be seen as relevant and and normal people, right?
• 40:55
  SPEAKER_00: We obviously want to be that.
• 40:57
  SPEAKER_00: But there is all this rich like theology behind some some of these ideas that I think people would be mu really interested in.
• 41:10
  SPEAKER_00: And it it sort of says that we aren't we we don't just think of life as being a set of of kind of horizontal relationships between people.
• 41:22
  SPEAKER_00: We actually see life as part of this of of this, you know, properly heaven and earth, and like and that the and that church is is kind of given as uh as the meeting place for for heaven and earth since Christ has has ascended.
• 41:42
  SPEAKER_00: Um I mean obviously that's out of line liturgically, but history of redemption wise, he is ascended, and so the church as the place in which people can um discover you know the things of heaven and earth.
• 41:57
  SPEAKER_00: Um yeah, and and that people might have more of a desire to go or more of a um uh more of a reason to go if if church is genuinely giving them something they they can't get elsewhere somewhere else.
• 42:12
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 42:12
  SPEAKER_00: For for kind of you know, yeah, absolutely.
• 42:14
  SPEAKER_03: I mean I think it as we talked about that, what Mothering Sunday was, it would be tempting to say kind of oh, but it all sounds it might be a bit much for Mother's Day, you know, like having people come, they're not expecting that, you know, it might be a bit weird, but I think it is you know, it is leaning into the weirds because you know the virgin birth is pretty weird, resurrection is pretty weird, um and like you say, if it we've got to have something distinctive to say that they can't get anywhere else.
• 42:41
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, so I think from even into it.
• 42:43
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe especially when the culture is losing its ability to define quite simple terms to be able to say we don't just have like you know a uh a line of attack in a culture war, but we've actually got some some profound foundations for the way in which we're thinking about these things which which mean that you're you're finding a community of people that is that is more properly grounded in a you know, and that again is significant part of of Glenn's book is to say that people have all these kind of viewpoints and hold these values to be kind of self-evident, but we want to show them look how these cultural um perspectives or these these cultural ideas have have a history, have a have a significance and and are interlinked into a a coherent understanding of the world.
• 43:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um exactly how you do that on in your you know, mothering Sunday service, um I think I think just lean into some of the history of it and and share those things that people wouldn't know, you know, um wouldn't be aware of.
• 44:07
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
• 44:08
  SPEAKER_03: Cool.
• 44:09
  SPEAKER_03: Good, good.
• 44:09
  SPEAKER_03: Any other bits, Thomas?
• 44:10
  SPEAKER_02: Or yes, we just had another comment from C.
• 44:16
  SPEAKER_02: Hollett.
• 44:18
  SPEAKER_02: Mother's Day being celebrated on Mothering Sunday was a really cunning bit of cross-marketing that kept the old tradition of thing and the upstart Hallmark holiday to have an air of legitimacy.
• 44:31
  SPEAKER_02: Which was quite an interesting point.
• 44:34
  SPEAKER_02: And then we also had lots of love for the Simnal Cake, Christoph Keating, make SINL cake great again.
• 44:41
  SPEAKER_02: Or barring that, make simol cake again.
• 44:45
  SPEAKER_00: So make great Symol cake again.
• 44:48
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's great.
• 44:51
  SPEAKER_00: I'm up for that.
• 44:52
  SPEAKER_00: Yep, up for cake.
• 44:54
  SPEAKER_02: That's everything.
• 44:54
  SPEAKER_02: So thanks a lot.
• 44:56
  SPEAKER_03: And I just noticed what Christoph Keating said about you know there's weight and density to these ideas.
• 45:00
  SPEAKER_03: And I think I thought you were talking about cake.
• 45:03
  SPEAKER_03: The cake, yeah.
• 45:03
  SPEAKER_03: If you've got a weighty and dense cake, it's probably not as good, you know.
• 45:06
  SPEAKER_03: You want it to be light.
• 45:08
  SPEAKER_03: But let's so let's make it.
• 45:12
  SPEAKER_03: Let's have some weighty and dense theology on Mothering Sunday with some light and fluffy cake rather than the other way around.
• 45:20
  SPEAKER_03: Let's do that.
• 45:21
  SPEAKER_03: Shall we?
• 45:22
  SPEAKER_03: And on that note, we're gonna move on that botch.
• 45:26
  SPEAKER_03: Very good.
• 45:28
  SPEAKER_03: Um so uh one of the things we've been doing over the last uh few weeks of Lent is we've been looking at uh a bit of the Apostles' Creed each week.
• 45:35
  SPEAKER_03: And uh we're gonna have a look at another section now.
• 45:38
  SPEAKER_03: Um I'll read out what we've done so far because I know not everybody is um kind of hugely familiar with it.
• 45:44
  SPEAKER_03: Um the Apostles' Creed begins.
• 45:46
  SPEAKER_03: I believe in God the Father Almighty, creator of heaven and earth.
• 45:50
  SPEAKER_03: I believe in Jesus Christ, his only son, our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried.
• 45:59
  SPEAKER_03: He descended to the dead.
• 46:01
  SPEAKER_03: On the third day he rose again, he ascended into heaven, he's seated at the right hand of the Father, and he will come to judge the living and the dead.
• 46:09
  SPEAKER_03: That's where we got up to as of last week, and then we're going to continue today with this section.
• 46:14
  SPEAKER_03: I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Holy Catholic Church, the communion of saints.
• 46:20
  SPEAKER_03: So what do we think about that then?
• 46:22
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, well, I suppose as we've thought it through in terms of you know what um kind of percentage of the creed is given to uh the person of God the Father, what percentage of the creed is given to the person of God the Son, and then this single line, which seems to be given to God the Holy Spirit, um, I believe in the Holy Spirit.
• 46:45
  SPEAKER_00: And if we're we're thinking, oh well, we ought to be Trinitarian, shouldn't we shouldn't a creed give kind of equal you know weighting to yeah line length to um to each person of the Trinity I think you here you're seeing why um uh it's important that we're our focus is on is on Christ because that's both um the he is both the image of God the Father, he's the access point to God the Father, but also he is only visible to us.
• 47:22
  SPEAKER_00: Revelation comes of Jesus Christ by the Holy Spirit.
• 47:27
  SPEAKER_00: And so it's through the Holy Spirit that we have the scriptures which testify to Christ.
• 47:33
  SPEAKER_00: It is through the Holy Spirit that Christ is um is conceived in the Virgin Mary, uh it's through the Holy Spirit that Jesus carries out his ministry, and it is by the Holy Spirit that Christ is both raised from the dead and ascended on high, and then offers himself unblemished to God.
• 47:51
  SPEAKER_00: So the Spirit is running all the way through this, like he's he is an absolute uh essential person with the um uh with the action of the gospel, but he he's showing us Jesus.
• 48:09
  SPEAKER_00: That's what he loves to do and um he loves you know to as the father communicates uh his love to the Son in the baptism, the spirit dis is kind of descending on him like a dove.
• 48:25
  SPEAKER_00: Um similarly, um as yeah Simnally similarly, similarly similarly just can't get Sunday on my brain, but yeah, so so and and so the Holy Spirit who who opens our eyes to you know to see the truth.
• 48:42
  SPEAKER_00: Um and yeah, the one the the breath of God on whom is carried the word of God.
• 48:51
  SPEAKER_00: Um is just such a but but I think it was it might have been uh John Stott who referred to him as the kind of shy member of the the the Trinity.
• 49:03
  SPEAKER_00: I uh and and the idea of him being like um the sort of f footlights that light up you know a great building or or on a stage or something.
• 49:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um he's illuminating um and he's you know kind of doing the work.
• 49:21
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, in but in a way we you the the creed doesn't expand on that.
• 49:28
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't include those those bits, but but in in a way if you were concerned, oh, is the Holy Spirit getting sufficient airtime in in the Creed, you'd say, well, the reason why is because you you couldn't have the rest of the stuff without him in that sense.
• 49:47
  SPEAKER_00: Um so yeah, I I suppose because the Creed doesn't really elaborate on his work in that sense, you s you do have to sort of extract it from what has gone before.
• 50:01
  SPEAKER_00: Um but yeah.
• 50:04
  SPEAKER_03: Great, okay, and any particular thoughts on the Holy Catholic Church?
• 50:07
  SPEAKER_03: I mean some people substitute universal church, don't they, and the communion and then the communion of saints.
• 50:12
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 50:12
  SPEAKER_00: Uh yeah, and just that's that sense of the the ca Catholicity of the church, of the the unity of the church.
• 50:21
  SPEAKER_00: Um and obviously we've talked already, but you know, the church as as our mother, that we are, you know, we are yes, individually part of our local congregations, and and we're part of that.
• 50:34
  SPEAKER_00: But it if problems come if we lose sight of the church universal and the the the church um as this greater body of believers rather than just being you know um asked for no more and shut the door.
• 50:52
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I mean that's kind of what struck me in the the second chunk we looked at.
• 50:55
  SPEAKER_03: I believe in Jesus Christ, his only son, our Lord.
• 50:58
  SPEAKER_03: I think I said at the time that obviously you're saying I believe, yeah, but we're saying it together, our Lord.
• 51:05
  SPEAKER_03: And maybe you would think and often we do it in church, the local church, but of course we're saying it not just with the people we're in the room with, we're saying it with everybody, every Christian across the world is saying these same things, um, and we're saying we are linked together as part of this family.
• 51:21
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, uh, and I suppose also throughout history, yeah.
• 51:24
  SPEAKER_03: You know, the the the church kind of through the ages has believed these things.
• 51:30
  SPEAKER_03: Um so I think uh and in our individualistic society I think it pushes back, yeah.
• 51:36
  SPEAKER_00: So and and the sense of um of that that comes through with the the communion of the sects, um which is that it it isn't enough for us to come and think, well, I'm going to go, you know, and and think very individualistically about our our involvement with with church, but to think that it's and the other people in the church are not the are not necessarily the problem.
• 52:06
  SPEAKER_00: Um that we are come you know, or that we're trying to kind of get rid of the distractions of the other people so that I as an individual worshipper can have this kind of personal experience.
• 52:18
  SPEAKER_00: It's that you know we are, as you say, gathered in together into the universal church, the Catholic Church that um that we are called into.
• 52:29
  SPEAKER_00: Um and that and that the creed is kind of providing us with that that dimension of of of Christian faith after having shown us the Father, the Son, the Spirit, you know, the the church is included in this too.
• 52:51
  SPEAKER_00: Um and I want you know Yeah, if you were to individually include the names of you know people in your you know house group or home group or growth group or whatever they they'd be cool for you, but if you were to like they're included in the creed, like you're included when I'm saying the creed.
• 53:13
  SPEAKER_00: Um and that, you know.
• 53:17
  SPEAKER_00: We've got communion, man, you know, fellowship.
• 53:21
  SPEAKER_03: Cool, uh yeah, great.
• 53:22
  SPEAKER_03: Good.
• 53:23
  SPEAKER_03: I will I've enjoyed today.
• 53:24
  SPEAKER_03: It's been a good chat.
• 53:25
  SPEAKER_03: Well, that's not enough Syminal cakes.
• 53:27
  SPEAKER_03: We need more cake generally.
• 53:29
  SPEAKER_03: I think after this, I shall go and have a nice slice of Seminol cake if I could find some.
• 53:33
  SPEAKER_03: So uh cup of tea.
• 53:34
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, definitely a cup of tea.
• 53:36
  SPEAKER_03: Uh guys, I hope you've enjoyed tonight.
• 53:37
  SPEAKER_03: I hope you found it um uh interesting.
• 53:40
  SPEAKER_03: I'm sure I'm sure there are bits in there people didn't know, because I certainly didn't know it before this morning.
• 53:43
  SPEAKER_03: Um do keep chatting away in the comments.
• 53:46
  SPEAKER_03: Let us know uh your thoughts on bits and bobs.
• 53:48
  SPEAKER_03: If you've got good recipes for Seminole Cake, send them in and we will try them out.
• 53:52
  SPEAKER_03: Uh be a new segment each week.
• 53:54
  SPEAKER_03: We try a bit of Seminole Cake.
• 53:56
  SPEAKER_03: Um yeah, and uh I hope you found all the bits about the Creed encouraging.
• 53:59
  SPEAKER_03: We'll be looking at the next bit uh uh next week, and that's the final section, I think.
• 54:03
  SPEAKER_03: I think so.
• 54:03
  SPEAKER_03: And is Glenn back next week?
• 54:06
  SPEAKER_03: Uh yes, yes, it might be.
• 54:09
  SPEAKER_02: Might be three of us next week.
• 54:13
  SPEAKER_02: Well, there we go.
• 54:14
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the Speak Life Podcast.
• 54:20
  SPEAKER_02: We really enjoy having your company.
• 54:24
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I don't know who you are uh listening to this, but there's something nice about podcasts, isn't there?
• 54:33
  SPEAKER_02: The illusion that I'm actually talking to you as an individual.
• 54:38
  SPEAKER_02: We do like to hear from our listeners from time to time.
• 54:41
  SPEAKER_02: You can contact us uh info at speaklife.org.uk.
• 54:46
  SPEAKER_02: That's an email address, by the way.
• 54:49
  SPEAKER_02: So you can email us.
• 54:52
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm gonna draw your attention again to the Speak Life Foundry, which is our our training program.
• 54:59
  SPEAKER_02: It happens it's a 10-month program that happens in Eastbourne on the south coast, the Sunshine Coast, as it's sometimes known.
• 55:11
  SPEAKER_02: And you can come down here or or up here, depending on where where you're coming from, although referring to north as up is is controversial.
• 55:21
  SPEAKER_02: You can come here, wherever you live, wherever you're from in the world, you can join us for 10 months and do theology and creative things and see how those things mesh together.
• 55:33
  SPEAKER_02: It's a great opportunity.
• 55:34
  SPEAKER_02: I did it last year, really enjoyed it.
• 55:36
  SPEAKER_02: It was very formative.
• 55:38
  SPEAKER_02: So we'd love to have you with us, whether you're female or male, whether you have much experience in creative things or you're just getting started.
• 55:46
  SPEAKER_02: Wherever you're from, you're most welcome to check it out.
• 55:50
  SPEAKER_02: So go to speaklifefoundry.com to find out more and to apply.
• 55:56
  SPEAKER_02: Well, that's it from me.
• 55:58
  SPEAKER_02: See you next week on the Speak Life Podcast.
• 56:01
  SPEAKER_02: God bless.
• 56:02
  SPEAKER_02: Goodbye.