Personal Development

Hello and thanks for so many great podcasts. They don’t put me to sleep. I’m usually exercising or mowing the lawn. Love the sincere exploration coupled with some good wit.

I could really relate to Kellys story. I have t attended as man church groups but I know that feeling of being consumed by the local meeting. Multiple meetings each week (if you are committed) and then volunteering, etc. Who has time for our neighbor or an unbeliever?

A metaphor I’ve found helpful as I’ve been traveling along is wells rather than churches. For a bit I was pretty anti church meetings. I finally got to the place where I realized that God is working in a wide range of experiences and I should encourage the finding of life not the exit of a meeting. My friend and I call them wells.

If you have found a place where your thirst is being quenched, enjoy. Jump in, participate, and help. Just don’t confuse it with the Church. Because Jesis is building his bride and she won’t be contained. A well can be a short or long term place to camp. The key is whether it quenches your thirst.

Thanks fellas.

Love this!!!

Thank you for this interview. Very inspiring. Terry’s outlook gives me hope for the future re: on-going, worldwide human conflict.

Hey guys, I’m still using the direct download link

(Weren’t you going to name it after me? ;o)

Tom in Arkansas

So good!!! Great questions and insightful responses.

Thanks guys for your thoughtful podcast. I appreciate (mostly!) the challenge that the interviewees bring. I am listening to the podcast where you interview Diana Butler Bass. I found what she said very interesting and understand I think how she has got to where she is. I have asked many of the same questions at various times. The most intriguing thing about the interview is that she never mentioned Jesus (maybe one mention of Christ). When she quoted “where two or three…” she applied it to God rather than mentioning Jesus. You guys then continued the conversation referring to the communion table without mentioning Jesus. As Christians (Jesus Christ-ians, followers of Jesus), how we know God is knowing Jesus. The incarnation is how God becomes “with us”. We know God through the Spirit of Jesus because we are “in Christ”. Any search for an experience of God that is not Christo-centric seems to me to be doomed to failure. I am still listening with 3 minutes to go to the end and you have still not mentioned Jesus. Isn’t that a little strange for a Christian podcast? (Ahhh at 2:43 a mention of Jesus.) Blessings. David.

Pete Enns speaks for many of us who have had similar faith/doubt journeys

Thank you Tim and Dave for introducing us (beloved listeners for a couple of years now) to the Gungors and also to their music, which is great – sensitive, thoughtful, calming. Dave, you’ll be pleased to know that today, while we were listening to the Gungors and the happy hubbub of Greenbelt outside the tent, I glanced at the clock . . . it was 1:11!!! That must signify a special importance for this particular podcast, and I suppose that’s what prompted me to write this comment.
My wife, Maria, and I are looking forward to the first Gathering in Nottingham, even though we, sadly, won’t be there! We think that you will all have a blast. And when you make it to Australia for a Nomad tour/holiday, please be our guests in the beautiful South Coast hinterland of New South Wales. Rod

Hi Guys

Thanks for the podcast, I was saddened not to be able to attend but hope that you were encouraged and are planning more.

In regards to your thoughts over diversity, have you considered contacting the Reverend Inderjit Bhogal, I am sure that his thoughts and conversations would be insightful to the Nomad journeying.

Dear Tim and Dave. I listened with interest to your interview with Walter Brueggemann on the subject of the sabbath. One aspect of the concept of sabbath that I most struggle with is how to achieve a day of rest as a family when children generate so many instantaneous demands. Brueggemann didn’t seem to make any comment on this in the interview. Any wisdom on this – or know anyone who has written/spoken on this challenge?

This is one of my favorite episodes you’ve done (along with everything by NT Wright (of course) and Alistair McIntosh, and the addition of David). Just reinforces my need to engage with YHWH and reality on a more visceral level. And furthers my growing understanding of how to engage with scripture as literature; and express truth through art.

More of this kind of thing please.

Thank you for the discussion with Brad. I thought I might comment that it is possible to stay connected with rich ritual and worship as well as embrace “relevant” worship. It is also possible to become aware of the various different ways to “cut the theological cake” as N.T.Wright (particularly around soteriology) puts it and not necessarily have to make denominational changes. I’ve been a charismatic Catholic since 1986, In the ecumenical, charismatic community I am a member of we have Mass in the morning (the other members worship in their own denomination in the morning) and we come together for what I like to call “big C” charismatic worship in the afternoon. I became aware of Orthodox theological perspectives through listening to Fr Thomas Hopko podcasts since 2010 (he passed away in early 2015). Even as a Catholic I thought penal substitution was “The Gospel” like Brad did! (Who knows what Catholic soteriology is exactly anyway?) I have since been very influenced by the Eastern thinking. Doing a Masters of Theology (and in the middle of doing a PhD now in Theology) I’ve become aware of theological history and it has relativised the basically evangelical (with a bit of ill informed Catholic theology)/charismatic theology I have imbibed over the years. I deeply respect Brad’s spirit and can see where he is coming from. However for all the richness of 3 plus hours of St John Chrysostym’s divine liturgy, youth are not flocking to be a part of it. In our community (and at Hillsong which about 6 kms from where we meet) we find youth are experiencing and coming into relationship with Jesus through “relevant” worship. Through this they are open to the traditional in a way they might not be otherwise. In our context we are intentionally seeking to stay connected with the traditional while being vigilant to stay away from the “religious”. I think your question to Brad about this is a real problem for Orthodox practice. Anyway I appreciate what you guys do and thanks for the interview with Brad.

I would think from my reading of scripture is that God controls things in such a way that some key individuals do not have a free will, so as to influence God’s ultimate plan for all others. So most everyone has free will to choose the good verses the evil, throughout their lives, e.g. Nineveh, but other’s have a pivotal role in shaping out the future for his plan e.g. Judas Iscariot. These pivotal individuals are protected from our free will.

Interesting interview! I was reminded of C.S.Lewis’ explanation of miracles and in particular the water into wine (which Thomas Oord was struggling to fit into his theory), by saying that these kind of miracles are an acceleration of a natural process; water does turn into wine over time and with lots of natural intervention in the form of grapes, growth, sunshine etc. This helps miracles such as this fit into the uncontrolling love model. Just thought you’d be interested!
I also reflected that the problem of GRATITUDE is another problem if we don’t attribute actions to God; yes the problem of evil is a challenge to believing in God’s goodness, but the problem of whom to thank when life is good is just as significant of we don’t believe! (I can’t remember who coined the phrase the problem of gratitude – it’s not original!).

I did a deep study of the first three chapters in Genesis, and I discovered that Adam and his wife ate from the forbidden tree on creation Day six, not on Day seven as most assume. (We are currently in Day seven, according to Hebrews) They where booted out of the garden & sent into the Earth where Adam was originally made. What that implies is that Adam and his wife (aka Life giver), where setup to fail so that they would have to leave the Garden. Why? Because in chapter one we see why Adam knew to give her that name Chavvah, upon blessing them God said “Multiply upon the Earth, and subdue it”. We know this must have occurred at the very end of Day six, because he then says, “look everything I have made is very good” and the Day ends. We are given our first prophet as well, Adam predicts he would forsake his Father and Mother, thus we learn who it was God was talking to in Genesis 1:26. Some will say our Mother is the Holy Spirit, others will say Jesus of Nazareth.
When I first discovered this I was very upset with God, because we have made a mess of things, and there has been so much suffering, not just for me, but for all of us; moreover, I did not sign up for this, and I feel as if I was forced into it, and I wished I hadn’t been born. It seems that I was lead to the book of Job for my answer, and although I have had to slowly grow into that paradigm shift, going on 10 years now with great difficulty in accepting things are not what I thought, or how I want them to be, that answer is framed in the questions God asks Job to answer, if he can. You see, we can’t answer those questions, we bearly understand what God has made on Earth (which we are doing a great job destroying), and so where does that lead us? We find ourselves 100% dependent on God whom we must trust by faith, since we can’t see him, but we do have his “word” as our flashlight to guide us in this darkness. It isn’t easy at all,(Mat 7:13-14) but we do have each other, to aid us when our crosses get too heavy. Can we say Original blessing? We must do so in faith. Is it easy, to say it is easy would be delusional, but I suppose a lot of people are good at self delusion. Can we look at the glass half full? Yes, but we can’t ignore that it is also half empty.
Mindfulness practice has been a blessing in my walk, we all suffer but we can get around it in versus healthy ways. Lectio Divina on the “Sermon on the Mount” is very powerful.

Listening to this on ANZAC Day in Australia. It is a public holiday and some people display a worrying patriotism that excludes all they deem ‘unAustralian’, as if we (Aussies) are the only keepers of truth and courage, ‘mateship’ and the current political favourite, “a fair go for all”.

This rhetoric stands awkwardly and hypocritically alongside issues such as our popular inhumane refugee, asylum seeker policies of turning back boats and locking up those who are different. A lot of ANZAC day makes me uneasy. I feel it has become less a day of remembrance than a day of unreflective, flag waving.

A great, if somewhat uneasy podcast. Many thanks for this one.

Pure gold. Thanks for posting!

“But is he saved?” #eyeroll

Deeply moved a chalenged by this : it’s made me uncomfortable as the real message should. The profound simplicity and way the message of scripture, refugee camp, right now stories and a beautiful reimagining of in the bleak midwinter have been segwayed together have made me think, give and turned me tender again to just keep going keep holding on , keep hoping giving and believing. Bad things don’t reveal a cruel God, but hide us from a God of love, that God is with us in the pain , he is in the face of the screaming child. “ beautiful and terrible things happen Don’t be afraid. I am with you. Nothing can ever separate us. It’s for you I created the universe. I love you. There’s only one catch. Like any other gift, the gift of grace can be yours only if you’ll reach out and take it. Maybe being able to reach out and take it is a gift too.”
Frederick Buechner

recently i discovered Nomad, it was like wandering in the wilderness for years then suddenly finding my tribe.thank u so much,

Wow! It’s Autumn in Australia and 27 degree celsius in Melbourne (that isn’t right). I can’t remember the last time we had decent rain.
I struggled with this episode because I went on a trip at the beginning of the year to Israel and then onto England to visit family and friends (first time back in 12 years). And now my carbon footprint is what?!
I have to keep reminding myself I am one of the rich ones in terms of my carbon footprint.
Thank you for this episode. Glad you are on the mend Tim.

Hi guys, obviously I am not listening to your podcast in chronological order and I only recently found it. . But I have to say I absolutely loved this episode. I have a masters in international public administration and only became a Christian after. Now I don’t claim to know the full extent of the political situation in Israel-Palastine, but I have always felt that Israel was not the Good Guy… And I have always felt awkward when people in church were super pro-Israel, because they often wouldn’t engage with the political argument and stay stuck on their theological/biblical argument. And now I have a biblical retort.
And perhaps this is a stretch, but when you were doing the reflection, my mind kept repeating that I saw parallels in the displacement of the palastinians in ’48 and the caananite conquest. And obviously it wasn’t as severe as genocide, but I don’t think ethnic cleansing is that much ‘better’.. Anyway, just wanted to share my thoughts and encourage you!!

Nick & Tim,

I loved the episode with Mark Karris! I’ve read Divine Echoes and am currently reading Religious Refugees. This is the first time I have come across you all and I can resonate with what the two of you were discussing after the conversation with Mark. I grew up in a Southern Baptist church here in the States and stayed in that Evangelical (as we call it here) type of church until 2 years ago. For reference, I am 56. I was on a journey that I did not even know I was on until I had an event propel me into full fledged deconstruction! I had books on prayer, why prayers aren’t answered as we had hoped, how to pray, etc. I had participated in a prayer ministry when my daughter was little and again when she was in college. When I saw that my prayers for her were not “answered”, well it was more than I could take. It was hard that I worked in the Christian school where she had graduated from when I began to question prayer and really all of the teachings I had been following. I left that job in June of 2019. Anyway, it really is strange to look back on what I did believe about prayer and to now look at it a completely different way. Thanks for the episode!

Thank you, Jessica.. I hope you will keep exploring and writing!

I’ve been reading a lot about spiritual bypassing and gaslighting and this podcast added beautifully to my journey. Thanks to putting into words so much of what I’ve been feeling. And thanks for encouraging me to continue my journey to full healing.

Love this! Can I ask a question. John 3:16 is about how much God unconditionally loves the whole world. All humanity are already loved, even before Jesus came. Then it says Jesus came not to condemn but to save the world. Richard says the world does not need saving. But it seems John says the world does need saving. Wondering how to reconcile this?

Thank you, Nomad. This was a particularly meaningful podcast for me, because I had a NDE as a young child. I had measles and chicken pox concurrently, my fever spiked to 106ºF, I convulsed and went into a coma for about 3 hours. Bear in mind as you read this that I was just 2 1/2 years old and my parents were not church goers. When I woke in hospital, I told my parents, my uncle and the doctor that I had seen God in pink mist and God said I could come home.
Contrary to Dr Greyson’s assertion, I have no cognitive memory of that event. Perhaps I was a bit too young to create that sort of memory. However, it definitely stayed with me on a non verbal and non visual level. I have a memory from just before my 3rd birthday of being out in our back yard alone while my mother made grape jelly in the kitchen. She could see me from the kitchen, and I was free to roam out there. I recall looking up through the leaves on the trees to the sunlight and feeling joy at knowing that I was accompanied by Light. In later years, when I did happen to attend a church service, I just knew somehow that the God being described was or was not akin to the God I knew.
This all came to the fore for me at age 11. It was Christmas time and we had spent the day with extended family. While we children played, the adults had apparently replayed some of the old family stories around the table. As we drove home, my parents discussed some of them. I sat in the back seat hearing for the first time about my NDE and what I had said when I awoke. So there I sat in the back seat, essentially doing theology: “There *is* a God! Who knows about me. And cares about me. I could have died, but God let me live for some reason.”
Fast forward to my adulthood. I attended a number of churches: Baptist, Federated, Southern Baptist, Lutheran, Roman Catholic and finally Episcopal. I discovered a deep sense of calling to “fill the empty plates” of people searching for God. I spent 6 years in the ordination process and was a postulant for priesthood when I discovered I could no longer pray easily. Instead I followed the Peace and stepped amiably out of the process into a kind of abyss for about two years. Then the calling deepened into spiritual guidance. I have now been offering spiritual guidance for 25 years and receiving it for 33 years.
Despite many struggles that I have experienced with church administration, and my doubts about doctrine and other queries, and despite having several years at a time when I had no sense at all of the Presence of God, I have never doubted the existence of a loving Being.
I want to address something you wondered about in your conversation after the interview. You wondered why it is God lets evil and suffering happen and doesn’t just make it so it’s all bliss. The answer I would give is that it’s because of Love. Out of perfect Love we are given free will, even though God knows we’re going to mess it all up. We are not created in our embodied state so that we can be in bliss and just follow God. It’s as the poet William Blake said it: “And we are put on this Earth a little space that we might learn to bear the beams of Love.” I’d say it’s that we are given the freedom to choose Love or to reject Love. Because, without that choice, wouldn’t our existence be some kind of enslavement?
I want to thank you ever so much for this podcast, because it has reaffirmed some things for me, I was especially intrigued by the description of the mind being independent of the brain and, in fact, that the brain serves our survival; yet when the brain is poorly functioning the mind is freed, and it seems can continue on even when our body and brain cannot. Perhaps it is the mind or perhaps it is the spirit, or perhaps they are one and the same. How freeing! Hearing this podcast reaffirmed that being drawn to silence is vital for me. Unknowing, the Via Negativa, contemplation is my best way of prayer.
I have been a contemplative all my life (at least since age 2 1/2). My family was poor and my parents had a lot of personal struggles. My siblings and I had it very hard at times, moving at least once every year to a new school system where my siblings struggled to get decent grades. Yet I sailed through school. Despite having attended three first grades (in one year) and four high schools, I graduated 3rd in the class. For I knew, underneath it all, that I was not alone, and that my true family was something greater than the family I lived with, and this offered me an abiding sense of consistency and continuity. You might say that, while I had no cognitive memory of the NDE, I was “rewired” in the sense of having an inner template ~ a deep and companioning comprehension of Love.
Peace be with you. ✨ June

Thanks for this interview, it was so helpful in describing the Trinity. Can you tell me what is the name and spelling of the 18th century Greek document he referred to in the beginning of the interview? Many thanks

In the discussion after the interview with Ms. Scott, Tim talked about the church or the monastery where Merton lived seeming like a very restrictive place and Tim wondered why Merton would stick with it. I wondered if you might want to have Kathleen Norris on your show. Her experience with a monastery was very different. She wrote about it in one of her books, *The Cloister Walk*.

What a great interview. Thank you so much. I can relate to the idea of the small book and the big book. I am in nature every day ,singing, listening, talking and thanking God for so much beauty.
I also found the Psalms difficult but the more I read them the more I love them.
Everybody can sing, John said at one of the singing days we had in Aberdeen. I loved the way John taught us new things.
Thank you

Ann,, what a well written piece and so true. I remember at the age of 12 arguing with a protestant reverend who claimed that doing good on God’s or Jesus’s behalf was better than doing good from your heart without a church telling you so. Your laat paragraph is not cliché but simply very compassionate. Thanks for your articulate and witty expression of this topic. Caroline

Dear Nomad Team,

I am a student at the Asheville-buncombe Technical Community Collage in America and I am interested in using this podcast episode for my research project in university about the link between the biological need for spirituality and childhood developmental. I found your podcast through my book club, and I would like to cite some of your arguments and findings in my presentation.

Do you have a transcript for this episode that you could share with me? It would be very helpful for me to access the full content of your podcast.

Thank you for your time and attention. I look forward to hearing from you soon.

Sincerely,
Ari Hanson

What songs were played in this episode?

When is Tim Nash coming back?

Hello!
I am writing my senior thesis on the Spirituality of Darkness- a reclaiming of darkness as rest and protection. Dr Cleveland’s devotion on the spirituality of the womb fits beautifully into this theme! I read her book, God Is A Black Woman, but it does not talk about the spirituality of the womb, and I do not see a way to contact her on her website. Do you know of additional resources I can research on this topic? Any books or scholars you recommend? Thanks so much for all you do. I continue to grow and learn so much from your podcasts!