okay so we are live and i'm back here with my friend mark lisney how are you doing mark i'm good david good to see you it's been i don't know a couple weeks right uh it was the second of april i think when i had you on okay second of april so that's yeah i didn't think i'd be back this soon but that's okay it's good it's good well i asked you back because of that uh email you sent me with the you were talking about prayers i don't know how deep you want to get into that i mean uh we could just talk about prayer generally i think that's a safe enough topic for a catholic yeah yeah one of the things i mentioned last time when we talked was the um spiritual director um and assignment um one of the assignments was to write about praying from the heart and i had to sort of go to square one and say well first of all i'm i just don't understand any of this stuff i don't really my prayer life isn't really very developed and so i started to kind of write out those kinds of thoughts and then it started to shape into kind of just a conversation and writing down well i kind of feel inadequate about a whole lot of things like my catholic faith in general and prayer life and i always end up sort of comparing and oh i should be doing this better or i don't do this right and you know to get past that you sort of have to acknowledge that so it began with that and then as it evolved i got really excited because you know i made the wise decision to stop at some point and ask for help you know and guide me in this little exercise and um what happened was that every couple of days i get like really excited about a thought about prayer or meditating on something or what does the what's the heart and what's the what does the bible say about the heart what does the bible say about praying and that's scurry and look uh look up lists of scriptures that i might want to explore around that and then i'd spend two hours writing and then i'd get burned out and say okay rest but over the couple of weeks since i saw the spiritual director and started working on that assignment it was kind of all this stuff kind of started to unfold and all of the things going on in my daily life i sort of noticed the pieces that kind of were pointing to notions that could be you know introduced into the i almost turned it into like a term paper you know i sent you a typed copy because my handwriting's so dreadful and you know when you type then you edit and you're thinking i could have used a better word or i could have used less words and you start to tighten things up and then you jot something down because you think oh i don't want to forget that so it turned into the whole kind of half academic half spiritual uh exercise um and i'm i'm probably halfway done uh but i'm not really sure because it's kind of like i'm not sure where it's going but i feel excited about that there's some movement yeah well i was i was disappointed when it ended because i had like i told you in my email i had it being read by microsoft words text-to-speech feature and so i'm just puttering around cleaning my room and listening to it i tried out two different male voices i picked the speed that i liked you can adjust these sorts of things and obviously it would have been better with your voice i mean if you want to do an audio book version of it when you're done that would be good but no i was disappointed when suddenly uh like bang it just ended it just ended like what are you gonna leave me on a cliffhanger here because i felt like i was listening to my own uh inner dialogue like i mean just listening to you and your your insecurities with prayer and your your struggles with uh reconciling uh horizontal dimension with the vertical dimension and you know sexual intimacy with divine intimacy and these sorts of things just like that's just constantly on my mind constantly and the the sort of um inadequacies that we feel you know as uh pilgrims here below in this perilous walk uh it's just like i just felt like i was right at home listening to you and so i was very comforted by that and uh you know i was smiling because i was thinking well this is an excellent way for me to have self-reflection like i can say okay this is mark and he's spilling his guts to me here and i i you know i have a lot of sympathy and compassion and then i thought well he's so much like me maybe you know this is good healing for me because i can have sympathy and compassion on myself you know what i mean like it's like it's like i don't know if this is how a group therapy works but that's kind of what i felt like i was in yeah and i think that whole aspect of we don't i think you know you take you take a chance really when you put things out there with people i alluded to this before um when we spoke uh and i don't realize that there are other people out there like me who struggle with prayer and feel inadequate and feel like they don't even have the basics until i say i don't know what i'm doing and then david says that sounds like me talking and then i go oh okay so it's it's that you know if we can do a little bit better at just being honest about the things that we you know i mean i don't it's not something obviously that i'm proud of and you know tell everybody i i suck at prayer i mean it's not you know what i mean you don't it doesn't you can that could be the title of your podcast when you make your own podcast i suck at prayer i'm sure i get a lot of subscribers but it's you don't know until you say that and somebody else hears it and they it resonates with them and then they're willing to say you know what i i've struggled with that same thing or you know you mentioned too for for a long time in recovery with sexual addiction and i would talk about it occasionally at meetings i just understood from a very gut level that there is somehow some connection between sexuality and spirituality and you know initially you're sort of afraid to sort of even approach that and say that out loud because you think we might be creeping people out but there's something there is something connected there and and i don't know exactly what it is it's difficult to articulate but there's a there's something that ties our sexuality into spirituality and and i'm not sure why and i'm not sure exactly how but at the same time i know that it is true and i can't tell you exactly why i know it's true except that i just do yeah i want to respond to that just give me one second i got a little technical issue right back one second okay yeah i'm back um okay i i do that the reason the reason i've done this before in my life uh streams is the reason i block my camera is because i don't want people to see my pajamas that i'm wearing because there's i look you know i look like i'm dressed for uh real life but my life at home is comfy duds all the time the rest of the the other half is sponge robert uh square trousers uh pajama bottoms it's just tartan my mom made them years ago but they're like falling apart just a little bit of comfort you know having those uh ratty old tart and flannel uh pajamas but i don't think they're i think they're too hot for television let's put it that way so the the thing with the the thing with the thing the reason you and i are so similar uh one of the many reasons is because uh you know this idea of intimacy and the overlap between a sort of sexual intimacy and uh yeah intimacy with god is is very very much on my mind all the time i'm not saying it's on your mind all the time it's on my mind all the time um and i'm convinced intuitively i'm convinced that this is why we're we were created to become the bride of christ and uh as individuals and as the church as members of that church so maybe we're members of the bride of christ whatever it is but there's that mystical union and saint paul talks about it in the bible you know we're one flesh yes christ and the church are one flesh and that uh the parallel with marriage is not accidental the parallel that's made by uh all throughout the bible even in the prophets like hosea where god tells him go and marry a prostitute because you know you're not you're not loyal to me and i want you to see what it feels like to be with someone that's not loyal to you there's always that connection between marriage and uh the our relationship with god and the you know there's that sort of equivalence between idolatry and adultery they kind of sound the same adultery idolatry and sometimes i mix them up when i'm talking about idolatry i call it adultery and then i correct myself and then i say no i don't correct myself it's the same thing it's adultery because we have our spouse uh which is god we're made to be united with god and the religious the religious you mention this in your in your paper the religious exemplify that they've given up worldly marriage to have that intimacy with god right yeah and i hadn't even thought specifically about that aspect with uh you know um the celibacy thing um but it's funny all the words around what you were talking about with the body and flesh and intimacy and on and on they're all words that are used um you know in the christian language of in we have our jargon but they're also those words pop up in in in the in the in the world of sexuality and um so there's there's an inescapable and the the other aspect that not to make it like too oversimplified but there is that idea or understanding i think that when we misuse sexuality in a sense where [Music] to use the banana cheating on god in a way um the misuse then is it's a it's a mimicry and a mockery if you know what i mean so i that sort of notion is starting to internalize for me and i'm making that connection and going oh there's something to that that's they are sort of connected because and there's ramifications to this use um and i've never read i've i've heard it's a brilliant document but john paul two's document on uh basically on sexuality um more than that obviously but i i don't even remember the name of the theology of the body yeah i must i must read that because i i'm sure that he within that that document some of these things that you and i are talking about are clearly evident i would think oh yeah oh yeah yeah i haven't actually it's it's funny i haven't read that um i have my little button of saint john paul ii and i do i do love him obviously but i i have i have to admit that i am not drawn to his writing style as i am to some of my favorites saying we talked about this last time you know we have our favorites and there's nothing against those who are not our current favorites whatever you know as we're on our journey we're drawn to certain saints for for different reasons and his writing style just doesn't do it for me for whatever reason okay so i haven't i know about the theology of the body i'm very excited about it uh in theory um and i'm sure if i read it i'd be i'd be over the moon reading and maybe after this uh interview i'll go and buy it on amazon for my kindle and go through it yeah i think i need to check that out because i'm sure i will find lots of things that will resonate and fill in gaps too and kind of have you heard of christopher west or whatever his name is he does a popularization of the theology of the body i think his name is christopher west if i'm not mistaken do you know him no i don't chris is it theology of the body for dummies kind of notion you know one of those yellow books with the black print yeah yeah so if you go you know theology of the body is sometimes shortened to tob theology of the body tob institute.org is christopher west's thing theology of the body institute and um i'm just looking at this now there's like a ministry around that whole yeah saint john paul the second masterwork the theology of the body provides beautiful and compelling answers to the deepest questions we all ask ourselves you see it's not just you it's not just me it's all of us we ask ourselves these questions who am i why am i here how can i be happy why do i experience all these deep longings in my body and soul and what am i to do with them what is my ultimate destiny and how do i get there in the midst of profound sexual crisis that is wreaking havoc in both secular in both the secular world and in the church the t.o.b offers the hope of healing and restoration we also desperately need we all so desperately need enabling everyone to rediscover not only the meaning of our creation as male and female but through that the meaning of the whole existence the meaning of life so you can read christopher west's full-length commentary theology theology of the body explained and it's available here click the link ding ding ding so go check out uh tob institute dot org and uh i'll check it out myself too because i i'm aware of it but i haven't spent time as i should i probably should have spent time digging deeper into that i'm also a little bit i'm also a little bit um i cringe a bit when i hear other people talking about um you know their problems with the modern day sexual problems like i just don't want to hear about it like i i cause it's like i i'm trying to get away from my own sexual stuff so i don't want to hear other people talk about it and that's not to say that i don't enjoy listening to you with your spiritual journey and all of that you're confronting and you know obviously i do and if i could sit down and interview one on one each every one of these people christopher rest and west and all the rest i would but to uh you know to make it my hobby to read about it and to go and watch videos about it no i i just find that it uh it makes me a little bit uncomfortable i want to go straight to the source i want to go to jesus christ when i have intimacy with him and uh sort of sidestep all the the movements that surround it um it's kind of like it's kind of like the um the whole debate over men's rights and um feminism and what is the good kind of feminism what's the bad kind of feminism and jp2 talked a bit about feminism and stuff like that and instead of diving into that whole conversation the contemporary conversation i just kind of avoid the whole thing and i find that everything gets politicized sex get as you know sex is very highly hotly politicized i mean it's uh that i guess that is the really the key issue for me i get disgusted by politics and politics puts its fingers into everything including sexuality and now i mean it's disgusting what they're uh pushing on the children i don't go down that rabbit hole with you but i think you would agree it's inappropriate to be telling a fourth grader about anal sex and masturbation techniques and oral sex and all of these things by the way are being taught 4th graders in canada as abstinence these are these are forms of sexual abstinence oh just do anal sex that's abstinence do well you know do oral sex that's abstinence masturbate that's abstinence this is what our children are being taught so i'm very disgusted by that and it's the politics that's driving it i think yeah and there's a a phrase that i came upon years ago when i was um dealing with the ramifications of sexual abuse in in my history um i read a very good book by a guy named mike liu lew uh clinical psychologist and uh wrote a terrific book specifically for men um but one of the things he talked about there was um uh covert sexual abuse uh things like adults that tell inappropriate jokes around children that makes them uncomfortable where there's no boundary where you don't respect the child's boundary and you expose them even mildly to things and topics and situations that they feel for some reason that they're uncomfortable and they can't put their finger on it and to do that to a child or you know he gave he also gave examples of people that don't respect you know children get to a certain age and you have a modesty about the way you dress around the home now when children are very very tiny and they're running around you know that's not a big to do but parents also you know have a responsibility to understand the developmental you know process and those kinds of things where uh the modesty and covering up are important because children pick up signals and get uncomfortable and your actions and sometimes your words may not be intended to be causing harm but they're a covert form of actual sexual abuse because you're exposing them to things that they cannot comprehend properly but they have an innate understanding that there's something not quite right about being a party to it children children know that and they have that sense have you ever seen it portrayed in films i've seen it in certain films i get very concerned with some films where they're trying to do a decent job of showing that things happen to children but i get very concerned that the child actors that have to play these roles i always assume and hope that they're careful to prepare a child or the parents with roles that that tell stories um about things like that because i think you you can really inadvertently do some serious damage yeah i'm not talking about you know obvious things where you sexualize children in in film i'm talking about those overt things you talk about subtle stuff i'm talking about being very careful that you need a child a role where they've experienced abuse it might be an episode of you know you know whatever it is uh and you need to portray that because you're telling that story um but i always worry that they keep the children safe from the context well my wife and i watch uh a show called evil lives here it's usually it's usually about violence but there's often sex mixed in with it and uh we enjoy it because the the victims that are selected usually have survived and sometimes even thrived after the abuse you know for example a wife who was beaten by a husband or whatever it turns out to be a very violent man who's killed prostitutes or whatever there's a typical example um and she finally woke up and she finally said enough's enough and she escaped this horrible relationship and so she's got her new life and sometimes she has a new husband whatever okay so you get to see the triumph of the human spirit and some of these uh are very touching stories how the women like a little woman against a big man and she fights back and she it's just like it's amazing it's david versus goliath and of course they don't they don't show on the show the killed or whatever just submissive and just didn't fight back and never had any happiness or any you know they don't show those episodes because the you can't interview those women they're like captive to their their hostage holders whatever but um you know those who do fight back and that do find a way to escape and to thrive and they do they do show the reason i'm talking about this is they do have children that are abused and i remember one guy touched i think uh over the course of six years he was touching his step children when they were between the ages of five and eight or ten or whatever it was and uh i think he got three months in prison for three months in prison for that but the reason i'm talking about this is because uh there are children playing these reenactments right like they have hire actors and actresses and children and they reenact some of these situations so yeah i do wonder at times like oh i hope they protected these kids and i hope they made the atmosphere when they were filming about something else like okay johnny now you're going to walk up and you're going to be scared because there's an alligator in the swimming pool right like they set it up as something completely disconnected from what we as the end and viewers understand the situation to be i think there are ways to do that but yes yeah and that's exactly what my concern is when i see those kinds of things i'm i always hope that that's it's done in such a fashion um yeah yeah that kind of damage uh you know i think the phrase you used last time we talked i haven't and i've never heard it before it takes more than a lifetime to heal from you know um and that's that's very true like you you never quite you never quite finish that kind of healing really i think i mean perhaps some people do but generally um it's a wound you carry to the grave you know yeah it's tragic and uh you know i was thinking about that exact that exact thing when i was listening to your paper that you wrote about prayer prayer of the heart um i forget exactly what you were talking about but it sort of made me think about the the fact that i'm damaged goods and um oh yeah it was when you talked about you didn't you didn't have the innocence and goodness to be with jesus in that scene in the sunday school book right right and of course you know uh you understand uh intellectually that jesus christ loves the wounded he came for the wounded he told the he told the righteous jews of his day i didn't come for you i came for those who are wounded right so i mean you're perfect okay good you can see you're not blind good that's you've so you're fine right you're ready to go but i paid for the blind i came to give the blind vision i came to heal the wounded and i came for the children and stuff so i think intellectually you understand jesus came for you and for me but i was thinking about that uh how we are damaged and uh i was very touched when you mentioned adam our first father because you know i think a lot about that and i'm a young earth creationist i believe the whole universe is about 7000 years old and so i have that proximity to the garden of eden and the proximity to the innocence and then the proximity to the fall the fall from grace and so i spent a lot of time thinking about her first parents and how they fell and the damage that's done and the wars and the pestilence and the natural disasters everything that flowed from that little innocent decision like oh yeah and i don't know where adam came from god bless him um that must have been a moment where i took a breath and asked for some guidance because um i i had to go back to genesis and read that again and i i'm fascinated by that that the movement of god like through the the the foliage in in in the garden and you know there's reference to you know he could hear god like approaching you know and i'm just like a rustling of leaves or something i don't know and he knows that uh oh uh i'm gonna be found out and of course we know that we're already found out he already sees through us but it was a very clear way for me to understand the literal nakedness of an awareness of nakedness that adam and eve had once they made that decision um and i do that bringing god into my heart for prayer i've i don't really want him to come in like too far because there's there's stuff i gotta fix before you come in and the silliness of that but the re the the realness of that feeling of well hang on a minute you know the doorbell rings and there's laying all over like exactly and and it went all the way back to you know our father adam like oh and and that was the literal expression of that feeling you know he literally now knows oh apparently when i was made um this is called naked um and that that was kind of um you know a helpful insight to understanding that first of all you can't hide from god um he already knows and that that there is if you can get yourself to the point where you can just embrace that and just say okay here goes there is a freedom to to to find in that letting go of all the covering you know um but it was at that point i realized why i had the intimacy problem why i was fearful of having him come and look and it was because of the abuse of four years old and it was because of that i have to fix myself quick before i go up and sit with jesus and whatever because i'm too messy and everybody else that i'm looking at obviously they're not they're all nice but i'm not you know yeah um well i was thinking yeah go ahead it goes so so far back that you then build your whole perception of spirituality sexuality everything on a misguided interpretation that you conjured at that age and it takes a lot of time and work and help to re-reframe that the template's been set and you can you can set another template but it is very it's it's hard work yeah well that you know they talk about virtue and vice and how we can only get a good ha we can only get rid of a bad habit by replacing it with a good habit you know of equal force um i want to just mention a couple things that came to mind as you were talking um i'm getting old so i had to take notes because my my memory starts to go you know but the the whole thing with genesis is so beautiful and saint augustine is one of my favorite saints he talks about uh the nakedness and how why is that shameful right and he he said something i've never heard elsewhere he said the reason we feel shame is not because our bodies are bad their bodies are good god made our bodies they're good and sex is good okay the reason we feel shame is because there is that potential to be taken advantage of okay so there's a vulnerability basically to attack and manipulation and abuse okay so yes saint augustine had this psychological insight you know uh whatever it was uh about the psychology of the shame of nakedness and it's not like oh uh my body's not good enough like adam and eve's bodies were perfect right it's not like they were it wasn't fat shaming it's not like she's overweight from eating chips and sitting on the couch right right and it's not like his uh genitals were too big or too small or too weird or whatever deformed like he was perfect so uh like you've seen david uh whoever did that sculpture david wasn't michael angelo anyway you know it's the perfect form and um but it's that idea that now there's the hunter and the hunted you know and i i i know i know from my experience with the sexual fantasy and my dabblings with pornography over the years i mean less so in the past since my conversion obviously but um there is that thing like well um there is an aggressive sort of thing in the in the male sexual i don't know about women but in the male sexuality there's aggressive sort of thing where it's just like um you know pursuit of like you just your own purely selfish pleasure it's to take advantage it really is to take advantage with no regard for the the dignity or the humanity much less the uh the no some some notion you're going to settle down and build a catholic family with this person but the other thing i wanted the other thing i wanted to mention to you was that saint augustine also said somewhere else and i can't find the reference but he said somewhere and it really had an impact on me when i was a new convert to catholicism and to god generally and he said that god will reveal his full self in all his nakedness god will reveal himself fully naked god will reveal him his full nakedness to you only when you love him exclusively and you don't love anything else or anyone else when you love god exclusively he will show you his nakedness this is saint augustine this is what he said i wish i could find the the quote i've been searching for it for years but it was about uh 10 11 uh maybe 12 years ago i read that somewhere and i was reading a lot of saint augustine at the time but uh it's a beautiful it's a beautiful idea isn't it yeah yeah and that's incredibly there that's incredibly deep because that yeah even just that notion of god because obviously there's there's a hint although it's not really possible of vulnerability to god which is bizarre but it it's something that you could reflect on and contemplate for a lifetime because it's like wow wait a minute what does that what does that really mean then you know but and it also has the notion that there's for everybody else who isn't able to attain that status of exclusivity he is withholding something yeah that that's kind of mind-blowing too now wait a minute hang on is that theologically correct can we you know how do we yeah so yeah i'd have to really but we have to find that we have to find that excitation i hope i didn't just make it up in my head you drained it it's possible it's fine everything's possible but i mean it made a big impression on me and i i've been it's been on my back burner thinking about that a long time that's one of the things where i'd look at aiden and go dude no wait a minute you know look at each other like oh but you know another thing that saint augustine said about god he said when you run when the atheist or whoever or the bad christian whoever when someone runs from god smiling okay so we pictured god smiling and he's all perfect and all happy and everything benevolent and whatever he's smiling god okay and so when you run from god smiling you run into the arms of god frowning this is what he said so the basic idea is um the way i like to think about that is it's like let's turn god's frown upside down because it's kind of like our orientation like if if we're angry at god or we don't believe in god or we just want to run from god and just sin and indulge in our selfish pleasures and do our will basically we're running from a smiling god and we're turning his frown turning his smile upside down into a frown like we're it's like our orientation is inverted like like all of satanism always talks about inverting everything okay so we invert ourselves not god god is upright he is righteousness itself so we can't invert god but we can invert ourselves and in doing so his smile looks like a frown to us so we run from god smiling but we just bump into god frowning because it's like you can't run from god so it's all about orientation that's something uh that i think about a lot our orientation and in terms of uh god withholding i mean it's obvious just read the old testament and the new you'll see that god has conditions on his relationship with the jews like he calls the jewish people horrors like dirty horrors that are spreading their legs for every passerby this is in the old testament and yeah you can say it's a colorful language it's uh accommodation to our human condition and these sorts of things but god is fully aware of our human nature he created our human nature he's the author of our human nature our human nature is good and god took on our human nature he knows about you know all the everything that makes us human god is more aware not less aware than we are so we should not be shy about saying oh god is you know it's sort of using anthropomorphisms this is something i was very very shy about in the early days of my conversion because i went from atheism to a generic monotheism didn't really buy into christianity or the incarnation too much but um you know i was very jealous of god as someone who was the opposite of anthropomorphic but the more i get comfortable with uh catholicism i am now starting to appreciate the value of anthropomorphism why because of the incarnation precisely because jesus christ took on our flesh and because god made our human nature and he gave it you know there's a good reason why he gave us our human nature and he saw our human nature and said it's very good so um yeah i i hope the reason i'm saying all of this is that i hope that i can help you to get just a little bit more comfortable with the anthropomorphisms and if god's playing hard to get and these sorts of things we can say that with you know with the proviso in the footnote like yeah we know the nature of god uh god the father has no body he's you know he's above sex and gender and all these sorts of things we we can have all these footnotes but we can also allow ourselves as catholics i think to indulge in that in anthropomorphism to a certain respect as long as it's uh it's not you know as long as it's done in a pious and wholesome way yeah adds a lot it adds a lot to my uh faith journey having that having the incarnation and knowing i think yeah god loves me isn't it that god taking on human flesh then it it's that then it's easier to swap follow that notion and kind of proceed in your mind in that regard because it's like oh yeah he knows because he was one of us um and that that actually that reminds me too the one of the things that off the topic but that was just staggering to me um i told you i hadn't been back to church for a long time and came back last summer so this was the first length that i went through in a long time so you know all the readings they're obviously familiar and i but but it was groundbreaking for me to discover and stumble upon the fact that jesus was in the in is in gethsemane and he's you know the agony in the garden and an angel comes to minister to him comfort him yeah and i've read it a billion times i've had it a billion times but all of a sudden it meant so much more and it oh he needed that and then it it it also attached itself to simon of cyrene and that whole notion pick up your cross and follow me and there are times in the staggering towards you know salvation that we fall but it's okay to say right now in this day at this moment this is really heavy and it's really rubbing my shoulder raw and i need someone to hold the weight of it for a minute for me david i need you brother or someone in a prayer group or just someone even someone you know simon was reluctant he was yanked from the crowd it may be someone who's not a christian person that is a listening ear and then they ease the burden for the moment and that's god working through people and just the permission by reading that and seeing he was ministered to by an angel in his agony and someone was you know pulled from the crowd because they if they don't help him he's not going to make it to the to calvary and he's going to die on the way we don't want that um you know what i mean but but i think it never occurred to me because my perception was that we all get this cross you don't want anyone else as you think you do but if you carry this for a bit you'd hate it you want yours back i was taught that growing up you know um but the notion that sometimes you can say you know what right now in this moment is too much i need help that for the first time that became something that was just such a revelation and such a relief um so holy week for me had had lots of lots of nice things in it that that i found really helpful and i didn't feel bad like i didn't feel like oh i've missed so much because i was just thankful that this year i was i was there for it yeah i'm so excited i'm so excited that you're uh back i mean i didn't know you before but it's just so exciting like i mean uh my wife was playing me a video uh at some point yesterday or today and it had some conservative evangelical christian guy that just talks about politics but he started talking a little bit about christianity and how the bad guys like these politicians they're never going to repent and they're going to hell and this sort of thing and i just pointed out to my wife that we don't know we don't know we don't know the journey of this individual politician we don't know if their heart is hardened because this is what the guy on the video was saying oh god made his heart heard and he's never going to repent and it might be true it might be true but we don't know we don't know we can't we can't condemn anyone and so i mean uh you're a man of a certain age with the deep wounds and these sorts of things and it's just like so exciting because uh the demons maybe thought they had you for good and you know maybe some of the people that you used to frequent in the in the in the heart of hertz thought this guy's a loser and i just used them and discarded them just like everyone else whatever okay there could be people that judge you and say this is the trajectory or whatever but um it's the same for myself like i mean just like we don't know how close we came at any given moment to dying physical death or to being uh lost uh to the state of uh mortal sin and or to being on our very last chance to repent or we we don't know we don't know it's going to be exciting at the final judgment we're going to get to see how god intervened and just turn you just a little bit this way so you avoid a major disaster and i don't know how frequently god intervenes in that way but uh it's uh it's sobering to think about it's really sobering to think about but my overarching point here is that we never know how any individual's spiritual journey is going to go and i'm hoping that we all make the the right choice in the end to choose life as moses said choose wisely choose life yeah and you don't uh i understand in one hand why people get drawn into uh condemning the frenzy of that yeah but when you keep thinking it through and thinking it forward i've said this many times to different people in different ways that i'm afraid of my own time before god where all is revealed and the thought of anyone being shown that they failed and and the outcome is not going to be good that there's no cheering there's no there's no raw and righteous um victory i don't like that i don't understand the mind that that seems to relish that you know and you can pick whoever you want whether it's your friend in canada or you know joe biden in america or whether it's whoever you think or if it's um i won't even give him credit by giving his name but the founder of the first church of satan do i take joy in knowing that perhaps you know he really did choose that destiny and that's that's where he is no why would i why do i why would i get joy from that why would i feel like oh good right then that's settled that is that that's frightens the crap out of me that that someone could delight in that let's hope it's a superficial um a superficial thing like yeah like people who talk lightly of all kinds because if you really believe that that is scary and that's sobering that should not be something that you know that's like cheering when they throw the switch when someone's you know been put to death be for you know uh capital punishment uh you know whatever they did and whatever whether or not they deserved that final kind of punishment there is no joy and glee and jumping up and down that that like that doesn't fit at all for me in the christian context yeah and just the same you know with the spiritual uh death eternal death there's no there's nothing there's nothing to to be pleased about no yeah i think it's i i like to give people the benefit of the doubt that they just haven't thought deeply about it it's just because if you stop and think about hell you will not wish hell on your worst enemy period you just won't yeah you just won't i want to speak speaking of hypocrites um especially christian hypocrites i want to uh touch on something you mentioned at the beginning of your paper where you talked about oh i have a message for you god put it on my heart this and that and you know like they're just like you know they're so in tune and so in touch with god and you know their their buddies with god and this sort of thing and i'm sure there are sincere people that have good genuine messages uh i think some of them are wrong you know yeah yeah like i could tell i could give you a message from god right now god loves you like i mean i am very confident with a whole bunch i got a whole list of messages from god right it's just like it's like it's like i got a whole bunch of messages they're generic messages yeah but um you know it's not hard to give someone a message from god when i speak to atheists they often say well you know god's never contacted me or communicated to me and i say well god has a message for you right now and i tell them god is telling you this this and this and i just list sort of basic dogmatic truths of the church it's like god exists we can know him you know like just list somebody's dog give me something else basically the idea is i'm very comfortable conveying the messages of the public revelation the dogmatic truths the eternal truths of dogmatic public revelation i'm very comfortable like being the messenger for that because i think people need to hear that especially atheists they're like uh oh god's never communicated to me well yeah he's communicating to you right now and it's true right god put it on my heart to say this god put it on my heart to say that but when yeah like when you what you're talking about is less generic and more specific like about like you need to um you know uh you need to sign up for this workshop at my local church god put it on my heart that you need to do that whatever like that's too specific for me i would never say that i would never say god god told me he's dead you know i have had conversations with people where they they believe that god laid it on their heart to pursue a particular person as a mate yeah you know and that i'm like all right then um but yeah it's those kinds of things but having said that david you know i've had i've had other things that that were you remember i told you about my church experience 20 some years ago with the men afraid of me yeah well after that i i had um i had private revelations yeah yeah and i had uh i was telling aiden the other day i used to have this big notebook and i would write down they were people i would run into or people i did know and i would jot down their name or if i didn't know their name man with blue baseball cap um and it would be somewhere i'd be out somewhere and i know as i walked by them a word would come into my head and i knew the nature of their struggle and i would make a note and i would sit and do the 15 decade rosary and i would compile groupings of names to pile them onto a decade and it became a sort of a spiritual exercise but then i also david i had things that you cannot you can't dismiss as just me making things up in my head i had um i knew specific things about people and i knew that i was supposed to tell them things and i hated it every time and asked not to have to do it but i did it anyway they were complete strangers and i had dozens of those experiences and only once did somebody stop me in my tracks and tell me to stop when i have when i'm on the receiving end of that i always give the benefit of the doubt okay this person might be crazy but i i'd rather err on the side of uh you know pius belief okay so i had a woman come up to me and uh my i i was at church this is early in my conversion i was at church with my unrepentant homosexual friend and uh she came up to us we were both kneeling praying at church and she came up to us and i think she even gave us a couple of uh rosary beads or something but she said something uh that was that had to do with sexuality right and i'm thinking wow this is this is interesting like maybe she just saw us together and two guys and maybe he maybe my friend was sending signals that he's same-sex attracted i don't know but um he seems very straight acting to me but maybe she picked up on something or i don't know but like maybe maybe it was the holy ghost telling her you know i don't know i don't know but i gave her the benefit of the doubt and it's happened a couple of times where i'm at church in this one particular church actually where i entered the church it's a monastery and i've had a couple of things where women have come up to me and an italian church i used to go to quite frequently a woman came up to me and she just randomly gave me uh a nice icon uh of the blessed virgin mary the black madonna actually the black virgin mary because she's polish but uh yeah so i always give the benefit of the doubt even if i'm cynical and i want to think okay this person's they should mind their own business and they're probably crazy or whatever but i do say no no no david i'm gonna i don't want to be wrong i want to get a message from god and then be wrong and say this person's crazy like i'd rather say i'd err on the side of uh misattributing it to god rather because i think does saint paul say we don't know if we're entertaining angels you know that's why we have to be extending our hospitality or something something like that right yeah and it and and the other thing is the person if it's genuine their responsibility to god is to as best they can follow what they believe god is prompting prompting them to do and then they're finished so if they get a punch in the face or if they get a middle finger or if they get you know um that's message was delivered and that person was the servant and and doing what was called those best that you can determine because sometimes you can you know your own thoughts are infused but and i only had one occasion where somebody just stopped me in my tracks and it was interesting because it was a it was a it was a nun and she said i choose not to listen to this and it was very specifically worded and i told her i introduced myself and i said i don't mean to intrude i feel i need to tell you that there's a specific decade of the rosary that you can meditate on that will be helpful to you and i got that far and she put up her hand and she said i choose not to listen to this and i said i'm sorry i bothered you and i turned around and walked away um but it was the first time and the only time that ever happened wow did you get any follow-up on her journey no i just you know i think in the immediate i i felt really awkward and felt like oops i hope i didn't you know i i didn't want to step on toes but i checked through my list in my head did i did i have a real thing here i think i did okay and then i probably for a period of time pray before and hope that whatever would be straightened out well worst case scenario like let's say oh it was a fanta fantasy or your own imagination and okay so what what damage could be done by asking a nun to meditate on the life of jesus hey you know what it's not like it's not worst case scenario is not that bad you know oh this guy of his own volition told me to meditate on the life of christ i choose not to listen to that no no no this is i mean this is the other thing we need to we need to look to the intention also like uh it's just take a common sense approach if someone has a message for you okay if they're if they're flamboyant attention seekers like hey i got a message for you and hey i got a message for you i have another message for you if it's obvious this person's just an attention seeker and plus they're asking for donations or whatever all the time for their own personal uh coffers or whatever there's a giveaway yeah uh you know we you have to use common sense but i mean yeah but let me tell you one story that dude like you just i still to this day i'm like this is insane and my son taylor was maybe he was little he was probably eight or nine and i went to pick him up and go about our little activities for the weekend i stopped at a barber shop that i'd never been to and i was sitting there getting my hair cut and then it was taylor's turn or whatever and i looked over at the um his shelf and there was a picture of a kid that was like a like teenage kid and i looked at it and then i was like and he saw me looking he said that's my son he passed away i said i'm really sorry and i said when he was little i knew immediately the history of this this kid and i knew that when he was a little tiny infant david um within the first few days or week of his life he was in serious trouble and they were worried that he was going to die and there was someone in the family that this this barber his wife and whoever extended family there was someone who played prayed to mary to spare the life of this child and it was granted but there was a stipulation that it it he could only live to a certain age for reasons i don't know but i suspect that he just couldn't it his life would affect too many things or something wouldn't be whatever and in in a few moments i knew all of that and the barber said to me my wife still hasn't gotten over it she's angry and she's she's so so i just said to him do you remember when he was really really little like the first week he was in the hospital and he was sick and he nearly died then do you remember that and he said yeah you know come to think of it yeah you're right it was touch and go and we thought i said well someone in your family that had an attachment to the blessed mother i i don't know if i said mary i didn't know if he was catholic i didn't know anything all i knew is somebody did that i said to him somebody prayed to us mary to spare him and that was granted but there had to be a stipulation that it couldn't be he couldn't live a full life and what you were given was actually a gift it wasn't that you were cheated out of something you were actually given a gift and i said i'm really sorry to tell you in that way because i'm sure that sounds hurtful but that's what what i think happened and he was very sweet and very gracious and you know i think he was you know he remembered that the little boy was sick when he was young so two weeks later david now i'm in a town where my son lived but i didn't live there and two weeks later i'm driving my son to the shore to go away for the weekend and we're in one of those turnpike rest areas with a billion cars that stop every day it's the middle of the summer and i go into the men's room and i'm standing in a urinal and i look over and there's the baba and he looks at me and he goes it's you let me tell you what happened to my wife i told her everything you told her and she's she's completely different and he just told me that he went home and told her that story and that she cried and cried but she was so relieved and understood that there was a reason and that she didn't know all of that and it was a complete sort of yeah um and then i just you know get the current go on to you know we're going on holiday whatever but i think like god gave me that moment to say you know when you follow through like i ask you to do it it really is okay and and i have a purpose yeah and you there's no way i can explain there's no way anyone can explain how that could possibly happen where i run into a random man again two weeks later in a restroom at that particular time when he's a random person i met once by walking into his barbershop and i'd never been to him before providence providence yeah um so stuff like that you know i've i've had those experiences praying for other people um and then gradually within a couple of years of the having that experience of someone praying over me those things kind of received a little bit faded yeah pretty cool well i mean uh i'm a fan of uh what's his name kubrick stanley kubrick and in particular i liked the shining i've seen it several times and analyses of it and there's a lot of a lot of conspiracy theories about him and his films oh and the native american piece and all kinds of stuff all kinds of stuff the room but the the idea of i guess it's a stephen king novel originally which i'm not a huge fan of stephen king obviously but um this idea of the shining you know it's it's uh the reason i'm talking about it with you is because there's a speculation that the the young boy the son the character was sexually abused there are a lot of analyses on the internet about this i mean obviously people are looking for pedophilia everywhere especially today in conservative christian circles but um maybe a little bit too much right like seeing it everywhere but um or maybe not enough i don't know but uh the point is there is a speculation that the character the of the boy was sexually abused and that this is part of the awakening of this psychic power the sensitivity and i think that if you look into satanic sex ritual or sexual abuse or whatever you'll see that there is a sort of an awakening of a certain part of the spirit or the mind or whatever you want to call it a certain sensitivity and there are good things and bad things that happen to these abuse victims but one of the interesting things is this sort of heightened sensitivity psychic phenomena and the ability to know things and i didn't have i mean if i did have early trauma in my childhood i'm not really aware of what it was but i was very sensitive and i was very otherworldly as a child and uh i've had some psychic experiences these sorts of things i'm not aware of any particular trauma i may have experienced but i mean i don't count it out like like you were saying in the beginning of this interview children are very sensitive even to subtle cues and there's a lot of uh there's a lot of dark stuff in my uh family tree going back generations right so uh yeah this this what i'm basically talking about is the sensitivity of the wounded child right and i think you have that uh that opens up certain possibilities in terms of spiritual connection and it could be very dark it could be very light like i mean it depends it's up to you it's up to you right yeah you want to let god in or you want to let the demons in it's up to you but i think you have that that opening and that sensitivity and i think a lot of people i think a lot of people do and i think it doesn't get talked about a lot publicly because you're going to think i'm crazy or you know it's not it's not it's just not talked about or you know well that's i i was thinking about that the other week too that the uh and it's kind of like uh what i said to you at the beginning when you know when when you open up and talk about well i you know i'm rubbish at prayer and then david reads or listens to it being read and says oh it sounds like me talking we we don't know until somebody says it and then we feel like we have permission and i suspect the same thing with whether you call it psychic um experiences or spiritual experiences with the holy spirit specifically that i think if people were [Music] you're right there's two things about that they think either i'm crazy or they will think i'm crazy or the second thing is they'll think that somehow i think i'm sort of some pious person and i'm i'm like really not then they're gonna think that i think i am or they're gonna think i am and get the wrong impression so i don't really wanna you know talk about this because they'll think oh they've got you know and it's like no i i'm rubbish believe me you know what i mean um but until you share some of those instances stories anecdotes or whatever you you just assume that nobody else is having them but you know sure enough between the two of us just two random so seemingly random meeting of minds um you've experienced that you have anecdotal things that you could share that would would shed light you know i mean it's funny i was telling aidan the other day that if i sit down and do the proper rosary not just the quickie single decade that aiden gave me which i still do and i added like two more of them to do but when i sit down and do the full rosary my dog comes and sits with me and he sits sometimes at attention like he's a little sentinel beside beside me and then i noticed if i if i'm not paying attention and i decide to recite the prayers out loud he makes these little cooy noises like he's comfy and cozy it's almost like a cat purring but it's the dog version and you could say you could choose to look at that and say that's just a dog being a dog he likes to hear this under your voice or you can choose to say you know what animals have a sensitivity to dark spiritual things they're aware of demonic presences why would they also be aware when you're communing with god or trying to commune with god and they're the reverence that they have because they were made the way they were supposed to be made and they they live their their destiny according to his will because they're just created to be who they are um so they know that they know who their maker is so you know i look at things like that and someone might say well that's the most ridiculous thing that's so silly and childish but i think no that's perfect makes perfect sense that every created living thing that god has made knows who their maker is yeah there are songs about that beautiful songs you know the dog knows who made him he does so if i'm sitting there trying my best to pay attention a little bit more or i'm gonna like say the prayers out loud instead of in my head and he reacts you know good for him he's a little prayer buddy good and if you happen to coat yourself in a pork lard before doing it that's just so much the better exactly my dog's so attracted to me when i put don't know what it is always comes forward to me when i'm sitting there doing this they do that they do that in the tv in greece yeah yeah they used to do that on frasier i don't know if you know frasier but a great show they put like a grease fat or whatever kind of bacon fat behind the ear of someone and the dog eddie would lick behind the ear that was one of the tricks that dog eddie was very smart i don't know if you know uh that show frasier but that was one yeah very good dog actor eddie yeah very cute but i always say people you know people ask me will my pets go to heaven i'm like sure why not there's they cannot go to hell there's no reason for them to go to hell they don't merit heaven but they don't merit hell so hey if god wants your pet in heaven yeah it's easy that's easy don't worry about that you got you've got other things to worry about don't worry about that there was even a simpsons episode that mentioned that when uh who's the little girl in the simpsons that plays the saxophone lisa lisa and she was at sunday school and she's or maybe it was bart but i think she was asking well about the pet going to heaven no your pet will not go to heaven it's like you remember that as a kid and it goes back that same thing we talked about last time when you're a kid and you go i don't know if i want to go to heaven it's like boring you're just standing around up there you know i don't want to go to heaven if my dog's not going to be there and we're just so sad in the way that we limit god to these insane mundane scenarios yeah did you ever watch the twilight zone the original series yes rod sterling whatever whatever anyway there was one episode i remember watching as a kid with my family and uh this old guy with his dog and they just have a nice life together like a man and his dog their best friends and then uh the man dies and uh he realizes he's dead when he is walking down the road like he's you know something's weird and he's walking down the road he's never been here before he doesn't know how he got here he's dogged with him just talking to his dog and they're he meets a couple of people standing at a gate and they're like hey welcome to heaven you made it whatever and uh like the guys standing at the gate are a little bit like they're nice but there's a little bit of something a little bit not quite right and he's like oh i'm dead oh this is heaven okay okay so come on buddy let's go in he's like no no no you can't bring your dog in and he's like well then i i i i'm not going sorry my best friend can't come i'm not going and they're like this is heaven you can't what are you going to say no to heaven he's like whatever i'm not going if you don't let my dog in not going so he just continues walking down the road and the guys are at the gate are all angry and then he comes to two more guys in a different gate a better looking gate nicer guys and they're like hey welcome to heaven and come on in and and he's like can i bring my dog sure he's like this is the real heaven the other guy's down the road that was hell that was hell they were trying to and this is this is the thing about heaven and hell this is the thing about satan and god or christ and antichrist there's always an invitation there's always that um trickery of trying to pretend like like satan said to adam and eve like you will be like god like this is sort of like don't worry you can have it all you can have the knowledge of good and evil like we're gonna offer you everything it's the same thing i'm gonna give you all oh god made pleasure well i'm gonna give you pleasure oh god made that that young hot secretary i'm going to give her to you so there's this idea of satan always giving god's good gifts to people and trying to imitate christ as much as possible that's why we have the black mass because it's just an inversion of the mass and everything's just an inversion right and uh you know with the lgbtq plus community saying you know it's just love and we should be allowed to love each other and love is love and say no to hate this is just satan again twisting everything inverting everything because of course love is good right but yeah there's always this idea like even in cs lewis's famous uh books on the narnia series where uh there's that anti-christ situation with uh did you mention that to me in our first interview no no okay it was someone else but just the the sick and twisted perversion of uh the the antichrist is sort of imitating christ and is very well portrayed in one of the books of the narnia series so yeah just that idea of uh imitation and uh that's why those guys at the gates of hell were presenting themselves as heaven because that's that's what they always do right like we are the way we are the truth and we are the life and i saw your talk with uh somebody uh forgotten which fellow it was i don't think it was the guy who's working through his recovery was this a live stream with video or live stream recent one fairly recent but you talked about madonna oh oh you're talking about my friend matthew murdock yeah so then it was matthew okay okay maybe um because i didn't talk about madonna in two recent interviews it might have been that one it might have been another one okay okay and i saw that same thing and it was just so hideous and so sad and so pathetic but it really illustrated that whole notion of how fleeting fame wealth beauty all the trappings sexual prowess and sexual you know conquest and you can keep on everything else you want whether it's the highs you can get from you know the best drug on the planet um [Music] it's such a short-lived it's forgotten and you're the a thing of the past no matter no matter how high you you were raised you're gonna come crashing down and it's sad and it's but it's still it still draws people to it who's that funny person that um not funny ah but that funny america uh he's american i think uh he's a rapper african-american guy that did that really i couldn't watch it i saw a beginning of it i was like i don't want to watch that um and then he had those sneakers the 666 sneakers and the the lap dance with the devil little naz or somebody okay i don't know okay so he like he is at the height of fever pitch stardom in his genre of music a couple years ago he he had a crossover hit with the country people with with that oh probably cyrus's father okay it was a very popular song and they did a video where they're both riding in on horses okay it was but anyway and you know two years later little naz i think that's his name is doing this video where he's literally doing a lap dance for satan oh and it's not it's it's so blatantly [Music] like you won't you won't want to watch it once you see the first the screenshot of it you'll be like ah gotta move away from that um and of course it's big and controversial and then he sold the nike sneakers with and limited edition six six six ninety sneakers and cashing in and there's a sort of a nod in a wink that of course this is ridiculous i'm just playing games but it's also at the same time being be intrigued be be i'm i love the personification of satan in in mel gibson's passion amazing amazing and when when they talked about how they would visualize him how would they film him how would they show that uh and talked about the there's something alluring there's something interesting and you can't quite grasp what it is and the way they filmed it you can sort of see him and he's sort of none he's not quite a man not quite a woman there's something intriguing there and the the camera moves so you don't quite get it and you want to go back and look that whole kind of allure of something mysterious and well it's got a bad vibe but it's also kind of like ooh what is that yeah um i think they captured that allure of the devil so well in that film yeah amazing there was just amazing people are intrigued by them aren't they remember during the uh stations of the cross or whatever his his uh when he's carrying the cross crisis crane carrying the cross and you see the mother and the child yes and in the crowd as the as the camera kind of pans david lynch style of uh creepiness yeah but so clever and so accurate capturing that that that difficult to describe but that that there's a certain strange appeal yeah that you sort of want to look but don't want to look yeah well i think you know i often think about being seduced by god on the one hand and satan on the other hand and i think about uh it's like okay let's put this in very human terms there's a young man with a beautiful young wife and i'm gonna i'm gonna use it uh sort of reversed genders just to because it's more powerful this way in my image okay so you have a young man and a young uh fiancee or wife whatever you want to call it let's say wife and um you know she's the most beautiful woman okay and he's lucky to have her a