CVS Live Guest - 2022-04-09 - Kieran Lisney
There are 206 episodes in the Guest:Solo series.
I asked Kieran to come chat about his reaction to some of my recent guests, including his own uncle Mark, and Pastor Artur Pawlowski. I know Kieran will be honest with me about his opinions, even where they differ from my own. God bless him. ?
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These YouTube transcripts are generated automatically and are therefore unformatted and replete with errors.
hair on end hair standing up tears in my eyes oh my god who are these angels and saints who is uh so the was that the recording that i sent you lamentations yeah yeah so actually it comes from so this is part of the um for holy week we start off the week or we do the lamentations on i guess it would be thursday night um but um so the group of gents that i do that with is uh my godfather who is the chant director and um pretty much when i was brought into the church he was like you're chanting since you know music and i was like oh okay uh but it's weird because like byzantine notation is totally different from staff notation so like having to like re it's basically like having to learn uh music all over again it's very it's very bizarre it's actually cool though because the notations like very intuitive like the way that notes sound is how they appear okay in the byzantine notation um and like the scale like doremi fosso la tito it's actually nipa fugati everything is the same it's the same amount of notes per scale but it's just different uh there's like different intervals so it's kind of confusing i just do the eson which is basically just the drone note underneath it and then every now and again i do little uh verses and stuff so i'm relatively new at it i've only been doing it in the liturgy for like three or four months or so what's the age range how many guys and what's the age range of what i was listening to there uh so daniel my godfather is younger than me funny enough he's about two years younger than me and i'll be 30 in june so he's like 28 29. his brother aaron who's 24 a couple other guys who were in their kind of like intermix so like per whatever service we're doing like last night we did the akathist uh which we did the last one for the salutations to the theotokos for lent we do we do five weeks of salutations which is an octopus service and uh like depending on the week or depending on the day of the week we might have like three to four guys but sometimes if we're lucky like on sundays or whatever we'll get like some upwards of like seven or eight guys doing it so um is there a rock star is there a hero of the group the super apostle that's everyone's in awe of there's two of them so one is named isaac he is he's actually the youth director at the church but he went to the athenite school for theology which is the um the theological seminary on mount athos he lived there for like a year or two um the dude's like ridiculously smart he actually was raised roman catholic became a staunch atheist and then converted to orthodoxy like six or seven years ago and he is like basically a monk he's on his way to the priesthood uh but he's waiting to find a woman before he gets uh before he he commits to the priesthood because he really wants a family and he doesn't want to be locked in as a celibate so he's uh um but yeah he's he's really cool and he knows his stuff he's awesome but he's also very much like he's a when you meet him you're like oh my gosh this guy's like steps above everybody spiritually and he's so humble and then daniel my godfather is very much the same attitude very down to earth you know like all these people like there's not a there's not a like a proud bone in their body but um daniel's very simple and he's just awesome and then pretty much all of them are awesome i'm pretty much the straggler there's one other guy that just joined who's isaac's godson uh richie and he started doing eson with me now that i'm getting more comfortable doing ison i'm going to be kind of instructing him so that aaron daniel's brother can go more on to melos which is like the actual singing of the words and stuff so all of them are fantastic but i'm basically the noob there's one other guy that's more of a noob than me but only barely so you asked me before i went live to show my wife's uh i don't know if you can call them icons or paintings but i guess they're paintings and uh can you tell my audience what you told me about this one because i said i made a joke i said guess which saint this is and you hesitated what was the joke there well the joke i knew it was christ but at the same time because he doesn't have the he doesn't have the cross in the halo um i was a little confused i saw the icxc which um obviously are the initials for christ but i just thought well he doesn't have the cross in there so maybe it's supposed to be a different saint or something what do you think of this is it well it looks it looks fantastic it's basically like your your wife should be writing icons she should if she's an artist and she was and she's ethnically greek like she should tell she should what does she think of icons like what is she she likes she likes everything that's orthodox she loves the orthodox church but she just is struggling with uh theodicy or the problem of evil that's her struggle right oh man if not exist then he's an a-hole that's her famous line which i mean it's trying to get but see honestly that's good yeah i remember you saying that when you're i think you were talking with uncle mark and you're saying much the same thing if that was that might have been that interview what do you think of jesus's facial expression here a bit sleepy uh serene serene sometimes when you look at christ pentacrotter it's a little intimidating so it's nice to see him with the serene look on his face his lipstick his lips are a little bit feminine i find but that's her she usually does women so yeah um and then it's really cool that your wife does that for you yeah she did it for my birthday years ago so this is saint mamas or mamos i sent you a link you can read about him he was a child murderer i guess but uh pretty cool riding a lion and yeah i'll show you this is uh what that my typically what my wife used to do this is like uh kind of like a self-portrait sort of but i like to think when she does women i like to think of them as the blessed virgin mary that's how i like to think of the women that she does i've got a whole bunch of them around around the house what does it say is it uh saint marina who smashes satan is typically depicted smashing satan over the head with a hammer you should get her to do that i'm very uh i'm very sexist when it comes to the saints though see this one with the coffee on her head yeah are those sugar cubes next to the coffee cup what does great so she does lots of cute art so what were you saying i was just saying i'm very sexist when it comes to the saints it's not that i don't like the women saints we have so many beautiful women saints in both the orthodox and the catholic church right yeah but there's like a particular um like an implicit bias i have against them not because they're not good saints they're saints but like i don't know i'm just i'm i'm just more attracted to the mail well i mean i guess i do i do at work i have to drive around sometimes and um i enjoy it it's beats working right so i go to job sites deliver stuff and whatever um but i listen to christian radio there's one am station here in montreal that i can listen to it's all protestant all the time some stranger denominations i guess sort of jews for jesus kind of stuff israel israel stuff you know is really israel is real and all that but some of the stuff is very good um that i listened to but um i have to admit i'm a bit uh wary also when women start talking or um it's it is a prejudice that i have same thing with driver if i see a bad driver and then cut me off or they're just a crappy driver or whatever like i always look i always look to see and if it's a woman i'm like uh yeah it's a woman right and if it's a guy i don't say that makes sense if it's a guy i don't do that right i have a prejudice and if it's which is hilarious because men are typically men are typically uh like intentionally bad at driving yeah like when a dude is bad at driving it's because he's being reckless i feel like but when a woman does it it's like oh they just are like i feel like most of the faults come from being overly cautious where it's like do you not know how to like back up properly or something or do you not know how to like change lanes properly you're very timid and so you can find faults in like women drivers with that but with guys it's like i'm in my ford f-150 i'm gonna drive like an a-hole yeah and then they just like they drive i drive i drive a king cab ford f-250 i can't picture you driving a truck at all it's like aiden aiden i forget i forget what aiden aiden has a really manly truck i forget what it is but i'm like dude you drive a truck i just can't picture him driving the truck i'm also i'm also racist and ageist because when i see it's uh like uh some ethnic minority or an elderly person i'm like yeah yeah yeah this is just and i'm just admitting this to you as a fault like it's a character flaw that i have but i'm just admitting it racist ages sexist so am i i'm not going to sit here and say that i'm not we can be we can be uh strive against our uh failings but it's like kind of uh it maybe there may be uh an upside to favoring like i'm a middle-aged white male so maybe there's a reason psychological reason to favor our own kind um i know it's controversial but i do listen to nick fuentes a lot he's a very controversial uh allegedly white supremacist whatever but he made a funny joke the other day i really like him i i i'm like attracted to him as a man i find him very attractive and charismatic and good looking and whatever but um and cute and charming but um you know he says couple edgy things whatever but the other day he was making a joke saying you know everyone says i'm white supremacist i'm not a white supremacist i hate white people they're annoying i'm an italian supremacist i think italians are cool because he's got some italian food but no he's a cute guy he's really sweet i've invited him on my podcast but he's too busy and he's too famous whatever but uh the thing the thing about he's pretty big the thing about um controversial racists or whatever is if you actually get to know them they're nice like they may have a prejudice or whatever some biases and he clearly does have some against jews and against blacks and against hispanics and all that even though he's partly hispanic himself i was gonna say yeah you know there honestly there are worse things than having some prejudices like if you're a bit misogynistic or racist or ageist or whatever it is just be aware that it's wrong and try to try to avoid falling into sin but if you have your if you have your prejudices you know uh let's not turn it into a complex or um i'm not saying he's emotionally and spiritually and mentally fit or ideal he's probably got his own problems he admits to being a narcissist for example which is part of the reason i'm attracted to him but um you know if we if we try to suppress these things that can turn into a cancer into a neuroses but if we just admit like hey i don't you know my father doesn't like tomatoes i love tomatoes but i don't think he's uh evil because he hates tomatoes it's just he doesn't digest them well it's the same thing with like if you just happen to think that black people bring crime to the the neighborhood statistically or whatever that's a prejudice you know may or may not have some foundation in reality whatever but i mean you can go deeper and deeper and try to find the root causes of it the root cause ultimately is uh the garden of eden and the fall of the flower humanity right but i think we make we make too much of these weaknesses um in our society especially today there's so much woke culture that's that's picking on the races it's like is racism really that bad i mean really honestly just to have that proclivity you know it depends what you do with your racism right yeah sure i think it's wise to accept and to acknowledge that there are differences between people this whole idea of egalitarianism is totally false and it's one of the things that comes out of yeah because we're not everybody's different so like if you're going to sit there what it like i think this the starting point is the basis for what are you what are you basing what equal is like what is the standard because if you don't have a proper standard then it's going to be a moot point to even say that we're all equal in the first place because you don't have something you don't have a starting presupposition to say equal and compared in comparison to what because we're not all the same so from the christian perspective we're all equal in the sense that we're made in the image of god right and we're icons of christ but we're not the same and each person is given a different role in humanity and if you put that down to the level of the church and the body of christ was you know saint paul says that the foot can't say to the arm i have no need of you right we all have our particular role that we have to play and why is that because we're not all equal because we all have different strengths and weaknesses and these type of things so and that that spans out into anything that spans out into race sex culture all these things and it's not to say that either one is good or bad it's just to say that they're not the same they're not equal remember people have this idea that right well i was just going to say people have this idea that to be equal with somebody is to basically say that you are all of the same value every human is of the same value but they don't bring the same things to the table yeah well you remember when paul said there's neither male nor female greek nor jew and all that sort of thing in a certain sense uh we have that one destiny and that one choice to make for or against christ and it's the fundamental option and it's between you as an individual and your maker and it's very personal very personal project and it's so laughable to bring race or or sex or iq or anything else into it is so it's so absurd it's so absurd um but it there are a lot of distractions in our modern world and the freedom movement is one of the distractions i want to talk to you about that because people can get all excited about a politician that promises them a better future and freedom and i stand with the people and all these sorts of things and it is encouraging and exciting to uh get behind a leader who's talking the talk right sure but uh you know there is that danger like i mentioned with my recent interview with uh pastor art there is that danger of getting worldly in your concern about uh a political freedom can you just talk about what impression you got from uh did you listen to the uh interview i did of pastor art i only got through like the first 10 or rather rather busy but i only saw this morning when i you know woken up i saw your thing yesterday and i was like oh sweet he's going live with him in an hour i'll check it out after church and when i got home from church i'd saw that you know it had fallen through or whatever um so then i saw it this morning and i was like oh great but i had a scheduled haircut you know and i know some stuff when i got him yeah i had followed him from before because um obviously with the whole covid thing um so he's been on my radar for a couple years now and that's not to say it's good or bad but i notice that um a generalized trend in the push back against the covidien kind of mindset if if you will this whole idea of covetism and then the reaction against it i look at everything in in terms of hegelian dialectic where it's problem reaction solution and all of it plays to the end of whatever it is the global elites want the end to be so they they realize they're starting a problem and they realize that from that there's going to be a grassroots kick back against that that then they can co-opt uh to meet their final end and i see the the whole here's the thing i see the whole um reaction against it as noble in uh thought and perhaps an intention but i see it going down a dangerous path to where it's actually leading people away from not only the theological um underpinnings of the gospel but also from the uh the attitude that we're supposed to have as christians as little christ the the spirit behind it seems if if i can say so it seems rather antichrist actually where it's very much rebellious um and it doesn't seem to be in the spirit of what saint paul says again when he talks when he's talking to timothy i think it's in his second epistle to him and he says that and now of course he's talking in terms of instruction for pastors because timothy who's timothy he's leaving timothy in the care of whatever church it was and he's saying you need to emulate these particular things right here but then he broadens it and he says every person who follows god they need to not be quarrelsome and they need to have an attitude of loving kindness and goodness towards all people because that's the way that we're going to win our enemies over and hopefully from that that action of love and kindness what we're going to see is a turn and a repentance by those that were were showing this love to to come into the light and out of the darkness and there seems to be a danger in even some of the videos that pastor um arthur um you know has posted on his own channel from years ago i remember watching when the police came the one time to his church his congregants after he got arrested the way that they were behaving shouting and yelling and being very antagonistic it just i tried to kind of put it in the context of like did paul do this did the apostles do this when they were arrested by the roman government and the way the picture that we get from scripture is the exact opposite rather than this idea of we need to be aggressors for the faith and kill for the faith there was the mentality of we must die for the faith we have to be passive we need to be wise as serpents but innocent as doves and i don't see that coming from the freedom movement and there's also the other element that i i that gives me pause for concern in the idea that people who are not filled with the holy spirit new agers alike atheists secularists buddhists hindus muslims all people are getting behind this idea if of the truth movement which seems to be the ultimate good is freedom and these ideals that have been created by let's be honest free masonic founders of america where instead of instead of um you know codifying scripture and making that part of their life they've almost done the same thing to the constitution that we should we should as christians do with scripture and the tradition of the church which is to make it our focal point and uh i see i see a real gravitation away from that and sort of a usurping of the gospel in favor of these ideals of freedom and it there's always uh satan is so cunning because he doesn't care what position you're on just as long as you're not on the royal path there's the right and the left and then you have the royal path and either extreme can take you down and away from the royal path and so yeah you might look at the right as being um you know essentially a better option in the left which which i would be sympathetic towards of course but at the same time it's still if it's driving my focus away from christ and from the gospel message and from the saints then satan's still achieving his his main goal which is to take us away from the church and the sacraments and so um it gives me a lot of pause for concern i'm going to disappear for a second you're still going to hear me uh my mother-in-law just texted me and said i want to see what your hair looks like she was dying for me to cut my hair so i have to sit on her picture quick anyway i'm gonna go ahead i'm gonna comment on that i'm gonna play your song again [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] wow amen or uh because we go we go back and forth between the greek and the english so one first or stanza will be in um english and then the next trapario or whatever will be in greek so it just depends i guess but very beautiful it's the best it's the best music the best liturgy is in the east for sure hands down no question about it praise the lord um can you talk to me about uh are you still there yeah i'm still here okay you're fixing your hair no my mother-in-law she's you do you look so much better so i had to text her back send her a picture send her a picture of my hair please i want to see what she has to say about it tell tell her that i'm aspiring to to david and do a little screenshot here just for my own benefit here okay anyway go ahead over here can you talk me through a little fantasy uh about what uh jesus christ would do just paint a picture like um he's here today and he's working a simple humble job blue collar and he has to get the jab or lose his job and he can't feed his family we're going to fantasize that he has a family and um what would he do and just walk me through a little fantasy story if you would please just to paint a picture in the face of tyranny in the face of tyranny okay well i have thought experiments okay i don't know man because i like my own ideal of christ is is rather rather than painting myself in christ's image we have like i have a tendency to paint christ in my own so of course my natural proclivity is to say that christ would do the same thing as me which would be to just kind of keep your head down and uh speak when necessary but ultimately you know um not mind your own business not s yeah not not stir up too much trouble i i guess in the broader scheme even if we could take it like out of this particular like thought experiment i don't think that christ would be reacting in the way that a lot of uh a lot of us christians are reacting to what's going on right now there seems to be like so if we can take it down to like the fundamentals of like how do you discern whether or not something is of god or not one of the peace and calm right so if you feel there's this idea in the eastern tradition that if you have excitability whether it's anger or something like um yeah lust uh excitement oh like there's always a sobriety to the spiritual life that allows us to experience peace and calm if we so choose and if there's anything whether we perceive it as something that's good or bad and it's taking us out of that realm of calm and peace and stability then it's probably not from god which is why we're so big on not entertaining um emotions and these types of imaginations and thoughts while we're praying or when we're worshiping um everything needs to be encompassed by sobriety and if it doesn't then that's when we can be led into deception so i don't know um do me do me a favor i know you're really uncomfortable with these sorts of things but if you were to put a pastor archer on one side and pope francis on the other can you just sort of compare and contrast and the pros and cons of each i know you're not a huge fan of either but just do the pros and cons of each really quickly in the perspective of jesus christ imitating christ prose of pope francis um the prose of pope francis i think would be an overall ethos in the way that he conducts himself very calm very non um controversial in attitude the things that he says are rather controversial at times but if i can say anything about him it is that he does appear to love people that's not to say that pastor art doesn't love people i don't really know him i don't know either of them personally obviously so um just from what i can glean the good things about uh about art is that he um he believes in something he stands for something and so he's going to be vocal about it and there is a time there's a time where we're going to be called to be bold for the faith i think that he's being bold in perhaps things that are not actually indicative or um of of what the faith actually is i think maybe the attention is being focused on areas that aren't really gospel centered so yeah i don't know i i i don't know you didn't do that kind of you didn't do the negative video francis though well i feel like people already know what my take is if they've ever listened the negatives of pope francis is that i i think that in terms of uh faithful catholics uh he does you guys a disservice i i think he puts you guys in a really bad position because you're left with the idea that you either have to um forsake him in order to not be associated with his confusion and his questionable ties to other geopolitical figures um or you have to defend him tooth and nail where everything he says even when it's the most blatantly obviously contradictory thing towards the gospel you're left in a position where you're like well he could have meant this by it which i mean no no leader of this flock is supposed to do that they're supposed to be concise and they're supposed to try and do it in a way that's going to be less divisive and i feel like even though his attitude and his disposition might be gentle he divides the church he divides your guys tradition like crazy i mean there's so much there's so much infighting and you know we see it within the greek church too so um so it's never good we see the royal way in the middle and the left and the right on either side as traps would you say i mean this is pretty obvious i think i know the answer would you say generally speaking pope francis we could put on the left and uh art or on the right is that a fair assessment yeah i would say where would you place where would you place me don't place me on the royal road but if i had to be a little bit left a little bit right a little bit leaning toward pope francis or towards arter or is it a mixed bag with me how do you see me you're you're an enigma because uh you're very faithful to pope francis but you are very very very adamant about some of the same things that art stands for so like even with the whole uh vax thing like your position is so strong in the right side but the way that you defend pope francis is very admirable i wouldn't be able to do it so it's you are kind of a mixed i guess it depends on perhaps it depends on the topic that we're speaking about or whatever but i would place you i guess more on the right i don't know what about your brother he doesn't care aidan i would say aidan's on the royal path okay aidan's on the royal path because he he has a way of like not getting involved with that stuff and maybe to a fault you know he would say that like i'm so ignorant of this and that maybe i shouldn't be but i kind of admire that because uh i have a hard time like disassociating from the whole um debate between right and left myself and it's i've spent years trying to like disengage from the talking points of both sides but i can't help but notice um cases for and against both sides where i'm like oh this is still important like i should invest time and effort into sorting out where i stand but at the same time like this is also what satan wants because while i'm busying myself trying to figure out where i stand i'm being taken away from christ in the meantime so it's not to say that these things aren't important like we should definitely have a position and we should be concerned with things going on on either side but at the same time um where do we draw the line like it's it's very difficult it's very difficult and i don't envy i don't envy pastors or priests at all anybody that's taking care of a flock in in today's world um especially in america i can only speak from the american perspective but i see it in my own congregation where my priest he thank god he's holy because i've seen his own i've talked to him a lot about this kind of stuff and um he walks a tightrope i mean that's that's orthodoxy is walking that tightrope but i mean he really he really has to walk that rope because he's in charge of hundreds of faithful christians who all happen to have different opinions what do you think of the fool for christ um approach have you seen that orthodox film about the i think it's called fool for christ it's about the orthodox monks on an island and there's one guy who's innocent and oh oh the the island yeah then yeah yeah i saw it i wish man did you did you watch that whole movie years ago oh my god oh my goodness re-watch it dude um if we could all be like that right i guess there wouldn't be there that would be there wouldn't be any fools that we were all fools but um that that is like a particular vocation isn't it um yeah very very very admirable this idea of like like having there i forget which fool for christ it was but um there was this one um saint who he was speaking out against like this was at a time of symphonia where church and state were you know working in concordia and um he saw the pomp and the grandeur of a lot of the people that the worshipers in particular that would go into the temple and worship and this was in i think this was inagia sophia and um he would sit out on the steps while people were walking in for lenten services and he would eat chicken in front of them and do stuff like that to make a statement like you guys are all you guys are all a bunch of hypocrites look at you like and just and people thought that he was basically just a beggar who had no idea of the um you know the social status quo that they were supposed to you know they were they were following and they were obeying the commands of christ in the church by being good little participants in the sacraments and um and the lenten struggle and here this guy is and he's eating a chicken yet he's going home every night and he's experiencing the uncreated light and he's one of the most holy people that these people are so unaware that they're they're they're walking in front of such a holy man he he he was experiencing the uncreated light in a way that like the divine darkness it's so imperceptible to these people because they're so um un-illuminated that when they when they see the light literally shining before them they can't even perceive it because they're just so darkened and yet there they are and they're following all the things that you're supposedly supposed to follow as a as an orthodox christian um but yeah i don't know is um what one second i'm looking up a reference here you just bear with me here i can play your song again if you want oh no you're good i don't need to hear myself again um have you heard of uh diogenes the pre-socratic philosopher diogenes he like lived in a barrel he was disheveled and unkempt and uh a great genius i would say sort of like uh he was a man of god sort of thing um before socrates okay but alexander the great you know alexander the great right you must have some affinity for his story yeah which i didn't did you know that he like that he prostrated himself before the uh jewish high priest and like when he like when he visited uh jerusalem to like take it over he had a dream before he went there about the the one true god and when he went he was told in his dream he was going to meet the high priest i forget what the priest's name was if you look it up you'll you'll see it's a very interesting story and he wound up being um a respecter of the true religion which i didn't know about alexander the great because you hear like oh you know he died young and he basically conquered the entire world he accomplished something that nobody had ever accomplished before he was a total uh military genius and whatever but here here we have this guy who's instructing the slaughter of thousands upon thousands of people in the conquering of nations and uh here he is prostrating himself before the representative of god almighty and i didn't know that anyway it's a little factoid little fact to wait for you when you're talking about your your fools for uh fools for christ they're on the on the steps of the church eating the chicken reminded me of diogenes the philosopher who lived in a barrel like a like a homeless person total poverty and uh i guess sort of the eastern uh mystics that sort of vibe like just detachment whatever whatever you might think about that okay but alexander the great you know when i was pumping ceremony and he came up with his retinue and he wanted to meet the great diogenes right and so he stood in front of the barrel and he addressed diogenes and said i am alexander the great what do you want from me because he's willing to give him anything he said if you would please step to the right you're in my sunlight that's what he wanted that's all he wanted can you get out of my son michael can you just get out of the way please that's what he wanted so alexander had to have been humbled by that we would we would hope right but we take ourselves so seriously and these people in their nice clothes with their nice shoes walking up and looking down their nose at the orthodox saint looking down their nose at him and sneering and raising their eyebrows and making a knowing glance to their compatriots as they enter the church and that pride and the the stench of death uh that surrounds these hypocrites no i'm just exaggerating for the sake of uh to make a point here i'm sure there are nice people but and some saints among them but the this whole contrast that we see when we read about any of the great humble saints and how they humble themselves and how they uh goad because speaking of socrates socrates i think was a holy man and he called himself the gadfly because he goaded and pricked the proud all the time just goading and pricking just with a little simple child like observation well what about this or how do you explain that or just how do you define this word what is what is a woman right yeah you're going to be a court in the highest court in the land do you know what a woman is no oh interesting so you know the gadfly the the gold the prod the prick uh they and then and then he was forced to drink poison if i remember correctly right very touching such a thorn in the side yeah very touching story of his trial and death and the the most fascinating thing is very christ-like and if you like peter craven i don't know if you like peter craft or creeped he talks about socrates and jesus and the parallels some of the parallels and socrates at his trial was uh you know he was sort of tolerated and a little bit beloved by some of the jurors and they voted they voted to find him guilty by a narrow margin but after he gave his speeches after having been condemned but before his punishment was given he was asked to defend himself and give a speech before the before the sentencing was given and his his he so annoyed them with his speech that that 49 that wanted to save him now condemned him to death you know they were just like hosanna you know and then crucify him it's like because he annoyed them he annoyed them and this is the way of the saints i think this is the way of the saints and that's why i give a lot of i give give a lot of leeway to people who are obnoxious and people who are uh off-putting and people who maybe rub us the wrong way and maybe they uh be well-dressed with their approach um i think that they're we can expect the unexpected we can be astonished and we can have saints who have warts and that have figurative warts meaning that they've got their own problems and their own quirks but god uses them god's god does draw straight with crooked lines so in the case of uh arter you know i could i could probably if i wanted to i could find all kinds of things to criticize and especially theologically if we have differences which we do lots of things to uh to criticize i can point my finger at him but the the main thing i'm interested in is the his love of christ and his his willingness to suffer for christ and the way that he loves the marginalized and the way the marginalized love him and i mentioned that in the comment to you so i just wanted to mention to you uh this notion of the fool for christ and the fact that the saints and even jesus christ himself is annoying he was annoying those religious hypocrites to no end right yeah sure yeah absolutely so you've got to be yeah you you karen you have to be willing to be annoying and to be a little bit uh obnoxious and a little bit oh well i already succeeded then i guess get yourself a whole chicken and sit on those steps let's see well you got to do it your own way right yeah i already do i already do it my own way i'm too forceful with with with people i'm trying you know edgy you are in the last in the last um you know three years less than yeah three years of you know um moving into the orthodox church i should have just shut my mouth most of the time if not all of the time and now i found so many like-minded people within my own group that i i i can see it's good to have the outlet so that i can say things to people who i know it's not gonna offend and then uh i've i hope i'm getting better at not saying things to people who i'm like oh this will probably offend them but i'm gonna say it anyway so i've had to try and temper that and figure out i should probably pick my battles with with this person or that person and not rock the boat too much but uh it's a work in progress if we think back on your first interview with me have you listened to it recently no i don't want to it's embarrassing i think you think you've made a lot of progress spiritually and i mean you're like well beyond me but um you know it's just the the humility that you have and the you know the wisdom the calmness that peace and you know you're still edgy you still have a hard edge to you which i like i like that uh and i sort of i didn't want to press the issue with uncle mark because i don't want him to pick his favorite okay but i did press just a little bit what do you see and karen what do you see in aiden and you know he gave a little hint he gave little hints yeah yeah uncle mark so everyone growing up or when i was growing up i remember so many people would think that aidan was actually uncle mark's son so like so i'm very similar to my father i'm very very similar to my dad in certain ways okay in like perhaps attitude i guess uh although my dad has very much softened in his edges i think over the years um the way that i'm similar to uncle marky and this is what i would pick up on uh maybe he would disagree but my uncle mark and he didn't let on in your interview but that guy is he that guy is literally um wikipedia in human form he is so intelligent especially when it comes to matters of faith and morals now you were getting more into the personal side of his faith journey which i appreciated the whole interview was fantastic it was and i'm not saying it maybe it's because he's my uncle but i feel like even if he wasn't my uncle and i listened to it i would have enjoyed that interview just as much and i feel like that was one of your best interviews yeah because uncle mark he has a tendency to say things that are just so profound that it like it just it just hits you like a ton of bricks like what even when he was speaking about this contrast and this inner turmoil as a child of having to go to confession and not being able to say the things that he's actually done and then seeing his siblings go up and receive the eucharist and him saying what am i going to do i'm not just going to sit here and um and not receive the eucharist like these things where it's like i identify with that i can i can pick out times in my life where those types of things were very much a part of my story and it was an extreme struggle somebody who myself he and i share addiction together that's another character trait that he and i have where we have these proclivities towards substances and things that are addictive that maybe are outside of the realm of material substance that we really had to fight against and that we have to continuously fight against in our walk with christ where mark says these things that i'm like oh my gosh that that really hits home but he thinks a lot a lot like i do in terms of um scrutinizing um political conflicts within the church he and i have had long conversations about pope francis and vatican ii and all these things and um he's very i mean just even just talk to that guy about maliki martin for like okay five minutes okay and you will get an idea of the depth of how uh of of of how deep he is when it comes to just uh the catholic church in general like he is so smart it's crazy uh but his his his humor his his uh emotions the way that he promotes yeah the way that they talk i mean it's it it is insane it's really so yeah um and and aiden aiden had a lot more one-on-one time with uncle marky uh growing up than i did i think because i was rather believe it or not i was rather timid when it came to people outside of the immediate family for some reason except for with my except for with my nenen i never felt uncomfortable around my uncle mark or uncle mike or uncle simon or any of them it's just that um there was a time where a lot of a lot of things felt surface and i think that because aiden was an open book and wore his heart on his sleeve um growing up and still does um he's not there's not enough there's not a fear of being vulnerable and so aiden and uncle marky connected on such a strong level that it was um it was good for their it blossomed into this relationship that they have now and i wish that i hadn't been such a little you know p word when i was growing up because i would have um i would have engendered a little bit more of that too where i would have been clamoring for more of a relationship with some of these members of my family who i remember like when mark first listened to um my first interview with you he he said to my dad i had no idea that kieran even knew any of this stuff i had no idea that karen was even searching with this stuff that's really cool why don't i know this about him wow and then i'd so i'd say within the last couple years we've gotten at least a little bit closer than perhaps we would have as kids but um yeah i don't know he's uh he's just a wonderful human he has such a he just has such a good heart and actually really honestly i think it's because like with my dad it's harder to notice because of always around my dad my dad is very much the same way but all of his siblings are like that they all just have such a good disposition and they all have their little strengths and weaknesses and um but just all around just really really beautiful people and that all comes from my grandmother that all comes from netan um you know she imparted her little gifts to all of them and they all have their little strengths and and their emulations of of this aspect of then and in this aspect and then even hearing some of the things about my grandad um like i knew that he i knew that he lived with the vicar of the anglican church but like i didn't know that he like i didn't know that when they moved to america that um he was a regular attendee at an episcopalian church and only left the church when you know that that pastor had left or whatever like i had no idea of any of that stuff i didn't know that that guy was uh was was colleagues with uh bishop spong because mark and i have had many conversations about bishop spong i used to listen to debates between bishop spong and uh and um um uh walter martin i'm always familiar with yeah yeah um kingdom of the cults and i used to love even before even when i was a catholic i listened to walter martin and i thought man this guy is taking bishop spong to task this is awesome and the one thing that irked me even more than the questioning of the physical resurrection of christ was the idea that paul might be a closeted homosexual which is why he wrote against uh you know homosexuality in in romans and there was a whole debate around this kind of stuff with uh with walter martin yeah what's up buddy yeah you want to put on your construction outfit okay let's stay out of the way of the camera though there you go buddy you want me to buckle it up for you yeah okay can you go take measurements okay go measure the carpet for me all right love you he's okay he he yeah his new things are costumes he really likes costumes and being a construction worker he showed up on one of my job sites yesterday with my wife because she had to come and drop something off at a job site and she had him with him and uh it was really cool his eyes just like lit up when he got to the job site wow and he's like whoa this is what dad's doing that's funny very cool go play but yeah yeah bishop spong what a guy did you hear i i guess he didn't hear the whole interview with art yesterday but he um [Music] uh was it yesterday was the day before i interview i guess it was yesterday today saturday yeah so um i mentioned the former archbishop of canterbury this anglican or church of england guy who recently tony what's his name what's his name or william's son or williams or something like that let's see did he die arch bishop of canterbury i'll just give me one second here friends sacred there you go buddy lord lord williams anyway he he said it's becoming transgender is a sacred journey and so i knew i knew art would take exception with that language and with that notion but the church really has fallen hard and fast away from the uh apostolic church right and uh it's sad to see so when we hear about spong when you tell me about spong it doesn't really surprise me too much although that was decades ago right that was dec that was i mean he was causing controversy back in the late 70s and 80s um yeah i mean but i mean again like just like you said you fall away from the apostolic faith what do you expect i mean an anglicanism there seems to be um there's an uptick in people converting to either catholicism or orthodoxy out of protestantism and there a lot of people on their journey they kind of they kind of poke their head in the door of the anglican church because they see they do see tradition they see redeemable things about it but the problem is is that there doesn't seem to be an ecclesiastical um structure which can hold back some of the broad spectrum things where you really you see you see the right and the left in spades within the anglican church uh you can go from one church to the next one down the street from the other and one once teaching about the sacred journey of uh i guess yeah transitioning and then you can find another one that is as conservative as conservative can be so you know um [Music] yeah what i mean what do you expect i suppose you don't have the mysteries of the church i wanna i wanna bounce an idea off you that i've been meditating on i hope you don't mind it has to do with uh ecumenism and the way that i see ecumenism um you'll let me know right if you have to go yeah yeah yeah what time is it um i got i got a little bit you got a little bit of time yeah that's for sure um here i am so i wanna i wanna get your perspective because i know you'll be honest with me but um the idea is that i'll just walk you through the sort of thought experiment that i go through as a meditation so let's say you're on a city bus do you ever take public transportation no or you go to the mall or grocery store no i don't you go to the grocery store yeah i do often is he okay sorry if you hear banging around yeah he picked up his toy piano and just dropped it on the floor god so let's say let's just say you're uh standing in line at the grocery store okay okay and um yeah you want me to turn it on for you yes okay you want to take that to the living room buddy okay don't break it anymore please take your time with your little guy he's your top priority there yeah he's good he just wanted me to turn his piano for him cute cute so you're at the grocery store you're standing in line you're just you're just thinking about all these human beings that are around you like there might be 30 or 50 human beings around you and so just in your head you say well i know hell is real it's eternal and sadly humans can go there there are some people that go there and some of these people that are around me right now may end up in hell that's the reality i am saddened by that but that's reality i accept reality that's the justice and mercy of god praise god thank god okay so then you just in your mind's eye you say well just randomly i'm going to just pick out x number of people here that are around me myself included i'm a candidate too some of us a certain number are going to end up in hell so you mark them with a black dot okay in your mind's eye they are designated for hell and the everyone else everyone else that's there you need a chewy bar okay are you hungry buddy you've been eating all morning okay this is the last one is [Music] [Laughter] [Music] black dot so so everyone else that's not marked as a reprobate everyone else guess what they are going to end up in heaven right so the ecumenical idea of this meditation is that if you're not going to end up in hell you are a member of jesus christ and his church period i don't care what you say and there are three ways of looking at i've mentioned this to you before but i just want you to meditate on a little bit more you have the full members that are in the state of grace and have the faith you have those people that have the faith but are not in the state of grace currently and then you have those people that are just potential members that don't even have the faith they don't they're not certainly not in the state of grace so i want you to just sort of uh reflect on this this is my model now of ecumenism and uh i'm i have a lot of hope a lot of uh energy that comes to me a lot of peace a lot of joy that comes to me because of this fact that that old muslim there is a member of christ in his church that sweet old lady there anglican woman she's a member of the church of christ that little baby there that's a member of the church of christ and they may be at the first step the second step or the third step right now it doesn't matter it doesn't matter so it takes a lot of pressure off me about that fire and brimstone thing like you're you're gay you're going to hell you're a thief you're going to hell these sorts of things some of the protestant uh westboro baptist church and these sorts of things they can get up on their podium and they can look down their nose at people and or you can look down on your nose at that orthodox saint eating the chicken on the steps right um it frees us from that this meditation frees us from that uh what do you think of this approach that i've been dabbling with i think it's a good one i mean this is essentially what the church teaches right which is that we know where grace is but we don't know where grace is we we don't know where grace isn't necessarily we can't we can't say we know what the physical bounds are you said similar things to this before in that everybody who dies and um if they end up in heaven they're catholic right because one way or another they're going to accept the dogmas and the teachings of the chur of the church and i would hold to the same position but obviously from the the orthodox one correct um i think that that's a very holistic way of looking at ecumenism what i see happening with ecumenism the idea of ecumenism is good but it what it is is that true humanism is that the the conforming of one to the church whereas the ecumenism that i see largely speaking happening today is a conforming of the church to the people and rather than having people meet the ideal having people follow the ideal which is christ and his church and his teachings and all of these things um in you know wholesale you see a departure in order to meet people on their level like i was listening to something yesterday or perhaps the day before in terms of the um the covet thing and this idea of using multiple spoons for communion right and this was a big controversy in the orthodox church in certain jurisdictions thank god we didn't experience this in our church but all that to say there was this idea of well people don't have enough faith people don't have enough faith to um trust that using the same spoon is not going to get them sick and the question is why do you why do we need to uh go down to the level of people's faith if it's weak we should be calling them to a higher level of faith we shouldn't be calling them we shouldn't be calling the church down off the the the heights of where god expects us to be in order to um in order to to subjugate the church for these people this is something that you still have to call people in love but there's an expectation there you know we don't lower the faith for other people people conform to the faith and if you broaden that out in terms of ecumenism why can't we all just hold hands why can't we all just accept these things we can agree to disagree and on these parts and then we can agree on the rest of it faith doesn't work like that the church is not cut up into small pieces nothing about the church can be divided so if you say that over here we have these separated people and over here we have these other separated people but they're all part of the same body if you if you cut off your arm you're no longer a full human being anymore you take everything you take everything whole and so the problem i see with ecumenism today is that um it sends the opposite message of what relic humanism is and the flip side of that is that we don't beat people into submission god gives us free will so i'm not going to hate the the jew or the muslim on the street because they have a different faith than me but certainly i'm not going to say that these things don't matter and certainly i'm not going to say that because they lack the actual faith the fullness of the faith that they're automatically damned to hell there's the other side of it that says and i say this rather frequently too that um you know to whom much is given much is expected so in one sense yeah we might be in a privileged position because we're within the ark of salvation but if we don't do anything with that we're worse off than the people that never had the faith to begin with so i worry about myself in terms of am i on my way to hell or am i on my way to heaven maybe even more so than the person that doesn't have christ at all because they're working with what god has gifted them and they're using their free will in order to navigate that and um you know i'm convinced that i've been given the fullness of the truth and so i better i better follow it so it's a fine line for sure and um this has been a point of contention within my own family where i remember my mother-in-law had asked me so what so you think that i'm going to go to hell because i'm not part of the orthodox church and i just said when did i ever say that i never said that i never said that it doesn't logically follow that because the orthodox church is the true church that if you're outside of it that there's no hope for you there's always hope there's always hope in fact it's only god's grace that even brings you to the initial point of enlightenment to even begin entry into the church so i have no bearing on your salvation whatsoever i have i mean insofar as um i'm not your judge i have no i have no right to speak on any one per person's particular salvation i can look at things and say oh i really hope that they repent but at the same time i don't even know maybe they did and maybe maybe that fruit is just not being witnessed by me for whatever reason because i don't have the eyes to see it or like you said having that ability to look at the the person that annoys you or whatever and you haven't uh it helps you to give them the benefit of the doubt um i would hope to adapt the same type of mentality for anybody else that i see exteriorly is not part of the church but perhaps is going to be part of the church is going to find their way to salvation and we're all in heaven or hell right now anyway anyway right so i mean at a certain level um in the end like what helps me is um i don't fret about i don't fret about other people's salvation because um i have to be so preoccupied with myself um you know everybody's on their own journey and i hope to god that they come to the royal path um but in the meantime i have to focus on myself because i know any any one given day whoops are you gonna rejoin here let's see if he comes back [Applause] [Music] [Laughter] [Music] listen to that over and over again what's up sorry aidan called me what oh go get your wifeys to get your wifeys anyway all that to say um all that to say you know i i don't know but i think it's a nice i think what you do i think what you did there with that thought experiment you can't find it no honey they're on the they're on the thing um my son's nose just anyway what do you think david you can go you can go find the thing your son needs i'm sure you can find it for him yeah i got it is this what you need is this what you need okay yeah wipe it off now you're not picking your lip are you okay don't pick your lip buddy i'm back he's good little guy he just needed yeah he just needed some some booger wipes and he needs he needs his two bars chewy bars your brother phoned you yeah he just tried facetiming me and i actually i went to i went to i went to deny it and i accidentally accepted it i did the opposite of what i was trying to do um do you have another five minutes for me yeah i do i do okay uh what i'm tr what i tried to get out of uh pastor art i didn't get much out of i got a little bit out of them but i didn't get much out of him i want you i don't know how much you know but what little you do know can you please share with me about the 12 apostles um we know about paul we know about peter we know about andrew and john we know you know five or six we know five or six sort of pretty exciting stories can you talk about some of the lesser known ones uh have you learned a lot in your uh orthodox training about some of the lesser-known apostles i don't want to hear so much about judas iscariot but um my favorites uh one of my favorites is philip because my conversion story he played a role in that he said just show us the father that's that's good enough you know that'll suffice and he he has some interesting moments in the gospel so i'm really attracted by uh phillip and um [Music] uh ju jew is it jude hold on no no who are the two guys not jude no who are the two guys that have the same name one is the brother of the lord james oh james yeah yeah james james who lester and james the greater the one who wrote the epistle that's the lesser uh no i don't think anyway the one who wrote the epistle i really really really love him because of his epistle blows my mind every time i read i just love it um you know doubting thomas i like him too i got a certain uh affinity toward him can you just sort of try to flesh it out because i've been i've been christian now for uh years but i'm not getting fleshed out some of these lesser-known apostles can you just help me and try to flesh it out some of them no no i'm i'm totally ignorant too uh isn't that terrible why is that why why are we not getting this i don't know you know and it's funny because like uh as catholics and orthodox we have a very rich tradition outside of scripture that talks about the hagiography of these saints and we're the apostolic or the apostolic but we don't know enough about the apostles isn't that something yeah dude i don't know um because uh james the brother of jesus wasn't even technically an apostle because he didn't even believe in christ until after his resurrection so i i don't know and thomas didn't he end up he went to india and established a church in india and stuff that's like all i know and i know all of them were martyred except for saint john of course um okay let's put it this way to you let's put it this way too we we need we need we need a great saint today to come and help us with the with the apostles or maybe it's not important maybe that's why right maybe it's not important but um just rank uh your top three or your top five like would you put paul above peter or peter above paul or would you put john or like how do you how do you see them okay so st paul is probably my favorite out of all the apostles and i only say this because without saint paul we wouldn't have like we wouldn't have like a third of the new testament and um and the guy's a genius and uh he's got the head he's got the heart he has he has everything right and like he has he he you know he was a he was an apostle born out of time he says or whatever right um but it's just so funny like i just like it because god uses the unexpected to bring the truth to people and saint paul is a perfect encapsulation of that because he went from being a distrusted persecutor of the christians who spent three years in in arabia um basically what we would say is practicing hezekiah and learning learning the gospel from christ himself before even going out and preaching it to anybody and then even then when he goes to jerusalem and meets the other apostles they're so like i don't know about him and then he winds up being um you know highly respected by all of the apostles and the the the the christian church as a whole so his story is beautiful and yeah like he said he has like he has everything he's the head the heart he has the courage he has uh he has christ i mean he experienced heaven before he even you know was martyred um and then saint peter wrote about some of the most fundamental doctrines of of of orthodoxy you know being partakers of the divine nature like if that's not the gospel then nothing is the gospel and saint peter happens to be the person that that wrote about it and you can see a flawed character within peter that's i guess a little bit more readily available to witness than it is with some of the other apostles because he was so important because he was the one that he's spoken about more in the gospels in terms of the apostles than any of the other ones by far and he's always highlighted first and so of course you're gonna see his mistakes as much as you're going to see all of his triumphs and uh just a beautiful example of the faith um and then james wrote an amazing epistle um but i like what i like though too about peter is that he even he he makes things clear in terms of like he he must have had the gift of foresight because he talks about how people use paul's words to twist to their own destruction and what do we see saint paul uh you know is abused more than any other because of his writings uh to come up with all sorts of fantastic heresies and these types of things and peter's like yeah let's not let's not do that and he's already calling he's already pointing um pointing us to the idea that you need the apostles in order to even understand what scripture is because he says paul's words are scripture right but he's making a bold claim that a person that's living right then is literally writing the words of god down and peter so peter's giving us a perfect example of you need the church to recognize what actually is tradition because scripture itself is is a part of tradition it comes from the tradition of the church and he makes that pretty clear on how you can get away from that um yeah i mean well you should what i would say i just want to interrupt you i just want to interrupt you to say that if you haven't seen jesus of nazareth the movie i've been plugging it in my recent videos because i watched it recently it's a four-part thing you can find it on bit shoot for free jesus of nazareth produced in the 60s or don't know anyway beautiful beautiful beautiful beautiful beautiful movie and the scene the scene if you watch nothing else watch the scene where jesus recruits saint peter okay and then the most important part is where peter you know he's very gruff and and skeptical and he is brought into the house of matthew the tax collector of the center all the horrors are there all the luxury all the decadence and all the godlessness is apparent there in the house of rich matthew and the hatred of saint peter for saint matthew is amazing to watch the the actors that they hired are amazing most of them and the way that jesus christ transformed saint peter in that in that meeting with matthew and the love between peter and matthew in that scene is just heartbreaking you just have to watch it you have to watch it all right uh it bro it brought to life a little scene was there artistic license probably whatever i don't care i don't care artistic license that's fine but it's like a lot of the pious legends in our traditions it doesn't really matter it doesn't really matter truth the truth is there the truth is there yeah dude have you watched the chosen no okay you've heard about the chosen right this sounds vaguely familiar what is it okay it started during the pandemic it's this protestant director he's a really really nice guy he started out he made a movie for his church about the nativity and it became so popular that he did an entire series of jesus um appointing the apostles and it's in two seasons now it's on youtube well it used to be on youtube no no most of it's still on youtube uh you can watch it for free it's amazing um and they take artistic license with things they even make matthew like an autistic person kind of becau