so just wait till it goes live here again okay yeah so it looks like we're back and the stream health is excellent so i don't know what the issue was there but uh we're back all right cool definitely demons i'll keep that first part as a separate little teaser thing talking about your monastery experience so um do you want to remind me a little bit about um the orthodox church like there's the oca in america there's the greek there's the russian they're all kinds of different churches um are you like are you fixed into one particular group or can you move around or what is the deal with that um so i personally am fixed into the to the greek church just because that's where i first went and that's where i that's where i came into a very loving and um established community but if if uh if i so chose i could go to any other church whether it be serbian or bulgarian or you know russian antiochian oca what have you and i would be able to commune typically it's like it's a rule of thumb that you should get a blessing before you do that i mean your priest typically isn't going to care but you're going to want to get a blessing because you'll want to have your priest call on your behalf to whatever church it is you're planning on going to um so that they can say yeah they're in good standing with the church they can commune with you because um i mean you're not going to find that's not it's not a it's not like a for every situation but that should be done but some priests you know they get lacks and they don't care whatever but if i were to go visit another church i would call ahead of time and say hey if you want to check with my spiritual father to see that i'm able to commune then you can do that um so yeah that that would be the typical rule of thumb would be if i wanted to go to another church whatever and then if i wanted to ultimately like transfer churches there's really not much involved with it um should obviously get a blessing from your spiritual father and then if you for whatever reason don't get a blessing from your spiritual father to do that you can go you can go above him but typically speaking if they're gonna stop you from doing that then there's a pretty good reason behind it so for instance one of my friends from church during he he has a little girl who she has a medical condition she can't wear masks and you know we kind of all none of us buy the narrative so he was just very frustrated with what the bishop in our particular jurisdiction was mandating as far as uh church restrictions during the pandemic so he ended up going to a church that was a lot more lacks with it so he went from enunciation which is my church which is uh under the um ecumenical patriarch so it's a greek church not to be confused with the normative greek church the ecumenical patriarch has the areas within america and they rule from constantinople or istanbul but he went to a russian church so he basically got a blessing from the spiritual father to do that and then just started going there and he basically hasn't been back since because he fell in love with the the russian parish that he's at so um yeah i could i could essentially do that and that kind of plays into um the whole issue of what do you do if your bishop is telling you to do something heretical um that's kind of the nature of the decentralized governmental system within the orthodox church in which if one of the patriarchates is doing something or trying to demand something that is non-canonical then you're under no obligation to stay there you can go to one of the other orthodox jurisdictions that are teaching preaching and enforcing canonical church teaching so uh kevin has instances in history where that's happened quite a bit actually so you know i i've been talking by email with a couple of uh my catholic friends that i met through the podcast and uh whenever i ask them to come on and talk about uh covet related stuff they always say no no no i don't want to and i i'm not sure if it's because it's too controversial or because they could actually have major consequences at work with their employer or or what the deal is but um yeah it seems like people are a little bit too shy gun shy on that uh on that issue but you you seem more relaxed about it voicing your opinions yeah well i mean you know first of all my boss is my mother-in-law and she's on the same page as me so if she were to see this i don't have to worry about getting canned or something because of it um but i've kind of you know there was this huge um kickback reaction against the lockdowns that was definitely justified and i was definitely part of that camp where i was very angry and just couldn't believe all of the the lies that were coming out to try and bolster this narrative that we need to basically be shut-ins and especially for me at that time when it initially happened in january and february of 2020 that's when i was really getting into the swing of the orthodox church that was about a year a little less than a year before being baptized so we were entering the lenten season and i was really excited for it and the church shut down and i wasn't able to experience any of the lenten season or the beautiful services that the church offers during that time so i was pretty salty about it and uh over time dude i think not only has it been a matter of just being so ground down by everybody talking about kovid whether it be on the mainstream narrative side or on the conspiratorial side i'm just so i don't want to say lethargic to it anymore i know that it what i believed before about it being a lie is true but i just don't see the need to dwell on it as much but of course you know kind of comes up in conversation quite a bit so i try and i try and mitigate the amount of time that i spend thinking about it or looking into it so i don't have a problem talking about it but i'm definitely not one of the people that's going to go into the ins and outs because i've spent countless hours just researching it and the vaccines and yeah the whole mess dude but my home praise god dude my whole family is like not on board with any of it so i mean i i think some people are still worried about it because now we have the whole vaccine narrative and i don't have to worry about it because my family's not stupid so they just kind of and forgive me for anybody that got the vaccine i'm not saying you're stupid if you got it i'm just saying that nobody in our family is putting faith in this vaccine and uh so it hasn't been a point of contention within our family so i really don't have to think about it as much i'm sad for people that feel the need to do it but at the same time if it's not people that are directly related to me and that i don't have contact with all the time it's easier for me to be less sympathetic or worried about it than i would be if it were my wife or my mother-in-law that were falling for it but thank god they're both very hip to what's going on so yeah yeah uh we're gonna continue even though the signal is poor i don't know what's going on the stream status is poor i think it's like a very bizarre i think it's it's probably a spiritual thing yeah i wonder i mean i don't have my wi-fi on it is it coming bad and not my end no no okay no okay it's the google meet is is smooth it's just youtube is bugging out but uh it's more than likely it's uh democracy we were talking about cv dude shouldn't be doing that yeah yeah i know all my stuff through david youtube doesn't like that stuff but uh yeah i mean uh there's nothing really to be said because uh people are adults and they can they can evaluate they can make their own choices and uh decide if you're pro-li pro-life pro-choice or whatever um well we could say more about the irony in that yeah my body my choice right but i've always i've always said that i'm pro-choice even with abortion i just want people to make the right choice because there's no merit or blame like there's no praise or blame possible there's no merit your choice is not free so you have to make a free choice one way or the other i just want people to make the right choice right always i choose always choose for life so i did watch on bit shoot a couple of videos of orthodox priests preaching against the lockdowns and the vaccines and stuff like that but i haven't really seen i haven't really seen the same from uh catholic priests or bishops but there might there might be a couple out there i just haven't discovered them but uh if you know of any send me links uh i know they might i mean it gets really dicey when you get into that territory i found a lot i found some good videos of orthodox priests from different jurisdictions speaking out against it but sadly enough i mean they didn't do it without flack from you know the bishopric within their i mean there's there's been some bishops and archbishops that have spoken at like georgia's been very very very hardcore against it since the beginning but they're hardcore against everything they're hardcore against the lgbt and the whole pride month thing i mean but i mean within the within certain jurisdictions there have been priests that have been suspended for speaking out against it by their local bishops or whatever um now i'm not saying that you know they haven't been defrocked or anything like that there's no grounds for it but the same problems that you see in the catholic church um you're gonna see in any church so i mean we we definitely have a lot of zealous and really godly priests and bishops and stuff but you know there's bad eggs in there too and i actually i don't know if i've seen because i've uh you know my family's hardcore catholic so um my uncle mark for instance he's like on top of that stuff so he'll send us videos every now and again and there was one priest that spoke out against the president and and basically said don't come to my parish because i'm not going to convene you i'd imagine that even if he didn't necessarily preach about the whole cv 19 thing that he probably has the same views and opinions that we do and i can send you that i forget what his name is but his his one homily that he gave in regards to what's going on right now it was pretty intense very good very very good oh yeah someone did send me one early on about a guy uh giving a very impassioned speech just uh i think he was a diocesan priest so it might have been the same one yeah yeah this guy was a diocesan priest the one that i'm talking about and there i mean you know it's i'm sure there's probably i'd like to think that there's more from all of the different traditions that are speaking out against it that maybe just are being silenced a little bit more so maybe maybe that has something to do with it i'm gonna i'm gonna say that that's the case because it makes me feel better but i don't you know what i mean you know when christ was tried illegally in the middle of the night and then crucified and all that um there there's a tradition among the saints that if anything had impeded that pathway to the ultimate sacrifice on the there would have been workarounds applied to make sure that it happened like contingencies and for example if the soldiers refused to nail hammer the nails in that mary yourself would have picked up the hammer nails and finished the job herself right yeah so um i'm wondering if the covid crisis you know whatever the reality is by a weapon or whatever it is uh like i make no claims about what's going on i just think it's ridiculous whatever it is um but is it this i'm wondering spiritually if it's the same sort of thing like the end times there are certain things that have to come about in the end times jesus says there are things that have to come about so there's no point i don't go to protest i don't really speak out about it other than with my friends um right i'm just wondering if it needs to be ushered in by those high up in the those in the orthodox churches other churches they need to sort of facilitate the end times does that seem reasonable or would you automatically see bad apples and bad actors in the churches well i mean i think that throughout the ages since the time of christ ascension there obviously john says that um you know they went out from us because they were never really of us and we all also know we're warned countless times throughout the new testament that wolves are going to come creeping in and that's been the case since i mean think about like think about saint athanasius like the time that he lived in probably felt like the end too with the aryan heresy and how he and only a handful of other bishops were actually preaching and teaching the orthodox faith and you had so many of the bishops from the major jurisdictions that were teaching heresy so i try and compare it to times in history like that where it's like very very intense this has more of a cosmic scope perhaps which maybe that should apply that to athanasius too because obviously when you're talking about christ everything is cosmic but there seems to be something in that things are kind of just unfolding the way that they're supposed to even if we can't necessarily see the good in it or i mean we look at things from such an earthly perspective that um seeing all the turmoil within the church it really makes you think like well why is this happening what's going on but i don't know i kind of take my dad's approach to it where it's just like yeah everything and god's totally sovereign so um as long as i keep my mind focused on christ that's all that really has to happen he's gonna protect me as long as i'm repenting and i'm i'm communing with him that's all i have to do my priest is very big on this you know he's very much like you know it very well could be the end he said but who cares it's your end anyhow yeah i mean we're gonna we're gonna i could die tomorrow so i'm gonna have my own personal apocalypse at the most within the next you know 60 years or something like that so what am i going to what am i going to do then i need to always regardless of whether or not the apocalypse is at our front door or at 60 years down the line my mind needs to constantly be focused on christ and repentance and prayer for those around me who still don't have jesus yet because i'm going to be held to account especially you know to whom much is given much is expected so uh uh i'm i'm in a privileged position i don't mean that to sound boastful but the church is in a very privileged position and her members are within a you know they're in a very privileged position where if you don't if you're exposed to this stuff and you believe it and you don't do anything about it you're screwed so i just kind of look at it like that i mean and then from the orthodox perspective there have been many saints throughout the church uh contemporary saints who have talked about 2025 being a very big year for the entire world the church as a whole the upper echelons of the clergy being shaken up and completely disturbed because of all the corruption that has crept in um yeah and so we just you can speculate on all those things and you can i hold those things very highly because they come from very very saintly men but i also um just kind of keep my head down at least try to and just keep pushing forward and repentance and that's really all i can do so uh if it ever came to a vaccine passport to get the sacraments there's always going to be an underground uh church right yes absolutely and and thank god i mean we've already had this uh discussion within the um within multiple jurisdictions like for instance the antioquia and jurisdiction they've come out multiple times and said it wouldn't you will not be forced this is not canonical many monasteries they were trying to go that route even on mount athos which is the pinnacle of orthodox spirituality they were trying a veto petty and a couple other monasteries there to say that the monks have to be vaccinated and uh one of my one of my he's an acquaintance he's he's starting to become a friend he just came back from mount alto man atos he was uh he's an athenite student he goes to the school over there he's learning greek and he's very very intelligent such a sweet guy he's probably my age and he uh he was keeping us in the loop while he was on mount atlas and telling us hey this is what's going on uh and just after he came back it was decided that they were not going to force vaccines on any of the monks if they didn't want to so praise god for that but you know anything could happen so there's always going to be there's always going to be something to wear um you know we have it we have an option we're not going to be stuck basically we'll have somewhere to go we have somewhere to go so and uh what was i gonna ask you about next oh yeah your um ladder of divine ascent or whatever the book was called you you're gonna do something with that weren't you and your brother yeah but you know what eden and i are procrastinators so uh actually funny enough i i i started and i i showed you that my youtube channel changed to orthodoxy and the religion of today i think i told you a little bit about what our plan was for that myself and my buddy george we were gonna start this um weekly podcast slash youtube thing in regards to father seraphim rose's book orthodoxy and the religion of the future that was written in 75 and uh much of the stuff he talked about then people were like rolling their eyes like what the heck is this dude talking about because he gets into the alien agenda he gets into pentecostalism and the false spirits and that i mean he just breaks down all of the modern day heresies of his time new age spirituality but these things at that time were much and largely on the fringe so people were kind of like i don't father seraphim i don't think that's going to be a huge deal and then he passes away he proposes an 82 and look where we're at now so you go back and read the book and you're like dude this book must have been written yesterday because this thing is so prophetic so anyway our idea was to take this book and do orthodoxy in the religion of today and sort of continue the story as to if father seraphim were alive today the books that this guy would be writing in the the the sermons and the talks that he would be giving on the state of the world i mean you know god only knows what he would be saying about everything so we did that we talked we talked to um we might george my good friend uh we both have the same spiritual father so we went to him and uh we did not receive a blessing for it yet we are okay we're we're praying about it and um we're gonna we're gonna revisit it sometime in the future so it's you know it's just a big no-no you don't do anything without a blessing from your from your spiritual father because it's pretty much bound to to uh not go so well so as long as we have his blessing then we'll start doing that but obedience first so we'll do that when when the time's right and the original idea with the divine ascent the latter what is that yeah it's on the shelf that would be more or less the same deal i would want a blessing to do that and uh father hector was like so what do you think of the latter kieran and i was like father i don't i don't get any of this like i don't know the more i read it i was like this is so uh this is so rich it's like you know three to ten pages at most per step but dude you can reread the same step 50 times and be like wait did i read that already because it's just so it's so it's just so theologically deep and it's so uh it would just i would screw it up i would just screw it up because i'm an idiot so it's one of those things or it was more of an intimidation thing i before i realized the importance of of receiving a blessing to do something like that i realized that i shouldn't do this just simply on the grounds that i'm not qualified to do it so yeah so uh what else is on your mind these days i know you have a lot going on in your personal life i don't know how much you want to share the challenges and all that sort of thing or if that's too much for too hot for two no no i won't uh i i want you to i'll share mostly about my own personal uh health stuff but um so i'll share a tiny bit about what's going on with my wife but i want to be respectful to her um but so she and i did find out that we were pregnant um again about five weeks ago and um it's just heading in the wrong direction and so right now we're pretty much in the midst of a miscarriage um there it was a big surprise that she was pregnant we didn't think that it was even going to be possible without her going back on metformin and some other hormonal things we had to she had to eat a special diet and do all these things prior to our getting pregnant with our son oliver and so we just we just thought well you know when we want another kid we'll have to go through all that again because of her you know her health condition it's not very feasible that she'll get pregnant without having a very attuned kind of uh and direct support behind it as to like this is very intentional we have to eat properly we have to take the right medication etc etc but we she got pregnant and we were just like blown away by it and she knew she was pregnant like a week before she was due and she was like i'm pregnant i was like no you're not she's like we need to go get a test we went and got the test and literally within two seconds she was like yep i told you i'm pregnant so the whole thing was like we were like wow this is like miraculous my wife was very scared because we weren't sure that you know how we're going to do this financially etc but we were just ecstatic after it was the same deal as oliver we had to go and get certain uh medication to keep her hormone levels regulated and increasing and they just weren't and we thought we thought almost immediately within the first two weeks that it was actually what's called a blighted ovum where your body thinks that it's pregnant but the egg never got implanted we were very surprised because we had two ultrasounds where we didn't see the baby nor did we see a heartbeat we just saw the sack and the yolk sac and then we were like well she was experiencing a lot of cramping and stuff and it just wasn't normal and so we were basically preparing for the worst even the doctors were like yeah dude that's a miscarriage it's probably a blighted ovum non-viable pregnancy and then we went to just go get the last ultrasound to make sure that her levels were still going down and the sack was shrinking and much our surprise the baby was there kicking beating the heart was going at a normal rate it was just like it went from nothing to just like oh the sack everything is there the baby's there we were just so blown away by it and then pushing on further things just kind of went downhill a couple ultrasounds each ultrasound got a little bit more concerning the sac wasn't growing properly the gestational sac but the baby was just continuing to grow and get bigger and so now we're at 10 weeks and she's started not to get gross but she started bleeding and stuff and with the tests that they've run they it's pretty much it's either it's either a miscarriage uh it's the start of a miscarriage um or a miscarriage can last up to three weeks sometimes so it might be the middle of the miscarriage or it's what's called uh triploidy which is when the baby gets an extra set of chromosomes from one of the parents and it creates all of these defects within the child to where it's almost impossible to carry them to term if you get past the second trimester you'll probably be forced into labor within the second trimester and the baby will most likely be a stillborn it's so rare actually that there's only 50 cases in the entire known history of this thing to where a baby has survived outside of the womb and even that they usually only survive for like a day or two so uh so right now we're really just praying that it's not that because if that's the case it's very dangerous for adrian she could die from it because it creates a lot of hemorrhaging which she already had with oliver so she's very susceptible to that and also the baby there's it's it's just would be insurmountable suffering for the baby because once they start feeling pain i mean they have so many defects it's just it's almost impossible for them to like their lungs don't function properly they get spina bifida their heads are deformed it's very very sad so we're kind of we're kind of dealing with that right now painful i'm very sorry for that my sister died after just after birth from spina bifida well the doctors actually terminated her but uh yeah that's uh tragic it's uh let's hope it doesn't go that way and uh let's hope and pray for the best and uh everyone's healthy and uh i don't know if there's a miracle that could happen where the baby could be viable and healthy i don't know if the miracle could happen like that but anyway i mean god can yeah so we're just i think we've had it's been so she's 10 weeks so we've had five weeks to really sit and gestate on the whole thing and um we've had a lot of crying and emotional ups and downs with the whole thing we're just so my wife is physically exhausted at this point she's never been more tired in her life but we're both just very mentally and emotionally and spiritually drained to where it's like we're kind of numb to it at this point you know so um now that it's actually happening we've been bracing for a miscarriage for at least four of the five weeks we've known she's pregnant so now that we have it all but confirmed that she is miscarrying we're just kind of like well we've cried all the tears that would be uh affixed to a miscarriage so now it's kind of like now that we know it's there i don't want to say it's a relief but it's just like well at least we have an answer because this whole time we've been left in the dark with it we didn't really know what was going on so we're kind of uh at least just relieved that we're starting to get some answers with it and we're just praying that it goes as best as it can yeah yeah heavy stuff heavy stuff yeah so and then um so so for me um i have this one is not as concerning to me my wife was pretty freaked out by it but um so for a number of years now three or four years i've had this big lump on my back okay it started it started out i don't even remember the day that i noticed it but i just remember searing pain on my back right next to my spine and i just let it go i haven't been to a doctor and like like for a checkup in like 10 years um i just don't go to the doctors and i was like uh it'll go away on its own and it never did and it hurt really really bad and um i went to go get it checked out a year or two ago by my my family care physician and he was like that's just assist dude we can cut it out in the office but by that point it was really big and it was gross and i was like don't cis usually have this characteristic and this characteristic and he was like yeah and i was like okay i don't have any of that this is weird dude he's like yeah it does he's like it doesn't feel like a cyst but i mean he's like that's got to be what it is so i was like all right whatever he's like i'll set you up for the dermatologist and you'll go there and whatever but he sent it to a dermatologist like an hour away and he said it for like seven in the morning so i just skipped it i didn't go because i had to work and my mother-in-law was like dude you're an idiot you should have just gone i was like ah it's not a big deal so fast forward like one or two years or whatever it is and now it's turned black and it's uh it but it stopped hurting it didn't it didn't hurt like it used to hurt so i'm like oh it's fine and i woke up one day and it was just black but it like had hardened a lot more and it got a little bit bigger and i'm like well it's not hurting me it used to be like a really bad stinging burning sensation even just to put a t-shirt on if my shirt rubbed against it it would hurt it so it wasn't hurting and i was like it's fine and then one day at work i started noticing like a hot pain going up my spine and i was just like i should probably go finally get this checked out whatever so i went got it checked out they sent me to a general surgeon this time because they're like yeah that looks really weird dude you should go to this guy so i went to this dude who's who works in vascular surgery and he was like he looked at it he was like that's a cyst and i was like okay that's what my family care physician said but i'll take your word for it so he schedules me to get it cut out and he cuts this thing out and he's like yeah that's really weird looking he was like well he's like uh oh that's that's the whole thing and i was like well are you gonna like test it are you gonna send it away he's like no we don't have to he's like do you want me to i was like yeah yeah you can test it and i'm glad i asked him to because it turns out it was a tumor um it's either a what's called an angiomatoid fibrous histiocytoma which is one of again getting back to rarities only 0.04 of all tumors make up this specific kind of tumor and it's so rare that they don't know much about it they don't know the malignancy rate they don't know the metastasization rate basically it's cancer but they don't really know like how serious it is and the cases that they do know of it it's usually just localized so it's not like in the cases that they've had of it before it hasn't really metastasized there was one case where this kid died from it because it spread throughout his whole body but that was like a weird freak thing supposedly so um i went back in just to get my stitches taken out this is before i knew that it was cancer and the the doctor was like hey so you got a really weird uh diagnosis here and i was like are you joking like are you just messing with me and he was like no dude i'm being serious it is actually something that we're gonna have to open everything back up and make sure we got all of it so i'm like okay he's telling me it's probably you know it's possibly cancer and all this stuff and i go back like a week or two later or whatever it is and he cuts he cuts it deeper wider and you know longer and there was more in there so he took more out and i was like so what do you do now this was just like last week i was like so what do i do now like are we gonna do more testing whatever he was like pretty much all you can do is just wait and see if it comes back he's like and then you know like there's chemotherapy for it if it comes back you might wanna he's like but it's in a it's in an area where it's easy to cut it out so chemo wouldn't necessarily be necessary for it um and then but then my wife called because she was concerned and he told her he's like yeah it might actually be melanoma it's like we don't know so i don't really i don't really know dude i'm not worried about it i feel fine yeah and um even if it's even if it's that one particular tumor or it's melanoma those are pretty manageable just as long as you yeah take care of it so it should be fine is the scar forming nicely it's only been a week it got infected i am i have a history of uh what do you call it staph infections yeah i've had mrsa i've had mrsa a couple times so and i also have i have an autoimmune disease um so like i have psoriasis everywhere and like uh like i'm starting like out in my joints um i think it's the start of arthritis i get like water on the knees and stuff like that yeah um it started developing in my early 20s and i'm almost 30 so it's just gotten a little bit worse so uh like i'm negligent so i just you know i work all day and i sweat really bad through my stuff so they it got infected basically okay it's looking a lot it's looking a lot better now they took the stitches out but it was really inflamed it's still like like really scabby and tender and stuff but it's a lot better than it was so is it right on the bone or is it on the side of the fleshy part of your back it's on the flat it's literally right next to it on the fleshy part thank god it's not it wasn't actually on this on the spine and you know like the dip in your back where it's like the center of your spine yeah where it's like if you bend over you can touch that that bone in your back that's like that's like literally what it's right next okay it's right next to yeah you sleep on your back or no i'm a side sleeper okay which side uh my let's see right side okay yes i generally sleep on my left or my back but sometimes i start on my back because the dog she sleeps between my wife so sometimes when i get in bed i have to lay pen straight until i can move her but that's about it so is the dog yeah we thought she wasn't but thank god she is we took her to have a bunch of tests too because she was acting really weird and she's a golden retriever so they're really susceptible to cancer and stuff so we got a whole bunch of tests done for her and she's fine but yeah we thought she had health issues too oliver is pretty much the only member of our family that uh is like clean bill of health all the way through touch wood when you say touch wood is that the wood of the cross by the chance touch wood oh i don't know oh knock on wood oh is that what we say knock on wood touch wood i thought we said touch wood or knock on wood i mean that might be we don't want you we don't knock it's too aggressive right we just touch yeah exactly i hey i don't mean to be impolite yeah no i don't know where that comes from though or if you say bloody hell is that the blood of christ i wonder about these things probably that's probably where it gets because it's i mean it's i mean literally in certain countries dude like just swear like they will literally uh like they'll use like like the cross as a swear word what's that you guys are saying that come back here like that's insane dude like the chalice the chalice the tabernacle the host those are the worst ones those are the worst ones that's so gross dude and it's used it's used flippantly it's used so much that i find myself when i speak french uh like saying it or almost saying it because it's so used yeah it's so common it's so common so it just it like when i when i'm just joking around with the guys on the construction site they're all saying it and i feel myself drawn to participate yeah yeah i'm so i catch myself that's terrible sometimes if i stub my toe i'll say in english jesus christ and then i just continue with the prayer like i just continue because it's just it's so built into me from all my years of atheism if i'm gonna swear i mean the f word is my favorite probably but there's also uh jesus christ and oh god oh my god i say oh my god if i'm surprised or shocked mine is uh mine is s-o-b and uh and c-u-n-t uh like if i if i if i if i hurt myself like i was working with my brother-in-law and uh he he's funny he he makes fun of me sometimes because every now and again he'll catch me slip up and he's like oh oh oh and the other day i i i like smashed my finger with a with a hammer or something like that and he was in the other room and i was like oh son of a and he was like oh he's like dude i can't believe you said that and he was like he's like dude you better go you you better go to your little picture corner and say 100 i was like dude you're such a douche but what are you gonna do yeah yeah yeah you're you're known as the religious guy uh so we have the we have the matriarch who's my mother-in-law who loves jesus with every fiber of her being but we just have theological differences so she and i are known as the the jesus people okay but um naturally as the matriarch she has a little bit more sway when it comes to that kind of stuff so i'm more uh i guess i would be seen as more religious because they see the things that i do like you know go to my prayer corner and uh like my incense and you know you know read from the prayer book and the psalter and say the jesus prayer and i always have my prayer rope on me and they see that they're like wow that's like really weird so so i get i get a lot of that stuff but um yeah i mean you know i guess you could say that yeah they're very much like uh there was another instance where i was watching a video and uh it said the f word in it and oliver was was was near me and so he's talking a lot now and the words that he picks up i'm like like he says like big words where i'm like dude where that he's like not even two and a half but he says words where i'm like dude how the heck did you know that and and literally it couldn't have been more perfect like i chastised my family all the time and me and my my mother-in-law are always like dude you guys need to watch what you say around oliver like don't say the f word because we have a family of southern and lancaster people that's like the equivalent of having like a sailor in your family yeah and so so they all swear quite a bit my wife's gotten a lot better with it um but you know it comes out and so for all the times that that my brother-in-law or my wife or whoever says something and oliver's there he doesn't repeat it i'm like one of these days he's gonna repeat it and me saying this of course it would be from me watching a youtube video that said the f word in it that i wasn't aware was going to swear and he heard it one time and he and he looked at me and he goes hey dad oh and i'm like are you kidding me dude and i'm like don't say that dude your mom's gonna get mad don't say that don't say that so we go to the other room where where where because he just keeps repeating it and i'm like crying laughing to myself because i'm like dude this is bad so we go to the next room and adrian's in there and he looks at he looks at adrian he's like mama mama hey mama and he just says it and she's like what what did you say what did you say and he was like oh and he just kept saying and she was like here and how did he know how did he learn that so anyway so so my father-in-law hears about it and he he's like oh my gosh he's like so out of all the people it's you he's like dude you better go to your statues you better go pray in front of your statues and i was like whatever dude like i don't even have that many statues dog he doesn't know it's catholics that have the statues yeah our friend uh our friends max the man and matthew murdock are uh in the live chat now sending or sending their good wishes max the man says hi david my heart goes out to kieran and his family we'll be in mike thank will be in my prayers and uh matthew murdock says uh hahaha mustache and uh he says he uh he loves uh you you meaning us i guess so i love you too matt and thank you max yeah it's great to uh see you guys in the chat and uh matthew murdoch if you're still watching listening uh we gotta talk again and we haven't talked in a long time and uh i've got two week holidays two weeks of holidays now so we can do a live chat and uh it would be fun maybe to do a group chat with the curio lisney brothers not aiden he sucks how is aiden he's doing well he's doing really well he's seems like he's adjusted to florida and he also um he i think he's get he sat he called me the other day while he was literally working and i was really surprised or maybe i called him but he answered and he talked to me and he i was like wait are you working he's like yeah i was like oh dude i'll let you go he's like no i'm good man i'm just doing x y and z so he's comfortable enough to a point where he's multitasking at work which i know is a big step up because he was having a lot of anxiety about his job when yeah workload and you know i wouldn't want to work in a hospital or in health care for that matter no and uh last time i talked to him he said that all of the staff that he was aware of was resisting the injection i don't know if that's still the case there well yes the last i heard is that they're not they're not big on it or at least at the very least they're not making their workers do it okay i mean i know some hospitals they're forcing people to yeah and some people even in social work they're making them do it even if they're out of the medical field i mean it just really depends on your your personal employer i guess but yeah he got really he's really blessed he doesn't have to worry about that that's state by state there's a different sort of vibe in each state down there in the states i i so i don't know uh i don't think that there's been any state so far that has mandated it in certain fields i could be wrong about that because i'm not hip to all of the political aspects of what's going on but um it could be the case but i think it would probably i mean if you have a privatized business i mean he works for a catholic hospital so uh i don't know what the ins and outs of that are administratively but i'm sure that you know it's not within their purview to tell people what they can and cannot do with their bodies that would yeah so you're still in touch with him quite frequently here bro yeah aidan and i always talk um i'd say definitely it's tapered off since he's moved down there but his schedule is so different from mine yeah the dude works the dude works 12 hours a day but he has like four on three off but it changes all the time so he might have off saturday sunday and like wednesday of the fall you know it's like weird so he just they kind of tell him what his schedule is and he just kind of does it whereas me i'm i'm eight to five every day monday through friday so yeah remind me again what you do restoration so it's basically deconstruction rather than construction okay so yeah water mitigation mold remediation uh commercial demo stuff like that oh boy that's sturdy work yeah it's fun though and you gotta watch probably probably by the age of 40 i'm gonna be feeling it but yeah i mean i've been doing it for eight years and it's it's it's i like it i like it a lot it's different you meet cool people you meet a lot of people that love jesus yeah which is like which is really cool yeah so that's always that's always nice and what is this what is this room you're in now that's is that a prayer corner or just a general wall of uh icons or what is this area and it's just a general wall so i have i have my my icons and my my books over there and my crucifix and that kind of stuff it's like a prayer corner slash prayer room but it's because my house is a rancher we have two bedrooms so one's obviously for my wife and i oliver gets the other one and this is the basement which is a partial finish so at some point we're gonna actually do a full finish for the basement so that uh because we're gonna set up like on one half of the basement will be oliver's play area um and god willing if we have any kids in the future they'll we'll have to turn this into another bedroom or something but for now i just have this half of the basement is kind of like dedicated to prayer and study and stuff like that since there's nowhere else to go in the house to do it what are you uh what are you currently reading are you reading anything exciting oh yeah dude uh scripture yeah yeah yeah um i try and read i'm in i'm in uh maccabees right now but um uh this so this book i uh you probably can't see it but it's called a a night in the desert of the holy mountain it is a discussion with a hermit on the jesus prayer and it's by metropolitan of enough pactus higher ethios so this is like a pretty big bishop within the uh grecian world but he goes to mount athos and he finds one of the you know uh obscured hermits that nobody really knows much about goes and finds him and he has this conversation with it and records it and just wrote it down and this was one of the first books that i read when coming into orthodoxy and learning about the jesus prayer and the prayer of the heart in general and uh father hector lent it to me and i tore through it within like two days and i was like this is great but i wanted more books so i was like here father hector and he was like oh keep it as long as you want it's like no it's fine give it to someone else that needs it so i gave it back and i asked him for it during confession the one time after confession i was like yo do you still have that and he was like actually he's like when uh you gave it back to me he's like i gave it to a catechumen and i haven't received it back he's like and i can't even remember who i gave it to so i was unable to get it back and i went looking for it couldn't find it and then when i finally found it online it was like astronomically high in price and i was like that's ridiculous i'm not gonna pay 40 bucks for a book that's like 150 to 200 pages so i i i started reading like uh just a whole bunch of other books and whatever i'm always reading something but i went to the monastery and this was like the first book that i saw and there were and there was two copies left and it was like 20 bucks and i was like dude i'm getting it so so i got that so i started reading this on saturday and i'm about halfway through all the way through um but it's so good to go back uh and just reread some of this stuff now that i've had over a year and a half almost two years to since the last time i read it and then also i do for part of my daily reflection but also for uh just for just for reading in general uh the life of saint piecios uh it's like uh so the the biographies are awesome for the contemporary saints because they're like they're so expansive so like this one's like 700 pages but the way that the way that the saints write and are written about is so simplistic that it's like like you have one half of the book that's all about his life and then the second half is his teachings and different occurrences miracles that have happened around him uh clairvoyance healings uh what he taught preached all that kind of stuff and this is just one book on him and he himself although he was fairly uneducated um and he didn't want to be recorded a lot of the nuns that would surround themselves around would would write down their counsels from him so he has a whole list of books one of which i read a while when i first started looking called spiritual awakening funny enough he actually talks about the a vaccine being the mark of the beast and that was that was first published in like 90 something um which is pretty interesting um a whole bunch of biographies on old saints and contemporary saints and uh yeah so they're all great books orthodox reading is just the easiest and best read they're so fast and they're they're very very good yeah well that pillow really changed my life as you know i'm still i'm still on milk so i can't i you know second maccabees is that part of the orthodox cannon of scripture sure is so is third and fourth maccabees oh yeah do we not have that in our bible no you guys have 73 books we got 80. oh really yeah okay you know you know in second maccabee's uh antiochus epiphanes when he's like dying his guts are pouring out and he stinks and all that do you remember that uh-huh yeah i i'm very touched by his letter to the jews like saying you know i've always wanted what's best for you even though he was torturing them but uh i've always been very touched by his uh apparent conversion to god uh but everything i've researched on it and the book of maccabees itself treats him very harshly like it wasn't a true repentance and basically he's he's a bad guy going to hell it's a false false repentance but everything in me tells me that this guy is like suffering and he's sincerely repenting so is there any chance that he could be sincerely repentant at the end of his life yeah yeah there's always a chance um there's a chance for everybody we don't know the ins and outs of god's mercy and the depth by which he he loves people so of course it's possible same thing i mean look at the thief on the cross you know like you have the thief on the cross who presumably led a horrible life i mean he wasn't there for no reason so although we know little about him we know that that god has mercy so i mean repentance can come at the the last moment if it's true then it's true but then you have the the paradoxical nature of the christian life which is that you have then saints that you and i both regard as saints who at the end of their lives when asked on their on their bed of repose well what can you tell us like what what advice would you give us now that you're leaving and uh it would be for most of them i wish i had more time to repent even though they led these super godly lives and they loved everyone and they were constantly in tears over how sinful they were but you and i you and i would look at them like what are you talking about dude we're scum yeah actual literal scum and you have done all these holy things in the name of christ and yet you're saying that you want more time to repent so that's what's beautiful about the christian life is that you can have that sort of it seems at face value like there's a tension there but it's really just a beautiful paradox and that's like pretty much all of christianity there's these seeming contradictions in it that really you know like even christ saying at uh what you know what must one do to be saved well just believe and believe on me and then you get further into it and you realize you know christ also says that it's really hard yeah so you have all of these things in christianity that it that's what makes it so beautiful and unique from any other false religion is that there's there's so much beauty and truth to it and you can say black on one one part and say black is true and then you can see well white is true as well and yeah and the two perfectly the two perfectly uh just uh work in tandem together and that's what's awesome about christianity so yeah it's definitely possible that he repented but also for maccabees it's second temple you know it's the second temple literature so they were pretty they would be like the trad catholics of the jewish world okay you know when they're writing everything's very triumphalistic and like okay this is right kind of thing so okay yeah okay uh one thing do you have the book of tobit in your bible i sure do yeah yeah there are no catholic books that are not in the orthodox bible correct uh yes so um let's see let me go to my little appendix here to refresh my memory um so i don't believe that you guys have wisdom of saul or wisdom of uh sirach do you guys have wisdom what about um wisdom of solomon uh that might be another name for one of our books but i don't recognize the name now um uh you definitely have that uh so we have our so we have all so we have one through three maccabees um we have you have tobit you have judith you have esther correct yeah um epistle of jeremiah do you have that is that the lamentations or is that his writings prophetically that's that that's it's it's actually separate from this language yes you have jeremiah lamentations of jeremiah epistle of jeremiah okay um even like i know that you guys like technically technically and most protestants don't admit this but the last appendage to daniel for instance is actually okay so so rather than first samuel and second salmon you have one and two kingdoms and then for first kings and second kings you have three and four kingdoms what about chronicles uh chronicles we we just have one two um so so same as you um we have one ezra or uh two esdras and then we have second ezra or uh and then we have second ezra no we do have nehemiah that that's before nehemiah and then it goes to tobit and then that's when you start to get into the classical deuterocannon so i think i think tobit starts out your deutero cannon right uh i don't know i don't know off by heart the the order of the books but it's i think i think it might be tobit i have my i have my my catholic bible over here but i'm it actually varies from addition to addition you could have different uh orders in different places this isn't the uh dewey reigns this one is the new american the new catholic translation yeah so this is the nab and uh wow this thing is beat up bro holy cow not because i read it a lot just because i i'm a total heathen and don't have care for god's word um i don't want anybody getting the wrong ideas here i don't study scripture enough but yeah tobit starts out the uh at least in the nab tobit starts out the deuterocannon yeah but you remember when uh this the son went off to get the money and he got married and all that and yeah he stayed too long his future how to get home well yeah but his future wife and his future father-in-law and mother-in-law started crying when he told them that his father was blind you know yeah i just i find that so touching and so embarrassing that i can't shed a tear for even my own tragedies much much less the tragedies of distant relatives you know what i mean yeah it's so uh it's so embarrassing to me how insensitive i am and when i read in the old testament about all the tears that people were shedding constantly for their own sins or for the tragedy of the the plight of israel like the sinfulness of israel and uh the people of god you know not being faithful like i mean i i live in a world where the catholic church is corrupt and there's a lot to lament but i don't feel connected emotionally to the point where i would shed a tear and i feel like that's a defect spiritually in me and i've talked to my confessor priests about this and they just say well everyone's disposition's different you don't need to feel any certain feelings as long as you know the difference between right and wrong and you you know you uh so i i do understand that that emotions should not take the lead in my life as a christian but i'd like to at least have some sort of sensitivity to the the real pain and sorrow of the tragic the tragic uh the tragic parts of humanity and within the church outside of the church how do you are you in the same predicament that i'm in or do you have more are you more apt to get emotional about the tragedy that surrounds you in the world um no i mean i'm probably in the same boat but i i i'm so okay so what your father confessor said about people's dispositions is most certainly true but there's there's a distinction between tears of emotion and tears of repentance they're known as the tears that save us so we we read about you and i would read about saints that shed countless tears right on somebody stubbed their toe or something right and they just feel so much pain for the person and then you get into the more you get into the more broader scope where you start talking about the church and the sort of sickness that the church has that that she's been infected with and um from both of our perspectives regardless of the fact that you're a roman catholic and i'm an orthodox we hold our church ecclesiology although it's structured differently we have the same understanding that the church is the body of christ and as members of the church we're not only partakers or coming alongside christ but we actually make up christ as a whole and so if i can't shed repent tears of repentance for myself my own personal sins which i find that often i cannot then it shouldn't be too surprising to me that i can't shed tears of repentance for the church because i'm i'm i'm yoked to the church in a way that i can look at my brother and say you are christ right and so if i see if i see my brother suffering it's essentially like i'm seeing christ suffering because we're both part of the same body which is christ's body but i often wonder if i had seen christ hanging on the cross would i be crying the same way that you know mary was or any of the apostles were because that's really what we're called to we're called to first and foremost shed tears of repentance for ourselves and then that's kind of like the biggest barrier that needs to be broken down and then when you can make the connection that you yourself are the church and that you're that that through that you're being connected to the body of christ it should be like when i'm looking at that person i'm looking at myself i'm also looking at christ i should be able to shed tears of repentance but we don't think in those terms so like i don't think like that because i'm inherently selfish so nine times out of ten when i'm upset about something that i did i feel guilty about it but guilt is also a little different than an act of contrition that's that's um that's moving in the direction of repentance so i have to like really really work on that i have to really be mindful of the fact that what i'm doing to harm myself i'm doing to harm christ i'm doing harm i'm doing to harm christ i'm doing harm to christ in his church