My Friend the Friar
A podcast where we learn about our faith and share what it takes to live a Catholic Christian life through conversations and contemplations with my friend the friar, a Discalced Carmelite Priest.
My Friend the Friar
Drops of Ink with Chris Colleps
In this episode, John and Chris consider ink as a metaphor Chris developed in a song he wrote after dropping off his oldest daughter at college.
Our upbringing and relationships significantly shape us, much like ink colors a page. Drawing from personal stories—including the contrasting influences of a paralyzed uncle and a distant father—we delve into the importance of guidance and the transformative power of God's love. Reflecting on early human actions and the notion of "God ink," we contemplate how divine guidance provides a constant, unchanging influence that helps us navigate everyday challenges and relationships with grace.
Parenting is a journey that requires courage, intentionality, and a steadfast integration of faith. Sharing experiences of raising children and the fear of being too overtly Christ-like, we underscore the importance of winning souls and consistently bringing conversations back to God. We also touch on the necessity of forgiveness, inspired by Jesus' unconditional love, as we navigate significant emotional pain and relationships. Join us for a reflective and inspiring discussion on the enduring influence of divine love and the beauty of shared human experiences.
Have something you'd love to hear Fr. Stephen and John talk about? Email us at myfriendthefriar@gmail.com or click here!
Welcome to the my Friend the Friar podcast and thanks for listening. If you like my Friend the Friar and want to support us, please consider subscribing or following us. If you haven't already done so, and if you found us on YouTube, then don't forget to click the notification bell when you subscribe so you'll be notified of new episodes when they release. Thanks again and God bless. I was going to say maybe he's from the future.
Speaker 2:Maybe it's Britt's long-lost brother.
Speaker 1:Maybe, maybe it's her long-lost. Well, you said brother, I was going to say twin, but that's the same thing, same thing.
Speaker 2:It would be her brother yeah, but it would be cool. Long-lost twin, because she does look a lot like her brother. Yeah, but it would be cool Long lost twin, because she does look a lot like her dad. She's way prettier than her dad, but she looks a lot like her dad. Yeah, but man, this dude looks just like him. I wish I had a picture to compare him, but I don't. But it's crazy how much he looks like him.
Speaker 1:Thunder only happens when it's raining, are you ready?
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, I'm waiting on you. I was waiting on you. Yeah, I'm waiting on you.
Speaker 1:I thought you were still setting stuff up. No, I'm done, I'm waiting on you. I was waiting on you. Yeah, I'm waiting on you.
Speaker 2:I thought you were still setting stuff up.
Speaker 1:No, I'm done. I'm just setting up your heart. My heart's set up. All right then, welcome to the podcast. Thanks for joining me, and my friend. Oh, you're not the friar. I'm not the friar, no, but it's okay. Yeah, you know for the long, because he's a. He's a discalced Carmelite priest. That's so hard for me to say. Discalced Carmelite priest it means without shoes, gotcha, I couldn't say for the longest time. I've never heard that word in my life.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no shoes. You can go home and be like I'm discalced. Just kick off your shoes, I'm going to do that tonight Babe. I'm discalcing. Just look at y'all side eyes.
Speaker 2:What the heck does that mean? Watch my?
Speaker 1:feet. Okay, we are talking today about ink Ink.
Speaker 2:We're talking about ink Ink. We're talking about ink Ink and.
Speaker 1:We're talking about how we color each other's lives.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, there you go. That's a good way to put it.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I like that.
Speaker 1:Okay, so this is one of our random side, like work conversations, kind of things that we thought there was something worth digging into. So what? Just high level broad brushstrokes? Where in the world did you come up with this, this thought?
Speaker 2:I was driving and I was thinking about my oldest daughter in college and how it's like she's 20 years old and she no longer lives at home and she used to be a baby and now she's not. And that time went by really fast. Yeah, and you know, I've always been a poet. I've been writing poetry since I mean as long as I can remember and once I learned how to put words together most people are poetry, poets, and they don't know it, they don't.
Speaker 2:Most people are and if you really put your mind to it, you can. You can be a poet, because it's just taking the words out of your head and putting it on paper and rearranging it a little bit. So, anyway, I'm driving and I get a lyric comes to me and I don't not verbatim, I don't remember how I put it in the song and I don't remember exactly how verbatim it came to me, but it came to me and it was basically. The lyric is baby girl, thank you for allowing us, or mom and I, to be drops of ink in the pen that you're using, like the pen that she's using to write her life, the story of her life.
Speaker 2:The story of her life, yeah, and my daughter's always, she's like me, she's always been a writer, fantastic writer. She's way better than I've ever thought about being. She has some great stuff. And so when I thought of that lyric, the whole ride home, I was kind of putting a song together and the song kind of pieced together. The first of it is like her being a baby, and then it's her being a little girl and then her growing up and leaving, and the whole thought of it is is like I got to be and I continue to be drops of ink in the pen that she's using to write the story of her life.
Speaker 1:Yep.
Speaker 2:And I want to thank her for allowing using to write the story of her life yep and I'm. I want to thank her for allowing me to be be a part of that yeah, and when you think about it, it, yes, she allows you to be. But no matter what you're still, you're still providing ink to your child's life, whether they want it or not right and so it's just kind of the concept of we feel each other, whether we know it or whether we do know it.
Speaker 2:We feel each other with the ink that we have in our lives.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And it's just kind of a cool concept. And you, we were talking earlier and one of the things you brought up was which I thought was really cool. It was like you have, you have like, say, you have yellow ink oh yeah, and I have and I have blue ink and you, you give me some of your yellow ink and I give you some of my blue ink, and then it makes green ink and yeah just kind of how we mix ink it sounds so funny like just listening to somebody talk about ink, but I guess the whole thing is that we influence we, we all, we all play a part.
Speaker 1:We all influence each other when we know each other right. You influence the people around you and we all influence each other in unique ways.
Speaker 1:And so, um, whereas you, if you're having a good day, you can make somebody else's day better, if you're having a good day, you can make somebody else's day better, if you're having a bad day, maybe you can make somebody else's day worse right, so that's the color right, and so we can contribute things in it, and as we have serious relationships, meaningful relationships, like relationships of family friends, marriage, whatever those relationships we contribute, we play a big part in affecting each other and we affect how those people will perceive things, especially our kids right so we teach them. They learn to see the world partly through our eyes, because they're seeing. Well, this is growing up. This is how my parents thought about something, so I'm kind of my thinking is going to always be kind of skewed toward what they think or what they thought right, because that was how I was exposed to it.
Speaker 1:And so we start to color the ink in the pens of each person, person right, and how they write the story of their lives and it's it's.
Speaker 2:It's such a cool concept because, like you you mentioned, like we, we take what our parents, like, give us and that that kind of starts our ink right, that that kind of starts the pen being full of ink. And then, as we get to the different stages of our lives, we then start processing what that ink is and what each one of our parents are giving us. And we all come from different backgrounds, right? Some of us have moms, some of us have dads, some of us have mom and dad at home, some of us don't have any at home. Some of us are raised by our grandparents. Uncles, aun don't have any at home. Some of us are raised by our grandparents, uncles, aunts, whatever, friends, whatever.
Speaker 2:But no matter what, you're influenced by that. You. You gain ink from those individuals. But the older you get, the more you start to process what that ink looks like in your life. And then when you come to an age where you're you're able to make a choice, you're you're able to make a choice, you're wise enough to decide okay, I'm going to take that ink or I'm going to leave that ink right, and that kind of relates to our I don't kind of I don't kind of.
Speaker 2:it directly relates to our relationship with Jesus and it goes right into that relationship with Jesus because Jesus says here's the ink, take it or leave it.
Speaker 1:You know it's funny if we're talking about the story of our lives. He's the Word.
Speaker 2:Yeah, what yeah Boom.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's awesome. I didn't even think about that. I didn't either.
Speaker 2:Until right now, until you said that, said that. But yeah, he's like, and no matter if we take the ink or not, we're still affected by the ink that god has produced for the world. No matter if we take it or not, it's the same with the relationships in our lives. Whether we take it or not, we're still affected by it. The ink is still affecting what we do yeah whether we take it or leave it, and so when we look at that, in our relationship with Jesus, jesus has a lot of ink.
Speaker 1:He wrote the whole story, right yeah.
Speaker 2:And we don't have that much ink, we're just drops, and that's where that line came from is. Thank you for allowing me to be drops of ink in the story that you're writing. Well, you can say the same thing to Jesus. You can say the same thing to God, god. Thank you for allowing me to be drops of ink in the story that you're writing. Well, you can say the same thing to Jesus. You can say the same thing to God, god, thank you for allowing me to be a drop in this story.
Speaker 1:Yeah or thank you for being the ink in my life. Yeah, thank you for being the ink in my life and then caring enough about me to fill me with your ink and let me ink other people's lives, yeah, and that's something that I think is interesting too, because you kind of have to get to a certain age before you start thinking about this, Like maybe old enough for your daughter to be getting ready to go to college or going to college or something, because when you're a kid, everything is very egocentric.
Speaker 1:It's just me, me, me, me. This is my story and this is what I'm doing and whatever. And you get old enough, you start to realize how we influence each other, and I think, probably, if you look at the people who are the greatest saints, they're not perfect, they're not correct about everything. They're like I think I've heard stories of some people getting in fights and punching each other when they're you know in the face kind of thing had some kind of like bishop conference or something like thrown down, but it's like so nobody's perfect, but they have all realized that they want their life colored by Jesus, right, they want the story of their life to reflect Jesus, and so that is the biggest influence. And so that's just something I guess to think about, because something that Father Stephen had said once and it really turned on a light bulb in my head is our relationship with God. Because of our concubiscence, because of our brokenness, our default Well sorry, our, our. So sin is like this low-grade fever, right, like you're not made to have sin but we all have it.
Speaker 1:But since we all have it and you've had it since birth, we're just used to it right, it's like when your back hurts, you're just like ah, this is normal for me, right?
Speaker 1:So that's our state of being. So in that state, we look at God and we think about okay, god, you're my Father and I'm going to judge my relationship with you based on my relationship with my worldly Father. Right, jesus, you're my friend. I'm going to approach my friendship with you as the same way I approach my, or I'm going to approach it with you the way my earthly friendships are right.
Speaker 1:So we let our worldly friendships influence our relationship with God when it should be Vice versa. The other way around. I should be looking at my earthly father, because I know who my real father is. I should be treating my friends the way that my truest friend treats me.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Right and so yeah. So just this thought of how we engage with one another and how we influence the stories of one another, Because I think last time you were saying, too, you had some rough moments as a kid, right With your parents, and even if you decide, you're saying I don't want this ink in my life. I'm going to set this thing aside, it's still going to color your life.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Right. And so I mean some of us have great parents, some of us have not so great parents. Some of us have really rough relationships. Some of us have great relationships with the people around us. Us have really rough relationships. Some of us have great relationships with the people around us, but all of those things influence us, whether we like it or not.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and there's nothing you can do about it. There's nothing you can do to keep it from influencing, because the fact that I'm putting them on the shelf in and itself is it affecting me.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Right, that is a that's, that's, that is a consequence of that ink in my life is how it affects me and me sitting on the shelf. And when you talk about how we try to influence the people in our lives and try to influence the relationship with God, we're trying to write with our own ink. Right, we're trying to use our own ink instead of using God's ink. And when we use our own ink, well, we're not. We're not the master poet, we're not the master writer, we're not the, we're not the master editor. We we're going to mess up and we're going to, we're going to, we're going to have to use some, some white out at some times.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And you had mentioned that's our sinful nature, right? Whether we want it or not, we have it and we talked a little bit about on the last podcast about how we're born with that. Yeah, we manipulate with our different cries when we're babies and all that stuff, all that stuff just intensifies.
Speaker 2:The more we learn, the more we grow, the more it just intensifies and we find different ways of doing that. We're not. We're not crying our hungry cry anymore, but we're doing something else to get that attention and we're doing this to get that intentions. Well, those intentions in that stuff again, because we're using the ink phrase. That is the way we react and the actions that we do are direct reflections of how we were raised and who we were brought up by and who taught us what to do. And I, I have a lot of papaw isms, you know I call them.
Speaker 2:My papaw isms there's a phrases, because the last one cracked me the uh, the papaw isms, because that's who raised me you know, my, my papaw raised me, um, I became a marine because my uncle got shot in the back of the neck and paralyzed for 22 years when he fought in Vietnam. And I sat when I was a kid and I sat next to him and he poured that ink into me of wanting to be a soldier, wanting to be. Here's a guy that you know he was, you know, 22 years old, got shot in the back of the neck seven times and laid in the bed and all he could do was look at the ceiling and look at a TV in front of him. He couldn't move his body but yet he was still impacting my life with his ink because he chose to make a positive out of it. And he didn't teach me about Jesus. He taught me a bunch about wwf and wrestling and, and I heard a lot of war stories that I wasn't supposed to hear in my life. Yeah, but it affected me.
Speaker 2:yeah, very much affected me yeah and he affected me more than my dad, who was fully capable of, of not paralyzed and all. He affected me more than than my dad did, but that's the ink that we're talking about. Is he, whether he knew it or not, he was impacting me in my life and and and shaping who I was yeah well, that's anybody and everybody that we come in in contact with.
Speaker 2:I chose to accept that ink. I didn't choose to accept my dad's ink, yeah, you know so. It just no matter what. But, but not accepting my dad's ink still affected my life, you know, and uh, so it's, it's, it's, it's just a. It's just a cool concept, because when just go back to the beginning, when adam and eve were were born, when were created, whatever you want to call it.
Speaker 2:They started shaping the ink that was going to be passed to the whole world at that moment and they started affecting each other by each other's inks. And as soon as they went away and started trying to write with their own ink, look what happened Everything got destroyed.
Speaker 1:I think it's something like it only takes like two chapters. It only takes like two chapters and we're murdering each other.
Speaker 2:It goes down real fast, we go from paradise to perfection and in two chapters, and we don't know what the timeframe is. We have no idea. We have no concept of what time.
Speaker 1:As far as the story goes, yes, as far as the story goes. It's quick, yeah.
Speaker 2:And boom, we're killing each other.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know it's funny too. I'm thinking about something you were saying, how we influence each other and, like your uncle, imagine if instead so for him his kind of national pride and the pride of being a soldier and fighting for your country and all that stuff that stuff is what influenced him and that's what shaped you right.
Speaker 1:Imagine if all of our interactions in our life were specifically formed by how much God loves you. By how much God loves you Like. How would you treat the vendor that has at work, that has failed you like seven times in a row?
Speaker 2:or something like that.
Speaker 1:Right Like how would you interact with that person or whatever? How would you interact with your daughter when she broke the thing? How would you, you know, when your wife had a rough day at work and she's yelling at you kind of thing right Like or, or whatever right Just you're in a, in a place that most people just I'm done, I'm out of this Right. How would you treat that person if you were letting God's love dictate how you engaged?
Speaker 2:a lot different way, different than than when I use my own ink, when I use my my own ink to try to try to, uh um, interact with that vendor. Because it that it brings up a great point, because when God disciplines, it's just. There's nothing that God does. That's unjust. We unjustly discipline all the time, I think, because we act out of that sinful nature and again go back to the people that shape our lives. I spank my kids because I was spanked as a child and I believe it works, but my cousin, they don't spank their kids because they weren't spanked and they don't believe.
Speaker 2:My kids are well behaved and hers aren't. You know, so it's that. Do I think my, my discipline is just yeah? Does she think her discipline is just?
Speaker 1:yeah.
Speaker 2:Is either one of them, just I don't know.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:But when God disciplines, it is. Yeah so if we could discipline like God, then everything we do would be just right.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So that's that's what I think of is like when you said, if we went to every interaction with anybody that we have, every interaction with anybody that we have, if we went to it with the God ink and used the God ink, then it would be just.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and that's really something interesting too, because God's discipline is just because he is just, yeah, Like it's not a quality of Him, it is who he is right.
Speaker 1:He is yeah, he is just yeah, Like it's not a quality of him, it is who he is right, he is, yeah, he is just so when he in the Old Testament says, israel, I need you to go and just, I need you to kill every man, woman and child in here, right, that is justice, that is his justice, it is his love, his mercy, right? So everything that we are like, you're talking about spanking your kids for discipline, even if it's as rightly motivated as you could somehow be, because you are not just and you're not God, it is only a shadow of his justice, so it's never truly just. Yeah. And so then that starts playing mind games with you, because God, equally, will let you just go and do whatever you wanna do, yep, and he's gonna love you no matter what. Okay, so we, equally, we have that kind of calling as parents no matter what you do, I'm gonna love you, no matter what. But again, we're supposed to be emulators of God, right?
Speaker 1:So God laid down the law he said here are the rules, here are the guidelines. If you live within this, you get life right To the fullest. If you go outside of it, which you're free to do, it leads to death, yeah Right. And so you can't just be kind of parent that says, well, go you, do you, yeah, when. And I'll love you, no matter what, I'll be your friend. Like you can't do that, you still have to have boundaries, yeah, like and.
Speaker 2:And that's when, when I give my kids boundaries and I think I mean three of my kids are old enough to to start understanding why those boundaries are there because I love them. I want them to understand that those boundaries are to keep them safe and to help them grow into productive members of society, and then they can teach their kids. They can take what again take the ink that mom and I give them, or they can mix it with their own ink, or whatever they want to do with it. But it is to it's to shape them and to form them into good human beings, right?
Speaker 2:well, we it's good at human beings as best we can be as best we can be, and so but my eight-year-old she, she doesn't care you know, she's like I'm, I'm not, I'm not worried about being a productive member of society. I don't like it when you spank me you know, I don't. I don't care why you do it, I don't like it. Or I don't like why you take my, my, uh um gaming system away. I don't like why you take my toys away or why you put me in it.
Speaker 1:I don't like it. Yeah, you know.
Speaker 2:And again, that's her at her age. Whether she's receiving the ink or not, she's still she's. She's being affected, whether she takes it or not.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And I mean honestly, at this age she kind of has to take it because she don't have a choice.
Speaker 1:She's eight.
Speaker 2:She's eight years old. So, she doesn't really have a choice. My oldest do I still discipline my oldest. She's 20 and she's in college. But yeah, I still discipline her, I still give her guidance. I guess it's more in a guidance than it is a discipline.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well and appropriately, as you grow, it changes, it changes.
Speaker 2:I don't discipline my 20-year-old like I discipline my 8-year-old. Yeah, and I don't have conversations with my 20-year-old like I have with my 8-year-old. It's completely different and that's you know. Going back to what we were talking about earlier when we were at work is and it just clicked in my head when I was saying this is we give different ink at different times in our kids' lives.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, and that's part of your song too. Yeah, that's part of the song is because the song is when she was a baby, when she was you know. Little girl, little girl into a teenager and going on and moving off, and so we use different ink at different times. It's still our ink, but it's it's used differently.
Speaker 2:Maybe, we have different colored inks in. You know, like when we're you know we're sitting in a in the conference room here and I see that that dry erase board around you. Well, we use different colors to to dictate different things that we're talking about.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So maybe there's different ink that we use when we when we're we're in different stages of our kids' lives. The cool thing about God is God is just ink, right, he's just, he's just God ink. You know there's no, at least when I think about it. There's no different colored God inks. You know, he's just God ink, he is.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And it's so cool because he can be just God ink and still be exactly what we need at every stage of our lives, whether we know it or not, and whether we understand it or not, because our understanding doesn't dictate who god is correct. God is god, and whether we understand the human side of him or understand the god side of him, yeah, he's still god. And so when you're talking about how, if we go to the relationships and the interactions that we have in our lives and we go with it in a God view or with a God ink, and how is it different when we use ours and when we use God, how do we know if we're using God's ink or not?
Speaker 1:if we don't understand, yeah, or you don't know God, or you don't know God.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's interesting.
Speaker 1:That's interesting, don't understand, yeah, or you don't know God. Or you don't know God, right, yeah, that's interesting. That's interesting, yeah, because how do you? How do you approach the homeless person on the street who's asking for money, who it only takes you about you know half a nanosecond to know how they're going to spend that money? Yeah, how do you approach that? If you're God? Yeah, if you were Jesus, how do you?
Speaker 2:approach that?
Speaker 1:And if you're Chris, how do you approach that? And if you're Chris who had a bad day at work, how do you?
Speaker 2:approach that.
Speaker 1:If you're Chris who's tight on money, how do you approach that? But one of those things never changes is how Jesus approaches it.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, he's going to approach it the Jesus way. Every time, a million out of a million times, he's going to be Jesus and even when he was fully human, he was still approaching it how Jesus approached it. No matter what you think, jesus had bad days. Absolutely, jesus had bad days, but he still approached the situation as Jesus.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:You think Jesus got angry? Yeah, go ask the people in the temple. They'll tell you. Tables were chunked and tables were full.
Speaker 1:Yeah, he threw together a whip real fast.
Speaker 2:Yeah, he got angry, but he was still and let's go back to the just. It was still just. He had every right to go in there. Whether it's we believe it or not, he had every right to go in there. Whether, it's, you know, we believe it or not, he had every right to go in there and do what he did. And what he did was was just now. If we go in there and start flipping tables and start whipping people and, you know, going nuts, is that just?
Speaker 2:yeah, maybe, maybe, yeah don't know, but I know% that it was just when Jesus did it, right, yeah. And so again, whether we understand who God is or know God, or want to know God, we may know God, but whether we want to accept him, whether we want to believe that he is or it doesn't matter, the situation it doesn't matter.
Speaker 1:He is who he is and that never changes yeah you know that ink never changes and it always is right yeah, yeah, the the in the first part of the catechism of the cath Church, which is a book which is a series of teachings and just kind of deeper teaching on all the things about the faith, right, so like who is Jesus?
Speaker 1:And it's chapters on just that kind of thing. What's the Bible Chapters on just that? What are angels, you know chapters on just that kind of thing? What's the Bible chapters on just that? What are angels chapters on just that? So it's just like deep teaching, right?
Speaker 2:When it's funny.
Speaker 1:If you read it, you realize how shallow it still is Like it's so much more there, but anyway, one of the things it talks about is how man is made for relationship with God right for relationship with God right. And we have this innate desire, this longing to know him and understand him and search for him, which is why the thing that is uncommon in the whole history of humanity is like atheism, and everybody's got some kind of gods or God or something somewhere, right. So we have this understanding that God is there and we're searching, and so the whole first part. It's really beautiful because it's this back and forth. We've got some good episodes on it if you ever want to go check them out, but it's this back and forth from God to humanity, humanity to God, god to humanity.
Speaker 1:How does he respond, how do we respond? And how it turns into a relationship. Anyway, something you had just said about just how we approach things triggered that in my brain and now, just trying to recall all that about the catechism, I totally lost where I was going with it, but I don't know, it was really interesting. Maybe it was the thing where you're saying, like, whether we want to believe or not.
Speaker 1:Whether we choose. Oh, there's no God out there. Maybe there's a God where the fact that he is, that he exists, whether we want to believe or not, is coloring our ink.
Speaker 2:It affects reality 100%, it's part of it, and there's no escaping it right. You can try all you want to, but at some point you are going to understand who God is. Yeah, at some point. Yep, and it's because he is affecting you with his ink. Yeah, whether you. But that's the beauty of God, right? The beauty of God is I have it. You can have it too. Yeah, if you want it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. So there's something else. Speaking of wanting it, there was something else that we talked about, and this would be a cool thing to kind of just kind of continue this going is. This made me think. In our last conversation we were talking I don't remember how we got to it, but we were talking about pain and the avoidance of pain and all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 2:I don't know how we got there. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:But we were talking about it and I remember that I said it's like once you truly experience pain. You're like I don't want none of that, right? And it's funny I was thinking about it later because I have morning prayer time, right. So I'm sitting there and I'm like what cowardice man, come on, you're afraid of some pain, of all the things you've been through in life, you're afraid. You're afraid of that. Well, okay, there's nothing wrong with being afraid. Yeah, you're going to let it affect you, that's yeah.
Speaker 1:That's cowardice, right, yeah, and you don't have to be like Superman brave, you just got to be like that, much more brave than what you're afraid of. Exactly, exactly, right. And so that kind of made me start thinking, being that I used to coach, was and I guess we were talking about boxing and stuff.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, we're talking about Mike Tyson.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And so I was like I was thinking about the strategies between, the difference between having a strategy when you're playing a game of, you're playing to win or you're playing not to lose yeah, very different. And, as far as I'm concerned, playing not to lose, you're playing not to lose. Yeah, very different. And as far as I'm concerned, playing not to lose, you're going to lose, you're going to lose. But if you're playing to win, you got a shot, you at least have a shot to win.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and so that seems to me to be something that then affects you personally, which, as we're saying, affects the people around you. So what would it be like if you parented not to lose versus parenting to win? Man?
Speaker 2:I love your questions because they, they, uh, and this is, this is one of those that you told me you were going to ask, but you didn't tell me what you were going to ask, you said I've got some questions to throw at you so what a good one to start out with. I think um, I'll start with this that sometimes I have parented not to lose. Oh yeah, and I've been thinking about it. I'm like crap.
Speaker 1:I sometimes I have parented not to lose.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, I've been thinking about it, I'm like crap, I think I do that all the time, all the time, and I think I probably parent more not to lose than I do to win.
Speaker 1:Which goes back to the fear of loss that we were talking about.
Speaker 2:And it connects directly to the fear of loss, because a lot of the times I, you know, when I talk to my kids, I I used to when I were younger and when I was on fire for God, I used to bring God into every conversation. I think we need to do that. I think we need to and I'm not saying use God as like the if you don't do this, god's not going to love you.
Speaker 2:If you don't do this. This is not you know. Don't just throw it in their face. God doesn't like this. God doesn't like this. God doesn't like this. I don't think it's like that.
Speaker 1:I think I remember you telling me once too is like somebody said something where it's like they're just waiting for you to bring up God in every conversation. They're like, okay, when's it going to happen? My kids used to do that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they're like, I'm talking to them and then it's just got. How does it tie back to the Bible? How does it?
Speaker 1:tie back to the.
Speaker 2:Bible, and so I let that dictate to where I stopped, and I should have never stopped, should have never stopped. I should always, no matter how they react to it, I should always bring it back to God. It should always come back to God.
Speaker 1:Where you may be being afraid of becoming so Christ-like that the world would reject you Exactly.
Speaker 2:I tell you.
Speaker 1:I love that quote, man, I love it.
Speaker 2:Because that's exactly what I feared is like I'm becoming too much like Christ that my own kids don't even want to be around me. You know which. That's a good thing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know, I'm not saying it's a good thing that my kids don't want to be around me, but they're hearing Jesus and at some point again, at some point, they're going to understand it. It's their choice. And if they don't want to, but I still have to give it to them. Yeah, god, when he sent Jesus I'm not going to say he doesn't care if we accept Jesus or not but he knew that people were not going to accept Jesus. Yep, he knew that people were going to hate him and cuss him out and spit on him, and he knew that. But he did it anyway. Yeah, and he always made it about Jesus.
Speaker 2:And then, when Jesus was here, who did? He always make it about God? Everything he did, every teaching, every miracle, every healing, everything he did, he did it for God. In God's name, I'm doing this and he's daddy's giving me the power, right? Yep? And how we decide to do what we do, god did it knowing that half the time we're going to parent to not lose instead of parent to not win. He knew that, but he knew enough that he's going to give us Jesus to fall back on and take all that because we're goofy jacked up humans, right yeah.
Speaker 2:So he stuck his we held his son to a cross, killed him, watched him come back to life so that all those stupid decisions he can take and put on that cross.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know.
Speaker 2:And so, getting back to the original question, what would it, what would it? I think you said what would it look like? Yeah, a parent, not to lose yeah, I think we would have some pretty awesome kids. I think we would have some pretty awesome courageous, god-fearing, god-loving kids. Um, I know the world would would have the I'm and I'm talking not just us as fathers ourselves, I'm talking about the world you know who didn't parent to lose.
Speaker 1:God he played to win and he's still playing to win. Right and guess what he already won, but he's still playing to win yeah, and that kind of goes back to if we approach everything with the ink in our pens, if we're writing our stories in a godly way, in a holy way, in a holy way, if we stop being afraid of being so close to Christ that we lose the world. Yeah, that's. Don't be afraid, we're not playing afraid to lose.
Speaker 2:Exactly Right we're playing so that the people of the world see Jesus through us, because that's victory.
Speaker 1:Jesus is victory.
Speaker 2:He never once played to not lose. Yeah, he played to win every single time, yeah, and so, yeah, I think we would have a lot. You know, and I, I see in. You know, social media is rampant and and man, more often than not you see nothing but negative, negative, negative, negative, negative yeah but I was reading an article, and again, we talk about this all the time. You remember one snippet. It's a two-page article and you remember one section, one line, yeah.
Speaker 2:But I can't remember. It was like Gen X or Gen Z, I don't remember what it was, but it was one of the younger generations and the article was talking about how that generation of young men in the past however many generations of young men it's been is one of the strongest groups of Christian young men that there's been in so long. Yeah, and one of the reasons why is because the world is trying to take masculinity out of it so bad that these young men are saying I just want to be men. Yeah, I just want to be a man. Look, it gives me chills. I just want to be a man and the world is trying to tear that away from us so bad. It's so bad to be a man, because when you're a man, it's toxic.
Speaker 1:Yeah, toxic masculinity.
Speaker 2:Yeah, throw out all those flash words or whatever you want to call them, but it's good to be a man. And these young men are seeing that and they're like I'm tired of the world telling me that it's wrong to be a man. Yep, you know. And so when I read that article, I was like that is a good thing, you know. Yeah, but we go back. It's exactly what we were talking about. Those young men are playing to win, they're not playing not to lose.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:They're standing up to a world that is hey, I'm a strong Christian young man and I want to grow into a strong Christian man and I want to lead my kids, whether that be my son or my daughter, to be a strong Christian individual. Yeah, so that tide is turning.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and the church around any Christian community. They can't approach Christianity. Not to lose? Yeah, they can't. They have to be courageous. You. Not to lose? Yeah, they can't, they have to be courageous, you have to be. That is, I really think, being Christian, being a disciple of Jesus Christ and following him to your death is the most courageous and exciting adventure you could ever go on in your whole life.
Speaker 2:How can it not be? Yeah, how can it not be?
Speaker 1:You just gotta take a step. Yeah, you gotta take a step. You can't just sit there and do nothing. We were talking about that once, the other day too, whenever that was. But you gotta just take a step and just let god guide you, just keep taking a step.
Speaker 2:And again, I know people have heard it a million times and and from different individuals, but I heard it first from my papa. He was like every journey, whether it's a thousand miles or one step, starts with one step.
Speaker 1:Yep.
Speaker 2:And I know it's cliche and all that stuff, but it's the truth. Yeah, jesus' journey started with a step. Jesus' journey to the cross started with one step. Our journey with Jesus started with something. You know, we weren't just sitting there. I mean, maybe somebody, I don't know, but I just know my story. I'm not just sitting there and, oh my gosh, I love Jesus. Yeah, you know, it didn't happen like that. Yeah, I went through a lot of struggle and we talked about this a little bit on the podcast Went through a lot of struggle without Jesus and then I went through a lot of struggle with jesus, and a struggle with jesus is a whole lot better than a struggle without him.
Speaker 2:Yes, you know, always better, it's, always better it's still struggle yeah but it's you know again, I was looking this little reel that was on Facebook and it's like the group that does them is called Happy Life, right, and it was talking about how we dictate, how we let the world dictate us. And when they said that I was like to me it was kind of an oxymoron, because if we dictate how the world, how we let the world dictate us and this is me being analytical and going in trying to find you know, but it's simple.
Speaker 2:I'm just trying to make it more difficult than it has to be right. Because if I'm letting them dictate me, then they're really dictating me and I'm not really dictating all that good stuff. Right, yeah, but the concept of it is is we choose how the world affects us. Yeah, we choose. We can either let it make us mad, sad, happy, whatever, but we choose that that person hurt me. You chose to allow that person to hurt you. Now they could do something that hurts you and you didn't choose for them to do that yeah and yes, it's gonna hurt, but you choose how you continue your life after that person hurt you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, not that person right, yeah, you're never the the only. It's kind of like a captive being being held captive mentality right like I can't escape this thing, absolutely you're the only one who's holding yourself there yeah right, and of course that's really easy for us, but I've been in moments like that myself where it's like I, I can't get past it. Yes, you can, yeah, you can you, just it's hard, it's hard but we, we don't.
Speaker 2:We choose to play, not to lose.
Speaker 1:Yeah, right, that's the fear. Well, because what happens if I move past this Exactly?
Speaker 2:What is it like on the other side? Well, I'm too afraid to see what it's like on the other side.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know and we go back to, you know, life, reputation and desire. You know what is the world going gonna see me if I get past this. Yeah, you know what is the world gonna look at me if I don't get past this. So, no matter what choice we're making, we're making it out of fear of losing something. Yeah, you know, and, and I think so many of us get caught up in the easiness of not fighting to win.
Speaker 2:It's easy to sit on the sidelines it's easy to just sit in there and be all whoa me and you know, oh, you hurt me. So it's easy to blame that other person because you don't want to blame yourself, right, yeah, so well, and what happens?
Speaker 1:what would happen if you approach the person who hurt you? You approach them the way jesus approaches us when we hurt him. Yeah, man?
Speaker 2:That is a question that I think we should ask ourselves every single day, because when I was in one of the lowest moments of my life and my good friend Andy called me and saved me from a very, very bad situation that I was in, that's one of the things he told me. Bad situation that I was in. That's one of the things he told me and it's one of the things that I think about a lot, because he said in that moment he said you have to think about how minuscule it is how bad we hurt each other on comparison to how bad we hurt God on a daily basis.
Speaker 2:And when he said that it just man, it was so like gut wrenching and it's probably the last thing that I wanted to hear, because it was the truth. And it hit so hard because the person that I love the most on the planet hurt me the most at that time and it led me to be where I was at and again, we may be going into that on another podcast, I don't know yeah but it's not the time to go into that right now.
Speaker 2:I'm just using that situation because that was a moment when it was. You have to start playing to win right now, because you have children that need you.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And this is nothing compared to how bad that you hurt God on a daily basis, yeah, but he still loves you and still cares about you and still is there whenever you need him.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:He's not giving up. He's still playing to win. He's still forcing that ink I'm not going to say force, he's still providing that ink. He's always there, he's not forcing it, but he's always there, that pen is always full and you can always go fill your pen with the ink no matter what, and so it's.
Speaker 1:Yeah, like the person who hurts, you, turn around and forgive them the way Jesus forgives.
Speaker 2:Yeah and that's what I was Like. It's hard for us to think about how bad they hurt us and wanting to forgive them for it.
Speaker 1:Imagine somebody hurts your son.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, Somebody hurts your wife, yeah.
Speaker 1:Somebody hurts your daughter. Imagine loving the person who did that so much and forgiving them.
Speaker 2:And great point, because Jesus died for the person that hurt me, or my son, or my daughters, or my wife.
Speaker 1:That's who he died for.
Speaker 2:He died for that person? Yeah, just as much as he died for me. You know I had a conversation with my dad man. It was a while back Cause I haven't talked to my dad in a long time, but my dad struggles about you know, I've done so much bad in my life. I'm never going to heaven and I was like God. You know that there's there's murderers in heaven.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:There's rapists in heaven. You got to hope man, you got to, just there's there's got to be there's name, anything that's gone wrong in the world, that's bad, and there's somebody that's done it, that's in heaven.
Speaker 1:You, you know, and it's hard to understand that, but that's again I don't understand that love, because there's people that I wanted at some point in my life to die, and jesus doesn't want us to die yeah, yeah, and that's kind of thinking, thinking about again how we color each other's lives, how we influence each other's lives, how we play to win not to lose, how the struggle in understanding Jesus's divinity right. It's easy for us to understand the human side of Jesus, but to understand what he did.
Speaker 1:Yes, he did as fully man, right To show us. This is what humanity is supposed to be, this is how it was intended. This is the perfection of humanity, but also fully as God, because that's Like the thing that you can't be, but you are made in his image.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:This is what you are called to be.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:This is what it means to be a son of God. What?
Speaker 2:How do we grasp that Like? How do we? How do we grasp that Like? How do we? How do we? We understand the, the, the human ink that God provides when? How do we get to the point to where, and and again, it might not be for us to understand, to understand that, to understand the God side of God, or are we just meant to understand that the God side of God is the God side of God and that's it?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I don't know. I think there's something Father Stephen always talks about too is existing in the tension between two points. Right so, god is man, god is God, or sorry, jesus is man, jesus is God, and we can't comprehend that God is human and we can't comprehend that human is God. Right so, to somehow exist in that tension and the goal, the teaching and I hope I'm learning this right from him is the best place, one of the best places for us to exist in that tension is in our prayer right, so like we went to adoration once upon a time right, and so just to sit there in front of the Eucharist and say, like, what does this mean?
Speaker 1:Right and just to bask in the beauty of this thing that your brain is just aching to try and comprehend or to exist in that tension, to live out that tension by conforming our lives to Jesus.
Speaker 1:So when you see that the homeless person who's you know obviously not going to spend this money on food kind of thing and you had the worst day at work and you know wife yelled at you and your dog ran away and all that kind of stuff and to to, in that moment to have that awareness to go, I'm going to make myself approach this person like Jesus instead.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you just wrote a country song.
Speaker 1:I think. So my dog ran away, but no, yeah, I'm.
Speaker 2:I'm going to choose to approach this person how god would approach this person.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm gonna enter into that tension of the mystery that I can't comprehend, that the god jesus is god, he's, he's, pure divinity and you know there's, there's let's just put a.
Speaker 2:And again, we've talked multiple times on here that man I'm horrible with scripture memory. I can tell you that I've read it in there or heard it in there before, but I can't tell you where it is. But there's a, a part in there that I remember, where he's talking and Jesus says you will be able to do greater things than I. I don't comprehend doing greater things than Jesus, but he's saying with me you can do that, like, if you allow me to be in you and work through you, be in you and and and work through you, you can do these things. And can I comprehend that? No, but can I listen to it? Yeah. Can I believe it? Yeah. Can I play to win and not lose through it?
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So why not do that Right? Why not just understand that God is who he says he is, jesus is who he says he is, and they can do what they say they can do. And again, when I'm saying this, I'm talking to myself.
Speaker 2:I might as well be, you know, looking in a mirror talking to myself. We just happen to be talking to your, your listeners, and I think some of them probably think the same thing. You know, they're, they're probably, you know, kind of wrestling with the same thing. Jesus tells me that I can do greater things than him.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:What does that even mean?
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know, what's funny is um, today's uh mass readings happen to be and I just clicked the dang button on my phone Okay, the Solemnity of the Ascension of the Lord, and I have a feeling that it's in the gospel reading from today. So I'm trying to look it up real fast because that would just be kind of kind of coincidental, uh, or a god cadence I was gonna say that's not coincidental, that's a god cadential.
Speaker 2:However, you want to put that because you're about to blow my mind if it's in there yeah um, that would be wild if if it's in there, because I I just, I just thought of it you can do greater things than I. Okay, jesus, if you say so, yeah, no, I don't think it is.
Speaker 1:It might be in a different version, because the gospel readings from Mark, but the gospel reading from today was where, right before he ascends to heaven, he says whoever believes and is baptized will be saved. These signs will accompany those who believe right.
Speaker 2:That's why I was like oh, is this the same part? Is it there? Is it there? But?
Speaker 1:I don't think it is. I don't think it is, so it might be a different version of this recounting, anyway. Anyway, man, this is good, this has been good and hopefully it's been good for everyone else to think about or to listen to and contemplate. How are they filling the ink wells of all the people who, you know, we play a part in their lives and we influence them? And as they write their stories, are we letting God influence us so we can influence those around us? It's good stuff. It's beautiful, man. It's beautiful. Did you find it? I found it. Which one?
Speaker 2:is it? It's John 14, 12 through 28. Very truly, I tell you, whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father and I will do whatever you ask in my name so that the Father may be glorified in the Son.
Speaker 1:Amen, yeah, all right, that's cool. We're going to end it with that because it's perfect.
Speaker 2:What an awesome way to end it, man, yeah.
Speaker 1:All right, everybody. Thanks for joining us. Thank you, we will see you next time. Bye, bye.
