David Brisbin Podcast

Dave Brisbin 2.2.25 Would Jesus have been a Republican or Democrat? What seems like the setup to a joke is being asked in all seriousness. Two weeks into a controversial administration, I’m hearing people ask how a good Christian could possibly vote… How a Christian pastor could possibly support… An Episcopal bishop and a sitting president both state that God is on their side while remaining flatly opposed to one another. Near the end of the Civil War, Lincoln said that both North and South read the same bible, pray to the same God, invoke God’s aid against the other, but the prayers of both could not be answered, that of neither had been answered fully. Once we see an enemy, we imagine God is on our side, because we only have an enemy if we are certain we are right. An enemy is the wrong one. God is never wrong, so God is on our side, because we are right. Blaise Pascal said that people never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction. Truth is, the real enemy is n

Dave Brisbin 1.26.25 One of the best-known stories from the gospels, one that has seeped into collective consciousness, is the story of Jesus walking on water. This and turning water to wine has become shorthand for divine power. It’s natural for us to focus on the literal, but all Jesus’ miracles have spiritual meaning as well, and since most of us will live full lives never walking on water, the spiritual meaning is more relevant. Especially when Peter asks Jesus to bring him out on the water, and we can suddenly see ourselves as participants in miracle making. But Peter gets out a few steps, sees the waves from his new perspective, and starts sinking, screaming for help. Jesus puts him back in the boat saying, you of little faith, why did you doubt? How many times have Jesus’ words been aimed at us when we’ve expressed the least bit of existential uncertainty? But is doubt as uncertainty really what Jesus is rebuking? The word translated as doubt comes from a root that means twice or again, so we can und

Dave Brisbin 1.19.25 From someone going through a perfect storm of difficulties: I see no evidence of God, but plenty of evidence of the devil. Despite years as a devout Christian, she’s hit the point we all do, over and over in life, the point Karl Jaspers called a limit situation. The moment we realize we’re gonna need a bigger boat. Hitting the limit of our ability to cope, make sense, make meaning—everything that ordered our universe lying in a heap. Why does God seem silent when evil is so loud? We can walk into a dilapidated house and say we see no evidence of an architect, but the fact of the house, the space in which we could care for and maintain a home, is the architect’s fingerprint. If the consequences of human action or natural processes like extreme weather or viruses frustrate our agendas, security, and certainty, we label them evil. They overwhelm us, obscuring the order beneath. God is everywhere and everything, the foundation and bones of the house, the floor on which we act. But no matter

Dave Brisbin 1.12.25 I’m often asked about the big words... The words of Christian doctrine that seem to contradict the nature of God that Jesus called Good News, love itself. Degreeless and indiscriminate love that can’t be altered or avoided, showering on everyone equally—just and unjust alike. Yet Christianity feels exclusive…acceptance withheld unless we believe in an orthodox Jesus, declare him as Lord, obey church rule and ritual. There is heaven for those who perform, the eternal torment of hell for the rest, and at the center of it all stands the cross. Ironically, the ultimate dividing line. Here’s a big word: propitiation. An English word used to translate the Greek and Aramaic words used by John and Paul to describe Jesus’ death on the cross. It means to appease wrath, regain favor, change the mind of an angry God. In 1611, the King James bible translated the Greek hilasmos and Aramaic husaya as propitiation, but this has become controversial. Later translations use expiation instead—atonement,

Dave Brisbin 1.5.25 An angel was walking down the street carrying a torch and a pail of water. When asked what he was going to do with torch and pail, the angel said that with the torch he was burning down the mansions of heaven, and with the pail, putting out the fires of hell. Because only then would we see who truly loves God. With no promise of reward or fear of punishment, what is the temperature of our love when there is nothing “in it” for us—no consequence for not engaging. Everything in us rebels at this. We’re offended if there’s no reward for hard work. Yet Jesus tells us that no matter when we show up, we’re all paid the same at the end of the day—love is its own reward. We’re offended if there’s no punishment for failure, yet Jesus says that sun and rain fall on the just and unjust alike—love can never be other than what it is. We have to scale the wall of reward and punishment before we can ever hope to experience love without degree. Jesus relentlessly works to tear down this wall, knowing h

Dave Brisbin 12.29.24 When a rich young man asks what he must do to experience eternal aliveness, and Jesus tells him to sell all he has, and the man walks away with head hung, Jesus tells his friends how hard it is for wealthy people. Easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than a rich person to enter aliveness. The Aramaic word for camel, gamla, can also mean rope, so take your pick of images, but…it’s really hard. So how did the Magi beat those odds? Magi were wealthy, educated, astronomer/astrologers, influential advisors to power, yet when they saw the eastern rising of the prophetic star for which they had been searching for centuries, they jumped on their camels and headed west. So far, so good. All in the realm of accepted science and entrenched belief. But when that star “stood over” Bethlehem—when Jupiter went retrograde, signaling the end of their western push, and they found the one born at the rising of the king’s star—what could have prepared them for the abject poverty and insigni

Dave Brisbin 12.15.24 What is it we’re supposed to see in Christmas? Talk about a mixed message... Only two gospels mention Jesus’ birth at all, and the few details given depict a birth so ordinary to parents so poor that those closest didn’t even make room for them in the inn. Enter shepherds and Magi...here the gospels spend a bit more time, because their reactions were anything but ordinary. What did they see that everyone else missed? We only see what we’re prepared to see. Impoverished shepherds spending their lives in silence and solitude with their flocks, grew a consciousness that allowed them to see significance in the smallest detail. Magi—wealthy, educated advisors to the king—were used to power and influence. Yet these magi had retained a humility and vulnerability that allowed them to see the promise of their star while still unformed in a poor Hebrew infant. If we’re willing, the magi are showing us wealthy, educated ones how to get small enough to see Christmas. Christmas has a way of bring

Dave Brisbin 12.8.24 What does the story of Job have to do with Christmas? Any story is a story about risk. We’ve all been at risk from our first breath, but we don’t like to think of ourselves balanced on a razor’s edge of circumstances we can’t control. We work really hard to manage risk, grow as big as we can, accumulate money and materials so risk will have to get through all our stuff before it ever gets to us. Illusion. Risk passes through stuff like ghosts through walls. Job was big. Had everything a person could imagine—big hedges against risk. So when it all was taken, no one was more surprised than he. He cried out for answers, but when God finally speaks from the whirlwind of mystery and non-answer, Job finally admits his smallness. He had to lose everything to see himself as he was, that working to grow big is just another attempt at the control and invulnerability that will always elude. It’s not who we are as humans, and we’re never complete without accepting who we are. Only in our innate vul

Dave Brisbin 12.1.24 Long ago, many people came to seek counsel and wisdom from a great Zen master. One day, a very important man, used to giving commands, came to him, “Teach me about Zen. Open my mind to enlightenment.” The master smiled and said they should discuss the matter over tea. When the tea was ready, he poured and the tea rose to the rim, then overflowed to the table and on to the robes of the man who jumped, “Enough! Can’t you see the cup is full?” The master smiled again, “You are like this cup, so full that nothing can be added. Come back to me when the cup is empty. Come back to me with an empty mind.” This is how we all come seeking enlightenment. So full of what is true and false, right and wrong, attractive and repugnant, that nothing gets in as it actually exists in the wild. Automatically transformed into something we think we already understand, everything slips into our premade categories, judged good, bad, beneficial, not. Our cups are full. Epictetus said it is impossible for anyo

Dave Brisbin 11.24.24 To ancient Hebrews, the number twelve signified the completion or perfection of earthly systems, rule, government. More than a literal number, this is the meaning being transmitted by the twelve patriarchs, tribes, apostles, every detail of the New Jerusalem. It symbolizes a complete cycle—twelve lunar orbits creating the twelve months of the solar year, the twelve constellations of the zodiac counting out the agricultural seasons. Even Gehenna, the word badly translated as hell, had a maximum stay of twelve months, a symbolic full cycle of purification. Twelve reminds us that time is not a line, but a circle, that endings are beginnings, or in Eliot’s words: to make an end is to make a beginning; the end is where we start from. Like a snake eating its tail, we live endless circular cycles, arriving where we started in order to know the place and ourselves more and more deeply. To arrive at Step 12 of AA is a simultaneous ending and beginning, taking us back where we started with the wi

Dave Brisbin 11.17.24 The end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time. Eliot’s iconic line reminds that time is not a line, but a circle. Beginning and end one and the same. That any authentic journey is a journey of awareness, bringing us back to ourselves expanded. And knowing…what? Step 11 tells us it’s God’s will we seek through the prayer and meditation that makes conscious contact with God possible. Without that conscious part, what have we got? But what have we got when we’ve got God’s will? We crave what we imagine as God’s “what:” what he wants us to do, the perfect life he wills us complete to the last detail. Mistake-proof. But God’s will, sebyana in Aramaic, is deepest desire, pleasure, delight, purpose—the essence that paints God’s presence in the only colors we will ever see. How do we come to know that? See those colors? In circles. Circles within circles of growing intimacy. Knowing, yida, is not cataloging data points, but becoming i

Dave Brisbin 11.10.24 What do you think of as a miracle? Seas parting, walking on water, healings? Dictionaries tell us miracles are events not explainable by natural or scientific laws. But what if an event is not explainable to or by you personally? Or leaves inexplicable space between data points? When you raise your hand, can you explain that? What happened between unthought intention and action? When you think a thought, where did it come from? When you forget, where did it go? A thing doesn’t have to be spectacular to be inexplicable. Common, everyday events are as well. Maybe a better definition of a miracle is a gift that we could never have given ourselves. Birth. Next breath. A friend’s forgiveness. Abraham Heschel, the great Jewish theologian, said that his greatest talent was his ability to be surprised. Jesus, another Jew, never gravitated far from a child’s point of view, and the genius of children is to live in a world that is magical—full of surprises and inexplicable gifts immune to the dens

Dave Brisbin 11.3.24 I’ve tried to make amends to people I’ve hurt in the past. Sometimes I felt reconnected. Sometimes my apology was flatly refused. Sometimes the words of forgiveness were spoken, but everyone knew nothing further was exchanged. In all of them, there was no reconciliation. We’ve not spoken since. The 9th Step of AA tells us to make direct amends wherever possible except when doing so would injure someone. But what are these amends? Dictionary says putting things right, restitution, mending. But if our attempts don’t mend, is there still purpose in the process? Turns out, process is all we have, all we can engage, so if there’s any purpose, that’s where we’ll find it. And regardless of outcome, the process of making amends is all about forgiveness—properly understood as freedom from the limitations of victimhood. For both victim and perpetrator, the freedom of forgiveness is essential. Whether a victim of someone else’s actions or our own, we’re not free to connect with anyone or God’s pr

Dave Brisbin 10.27.24 When we hear the Hebrew word shalom, we think of peace, as in the absence of conflict. And when we hear the word forgiveness, we think of pardoning or excusing, even condoning a person’s harmful action. But shalom—selama in Aramaic—means the greatest amount of unity, wholeness, health, and prosperity possible. And sebaq, forgiveness, means to set free. To the Semitic mind, forgiveness is being set free from victimization, and the fear, anger, resentment that has metastasized as a result. But since we can’t free another person’s heart, when we forgive, we’re actually setting ourselves free. We’re the only ones who can. In the 8th Step of AA, when we make a list of all the people we have harmed, we are going far beyond a mere list. We are recognizing our deep interconnectedness, maybe for the first time. How each choice and action we make ripples out, affecting others, just as theirs affect us. Not a problem when our actions are affirming, but can be devastating when not. And the closer a

Dave Brisbin 10.20.24 Ever try to give someone a compliment who couldn’t accept it? I like your shirt. Oh this? I got it on the clearance rack. Good job! I could have done better, just got lucky. Or next level: It wasn’t me; it was the Lord. All glory goes to God. Maybe we feel unworthy…or think we’re being humble or more spiritual by deflecting praise. But in trying to be humble, we humiliate ourselves with deprecation and the giver by essentially saying we know better. True humility doesn’t reduce us or others to lower levels. It simply recognizes what is. Humble people see themselves as they are. No more or less. Their relationships with others as they are—perfectly level. Their relationship with God—dependent, vulnerable, yet loved and accepted at the same time. But to be humble is to step outside your egoic mind that is always fighting to make you more or less than you are: defensive, fear-based positions, the ego’s will to survive. To be fearlessly humble—or gratefully realistic—is to have become ent

Dave Brisbin 10.13.24 When I went skydiving for the first and only time, I didn’t want a tandem jump—strapped to a jumpmaster—so that meant a full eight hours of training, and that the decision to jump was all mine. Fear grew all day through classes and videos; fitting for jumpsuit, helmet, goggles, pack; walking out to board the silver prop plane with its door-sized opening in the fuselage; takeoff and ascent to 12,500 feet; my name called; looking down at two miles of air with fear now in my throat. All day long the fear was with me, breathlessly at the moment of decision, but once I jumped, hyperventilated through the first few seconds of acceleration, I was no longer afraid. The day’s fear, gone. I’d set in motion a sequence of events that would end the at the ground one way or another, and I couldn’t take it back. Fully committed, there was nothing left but what I was trained to do. And enjoy the ride. The 12 Steps of AA break the removal of our shortcomings, our obsessive-compulsive thought and beh

Dave Brisbin 10.6.24 Longtime friend sent a text just long enough to tell me that his wife had died and could we set up a time to talk. I was shocked—knew she was fighting cancer, but no idea so advanced. On the phone, he didn’t want to talk about her death as much as what it had stirred up. Any death raises awareness of our own, but the death of a spouse takes it through the roof. He asked if he could tell me about things in his life that he wasn’t proud of, that he’d never told anyone. He said, you may not like me after you hear what I have to say. What is our greatest human fear? Being alone. Whether in personal relationships or existential vastness, alone is terrifying. All our compulsive, dysfunctional behavior is aimed at soothing that fear, so it’s perfect irony that such behavior only creates more aloneness by killing our presence—our ability to connect. My friend was alone in his home now and afraid that his deeds over decades would end our connection once spoken and maybe his connection with God

Dave Brisbin 9.22.24 If the first three Steps of AA are a serial surrender of the illusion that we can manage our lives isolated from the greater power of community and God, then Steps 4-7 are a serial healing of the damage those illusions have done. Just as surrender is too big to happen in one step, so is our emotional and psychological healing. Stages. Cycles. When the 4th Step speaks of making a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves, we think of lists of defects and shortcomings. A moral inventory is much more than a list. Defects and shortcomings are surface symptoms that expose deep, unconscious fears. Until we face those fears, the source of our dysfunction, we blame everyone and everything outside ourselves for our pain. We live as unconscious victims of circumstance…under the myth that circumstance determines well-being. The circumstances of Polish Jews in 1940 were horrific. After the German invasion that started WWII, they were concentrated and walled off in a tiny section of Warsaw

Dave Brisbin 9.15.24 Made a decision to turn our lives and will over to God, a power greater than ourselves…Step Three of AA…sort of a let go and let God. Sounds so easy, but it’s only as easy as our grip on whatever we’re holding on to. And if we believe we’re holding on to the only way we’ll ever experience security and survival, affection and esteem, power and control—just how easy a grip are we expecting? I remember a scene from a movie where a man is dangling off a cliff, clinging to the end of a rope with those at the top calling down to let go. He’s screaming back, eyes squeezed shut, face contorted. Exhausted, he finally lets go and falls about eighteen inches, lands in sitting position. That’s each and every one of us, clinging for dear life to illusions of power and control that blind us to the fact that in God’s care, it’s a very short fall. Once upon a time, I went skydiving. Jumped out of a plane at 12,500 feet with a bedsheet in a pack on my back. I decided to turn my life (literally) over to

Dave Brisbin 9.8.24 Looking at the 12 Steps of AA as a rite of passage: separation from the now too-small world we knew, to a disorienting transition, to reincorporation—a changed person returning to community. It’s the shape of every human life, but the trick is to make it conscious, our steps intentional. The danger is substituting the ritual for the real thing—talk about it or work through a book—useful in mapping our way, but never the journey itself. A Roman centurion approaches Jesus and implores him to heal his servant. Jesus says sure, take me to him. Centurion says I’m not worthy to have you in my home, just say the word. Jesus is amazed, has never seen such faith in all Israel. So much happening in so few words. A military commander of a ruthless empire, hated by the Jews, loves his servant enough to publicly humiliate himself before a ragtag Jewish healer…compassion cutting through rank and status. Aware of the blood on his hands, the military atrocities…remorse has opened him to a vulnerable