Conversation | Ronald Rolheiser on Giving Your Life Away

Hello and welcome to the John Markoma Teachings Podcast. My name is Inka Dawson and I'm your host. Each week we feature teachings by John Marko or other voices in the formation space. It's great to have you with us. Today, we wanted to share a conversation between John Mop and Father Ronald Roheiser. Father Roheiser is a speaker, minister and writer of several amazing books, many of which are mentioned in the conversation here.

In this episode, John Mark and Father Roheiser have an expansive conversation about the various stages of life in the spiritual journey, offering wisdom for how to navigate them with grace and fulfill the call of God at each point along the way.

Here's the conversation. Father Rollheiser, good evening. I'm happy to be here. This has been such a joy to be with you on retreat in your neck of the woods here in San Antonio. Thank you for your time. You know, they say never meet your heroes. So I keep bracing for you to say or do something to devastate my soul. But so far, so good. Hopefully it won't be in the next hour. Hopefully. At least wait until tomorrow after we're done here, right?

But no, it has been such a joy. I experience you exactly as I would imagine after so many years of reading your work. And I'm so grateful for your life and for your writing, which has... played such a key role in my own life and so many others. So thank you. It's really a joy to have a conversation with you tonight. Thank you. Thanks. That's quite a compliment. Let's just...

Start off. Let's go for the jugular. Let's just start off at the deep end of the pool You are a three-time cancer survivor You're in your 70s. You've been a priest for over 50 years 50 exactly. Half a century of spiritual leadership. Well done. I imagine you live with a heightened sense or maybe a reality-based sense of your mortality in ways that...

somebody at my stage of life and a healthy body for the most part, I likely live with some neurosis of like imagining that I'm immortal and life's just going to go on and on and on. What has... being forced through your diagnosis? And what has living with that uncertainty, what has that done to heighten your faith? Or has it, what effect has that had on your spiritual journey?

Double. One of them is, the faith is one thing. I'll talk about that in a second. It heightens your being alive. You know, let me just give you a little history. I was diagnosed with colon cancer in 2011. And initially they said... You know, we've caught it early, not a problem, you're going to need surgery, but you're going to have to do, you know, four months of chemo, but then no problem. And then, you know, I started doing the chemo and I was checking days, you know, day one, day two.

I got a hundred days, I'm out of this. And about halfway through, I realized, this is silly. I'm putting my life in brackets. And I stopped doing that. I thought, no, you don't stop living. I have to, you know, live fully. And I see this in faith and so on. And that was a good moment for me, you know. But then you know what happens when you get healthy again? Within six months, forgot about it. And just goes back to normal life, yeah. And then in 2014, he came back.

But then it was serious. My doctor told my oncologist, he says, he said, I'll just be blunt with you. You probably have 30 months left to live. Now that was a jolt.

And he said, we'll do chemo again. It probably won't work. He said, so basically prepare yourself. And I came back and this was a jolt. But then I wrote a creed for myself. It's kind of like, I'm going to die. I want to make every day special. You know how you get up? I do this now in the morning. I never used to say, this is the day the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it. I have a healthy day. I'm breathing. I'm doing stuff.

And, you know, it made me appreciate my work more. It made me appreciate life more, my friendships, everything more. So that, you know, a heightened sense of your mortality, it just heightens everything. Yeah. And then they put me on this drug, and it actually worked for another seven years. Wow. And then they said, well, now it's over. You're going to do chemo. You're going to probably live another year or two. And then I heard about this operation.

MD Anderson and went down there's this guy said no we'll take this out we were thinking five eight years or something you know but but I'm in that phase now but I've never forgot from 2014 to now This creed is kind of, you know, every day is special. Every day is special. To me, when I say this prayer, you know, today is the day the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it. I live that every day, you know.

I eat my morning breakfast saying, thank you, Jesus. I'm alive. And not only alive, I'm healthy. Yes. You know, and just, you know, you realize that walking, that doing work, everything, it's a privilege. It's a gift from God. Yeah. You know?

So it's faith in that sense, not so much faith that, you know, it scared me, I'm going to die, and facing God, and not so much that. And for me, I don't know what it is for you, but fear of dying is not so much fear of... facing out is that you don't want to let go of this life. I mean, humanly, it's just, you know, we don't want to let go of this life. I mean, we know I have to do it eventually, but not yet. Yeah.

As Augustine used to say, yes, but not yet. It does make me think of St. Benedict's, you know, command and the rule to keep your death before your eyes daily. And I know there's an interpretation of that that's like an obsession. masochism, but I've never read it that way. I've read it like, embrace the fleeting gift of life. In one of my writings recently, I quoted this, but Flannery O'Connor, in one of her books, she asked this guy,

There's an escaped killer. And anyway, he kidnaps this woman. And because she's afraid, and this woman is not a very nice woman, she's really gracious and nice and everything, but he eventually kills her. But then he says, She'd have been a good person if there had been somebody to kill her. They were a minute of her life. Meaning if she'd lived under the threat of death, she would have been a good person. Yeah. You know, that's kind of crass.

something to that, you know? The positive effect of an awareness of immortality. With me, it's never been so much fear, you know, you die, and you know, I have a, I really believe that our death, we're going to meet. are meeker in a warm, wonderful embrace that'll probably be the best experience of love we've ever had, you know? So it's not that, but it's still, who wants to say goodbye to the planet? Who wants to say goodbye to health?

Who wants to say goodbye to all your work and everything you're doing, you know, and family and friends? I hope and pray that you live for many more years. I want to have more conversations like this. but as someone who is nearing the transition to the next stage in your spiritual journey, for whom that I imagine that must, you know, it is on your horizon.

What would you say to those kind of back in those who are 24 or 31 or 19 who are closer to the beginning of a long life of discipleship to Jesus? Do you have any, like, man, there are two or three things that I just wish everyone early on in the journey would just, if you could get this young, if you could get this early, it would help you to navigate spiritual journey.

Yeah, I'm going to say a couple of things. And one of them comes from Jesus. Always a good place to start. You know, it's interesting. Sometimes we forget how scandalous Jesus was in his capacity to enjoy life. You know, we know that Jesus could shock people about give up your life, take up your cross. But, you know, there's a very powerful passage where Jesus scandalizes contemporaries by his capacity just to enjoy life. You know that.

the woman at his feet with the perfume, but also the drinking of wine. Remember they say, how come your disciples don't fast? And Jesus said, why should they fast? The bridegroom is still with them. Now that has a double meaning. The bridegroom's him. But also in the New Testament, the bridegroom is a season of your life. See, when you're young and you're healthy, don't second-guess that. And, you know, the example I use with that is...

You know, I'm sure you've had that experience where you visit somebody in the hospital who's really ill or they may be dying. And you walk away and you feel guilty because you're not dying. Jesus would say, don't feel guilty at all. I'll soon enough be walking away from your bed. He said, someday the bridegroom will have lots of time to fast. He's not just talking about he's leaving. He said, no, the season of health and life.

enjoy your life, not in the hedonistic, you know, Epicurean wine women's song, but precisely, you're young, you know, enjoy your work, enjoy your life, and so on. Second one, I got that from an old man. We had a priest in my community who aged as wonderfully I've ever seen a man age, and he died at age 100, you know.

But I'm not sure this guy ever got angry in his life. He just had this generous spirit and so on. And so I think it was his 90th birthday. And one of our young guys said, Leo said, what's the secret? He said, I want to age like you. So what's the secret? He said, start now. He said, start now. He says, don't put off, you know, the things you need to do in terms of opening your life, being gracious, giving up grudges.

It's not something you postpone to, you know, after 50 and after 60 and after 70. He said, start now. Yeah. He said, if you... You nurse angers, you nurse grudges, and so on. He said, it's only going to get worse. You're going to age into that. And so Jesus wants us to thrive. We weren't put on this life as a test.

Can you measure up? Can you be faithful? I mean, that's there as a bottom line. Yes. But Jesus wants you to thrive. Jesus wants you, as a parent, you have kids. You want your kids to thrive. You don't just, you don't have kids to give them a test. that they be loyal to Jesus, you know. You want them to thrive. And part of that is Jesus seemed to have no problem enjoying life, you know. And the irony is, paradoxically,

that also empowered him to give it up. Yes. I think sometimes it's double when we somehow don't give ourselves permission to enter life, and then we also struggle. to give it away. That's a paradox. See, what Jesus gives us, he gives us sacred permission to enter into your life, to enjoy the fact.

Like right now, you're young, you're in ministry, you're doing important stuff. Enjoy those years. I love that you think I'm young. I take it. Okay. And, you know, but then to look at, see, at that age... I don't tell 20 year olds, you know, one day you're going to die. Start waking up. No, no, no. I would tell them more like, start building. So when you're 30 and 40 and 50, you know, look at...

Your anger is look at things that you need to look at and so on. Do your grieving and for what's wrong with, you know, if you have a dysfunctional background or whatever. And, you know, what you are calling on people to do... whatever you want to call that. Some people call that going on the inner journey where you start to attend to your wounds and your family of origin and your interiority and all of that.

I'm shocked at how few people are up for that inner journey, at least in our culture. You know, there's that saying I keep thinking of right now, no one matures without aging, but many people age without maturing. And it does feel like... A lot of people in Western culture mature to this kind of basic life architecture level, but then they kind of just plateau and they live kind of, I don't know, just a more...

generic materialism driven career driven pleasure driven whatever kind of family driven whatever kind of life and never really go on the inner journey and begin to prepare to die begin to you know

open their heart, as you're saying, why, I think I've read you say before that we live in a first half of life culture. There's almost like there's this, you know, cabal, almost like there's this vast conspiracy against interior depth. and against really spirituality, against the life of the soul, against the journey of spiritual formation. Why do you think that is? Is there something in the culture? Is it a deeper human resistance? Why?

are so many people resistant to ever going on this inner journey? Well, I'll start with a quote, which you gave partially. The man who directed my thesis in Belgium was a Dutch. theologian, older man, and he says, he said, right now, he said, Western culture constitutes a virtual conspiracy against interiority. You know, what he meant by that is not that, you know, there's people conspiring, it's just...

That's our culture. And he said this many years before the iPhone and Wi-Fi and social media. But I'll begin to answer with the story. Some years ago, I was listening to an interview on the radio, on NPR radio, with a journalist and his wife. Okay. And they had just come back from 11 years of living in Paris. And they were journalists and artists. And while they were there, their son was born, was now nine. So when they lived in Paris, they were artists, so they didn't have a television set.

They were completely out of the loop of Western, you know, pop culture. So when they moved back, your son didn't know who Taylor Swift was and who, you know, all this stuff. Okay. So now they moved back to the United States. He's nine years old. And so they said, the interviewer said, your son, has he held out against pop culture? I said, for about a week. But then he said this, he says,

Nobody holds out against it. He says, popular culture right now, which is spreading around the world, he said, it's the most powerful narcotic that's ever been perpetrated on this planet, for good and for bad. But he said, it's just so powerful. Western culture or pop culture right now, it's a virtual narcotic. And it's really hard for people not just to be swallowed up by it. And then normally what it takes is...

something has to crack. Yeah. Remember a line from Leonard Cohen, everybody quotes now, there's a crack in everything, that's what the light gets in. That's what the light gets in. So, you know, it takes a... A breakdown, it takes a breakdown in health, a relationship thing, something where, because otherwise you just swim along in the culture and there isn't any place for interiority. And the second thing, back to Jesus.

Jesus said the rich struggle to enter the kingdom. He wasn't just talking about money. The kingdom of God is within you. I've thought about that many times. But why did the rich struggle? And see, for Jesus, the opposite of rich, poor, but the opposite of rich, notice, he idealized children. He said, you know, the rich struggle in the kingdom, children go in easily. Why?

He wasn't, I think we tend to idolize the innocence of a child. He was idealizing the dependence of a child. See, children have no illusion of self-sufficiency. You know, if mom and dad don't get up, they don't eat. If it's not given to you, they don't have it. But see, we, when we're healthy, when we're young, when we're in affluent culture, we have the illusion of self-sufficiency.

It's mine. I earned it. I can do it. And so on. That's an illusion. And so our culture, it's individuality, it's strength. That's why... This changes when people, when their health goes, when something else happens and so on. See, then you're no longer rich. You just realize, I can't do this for myself. I'm not self-sufficient. Yeah. It's interesting, you know.

Medieval philosophers, theologians, you know how they define God philosophically? They said God is self-sufficient being. That sounds abstract. That's actually a good definition. See, God doesn't need anything other than God. Everything and everybody else is not self-sufficient. You know, we're not self-sufficient. Yeah. Except we feel self-sufficient. But it's an illusion. Yeah. Children don't. Little kids, they know I don't provide.

mom and dad don't feed me i don't get fed you know see and he said they go to heaven easily but see so the combination of affluence by affluence i don't just mean money but just You know, we're young, we're healthy, we don't feel vulnerable. You know, a couple of generations ago, people still felt vulnerable, you know. There weren't vaccinations. You could get sick and die. People died a lot more often. People died in childbirth and so on. Today, the average age of 100 years ago was 49. Yes.

Today, you're only warming up for life. Life expectancy was 49, 100 years ago in America. Yes. See, so that there was, and there was just a lot more dependence on community and so on. See, and where this also comes out is the individuality where we don't need, think we need community anymore. Yeah. I'm sure you've heard this line many times. I'm spiritual, but not religious. Mm-hmm.

I can do Jesus, I can do God, I can't do community. Or I will do community on my own. Yeah, through my lens of... Or when I need it. Reginald Bibby, who's a sociologist of religion up in Canada, the Baptist, kind of our major sociologist of religion. He has some interesting lines. He says, notice he says, people are treating their churches the same way they're treating their families, which means they don't want to disappear. They want you around.

when they need you. He also says, people haven't left their churches, they just aren't going. The same as they haven't left their families, they just aren't going home a lot. Wow. You know, see, and so that's a problem of culture, of individuality. And my fear is it's getting worse, not better. But then also just the power of pop culture.

It's just so powerful. You know, who are the stars from everything from the pop industry to sports heroes to Hollywood to just corporate world to Facebook and so on. It's a world apart. Yeah. And, you know, just a symbol of lack of interiority. All of us, we're sitting with something in our hand at all times, you know. That's not going to spawn interiority. No, it can just keep you. Yep.

Yeah. You know, I've heard it said many times that people go on the inner journey for one of two reasons, desire or pain. Yeah. But most of the time it's pain. Yeah. But, you know, you're calling pop culture a, I think you called it a cultural narcotic and narcotics dull pain.

Unless if the pain is really, really, really bad. And I just wonder if that cultural narcotic is so powerful. It doesn't keep everybody. At some point, the pain comes through and people receive an invitation. Sooner or later, it's going to break through. But you can delay it longer than ever before. Daniel Berrigan was a hero of mine. But Daniel Berrigan says, you know, he says, he talked about, he said, culture is so powerful. And he said, the one thing that could protect you is prayer.

See, prayer links you to something beyond your culture. You know, you're linked to something beyond. So the trouble is, most people don't have a strong enough prayer life. So his other thing was, if he can't do it, he said, connect to the poor.

connect to people who aren't in the culture. So, for instance, he would always serve at a hospice for dying cancer patients. He said, when you're watching people die every day, it kind of gives you perspective on the culture. And he was honest enough to say, like, my prayer life isn't strong enough.

I can't draw this. He said, and he said, if you don't do it, the culture is going to drown. He said, the culture will drown you. So he said, either do it through prayer. Prayer. Or serving the poor. Or serving the poor. Because they both ground you in reality in a culture that's constantly in denial. And essentially, the poor for Jesus include little kids. So, for instance, a father of a young family that grounds you. Yeah.

or helps ground you. Yes. You know, one of the things I love about your work, I experience your writing and teaching as a kind of... spiritual cartography. Like, you know, this is my perception. It seems like you have gone far down the inner journey, the spiritual journey, whatever you want to call it. And you're an academic, so you have access to the best Christian teachers for thousands of years. You've just spent decades of life reading and thinking and studying and teaching.

But, you know, there's a lot of your own life experience, personal experience and priestly experience with other people. And I feel like you've kind of gone ahead on the spiritual journey and done some map making along the way. and left behind not a path to follow per se, but some landmarks to look for, some warnings along the way, some invitations along the way. And I'd love to suss that out a little bit with you.

You are in the process of writing a trilogy that you started how many years ago was The Holy Longing? 1999. 1999. And third one should come out in a year or two, right? So, gosh. quarter of a century you've been writing this three book trilogy on the three stages of discipleship the holy longing and followed by your book sacred fire i read the holy longing many years ago when i was in my 20s beautiful

But then somehow I came to Sacred Fire, which is all about discipleship in the long middle years of your life. You would say, I think, kind of mid-20s to 70s or so. And it has become almost like my... playbook for discipleship for the long middle years that I'm living through right now. And you have put language to things that I was feeling, but I just were, were inchoate, as you'd say, which were not clear in my mind.

I'd love to suss that out a little bit. You have broken down the spiritual journey into three stages. First off, tell us why is it helpful to think about following Jesus over a lifetime through this concept of stages? And secondly, what are your, describe your three stages that you kind of, how you frame it? The first thing, why, you know, how that works with Jesus. And that is, you know, as I often say in talks.

Like Jesus didn't break down teaching for, this is for young people, for middle-aged people, for older people, it's for kids. Jesus is taught. Yes. And all his teachings, whether it's his parables or whether it's the Sermon on the Mount. They're just for everybody. Yes. Okay. All people for all time. But now the difference is you hear that at different stages of your life. So imagine you're 10 years old, you hear the Sturm on the Mount. You're 20 years old, you hear the Sturm on the Mount.

You're 45 years old and have young kids and hear the Sermon on the Mount. You're 65 years old looking at retirement to hear the Sermon on the Mount. It means different things. It's the same teaching, but you hear it in a different way.

So today we're, and I drew this from, basically from a classical mystic whom you're very familiar with, John at the Cross. Yes. You know, so John at the Cross would say, there are three stages of... transformation in your life, you know, and he uses mystical terminology, you know, your journey through the darkness of the senses, your proficiency, which is kind of a flat word, okay, and then...

you know, the dark night of the spirit. But basically, I'd also studied the anthropology. To me, this made perfect sense between the spiritual life and human life, that basically, you can put another wording to them.

There's three great stages. One is to struggle to get your life together. Stage one, the struggle to get your life together. From the day you're born until sometime in your 20s. Today, sometimes it's in the 30s. before you land in a career, a marriage, and so on. See, and then you have these middle years, which can be 50 years. Yep. Stage two, which you call... Generative discipleship. And that's the struggle to leave your life away.

So stage one, struggle to get your life together. Stage two, struggle to give your life away. But then we all have to exit the planet. And how we exit is going to be very important. Yes. And so then there's a struggle how to give your death away. How to live your last year so that, as I always said, that your last greatest gift to your family is a gift of peace, another gift of some kind of conflict or whatever, that when you leave the planet...

It's clean. It's a, you know, it's a clean exit and you leave behind a warmth, a cleanliness, a peace. Okay. Wow. And, you know, and that traces out, you know, this isn't abstract. So if you take the first, the first stage. Let's go through each one. Struggle to give your, struggle to get your life together. Okay. Struggle to give your life away. Struggle to give your death away.

Take us through the first one. You're saying that zero to mid-20s or whatever. Okay. Zero to mid-20s with a major thing in between. So, you know, like for you're born. You're born. usually you're born in a hospital, you're taken home, and unless there's some trauma in your family, those first 10 to 12 to 13 years are usually pretty peaceful. Yeah. You know?

You're learning languages and you're going to school. Psychologists call it pre-neuroticism, right? You're not neurotic yet. You might be deeply wounded, but you're kind of just going through life. And also you're... you still enjoy your parents and you know that's when you have family vacations and you go to Disneyland and you enjoy Christmas and so on. And then there's a disruption.

And disruption is puberty. Oh, as a parent of three teenagers, two of which are 14, I'm well reminded now of puberty. See, they literally become a different person. Yeah. And that can happen in the space of one summer. As I was saying in the book that puberty is designed by God, designed by nature to be a little violent because it rockets you to a certain stage of your life. the way anthropologists put it, it drives you out of the house.

You know, you still live at home for a while, but you're on your cell phone. You want to be with your friends. You don't want to be with your parents. Yeah, you want to go out on a Friday night. You want to make, you want independence, freedom. You don't want your parents to pick you up at school. You don't want to be seen with your parents and so on.

See, and as I said, those are dangerous years, but see, then your real, your first real struggle for individuation, the real struggle begins not so much at birth. but at that puberty. Who am I? Who am I? How am I going to turn out? Who's going to love me? What am I going to do with my life? What do I mean? And so on. And then, see, puberty also, it's biologically, emotionally, psychologically.

There's no other way of saying it. You heat up. Yes. You heat up physically, sexually, biologically, and all these energies and so on. And oftentimes you're given an adult body. Mm-hmm. without an adult mind, and that can be a dangerous combination. You know, a 14-year-old child, really, in an adult body, and with... with raging hormones and so on. See, but that drives you out. And so for the next 10, today it might take 20 years, you know, you're looking to find your way back home again.

You know, you're looking to find somebody to marry. You're looking to find a career, to land somewhere, to find something meaningful. An identity to live in. Yeah. Meaningful. Community to belong to. Meaningful for your life and so on. So you're leaving home to find home. Yeah. And then, normally, it happens. Sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes you have people in their 40s and 50s, they're still trying to find, who am I and what do I mean and what's my career going to be? But most people, you land.

can be dangerous. A lot of people don't make it through those years, you know, drugs, sex, alcohol, gangs, you know. Yeah, you described it today. I would love to hear you talk about that as an attempt. how you know traditional cultures have already always had an initiation moment for boys to become men in particular and girls to become women but in the absence of that in modern western culture and really disappearing around the world

People attempt to self-initiate, which is often quite dangerous. Yeah, because we're not helping them. Yeah. See, in fact, one of the most important things I think we do at church is to try to... develop some initiation rites, you know. I'm not sure in your church you have a sacrament called confirmation. You know, we have a, like we have baptism, and then we have a second, but confirmation, so many prophets used to say,

It's a beautiful sacrament looking for a theology. But, you know, like, could we have some type of adult initiation that would be church-oriented, you know, like really a sacrament? that you give at age 18 or whatever. But we don't. And see, unless as a parent you do it on your own.

is not going to be done. And then also, even if you do on your own, you're launching your boys out there into a world where the other boys aren't initiated. Yeah. You know, that's exactly what I've had to do. And you're right. You know, and so it helps, but you're still.

They're moving in a world against the flow of culture, against the flow of culture and so on, you know. But during those years, you know, I always point out, you know, and in the Holy Long, I do a long section that's just that, and also in Sacred Fire. the energies they have to deal with, you know, so that, first of all, their sexuality is really strong, you know, and it's not mature, you know. The problem in our culture is...

You might reach puberty at 14 and you get married at 34. At least 20 years of raging hormones. And that's a new problem in the history of the world for the general population, right? People used to get married. 14, 15, 18, so on. And see then also today we have a culture that plays in so, you know, and university campuses are notorious, but it's not just university campuses, you know that.

kind of pickup culture, you know, and sex. Low view of sexuality. It's no longer holy. It's no longer. And it's interesting, you know, I was reading Bibby's book and he was saying that study millennials. And he said, there's good news and bad news. He said, most of the good news is most millennial kids, they eventually want a monogamous marriage.

Bad news is they want to go through 15 years of sexual promiscuity. And the idea is, then I'll pull it together when I meet the right person. Yeah, gosh, that is not the right. That's not the best preparation for marriage. 15 years of sexual license, then I'll sacralize my sex and take it home. You know, good luck with that, you know. So that's the problem. But the other thing is, during those years...

There's just this powerful energy inside of kids. And that energy is actually beautiful. You know, there's something about, you know, kids. I need to hear this. I'm thinking about my 17-year-old right now who just always wants loud music on and always wants to do something and have people over. And they're jacked, you know, and this cheerleading. Can't sit still, yeah. And they're laughing a lot and it's upbeat and so on.

And there's something good about that. You know, like Freud looked at that and Freud said, you know, until you get 35 and some of that dies, you're pre-neurotic. And it covers your wounds. Kids can get along of different political parties and so on. After 35, really devote for it. I'll never talk to you again. Yeah, you're saying that energy carries you through some of the woundedness that you don't even realize you have yet until you get a bit older. Energy just carries you.

out into the world to leave home to find a home. And see, your energy at that age still, and your dreams and so on, they overpower your wounds. I mean, and then get into your 30s and 40s. the wounds slowly overpower the energy. You know, I always tell people When you reach age 40, you realize your mother did love your sister better than you. Before that, it didn't bother you. And now it bothers you a great deal.

And you feel your wounds and so on. Yes, just how deeply you've been wounded. And then that becomes a second dangerous time. That's when a lot of midlife crises and stuff and angers begin to seep into your life. Resentment, yeah. You've said before that in the first half of life, we struggle with lust, but in the second half, we struggle with anger. And I take my interpretation of that as primary struggle for most young people.

is what do I do with these energies, sexual or otherwise? I just want to draw energies for career, for upward mobility, for success, for whatever. I just want to drive it. How do I channel? You're already on a Friday night. Yes. How do I channel all of this pent-up energy? But then there's a shift where the struggle is, how do I forgive? You know, what's your paradigm? You have a four-part paradigm, forgiving others.

for hurting you, forgiving yourself for your own mistakes and your own failures. forgiving life for being unfair. And what's your fourth one? Forgiving God for not rescuing you. Describe what you mean by that. Yeah. I actually got that from Andrew Greeley, who had written a critique on, you know, it was a very famous book.

in the late nineteen nineties by frankie mccord called angela's ashes which was a brilliant book an autobiography of this irish guy grown up in new york went to ireland but but his dad was an alcoholic and destroyed the family his mother couldn't protect him and so on

But anyway, he had this hard life, but then he became this famous writer and he wrote, he made millions of dollars and so on, but also became an alcoholic who destroyed a couple of marriages. So anyway, he does a lot of whining in the book, even though the book is very brilliant.

So Andrew Greeley, another third-generation Irishman, wrote a review on that. And Andrew, I knew Andrew. Andrew was a sharp man with a great sense of wit and humor. And he said, Frank, he said, let me tell you something. He said, you're whining about being Irish, poor, and Catholic. He said, The only three things that make you interesting, you know. But he said, I'm going to give you some advice. I said, one Irishman to the next before you die. I said, forgive your father for being an alcoholic.

Forgive your mother that she couldn't protect you. Forgive Ireland because it was poor when you lived there. And forgive yourself for becoming an alcoholic and ruining two marriages. And forgive God because life isn't fair, he said.

You don't want to die an angry, bitter person. He said, that's the only moral imperative there is. It's quite a line. He said, that's the only moral imperative there is, don't die. You don't want to die an angry, bitter person. You're familiar, I'm sure, with the book called The Shack.

Mm-hmm. William Young. And, you know, he got in trouble with some churches for that because his thesis in the— He was based in the Portland area, I remember. Yeah. His thesis is basically forgiveness trumps everything as a Christian. You see the load that Jesus puts onto it with, if you do not forgive, neither will you be forgiven. I mean, that's like one of the most emphatic teachings of Jesus in all of the Gospels.

And why? Why won't you be forgiven? Tell me, Ronald Roheiser. Well, because it's not on God's part. This is the problem. You know, if I go to heaven... and somebody's there whom I can't stand, we'd need separate tables. There are no separate tables at the marriage supper of the Lamb, right? John Shea was this wonderful religious poet from Chicago. John Shea says,

The heavenly table, the banquet table, is open to everyone who's willing to sit down with everyone. Wow. See, so if I'm not willing to sit down with everybody, it's not God who's excluding me. It's kind of like, I don't want to be a table of jacks there. Yeah. Well, then we're back on earth. Yeah. You know, we won't be forgiven because God can't forgive it. Not just basically.

We can't have people angry at each other. There's that radical individualism again that just, you know, we just can't imagine. This is a communal experience of salvation. Everybody in heaven angry at each other. You know, we got earth, you know. Okay, so.

So now we're getting into stage two. Okay. So stage one. struggle to get your life together. Like, how do I leave home? What am I going to do with my life? Am I going to marry or not? If so, who? What's my identity? What's my community? Where do I belong? What's my place in the world? What's my Enneagram number? All of that stuff. That's phase one.

And then there's some kind of a transition into phase two, the struggle to give your life away. Describe that stage for us. Okay. Well, first of all, that can happen quickly or it can happen gradually. And usually we don't even know when it happens. You know, one day you realize you've landed. You know, I look at all the people who came to this seminar. Everyone came from a hole. Everybody came from a house, from a career and so on.

you know, they've obviously fought their way home again, you know. But sometimes you've got to be in before to realize, you know, I'm no longer a young person searching, who am I? I'm a married man with kids, and I have these responsibilities and so on. See, then it shifts. It's no longer, who am I? What do I mean? Who will marry me? And now it's, how do I do this? I'm tired.

How do I serve the world? Yeah. So it's a good expression. You have to do the next 50 years. You're trying to give your life away. And it's a long run of time. It's a long run. It's a marathon, not a sprint. Yes. God willing, you know. Which is also very important spiritually. You know, spiritually, see, there's definitely a marathon to spread. It's one thing to sustain a prayer life for two years.

and I think to sustain it for 60 years. Yeah. You know, it's going to go through some seasons and so on. You can, or like fervor, if we identify our religiosity just with fervor. Fervor is beautiful. It's a gift from God. You gave me like an emotional passion. Yeah. But you can't, it doesn't sustain. Yeah, it's not sustainable. You know, the same as, you know, a couple, they marry and they go on a honeymoon. It's wonderful.

you eventually come home from a honeymoon, not a marriage, you know. And it's the same with our prayer life and God. But see, so the next 40, 50, whatever years of your life, and actually those years are usually pretty clear to us in terms of what we should be doing. You know, you're a parent and you have a job and everything else, a vocation. Don't get up in the morning.

I wonder what I mean. I wonder what I should be doing. You know, I have to get the kids to school and we got to make lunch and we got to pay the mortgage. How am I going to get through this day? You know, see, and that can be for years, you know, that. Like I wrote this book, Domestic Monastery. It's like, you know, every young parent on the planet should read that book. And it takes about 25 minutes to read it, which is perfect. In terms of like...

The monastic bell controls you, except the monastic bell becomes your kids, your job, your mortgage, and so on. And it basically dictates your life to you. Yeah. You know? Benedict, who wrote the rules for Western monasticism, he had this famous line, he says, a monk's life is regulated by the bell. And he has a famous line, he says, when the bell rings, no matter what you're doing,

You drop it, you go to the next exercise. And he has this famous thing. He said, if you're writing a letter, you need to cross the T, put the pen down. Yes. He said, you go to the next exercise. And then you come to prayer. The bell rings, the monks all come together for prayer. You go there. He said, not because you want to, because it's time.

And you said time isn't your time, it's God's time. And part of that, right, is weaning people off of narcissism. Your life is not your own. Your life belongs to God. It belongs to this community. So put the pen down and go to prayer. So you basically... As a parent, you're a monk. You're saying that children can function for you as a beleaguered young mom or dad. Right. The same way as a monastic bell for a full-time monk. Yeah.

in a benedictine abbey like and even when they wake up from the nap crying that's your monastic bell you put also when they're babies you get up in the middle of night and you do vigils yeah it's just like you're like those crazy monks that pray in two in the morning also known as all young

parents yeah they'll know what yes it's interesting James Hillman who died he was this wonderful philosopher he was agnostic but interestingly and ironic he probably did some of the deepest writing on soul that's been written you know But he also said, when you're a young person, he comes back again when you're older. He said, aging turns you all into monks, except in setting up to feed a baby.

You have to get up at night to go to the bathroom. You still have to do vigils. Wow. So what are some of the struggles that you face?

Many people listening will be in that, you know, the long, let's just say between 20s and 70s. That's most people. That's a lot of people. What are some of the struggles that you face in those long middle years from a discipleship perspective, you know? Well, one of them is, let's look at prayer, you know, but not just prayer, relationally, because John of the Cross, you know, John of the Cross is the parallel between your prayer life and your relational life. They're always perfectly parallel.

Interesting. So one of them is when you're doing a long haul, it's not going to be exciting a lot of the time. Prayer is not. Or even like in a marriage or with kids, there's going to be some long... Daniel Berrigan used to say, he said, never travel with anyone who expects you to be exciting all the time. He said, for a long trip, there's going to be some boring stretches. And so whether it's in your family life, your marriage, your job, there's going to be some...

Sometimes where you, John of the Cross says, one of the biggest issues in sustaining a prayer life is, at a certain point, there's just going to be a lot of boredom. There's going to be a lot of flatness. where you're not going to sustain yourself through, you know, fervor and I'm excited. Working up a second honeymoon over and over again. And a quote I often give there, which comes from Bonhoeffer, I very much like this quote when he was a Lutheran priest.

When he married couples, he'd always say this. He said, today you're very much in love. And you think that your love will sustain your marriage, but it can't. But your marriage can sustain your love. Yes. See. Your covenant, your commitment. The same with. your commitment to God, your commitment to prayer, that can sustain your prayer life and your fervor and your goodwill. And your formation. Tim Keller has this beautiful insight about how it's the constraints.

of commitment, and he's thinking primarily here of marriage, parenting, career, ministry, that that constraint, that sense of almost feels like a straitjacket at times, is actually what if you let it do its work in you, sets your heart free. to become a person that's free and is at peace and is open and joyful over many years of fidelity to your call. And see, inside of that, that's where I think people need a lot of spiritual help and understanding.

In terms of, for instance, the talk you gave today on Dark Night of the Soul, a lot of people don't know that. And see, so I love that expression you used to whoever it was. He went to see the guy and said, what's wrong with me? And he said, God. Oh, yeah. Yes, that was a young priest who went to Thomas Kelly. Yeah. He said, what's wrong with me? I don't feel God's presence. God is wrong with you. God is wrong with you. See, because we're going to feel there's something wrong with us.

be fervorous, I should be really excited, and so on in prayer. And no, a lot of times it's, and that's, as you know, contemplative prayer then, in the deep tradition, a lot of times it's just being there. Yes. It's not even Lectio Divino or things where you think, you just need to be there. Yeah. And this isn't apathy. When you talk about boredom or flatness, it's not apathy. It's not a dull heart.

There's actually a sweetness that comes from it. Yeah, it's not like you're going through the motions. Yeah, what did St. John call it? Just silent love. Yeah. But you know, I have an analogy for that. See, John of the Cross says... during those years he said and the deeper you go and the longer you go he said i love this expression at one point he says the more the deep things begin to happen under the surface

Now, what does he mean by that? So this is my favorite analogy. My students are already sick of this. God, he's not going to use this again. And it says, imagine your mother is in a senior's home, assisted living, and you're the dutiful son. And you live five miles away. So every night after work for an hour, you go and you spend that hour with your mother. Help her settle down, so on.

In the course of the year, how many times you can think of an interesting, exciting conversation with your mother? Once or twice. The other times you're talking about the weather, the local sports team, you know, what's happening in politics and so on. Now, contrast that.

You do that year in, year out. Your sister is conveniently living in Alaska, okay? She comes home once a year for a week, and they're hugging each other, and they're crying, and they're having a deep conversation. You want to kill them both, you know? No. See, what she has, is that deeper than what you have? No. That's novice. You know, that's the first initiatory fervor. Let your sister stay there for a while.

And when your mom dies, you're going to be closer to her than anybody else in the whole world. Wow. Not because you had a whole lot of time. You were there. Yeah. You were there. Present. Faithful. And interesting, even if you fall asleep. Now, there's an interesting thing. Therese of Lisieux, the French mystic. Somebody asked her once, is it wrong to fall asleep when you pray? And she said, not at all.

It said a little child is equally pleasing to her parents to wake her asleep, maybe more asleep. So imagine you're visiting your mother, she's having a little dinner, your dinner worked in, all of a sudden you doze off for 10 minutes in chair. She's good with that. Yeah, she's just happy you're there. So John DeCosta, these mystics, they go to prayer. You fall asleep. It's even better. You're there. You're there. You know, see, earlier on in the spiritual life,

It's very important that, you know, the fervor happens. Yes. The deep. But at a certain place, you just need to be there. It seems like, you know, my reading of St. John is that...

you know, the reason that God allows such feelings of his presence and such, you know, I think you call it spiritual pleasure, you know, in the early years of discipleship is because God is... weaning us off of our love for the world, the flesh and the devil. So he's causing us to fall in love with himself rather than the world. It's just like... But we're still a drug addict. We've just moved from the drugs of the world, the flesh, the devil, to the drug of Jesus, you know.

But the problem with that is you're still run by the pleasure principle. We think we love God. We actually love the feelings we get from God, the emotional high we get from God, the honeymoon we get from God. Similar to dynamic marriage. Your stuff on marriage is brilliant about how... we don't actually fall in love with a person we fall in love with the archetype a union archetype of the feminine or the masculine and half the godhead

And then we get married and then we realize after a while, wait, this isn't half the Godhead. This isn't femininity. This is Sarah or this is Bob. And they snore and they have a, you know, zit on their nose or whatever. That's a real human, beautiful being. And the universal becomes particular. And so in that same way, God has to wean us off the pleasure principle in order to actually mature us to a place where we can become.

people of love, people of agape, you know. So that's some of what's happening, right, in this transition from stage one to stage two. Another thing that's a big piece of that, and you'll know that, and that is busyness. Yes. Flat-out busyness. A lot of times during, especially during the early generative years, it's busy. It's busy. You know, you're raising kids, you're doing this and so on. And I always say, you know, busyness starts as a virtue and it ends as a vice.

I'll tell you what I mean by that. Yes. It starts, you know, you're doing this because it has to be done. You're trying to pay a mortgage, you're trying to run a job, you're trying to administer to these people, and you're doing all this stuff, and you're actually really dedicated and so on, and you don't have time.

to do interior work. You don't have time to have a long conversation with your wife. You're home, you're tired, and so on. And for a while, you're doing it because it's virtue. But after all, it's also a great escape. You have to realize...

I don't have to deal with it. I don't have to do the inner work. I don't have to go there. I'm too busy. I'm too busy. Yes, I have a great excuse. But you know, basically, that happens. It happens to me, even as a minister. You get so involved in your ministry that... And so busy that after a while, you don't have to do inner work. Yeah. You know? Busyness becomes your cultural narcotic. Yeah. It becomes how you cope with pain and what carries you over it.

And then the longer you avoid doing the inner work, the more you want to avoid it. Oh, interesting. Why is that? Well, because it's like an analogy. Say, suppose you have a fallout with somebody. You know, if you apologize the next day, it's a little easier. You wait for three years, it builds up. Yes. The longer you wait for something, the more it builds up. So the longer you say that you put off to your wife's, we need to talk.

it's best to do it then. If you put it off for weeks and months, it becomes this elephant in the room, you know. See, and the last thing that we struggle with is kind of taking life for granted. and not having proper gratitude. You know, like... It's back to that we think we're immortal, you know? Or even just like, you know, I always tell people, you know what, when you're doing what you're doing...

you're young, you're family and so on. Some people say, it's quite a grind, you know, talk, talk the rat race and so on. I feel that right now. It's just, but now I'll give you some advice. You know, Someday you're going to be in a senior's home in assisted living. And you look back and say, those were the best years of my life. Wow. You know, see.

when we're in them oftentimes we can't appreciate it right now i'm just thinking how many more years until my kids go away to college and i can have quiet mornings uninterrupted but you're saying once they go away i'm going to be pining away missing them And even worse, once, because you'll still be busy, but once we're in the senior's home and, you know, they're serving you gel wet 4.30 in the afternoon, and you're going to be saying, those were the best years of my life. Wow.

And a lot of times I wasn't there. I wasn't there during these best years. Always on to the next thing. You know, I got that one ironically where you don't get spiritual wisdom from a baseball player. And Toronto had a pitcher called David Steed. And he was almost Hall of Fame. He won 20 games and won something. And years later, somebody asked him, he said, if you had your career do over again, you'd always be very different. The next time I'd enjoy it.

He said, you know something? He said, I had this incredible privileged life, you know, playing a kid's game and getting $6 million a year. And he said, but I was always angry and I wasn't doing well enough. He said, you know, I never enjoyed it. He said, no. I would enjoy it. But it's the same thing being a parent, being a minister, and so on. Cancer taught me that. I was gifted with cancer.

So that now I can say, this is good. This is the best day of my life. Because you get a sense of it. But otherwise, see, the grind can make it seem... I want to get this over with, you know, checking off the season of my life. I want to get out of here so I can get a rest sometime, you know, then we're not in, we're not inside of our days. And that's particularly in early generativity when the kids are young. Yes.

The mortgage needs to be paid for. You're starting to, you're founding a church. You're setting up something. It's really busy. You're tired all the time. You can forget that this is the best season of your life. Yeah, that's, I need to hear that. I am so, Father, realize that the way I'm wired, I am so on to the next thing. I mean, just like it is laughable. People could see inside my mind. It's just great. Cross that line. What's the next one? What's the next one? What's the next one?

And it is such a toxic. A simple thing is eating where, you know, we eat the fuel up. You know, you take your car to the gas station, half an hour for dinner, going to fuel up and on. Fuel up. Yeah, even calling it that. Yeah. You know, my wife almost died a few years ago. She dealt with a chronic illness for 15 years. The last five years were very serious. She was gearing up to die in her 30s at the time.

And it's a very long story. She was healed and in a very miraculous way. It's a whole other story. But just watching her transformation, she's not that old. but she just has this acute awareness way more than i have that life is a gift and because she had to stare down death at a young age and because she was so unwell for multiple years leading up to it

And so if you were to ask her, she just says her life motto is thank you. That's her whole life motto. Thank you. And I just want to be present to the goodness of now. And she is the least complaining, most joyful people, person I've ever been close to. Nobody has ever said that about me, ever. But man, there's something there, isn't there? And ironically, sometimes the more highly successful and in the best sense you are, the more driven we become. Exactly.

because see now the world rewards us for that hurry and frenetic busyness and drivenness and discontentment but also not just the word the world but and it's not even a bad thing you yourself have internal standards now that you have to measure up yes you know mediocrity won't serve you anymore. Yeah. And, and, and so you're, we just, we're driven from the inside, you know? So take us into stage three. So stage one, struggle to get your life together.

Stage two, a struggle to give your life away. Love that paradigm. Stage three, again, much less, you know, very few people in the population dispersion, less people listening. But tell us stage three, the struggle to give your death away. Again, that's new in spirituality. It's not new in scripture. It's not new with the mystics, but it hasn't been.

a developed part of popular spirituality. Is that in part because 100 years ago, 49 was the average life expectancy? You didn't get that old? Yeah. And even when I was a kid, a lot of men and women died in their 60s. Yeah. You know, now they're dying in their 80s and 90s, you know. See, so today, a lot of people are going to be pretty healthy at age 60, 65, going to retire. They're going to live for another 25 years.

What are those years for? Yeah. See, so partly it's not just preparing for death, but what's the new generativity you need during those years? What do you give your life to? What does love look like? And I love using this analogy from Scripture of Sarah and Abraham. When she was 70, he was 80, God said, set out to a new country. When you get there, you're going to get pregnant and have your real child.

It took 20 years. So now when she's 90, he's 100. They give birth to Isaac. So I would say like, who's going to be the Isaac? What are you going to give birth to post-menopausal? in your retirement years. Yes. Which might be the most important child you're ever going to get birth to, you know. Interesting. See, and that's the part about aging, but the part about dying, giving your death away, is this. In John's Gospel,

The last supper scene is half his gospel, you know, where Jesus is giving this long, long farewell discourse, you know. But he keeps saying over and over again, you know, my final gift to you. I'm going away. I'm going to leave you peace. Yeah. Peace is my gift to you. It's better that I go away. And see so that, like right now, okay, you're in, in even your early generative years, you're raising kids and so on.

See, right now, you're trying to give your life to your kids. And you are. Someday, and hopefully, they're going to be around longer than you. Because nobody wants to bury their own kids and so on. And when you go away... your final gift, and it must be peace. That when you die, they just have a sense of complete, like, Jesus is finished. And that wasn't the despairing thing.

There's nothing else I have to give. It's all done. And that when your kids think of you and your grandkids, they'll only have peaceful and good and warm thoughts. It's the spirit you leave behind. Well, not only Jesus left the Spirit behind the Holy Spirit, we leave a Spirit behind, you know? Not the Holy Spirit, but our own Spirit. Right. Yeah, I know what you're saying. And like, for instance...

Are your parents still alive? They are. See, mine are dead, but they've been dead a lot of years. But I have a sense of them, you know, and they left me a spirit of peace. Yes. I have only good thoughts. I'm only nurtured by their memories and so on and by their...

presence inside, you know, that mystical body of Christ. I've watched my dad, in particular, has lost both his parents. The way he talks about them, it's very similar to that. Very similar to that. You know, I was 21. My mom and dad died. You know, they died three months apart. They were all young. And you were 21 years old. Dad was 62. And you're the youngest of 12 children, right? No, more than 12. I'm not giving it a number, okay.

It's a discreet note. I just asked where you were in the birth order, and you said 12. I just assumed you were not. No, there were some more. This was Catholic. Yes. And then my mom died three months later. My mom was 58. My dad was 62. And at the time, this was just, you know, we really struggled to absorb that, you know. Heartbreaking. You know.

I'm so sorry. Well, in a year or two later, it's just, it's all turned warm. And it's, it's like a nurturing memory, you know. And the fact that you'll have that experience, you know, when... People who die, whom you're close to, if they're good people, there's the initial sadness. But then it all turns warm. And, you know, it's a nurturing memory and so on.

That's the last part of your life, many ways life, is how do you die so that when you die, you can see like Jesus on your deathbed. It's finished. Yeah. Even your death is a blessing. Because that's not inevitable. You're not saying that's not inevitable. Lots of people do not leave a spirit of peace behind. Some people can leave behind a spirit of shame.

family tears apart and all kinds of things and so on. Generational cycles of sin or addiction or abuse. You know, psychologists say that they say that death washes clean for good and for bad. You know, when, see, when a good person dies, that person, he or she had foibles and so on, very soon it's washed away. He only remembers the great things, you know, but vice versa.

When a bad person dies, they may have had something with, after a while, they'd wash it clean the other way. You know, I've heard some people talk about their prison. My dad was awful. He's just this awful man, you know, and so on. Well, notice that's not exactly a nurturing spirit he left behind. Yes. You know, and, you know, I need therapy. I need to, you know.

join men's groups and some have to be healed from my own father, you know. In fact, you know, Daniel Berrigan, the great Jesuit, he said, my father could never bless me. He just couldn't bless me. And that was a bad man. He said, but just said, that's the deepest one of my life. He said, my, my dad could not bless me. He said, my mother could. Yeah. He said, my bad dad couldn't. And then he also said, is that any, any marvel that.

Every policeman and every president and stuff were an irritant to me. Every authority figure in my life, you know, I was in their face, you know. He was an anti-war activist, right? He was anti-president, anti-war. Yeah, activist. So in some sense, it made him prophetic, but later on in life, he admitted it. A lot of anger. Yeah, anger and hostility beneath the good work. Yeah. His dad, you know. But sometimes your father, they have to die before you really get them who they are, you know.

I love my parents when they're alive, but a couple years after they died, I thought, I drew a long straw. This was good, you know?

So giving your life, getting your life together, giving your life away, giving your death away. What a concept. Why is this frame? And again, this is not chapter and verse. It's not empirical science. There's no one size fits all. Life is not that linear, et cetera, et cetera. why is this basic paradigm of three stages um why is that how is that helpful to let's say somebody's listening they're 26 years old or they're 34 years old or they're single or they have a young baby like how how

How does this inform how you navigate today? Well, you know, what we did tonight, we just laid out the stages, okay? But see, then the second step is, for instance, in your ministry and stuff. We have to tailor teaching and programs and stuff for those stages, you know, so that, so I'll give you a perfect example. Up until recently, we had no teaching. We had no programs.

for people in that third stage. Yes. And so what happened? You had very few people in that third stage. But I mean, even when we did, then they stayed and they just tried, I'm going to just be generative as long as I can. Yes.

And they never became holy old fools or holy old beggars who just, we hang on. Yes, I've seen people, really good people, lived incredible lives who just can't seem to die with grit. And let it go. They can't let it go. They're just still trying to keep it up to the right. We haven't helped them. you know. And see, and for instance, in the second stage, okay, in ministry, it's important how we minister to young couples and so on, how we understand their issues and so on.

So that, and it's important what kind of books they read. So you were telling me today, you said like, if you have somebody at 20 years old or something. Don't read Sacred Fire. Yes, don't read it. Wait till you're ready for it. Yeah, because, see, see, so, see, we can, it's a horrible verb. We can tailor certain kinds of spirituality. to their life cycle, you know? The same as we know that already with little kids. Yes. You know, Sunday school.

You teach the kids saying, you know, when the student is ready to mask, the teacher will appear. Right. There's just there's certain things we're just not ready to receive until we're ready. Yeah. You know. there are multiple there are many books there are many ideas that i think i came across in my early 20s and i just i just i could not metabolize it at that point i had to wait on in another decade or two

And then to avoid mistakes. And I gave an example of my mistake I made, you know. So I'm using the Mary Martha thing to talk about how we should all be Mother Teresa and Henry now. and so on. And so this person says, yeah, well, I'm stepping off the plane. Meaning you're talking about how life is more about who you are than what you do. It's about being more than doing. And what you do is not important at all. Your identity doesn't come from success. Feel good about yourself. How do you do?

that if you're a big, fat nobody, you know? It's one thing if you just won the Nobel Prize, you know? And he's right. I realized there was a bit of a slap in the face saying, you know, whoa, whoa. If I'm preaching to 70-year-olds, that makes some sense. If I'm preaching to 27-year-olds... Doesn't make sense. It's the wrong story. Yeah. So your book trilogy, two of the three are out. Holy Longing for stage one. Great read for people early on in discipleship or early on in life.

Sacred Fire, which is in mine. We have a family canon, kind of a silly idea, but we have these 30 books that have shaped the life of our family's legacy, and it is for sure there. In my top 10, I read it. every single summer. You would laugh if you saw my copy. It has just been highlighted so much. I don't think there's anything left to highlight. I need to start over. And then book three should be out, God willing, in a year or two. Title is...

Insane for the Light. Insane for the Light, which is the whole book on giving your death away. Yeah. And that's also stolen from the same poem, The Holy Longing. Oh, yeah. Goeth, yeah. See, so Vietti, who wrote this poem, he says, like, earlier on, we have this holy longing. He said, but...

You can reach a stage in your life, he says, where, he says, a desire for higher lovemaking takes you over, he said. And then, he said, you become insane for the light. And eventually, like a butterfly, you just fly away. Wow. You know, the publisher always said, make a great name for a rock album. Wouldn't it? It's Saint for the Light. It does. Or a beautiful book from Father Ron Paul Weiser. Yeah.

Well, thank you for your time. Thank you for your life, your wisdom, your humility. Thank you for the written word. I'm a lover of books. They've just, prior to moments like this one, books have given me access. to the mind and heart and life of somebody like you. And this is such a gift. I'm praying this recording will do the same for others. But thank you. Bless you. We honor you.

And may God extend your life for many, many years. Well, I want to thank you, too. First of all, I want to thank you for taking my writing stuff into this constituency. I'm really... touch that my writings are reaching ecumenically to all the different churches and so on. I've always tried to write more as a Christian, primarily in a Roman Catholic, secondarily, you know.

And I got that from Nouwen, in terms of like, see, Nouwen was unapologetically a Roman Catholic priest, and so am I. I'm not writing. I'm writing for everybody. Yes. And so I want to thank you for taking there. But also I want to thank you for your ministry. You know, it's just so needed. And you are reaching into another generation.

And I'm glad you're taking my writings into that generation. I'll give you an example. In this room, we do gender education every year, and we put through between 2,000 and 3,000 people every year.

But the average age is probably 50 to 60. And what we're doing here, we're doing some wonderful work at the school. We're not reaching the Gen C and we're not reaching... millennials very much at all there's a timelessness to it i mean literally walking over here i ran in outside we're on grounds for your oblate school a 20 something

brilliant young man who's discovered Nowen and has been, you know, I've been feeding him Nowen books or whatever. And he said, ask, ask Father Rollheiser, do you think that Nowen could be like the patron saint for Gen Z? because of Nowen's deep, you know, awareness of his pain, his struggles, mental illness, his sexuality, the way that he was honest about his pain, his proximity to...

God, his honesty about his experience of God. And I just think, you know, these books stand, they hold up. And they are, your books are waiting, your books about the, I mean, if anybody who's not read. The Shattered Lantern, which is your book about prayer in a secular age, or read Reaching Out or The Way of the Heart by now. And I mean, these books stand the test of time. The soul, yes, the world has changed and we live in all the things, but...

It's the same human soul. And I think the ability that you and now and a few others, just a few others have to name that life of interiority with Jesus is such a gift to so many of us. So here's my closing question.

What are one or two or three deep passions of yours that you don't see being picked up by millennials and Gen Z and the next generations? You feel like maybe from your vantage point. are kind of dying out what's is there anything that you could articulate that don't you would say to my generation and below don't lose this this is a baton i'm handing you don't drop it like carry this torch with you

Well, one of them is, before I was 30 years old, I wrote a book called The Restless Heart, which is the book of my youth. It's basically, but it's all the Augustinian thing about if we're born, we're restless, our hearts are restless. rest until they rest in you. C for a millennial or a gen C and C, read that book, read that book. The other thing is not so much a passion to get there, but

a passion to somehow get them to understand and value community. See that they're growing up in a world of high, high, what I call pathological individuality. you know, where communities, you buy in when it's convenient, when you don't. It's consumeristic. You don't, you hedge your commitments, you know, contemporary, but never permanent and so on.

And just to somehow find something that can give them some kind of buffer against the culture. Something to stand between you and the corrosive nature of culture at large. You know, like prayer does it, work with the poor. I know what some churches are doing with some success. I've seen they helped a couple of my nieces and so on, where they would take them on these, you know.

take them down and build houses in a poor part of Peru for half a year or something. Yeah, or a gap year. Yeah, and get them out of the culture so that they just have another perspective on the world, you know. because our culture is so powerful. It's so narcotic. But the last thing about it, it's interesting you should ask, because I should get this. Could Henry Nowen be patron saint of Gen Z?

I'm on the Henry now on board, but we know we're committed to keeping his way. And right now we are trying to find ways to reach into that generation. You know, we realized that Henry is still very, very popular. with the boomers, pretty less so with the millennials and probably not very much known with the Gen Z. No, I do think there is such a need and such a beauty. And so thank you again. We honor you. And thanks for coming on our campus. Yes, honor to be here. Very grateful.

Thanks for listening. This podcast is from Practice in the Way. We develop resources to help churches and small groups apprentice in the way of Jesus. Thanks to Little Thoughts for our show music. We're a crowdfunded nonprofit, so everything we make is completely free because it's already been paid for by The Circle, our community of monthly givers. Special thanks today goes to Austin from Fort Wayne, Indiana.

Laura from Forest Grove, Oregon, Veronica from Clayton, California, Ian from Loveland, Colorado and Michael from Reno, Nevada. Thank you all very much. To join this friend in the circle or learn more about our resources, visit practiceintheway.org. Until next time, may the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God. and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.