Dennis Wheatley was an author "on the margins". In other words, he was a flawed (tho' very popular in his day) writer who was not taken seriously by most critics. But his distinctly marginal themes and observations gave him a kind of crossbow into truth that endow more than one of his novels with Inspiration. I am a big fan of Dennis Wheatley. In 1956 he published a novel about the immediate aftermath of one's bodily death. It is called The KA of Gifford Hillary and I can't recommend it highly e...
Feb 04, 2023•22 min
The recent death of an old friend (i.e., of 52 years' standing) has brought vividly to mind, in the recollection of the person by their friends and family, a vital distinction: the distinction between what actually took place in one's life and the interpretation/s we place on events in retrospect. I saw this clearly when my mind, upon hearing the news of their death, turned almost instantly to the music I was listening to when I first knew the person. It was the album "Who's Next" by The Who, wh...
Jan 30, 2023•24 min
People conceal so much about themselves. They don't always mean to, but in one area or another they are afraid to say what's really going on -- especially inside themselves. Then, over time, they -- we! -- become habituated to not ever saying what they/we are really thinking. Listening to the Michel-Legrand-like title theme for the 1967 spy thriller _Billion Dollar Brain _put me in mind of so much. Its urgent, lyrical theme made me want to talk somehow. I don't know what sort of music does that ...
Dec 15, 2022•24 min
Herein is a degree of pushing-the-envelope that I hope may speak to you, dear Listener. One was struck recently when someone announced, "Your problem's been solved". "Come again?", I said. He added, "Your problem's been solved on the astral plane." Well, normally, that would not have computed. Or at least one's jaw would have dropped. But I did remember Strange Conflict , and the effect that novel had had on me just a few years ago. You remember Strange Conflict . Dennis Wheatley wrote it during...
Dec 13, 2022•26 min
Three recent sudden deaths of old friends have called forth this Christmas podcast. In two of the cases, the family, let alone the deceased, have been completely unprepared. I mean, completely . No service, no faith, no comfort, no hope. Only shock and abandonment, unsuppressed bewilderment and surprise. So I decided to describe two ladies I know, both characters in Enid Bagnold's late plays "The Chinese Prime Minister" and "A Matter of Gravity". Enid Bagnold was an English playwright who once h...
Dec 04, 2022•23 min
What do our favorite songs, movies, and shows -- and even places -- say about us? Why do we like the media we do? What draws us to one form of art rather than another -- to one sort of setting rather than another? Why R.E.O. Speedwagon, for some strange reason, rather than Dylan? Why "Next Plane to London" rather than "A Day in the Life"? Whatever the draw is, I think it has more to do with us than with the thing. Or rather, the object or medium that catalyzes one's deep feelings is less importa...
Aug 29, 2022•23 min
The Gospel of God's One-Way Love can find an appealing, commodious platform within the Anglican tradition. This is because when that tradition is allowed to be fully itself -- historically, theologically, and even aesthetically -- it supports the Good News and pastorally embodies it. On the other hand, like any ancient tradition, 'Anglicanism' can become dry and even choking. When the tradition becomes an end rather than a means to an end -- a "thing" rather than a fountain -- then it can desicc...
Aug 02, 2022•21 min
The vehement secularism all around us is no secret. I have seen its pointed perseverance in at least three settings recently, and most powerfully at my 50th Harvard College class reunion. In all three settings, 'God' was sedulously left out of the discourse, and, it felt to me, conscientiously. Nothing new in that, to be sure; but it made me reflect on the Christian Church, at least in its traditional manifestation, and what is it that "triggers" the sharp antagonism. But I came up with a slight...
Jun 15, 2022•24 min
Mockingbird's 14th annual New York City conference, entitled "Hope for a Weary World", was a kind of summit for this utterly needed Word. I'll bet almost everyone there felt the same way. Was it the fact that we hadn't met in person for two years? Is that what made this conference so refreshing? Was it the depth of the content, let alone the humor, the music and the sheer joy of the message? What was it? For me it was the unique chord of utter realism with electric Hope. You could hear it in eve...
May 03, 2022•23 min
It seems as if almost everybody is a little like the "Death Star" in Star Wars . There's a way in to our inner reality, but it's very small -- tiny, in fact -- and it takes a sure shot to get inside. With people, it is often serious stress or failure of some sort that opens up the portal; and even then, it seems rare that some healing hope makes contact with the real you. I remember how gripping Dr. Frank Lake's essay was, from the mid-70s, entitled "The Presence of Christ in the Healing of Prim...
Mar 11, 2022•18 min
Can you ever "over"-impute? Can you treat a person as they actually are not to such an extent that you lose yourself and are ultimately taken advantage of? The short answer to the question is No. Imputation can never go too far. Of course the 'imputor' may lose himself/herself in the act of treating someone as they are (objectively speaking) not. Christ did. But the effect of imputation in 99% of its enactions is transformative. Yes, you may have to take it pretty far. And yes, you may lose your...
Mar 11, 2022•20 min
The first cast, "Animotion I", laid the 'low-anthropology' groundwork for this new one. Carl Jung's typification of animus and anima diagnosed the male/female dynamic buried within us primordially -- _a la _"Quatermass and the Pit" (1967). Now comes the Hope, which for me is not only real but also empirical. Damon Runyon (d. 1946) understood about men and women. How could the author upon whose stories Guys and Dolls was based not have done so? Runyon's stories are vignette after vignette of oddl...
Feb 15, 2022•23 min
Amid the tidal wave/s of views and perspectives on men and women in relation to one another stand the enduring insights of Carl Jung. Much of what he wrote feels almost too complex and too layered to be true, for truth is simple. But what he observed over the years about men and women in their archetypal difference stands. I think it stands. One used to scratch one's head, at least in the late '70s, when almost every Episcopal minister one knew became a Jungian therapist, or almost did! No kiddi...
Feb 15, 2022•24 min
This is one's ecclesiology, one's doctrine of the Church, after a lifetime's involvement with it and 47 years' ordained ministry within it. For what it's worth, I think I've "got it now" ("One Monkey Don't Stop No Show", The Animals, 1966). Where I think it might help, dear Listener, is in the area of reactivity and also in the area of inclusivity . To wit, if you are on 'The Canterbury Trail', say, as a former evangelical or former Baptist, you won't reach a final or satisfying destination unti...
Jan 27, 2022•23 min
It's funny that in one's recovery from illness, the "band width" is still nowhere near what it used to be. I used to be able to read a novel by Dostoyevsky one week, then a book by Forde the next, then a novel by Cozzens the next. **Sayonara to that! **Now one is fortunate to be able to read The Runaway Bunny. So hey, I've gone back to reading in three-page spurts. And the perfect author for this "new way of walking, new way of talking" is... Robert Nathan. You remember Robert Nathan. He wrote T...
Jan 24, 2022•22 min
I was "thrown" a little recently by a liturgical service that felt confused at a pretty deep level, and maybe even untruthful. The service was trying to honor someone but "too many cooks" (theologically and personally) "spoiled the broth". That is true of many services when they are not rooted in the Gospel. I mean the Gospel that brings together accurate, i.e. "low" anthropology and the hope of God's mercy. Most "celebrations of life" that Mary and I attend seem to almost capitalize on false en...
Jan 24, 2022•21 min
You can respond to PZ's appeal and support the work of Mockingbird by clicking here . All gifts are tax-deductible. The Lemon Pipers captured something universal and actually moving in their second single, from 1968, entitled "Rice Is Nice". In the third and last verse of that song, the singer asks a question of her/his love and his/their feelings: "And when I get old and wrinkles appear/Will I still find some rice in my hair?" This cast concerns long-term marriage and its possibility and also i...
Dec 15, 2021•20 min
It is easy ("It's So Easy" - L. Ronstadt, 1977) to talk about "going deeper" and the "journey inward" and the layers of human personality. But in practice it rarely happens. It rarely happens that you actually let on to another person what you are thinking. As Joseph von Sternberg, the director of at least ten great movies, observed: "The average human being lives behind an impenetrable veil and will disclose his deep emotions only in a crisis which robs him of control." That is a supremely impo...
Dec 10, 2021•23 min
Someone inscribed a book to me once, and wrote, "To Paul, In hope of transformation." (I didn't feel insulted, but rather moved.) This podcast is about sudden transformation. We are sometimes taught that change is gradual. I don't believe it, at least not in most cases. Transformation takes place when the vice (i.e., grip) of conflicting forces in our lives, both outwardly and inwardly, becomes so great that we simply have to make a decision. There is a memorable illustration of this in the Jacq...
Dec 07, 2021•23 min
I keep talking about life-resolution issues that are fairly elemental. Part of the theme comes from recent personal experience, but part of it comes from popular music and movies. Today's entry point is a song from 1954 that almost won the Oscar that year, entitled "Hold My Hand". It is from an incredibly cool movie by Frank Tashlin, which you have got to see, entitled Susan Slept Here . This oddly titled movie starred Debby Reynolds and Dick Powell. Anyway, I'm talking about physical touch at t...
Oct 25, 2021•24 min
When people ask you "How's it going?" or "Hey, what's on your mind these days?", I'd be surprised if you always give an honest answer. In fact, even if you decide to sound honest and authentic, you may be covering over the real facts. And under the "real" facts of your outward -- and more importantly, your inward -- life, you may even be covering something else. It's "Human Nature" (M. Jackson, 1982). Human inwardness, let alone one's outward conversation and demeanor, can be a charade from top ...
Sep 02, 2021•24 min
There used to be a monthly column in Reader's Digest magazine -- of which one number featured a photo of John Zahl on the back cover -- that was entitled "Laughter Is the Best Medicine". It was a fairly "middle-brow" column, but its heart was in the right place. This new podcast explores the element of humor in resourcing one's detachment from the "boxing ring" of everyday life. (Did you wince at that 'English' use of "resource" as a verb?) I want to say that when you "lose your life and thereby...
Aug 21, 2021•23 min
I know it may seem pretty far off in geography, but the "zero-case" policy of Australia, with its accompanying long and also 'snap' lockdowns, is arrestingly relevant to Mockingbird (and over-all Christian) concerns for human welfare. What is going on officially in Australia is so striking in its steel mindset of fear over faith that it calls out for observation, let alone evaluation. In this podcast, I look at "zero-case" policy in its high(est) bar of risk aversion; in its seemingly complete d...
Jul 23, 2021•24 min
As I reported last time, I believe God gave me two words, or inspirations, as I struggled through an echo cardiogram during a recent illness. But wait, there's more! On the day after the echo cardiogram came a heart catheterization. In the midst of that -- Mary not being with me now, but in her place were six technicians and a surgeon, with the patient un -anesthetized -- three more words came. Seriously. Three more specific words... from Beyond. The first had to do with the false narrative(s) I...
Jun 24, 2021•22 min
I'm finally well enough to reflect, somewhat formally through this new podcast, on the recent illness I went through, and on what I heard at the nadir of it. What happens when you are that sick -- and it happens in some form to everyone who has ever lived except those who die suddenly -- is that your body in its requirement to defend itself wipes out every thought, consideration and proper noun of your life other than what serves the body's need to survive. I mean, the preoccupation of your body...
Jun 11, 2021•23 min
What did Dr. Johnson say concerning one's imminent death?: It wonderfully concentrates the mind. While I was sick recently, a familiar feeling came "shining through". Nothing is really important except love and God. That is not a cliche. Or better, it is a true cliche. I call this cast "Moot Point" because I've been following a tempest in the Church of England; and every time I read a new major story about the pros and cons -- almost all cons -- of a once highly regarded priest who has had a mig...
Apr 14, 2021•18 min
The excerpt at the start is from a song that was Number One in 1958 and to which I once got almost the entire support staff -- all of whom it turned out already knew the refrain -- of an institution of which I was the dean, to perform an inspired, spontaneous line dance. It was a high point of Mary's and my entire ministry. Anyway, this podcast focuses on that extreme moment in life when you come to the end of your resources and finally have no choice but to reach out for succor. You don't first...
Mar 25, 2021•19 min
I've talked about "phosphorus" before -- the ever-glowing points of connection that constitute a kind of trail within the story of our life. Today the subject is another kind of phosphorus, its other side of the coin, by which I mean rejection. In late career I experienced a rejection so mighty in effect that it seemed to pull down the curtain on decades of ministry. This rejection came as an utter surprise. So one day, during the lowest point, I'm in a Jewish deli in SE Florida. And the song "W...
Mar 23, 2021•20 min
The title of the Zombies' marvelous album from 1968/69 entitled "Odessey and Oracle" (sic) puts one's life in two-word perspective that means a lot to me. We are all on an odyssey of sorts, as Odysseus/Ulysses was in Homer. There are headwinds, zephyrs, tailwinds; and more to the point, storms, whirlpools and icebergs. No one could really disagree with the picture of our human experience as an odyssey, the forms and circumstances of which are quite hidden to us -- as Thomas Cole's epic visual pa...
Mar 05, 2021•24 min
What a load of uncharted material is out there for people who are looking for Grace! Here I have spent almost 60 years "trolling" for redemptive material, words and music, especially the Seventh Art, that would speak, and hopefully heal. And now I find, near the advent of my 70th birthday, literally **TONS **of main-line examples of transformative Christian art that I never even knew existed. Take movies like Journey into Light (1951), with Sterling Hayden and Viveca Lindfors. Or Miracle of the ...
Feb 23, 2021•19 min
