And Sons

This is one of those episodes that will leave you wanting more. And maybe there is a part 2 in store for the future. Wendell Moss is a counselor based in Seattle, WA, who specializes in trauma and narrative. The cultural narratives of masculinity and race and trauma are (perhaps not surprisingly) similar and require similar acts of courage and curiosity to enter into. The books Moss recommends at the end are: Just Mercy (Bryan Stevenson), White Awake (Daniel Hill), Roadmap to Reconciliation (Brenda Salter McNeil).

If we could sit our younger selves down from five or 10 years ago, we would have a few suggestions to share about how to better navigate the realm of friendships and relationships. People are never a blank slate. Jesus is always up to something, and we can partner with him or try to figure it out by ourselves. Are we really after redemption, or do we just want gratification through our friends? There is always something deeper at play.

If And Sons had an FAQ, one question would top the list: What do I do with what feels like Wasted Time? In this episode, we try to reframe the issue, describing wasted time in terms of the desert, the Hebrew name of which just means “God Speaks.” And, because this is And Sons, there’s plenty of distinction-making between our ability to waste time and God’s ability to redeem time, the development of a calling vs the aggregation of achievement, and a comfortable job vs and apprenticeship. It’s all real time over here, so if you haven’t heard what Blaine actually did in Grad School, or how Sam structures his life in young kid years, buckle your seatbelt.

It’s not a secret Blaine likes words. Maybe it’s the history with rhetoric. Maybe it’s the writing genes. But still, there it is: words are a repository of human experience. Words reveal the world. They are almost completely unique in their ability to transmit diverse experiences. In this episode, we let Blaine pick a few of his favorites, explain how language works, then explore key concepts relating to time, economy, and community. There’s enough in one word to change your worldview, but today, we’ve got six. Maybe seven. Or eight.

Makoto Fujimura is an internationally-renowned artist, writer, and visionary. His work addresses the tension between trauma and creativity, culture creation, and the extravagant wastefulness of God (among a whole host of other themes). We’ve waited a long time for this conversation, chomping at the bit to ask Mako how, exactly, an artist “sees,” what that vision does for the world, and how somebody goes about developing it. Plus, Mako has some pretty unique insights on the way creativity relates to trauma inside the story of God. It’s a mind-blowing episode, is what we’re saying, and although the audio we captured turned out a little shaky, Mako’s eloquence more than makes up for it.

What can look like, and feel like, soul care may sometimes not be that at all. Too many stories end in broken pieces when fueled by the phrase "No one is looking out for me, I am on my own in finding life". We need to care for our joy and our hearts, but the self-arranging life is a trap that doesn't offer what it seems.

The And Sons introductory playbook on using technology well. From tech calendars to channel-specific goals, it’s all about practical steps to mastering the technology you employ.

It’s summer. The question is, how do you actually get out more this season? We grabbed Justin and JD from the And Sons team, two men who have ridden motorcycles across the state, mountain biked all over the west, and mastered micro adventures, to answer that question. From asking God to frame your summer to scheduling to structure and rhythm, this is an episode to turn the warm summer days into real worthwhile adventure.

Joe Steinke is, in a word, an apostle. As a member of the leadership team of the Boiler Room church network, he oversees a growing network of house churches; as a leader of the Antioch School, he’s a real New Testament church wiz. Talking with Joe is like talking with a dad, in pretty much the best way. He’s committed to the growth, maturity, and flourishing of church families under his purview, and he’s been at it for decades. We really like the dude, is what we’re saying, and in this conversation, we jump into the Utopian Slope, a model for understanding the life cycle of a community. If you’ve ever banded together with like-minded folks to share a vision, tried to reach that vision, failed, and then had to recover, this is the episode for you. Doubts and disappointment effect every community. The thing that matters, as you’ll see here, is what you do with them.

If we are willing to see and to engage, we will find that God is always inviting us into the frontier with him. He is constantly exposing ways that we need to grow or change, but often we don't want to hear about it. When we do engage what is current, we are invited into deeper intimacy and new terrain with him and within ourselves.

We’re stoked this week to bring you a conversation with Bart Gavigan. Bart is screenwriter, mentor, Holy Spirit-following firebrand. One week, Bart might be hanging with the higher-ups of the BBC, working with the Hollywood A-list, or passing up on a conversation with David Oyelowo at the pub. The next, he might be helping nonprofits with tiny film projects. Best of all, he’s had a chatty relationship with God his entire life, a relationship that’s taken him, as he puts it, into worlds of beauty and worlds of horror. In this wide-ranging conversation, we talk about Bart’s youth in slums in Ireland and London, his experience visiting 60 countries in 5 years to make films—during which he witnessed a deaf and dumb school healed en masse, met child soldiers in Sierra Leone, and entered the worst orphanages in the world—and his life passing up on fame to pursue intimacy with God. Sometimes, it takes a storytellers eyes to help you see your own story afresh. This is a conversation to give you a new vision of the world.

In this episode, Sam and Blaine revisit fathering a year and a half into the game. It turns out, fathering is like most relationships, only more so. It requires a few skills everyone should have, like a method for developing patience, a thorough understanding of repentance, and the ability to pick out strands of joy in the middle of otherwise encompassing work. Sam and Blaine talk through these and other practices, as well as some basic tenants of the relational soul, like the fact relationship comes from sabbath, and the inclination of the heart to seek comfort when what it needs is intimacy.

From fiction to film to television, cultures across time have been creating a narrative for the public. National identities, hopes and dreams for the future, ways of placing ourselves in history, all are woven into the simple and complex stories that we tell. What stories are we telling ourselves these days, and what does that reveal about our culture now?

You've probably made some assumptions by the title alone, but this episode is around conversations that we seem to keep having. "If only I made a little more... then I would be happy" seems to be a sentiment that, if not always spoken aloud, creeps in and tries to give the verdict on our lives. Happiness, contentment, joy, hope... these are all attributes that take cultivation, rather than waiting around for them to appear because the time is right.

Sometimes the easiest sages to miss are the ones already in your life—we work hard to avoid that mistake, and today we sat down with Sam Ainslie of the RH staff to talk about work. A career, specifically, and how to keep your heart alive in varied seasons of a working life. This conversation also dives into work stress (how much is too much), direction (do you really need to know where you’re going) and purpose (can you develop a vocation inside a career?).