Coffee Talks with Mike

How do you define Pride? Where do we draw the line between being prideful in a sinful way and being rightly proud of accomplishments? Lewis gives a few ideas, and I give a few of mine too.

What's the difference between your ego and your soul? Can your ego be good? How do each impact how you encounter others (and God)? 

We pick up with Everything Belongs Ch 2 this week and discuss the great task of realizing... "we're already here."  

Do you remember what the circumference of a circle is? This week's episode is all about understanding the relationship between the circumference and the center of our own realities. 

"You are the man." Do you believe that's actually a Bible verse? It's definitely something people say casually all the time, but is it really in an ancient book about God, humanity, Jesus, faith, and the meaning of life? Yes, it is. But it isn't the positive statement we use today...

Tune in to this brief little update for a glimpse into what's to come!

What is Advent? Why do we celebrate the days BEFORE Christmas on top of Christmas? Let's be honest. . . 

Ched Myers wrote a book in the 80's called "Binding the Strong Man" which was a HUGE development in studying the Mark's gospel. I had to read this tome of a book for a class, and there is so much I want to talk about in it, but to start I just wanted to fill you all in on something called "hermeneutics." Understanding this term is important for all of us as we strive to grow in faith and understan...

This week's episode is all about the topic of loneliness, its impact on our ability to have belonging, and the hurdles to true connection we are sometimes responsible for. 

Something I want to start doing is an extended conversation about some of the sermons I'm preaching at church. Prepping for a sermon takes a lot of time and energy, and often you can't say all of the things you want to say for the sake of time or develop thoughts as much as you'd like. So I'm gonna try to do some of that extra work here. Let me know if you want more episodes like this!

Picking up with Chapter 2 from Braving the Wilderness this week, where he focus is on "true belonging." This begs the question, "What is false belonging?" I wonder. . .

This is a prayer written by a Serbian Bishop while imprisoned in Nazi Germany. It's a challenge of our view of redemption, forgiveness, and love. 

This week's book is about, you guessed it, prayer. It seems like a common theme in these books and episodes, but maybe Foster's approach will give you something new to think about.

**I originally uploaded the wrong audio for this episode. Sorry everybody. I hope you enjoy this week's book!** Everything we do is for the life of the world. This is one of the most significant works of the last century, so I hope I did this chapter justice. 

This book was immensely timely for me when I first read it in 2019 courtesy of a dear friend. Brown's work is driven by long studies revolving around guilt, shame, and identity. In this book in particular, she is pointing to the need for us to learn how to live in tension with nuance, and how that often will leave us without a "team" or "group" but that we cannot be fulfilled otherwise. 

"Nothing is neutral." "You are what you love. You worship what you love. And you might not love what you think."

Paul uses the analogy of Christians being "the body of Christ." Merton builds on this imagery to describe us as "a body of broken bones." We need to understand that our call as followers of Jesus is to be agents of peace and love, and that requires us to be a part of resetting broken bones. 

This week is a heady topic, but one worth thinking about: Morality and our faith. Plus, I found out there's a legit CS Lewis podcast out there run by some big names in Oxford, so I had to put another Lewis episode up. Hopefully we make some noise over here!

Night has been an image used to represent struggle and grief in human culture for millennia, especially Christian history. The topic of this chapter (and book) is how do we pray when we feel our struggles are too great? 

I finally finished the Weight of Glory this week. I try my best to do justice to Lewis's famous line "You've never met an ordinary person." 

Continuing on with "The Weight of Glory" by Lewis this week. This episode is building on the idea that there is something that our souls long for yet cannot quite place or name. 

This week I start discussing the Weight of Glory, one of CS Lewis's most famous writings and sermons. Its significance in my own life and faith has compounded over the years. I hope that I can do it justice here.

This week I'm reflecting a bit on the beginning of The Chronicles of Narnia: The Silver Chair and explain the two big ideas I think are present here in Lewis's imagery: one is about a stream, and the other is about learning to read signs. 

This book by Justin McRoberts is a firm response to the common phrase we all use when life doesn't go the way we want it to: "It is what it is." Though this phrase might be our way of coping, McRoberts doesn't think this is actually helping anything. Instead, he thinks it is what we make of it. 

This is one of my favorite images that Lewis uses to explain the Christian faith. I hope I did it enough justice to get the wheels turning.