At Sea with Justin McRoberts

Several years ago, six-ish, I think I don't really remember. Years ago, I started making myself available to artists, to ministers, to entrepreneurs, folks who had worked in fields that I had worked in, and I started doing so for free. And I wasn't calling it coaching. At the time, I was just making actual meetings to answer questions, and they were questions that had been coming up. And if you've...

 I used to think the phrase, everything in moderation sounded like wisdom. I mean, it was the piece of wisdom folks would dole out when we talked about work-life balance and we talked about alcohol. And we talked about video games, everything in moderation, everything in moderation seemed like the thing that one would say that the goal would be to find the correct balance between all of these thin...

A few weeks ago, I was in the middle of a call with a client, an artist I'm coaching. When? Well, we talked about the project he was doing, which is a project, by the way, that he'd been dying to do for three or four years. We finally created the time we got some money involved. And he was able to put this project together. And what he said to me in the conversation, he said I know that it's good....

During the first round of the 2023 playoffs, Stephon Curry of the Golden State Warriors, my favorite team, was on the sideline, and his head coach, Steve Kerr, came to him and said, I'm going to rest you for a little while to save your energy. Now, let me hit pause here and confess, admit to pointing out, yes, you are getting a sports analogy. And so if you're not a sports See, type person, and yo...

One of the conversations that I've been in for many years led to the desire to put together the book, Sacred Strides . And one of the conversations that comes up now that the book is out in the world has to do with burnout; you have most likely been around or been privy to or been in a conversation about burnout. One of the pivotal scenes or moments in the book sacred strides is one in which I poi...

I have had a somewhat unusual summer. And so far as I've taken a little bit of actual vacation time, I actually don't vacation much. I've never been one to enjoy vacation very much. Which isn't to say I don't like getting away. I do like the getaway; I like having days off. I like adventure, all that kind of stuff, vacation. It just has had historically this really odd association to it. Some of i...

The more conversations I have about the book sacred strides and dig into the themes in the stories, the more I find myself going back to some of my own source material, which is not to say the stories I wrote about my own life, but the words and the reflections and the teachings of the people who informed that life again, it's not experience that we learn from it is a reflection upon experience. A...

My last couple of weeks, two weeks really almost at the mark right now, have been turbulent; I would say they'd been rough. But that's mostly just been turbulent. It's been hard. Not because I wasn't a part of and doing some really great things, I was. I had a wonderful time in Green Bay, Wisconsin, and I was in Santa Cruz with Young Life staff. And I was doing things that were wonderful. I was on...

I have been, in some way, shape, or form, engaged in conversation about AI technology and our relationship with technology for a really long time. In 1999, or 2000, I read Ray Kurtzweil, his book, The Age of Spiritual Machines. And I was shocked if it was way beyond my understanding the terms he was using the vision he was painting of how life would work in relationship with technology like I didn...

You have used the phrase or heard the phrase, 'let's make some memories' or 'let's make some moments.' If you pay attention to the podcast, you know that for the last few weeks, I've been thinking a lot about the passage of time. It's one of the things that came up a lot as I wrote the book  Sacred Strides . I'm not just thinking about the way we experience time; I'm thinking especially about how...

 It has been said, and I've come to believe this as a truth, that writing for an author is as much as anything else, a process of self-discovery, that one of the things that happen necessarily, in the process of writing, actually writing is that I see myself, I look into my own soul, I recognize things about my own life patterns, history, my moments, I learned me as I write. And I've been asked a...

If you pay attention to my life in any way, shape, or form, you know that I have a 12-year-old, almost 13, and a six-year-old; she just turned six. My six-year-old, I call her the bird. She has a really unique and interesting relationship with time. And over the last, I don't know, three, four years, I've been paying attention to and learning from the way she actually experiences time. So when she...

I talk a lot about seasons, seasons of life, seasons of ministry seasons of work. I love the concept. I love the idea. I love the notion that for long stretches of time, somewhat indeterminate stretches of time, certain things are true certain things work. I like that there isn't a stringent timeline; when we talk about seasons, we can be in a really long season, or we can be in a really short sea...

Sarah Billups is a Seattle-based writer who has been speaking at and about the communal practice of religion for a number of years now. Most recently, she's collected a number of those thoughts in a book called orphaned believers. It's a wonderful book actually deeply insightful. And I was thrilled to have her on the podcast to talk not only about that book, but about the history she's had with re...

Welcome to the At Sea Podcast I'm your host, Justin McRoberts. I don't speak to a lot of other coaches, I talk to a few, but it's not a regular part of my conversation I actually fell into in some ways, the coaching job, just discovered myself doing it after a number of years. And so when I get to actually sit down and talk with someone else, working in that same space, it can be really refreshing...

Welcome to the At Sea Podcast. I'm your host, Justin McRoberts. When I first read Kevin Sweeney's initial book The Making of a Mystic , I found a bit of a kindred spirit that's somewhat unlikely person in the pastorate as well as a relatively unlikely person when one thing because of terms like mystical or contemplative. You might remember that conversation on this very podcast about that initial...

Welcome to the At Sea podcast. I'm your host, Justin McRoberts. I met Jess Ray a number of years ago at a conference where she was helping to lead songs and realize there was some of her music that I had heard before. Maybe you had that experience where you're paying attention to someone or something, you hear something and you realize, like, oh my gosh, this is already in my system. I'm already a...

Welcome to the At Sea Podcast. I'm your host, Justin McRoberts. What does it mean to lead well? Heck, what does it even mean to lead period? And specifically, what does it mean to lead and lead well, in a religious context, when we talk about ministry, we talk about Church we talk about religious culture in general. Nowadays, the question of what good healthy leadership looks like might be the mos...

If you are around or in conversations about mental health for much time at all, you probably hear the word trauma used relatively often. And if you are in or around conversations at the intersection of mental health and religious life, you'll probably hear the phrase church trauma, or religious trauma used, at least as regularly. Those conversations can be really tricky, can be really difficult, a...

Welcome to the At Sea podcast. I'm your host, Justin McRoberts. Molly Lacroix is my guest on this episode. And as a marriage and family therapist, she engages in the kind of art I find inspiring, incredibly rare, and necessary. She takes what would otherwise be, perhaps even frustratingly, wildly difficult concepts, things out of the reach of the average person's daily knowledge, and then boils th...

Welcome to the At Sea podcast. I'm your host, Justin McRoberts. One of the points of conversation we are returning to over and over during this series we're doing at the intersection of mental health and spiritual practice has to do with the benefit or the problem of familiarity with mental health issues, mental health terminology, and with diagnostic tools. There's a world of conversation now in...

Hello, and welcome to the At Sea podcast. I'm your host, Justin McRoberts. This episode of the podcast takes us deeper into the ongoing conversation here at the At Sea podcast. At the intersection of psychotherapeutics and spiritual practice, this time with author, pastor, speaker leader, and coach Nicole Unice. I think you'll pick up in the conversation that we haven't had a truckload of conversa...

Early on in my vocational career, I was on staff with a ministry organization. I was hoping to plant a church, making some music. I was around a lot of people, and a partner of mine, a friend, someone I knew who I was working with, described my overall posture as that of an ambulance chaser. They intended to point out that I tended to lean into difficult situations. That I wasn't causing drama. Bu...

I met Stephen Roach a number of years ago at an event he curates called the Breath and the Clay. It's a conference, an Arts and Faith Conference in North Carolina. And I'd heard about the Breath in the Clay through artists who had participated in the conferences, as presenters. And then some folks who had attended the thing. And, and all of them had something similar to say about it, that it was n...

Welcome to the At Sea podcast. I'm your host, Justin McRoberts. The emphasis I've placed so far this season on the practice of poetry actually positions us to have some conversations well to continue some conversations that I care a whole lot about. Really specifically beginning with this episode of Focus, concentrated focus on the intersection and overlap between psychotherapy and religious pract...