Creation's Paths

We left the bar with a knife in our pocket. That did not stop us from dancing. The lords of Babylon have always known what they were doing, using queer bodies as a wedge, trading in fear, stoking lust for power to keep the people of the earth divided. This episode walks the Four Paths through the heart of that mechanism and finds, on the other side, what they cannot take from us. Simca: the commun...

Devotion without discernment is just blind obedience. That line builds across an entire episode, and it lands somewhere true. John Cassian, a third-century desert father writing before Augustine reshaped everything, gave us four questions to apply to any belief system, spiritual teacher, community, or practice: is it truly valuable, is it genuine, does it bear the right intention, can it carry the...

Something happens in the body when someone says "Jesus." A clench, a recoil, a strange silence. This episode traces that response to its source: a fourth-century theologian who needed an excuse, an empire that found the idea useful, and the residue that soaked into the culture whether or not you ever set foot in a church. Charlie and Brian walk the Four Paths through original blessing, finding in...

She was in the National Cathedral, surrounded by moon rocks and ancient stones from around the world, and all she could say was that the lighting was not right for her pictures. Most of us are her. The meaning crisis is not about emptiness out there somewhere; it is about distraction from what is already here. In this episode, Charlie and Brian walk the Four Paths through the meaning crisis and fi...

Those who wait to deserve will never be worthy. The goalposts always move, because the system was built to keep moving them. Charlie and Brian walk into Yesod, the Sephiroth of foundation, and find the rhythm beneath every real community: gracious giving, gracious receiving, and the covenant that holds when contract fails. Stories from Berkeley, from the inflatable frog in Portland, from the dry a...

You are already the diamond. The light has been coming in for years, refracting through every sorrow, every question, every practice, and you have been waiting for a piece of paper to tell you it was real. This episode explores Hod, the Sephiroth of Splendor, and asks what it actually means to receive: not as passive absorption but as the active, creative act that turns tradition into a living thi...

The last thing Charlie sees every night before turning out the light is St. Sarah's face smiling from a painting on the altar across the room. And somewhere deep inside, that courage smiles back. Then morning comes. And somehow, you get up and go back into the daily struggle. This week on Creation's Paths, Charlie and Brian walk with Netzach: the energy on the Tree of Life that keeps things moving...

We are living in a time that wants to drain the color out of everything: from politics to consumption culture to the slow accumulation of fear. Charlie and Brian walk the Four Paths through a single question: what actually holds the center when things fall apart? The answer is not optimism. It is beauty understood as the cosmological balance point of the Tree of Life, the dwelling place of the Cos...

We're living in an Isaiah 5:20 moment: good called evil, evil called good, and a whole lot of broken people performing strength so the rest of us will feel powerless. This episode walks the Four Paths through the theology of Geburah: what communal, weight-sharing strength actually looks like; how Pachad, the projecting fear, corrupts it from within; what courage, the strong heart, wants to be born...

Jesus preached the gospel of the Kin-dom. Not a kingdom of domination and accumulated power, but a realm of kinship, mutual care, right relationship, and life lived in abundance together. In this closing conversation of the Kin-dom Rising series, Charlie and Brian ask what that actually looks like when it shows up in ordinary life. They trace the long argument between those who said the Kin-dom is...

Babylon is often imagined as something distant, a system somewhere else, run by someone else. But what happens when we begin to see how its patterns show up close to home, in the ways we treat others and ourselves? This episode invites a deeper awareness of dehumanization, not to accuse, but to help us recognize and respond with clarity and care. Thank you for Liking and Subscribing to this podcas...

Romans 13 has long been used to sanctify authority, but what happens when we read it in the light of love, context, and the wider witness of scripture? This episode explores how sacred texts are turned into tools of control and how they can be reclaimed as invitations into discernment. Beneath the debate is a deeper question about power, obedience, and the kind of world we are actually called to b...

Grace sounds beautiful in theory. It becomes complicated the moment someone who caused harm asks to come back. This conversation explores the tension between redemption and responsibility through the story of Saul’s transformation and the life of early Christian communities. What does it mean to believe no one is beyond grace while still protecting the safety of the community? Rather than offering...

Most of us do not live in cultures that fully reflect our deepest faith and values. Scripture calls that condition exile. In this conversation, we explore what it means to live faithfully in “Babylon” without becoming colonizers, without retreating into bitterness, and without surrendering the Spirit of Truth. How do we build, plant, raise families, and seek the peace of a city that does not mirro...

In this episode of Creation’s Paths, we sit with Jesus’ stark warning that we cannot serve both God and Mammon. This is not a simplistic rejection of money, but a deeper unveiling of allegiance. When wealth becomes savior, security becomes devotion. Together, we explore what it means to return to the One Life and live in right relationship rather than economic fear. Read the full article here: Tha...

In Matthew 11:12, Jesus speaks a warning that has echoed through centuries of empire, fear, and religious violence. This episode sits with that warning slowly, remembering that Jesus spoke as a refugee in a colonized land, not as a ruler offering control. Together, we explore how the kin-dom is seized, how it is defended, and how it is quietly refused. This is not a call to certainty, but an invit...

This is a discussion following a more detailed essay. Read more here: What if the Kin-dom Jesus proclaimed was never meant to be captured by power, enforced by law, or protected by violence? In this episode of Creation’s Paths, we sit with the unsettling claim that the Kin-dom is not a thing to be seized but a way of being that endures even under domination. This is a reflection on spiritual sover...

In times of injustice, celebration can feel indulgent, even irresponsible. But what if joy is not a distraction from justice, but one of its deepest disciplines? Charlie and Brian explore celebration as a spiritual practice that protects the soul, reshapes anger, and keeps justice from collapsing into bitterness. Here, joy is not denial. It is resistance that remembers how to breathe. For more rea...

What do you do after you refuse violence but still feel the fire of urgency burning in your chest? This episode of Creation’s Paths, Charlie and Brian continue their exploration of nonviolent resistance by stepping into the Via Creativa: the path of creative, active hope. This is the moment where many of us get stuck. We refuse violence, but the anger, fear, and urgency remain. The instincts to fi...

There are moments when taking up the sword feels justified, even righteous. This Via Negativa episode explores why refusing violence is not weakness, retreat, or denial of harm, but a disciplined spiritual stance shaped by trust, formation, and long memory. We sit with the tension between power that coerces and power that protects, and ask what it means to resist without becoming what we oppose. R...

What happens when the fragile Gospel of mutual care enters a world ruled by threat, hierarchy, and violence? In this episode, we sit with Jesus’ most misunderstood words about the sword and trace how the nativity itself exposes the systems of control that surround us. Rather than resolving the tension, we enter it, asking what kind of life becomes possible when power is expressed through mutual in...

What does it actually mean to “take God’s name in vain”? In this Christmas-season conversation, Charlie and Brian trace the commandment back to its Jewish roots, where names carry authority, responsibility, and consequence. From the ineffable Name to performative Christianity, from “the war on Christmas” to costly signaling, this episode invites us to examine how power, faith, and compassion inter...

What does it mean to say that God is not distant, but present in all things? In this episode of Creation’s Paths, we explore animism, panentheism, and the Cosmic Christ as ways of seeing the world infused with divine life rather than ruled by fear or domination. We talk about discernment, authority, power, and how the word in changes everything. This is an invitation to learn how to see, listen, a...

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My friends often joke that I am a predictable, spiritual stereotype. They joke that they can predict my answers and ideas based on the punchlines of comedians who mock the religious… They aren’t wrong. The Meaning Crisis I am one of those people the meaning crisis beat into the darkness from which I thought I would never return. Over my life I became increasingly disconnected from my family, my fr...