PZ's Podcast

It was quite arresting, decades ago, when a young artist in New York City told me that, despite appearances -- she came across as confident and hopeful -- she felt inside herself as if she were an egg that had been hurled against the wall, broken in a hundred pieces and dripping down the white paint. In other words, she was "Shattered" (Rolling Stones, 1978). But you never would have known. Not in...

I keep hearing the word "nimble" these days. It comes up in relation to declining and therefore merging church institutions, in which a press release declares that the sale of a church property or the merger of two diminished churches or dioceses will now enable the Church to be more "nimble" in relation to community outreach or the desire to build bridges to the world. What the word hides is inst...

Mary Zahl was recently the guest on an episode of a podcast known as "The Brothers Zahl" (out this summer). The subject of the cast was parenting, and I can think of no better illustration of a good parent. Mary listed three core themes of enduring motherhood/fatherhood that feel utterly right to me. They are (1) complete dependability when your child is little; (2) no control or pressure when you...

I wonder if you are ever struck by the ubiquity of this phrase at the end of every checkout line in the known universe: "Do you need a receipt?". Or, in grocery stores, "Find everything you were looking for?". Or, again in every cell-phone (business) call on earth: "Is there anything else I can help you with today?" In an earlier day, it might have been: "Paper or plastic?"; or, even earlier, "VHS...

You can't help noticing, if you study Soviet-Era Iron-Curtain sci fi illustrations and posters -- an activity which I feel sure governs your every waking minute -- that there are ZERO aliens or extra-terrestrial forms of life to be seen. The Soviets and the East Germans, who did in fact excel in graphics concerning space exploration, never ever bring UFOs or alien inhabitants of other planets into...

I'm trying to put into words the core principles of accessible Christian theology. Not mentally or intellectually accessible, but feeling-accessible -- heart-accessible -- and therefore actually and experientially accessible! Karl Barth promulgated what was called a "theology from the top down". He saw himself as opposing theologies "from the bottom up". But it was a false dichotomy. We start from...

I don't tire of quoting Thomas Cranmer's 'meme' that goes like this: "What the heart loves, the will chooses, and the mind justifies." That is so true to life. Now note its difference with the sentence quoted in part one of this cast by my old episcopal acquaintance in Australia: "Nothing can be loved at speed" (M. Leunig). But the heart always loves at speed! Perseverance and steady, thoughtful l...

An old acquaintance, an Australian bishop, has been quoting recently from a popular cartoonist and kind of pop philosopher "Down Under" named Mike Leunig. The bishop quoted an aphorism from Leunig in relation to his long-term hopes for the Anglican Church in Australia: "Nothing can be loved at speed". When I heard my old colleague quoting Mike Leunig, a 1975 disco hit by Tavares flashed instantly...

Personally, I think that one's most cherished tunes come from ... oneself. By which I mean that the music you love may say more about you than about the music itself. You hear a Pretenders single and it calls you instantaneously back to the person you were when you first heard it. "Don't You Forget About Me" by Simple Minds has the power to instantly recreate the mood you were in when you first sa...

I've been thinking some about "borderland" states, meaning extremely strong states of mind and feeling that are not necessarily explicit, but are nonetheless real. Borderland states of mind are when you are in despair concerning your life, or your primary relationships, or simply the way you feel inside. Sometimes the borderland state is positive -- for example, when you fall deeply in love, or wh...

One just can't get over that repeating, concluding forcefulness of Los Straitjackets' music by which they almost always save the best for last -- like in the wedding at Cana, sort of. They light up the sky in the last third -- sometimes even the last fifth -- of their covers and their songs. Like you and me could do! And especially if we could take the heartfelt learnings of the last third of our...

Heard a sermon last night that cut to the quick. It evoked the image of a "new priesthood" -- a new movement of God in the New Year. The preacher's vision of life and the work of God in the world felt inspired to the first power. And then I thought of Jack Kerouac -- right in the middle of her sermon. I thought of his amazing book, on practical Buddhism no less, entitled Some of the Dharma . Kerou...

On December 29th, 2023 Mary and I have been married exactly 50 years. What a marker for us! (I truly feel it and celebrate it.) This marker-episode concerns the primacy of individual belovedness over any and everything else, including career and professional achievement. This primacy becomes instantly apparent whenever you get sick, or find yourself in the neighborhood of death, or experience a ca...

Bishop Colin Buchanan died November 29th in Leeds Infirmary, and there’s been almost no coverage of it — not even in the Church press. Astonishing! Colin was one of the most influential ministers and scholars in the Church of England during the 20th Century. Yet it seems today as if he almost never existed. This podcast is a reflection on the anonymity of death. It also references Robert Blair’s s...

This Christmas podcast is in honor of Mary's and my 50th Anniversary, which comes on December 29th. She and I are both in thankful awe of having made it thus far. And happily! To me this is worth celebrating. The cast sets out two requirements, or better, signs, as I see it, for an enduring marriage. The first is the romantic connection. Our marriage began with that in first place. There simply ha...

That's a fun movie, from 1976, in which a group of Victorian English people are mistakenly rocketed into inner space, right down to the core of the earth. (What they find, well, you can probably imagine.) But the title and the premise are good: There's newness to be found at the center of the earth -- our earth, our core. This is the heart of the Christian Faith. God will always speak to beleaguer...

When I survey... not the Wondrous Cross, but the world as it's currently going, it's hard not to despair. So many things seem and feel wrong -- are wrong. Providentially (as I see it), I've been directed back to Rod Serling. He was so focussed on justice, and especially social justice; and also on fate and impassable destiny. But he also believed in One Big Miracle. Rod Serling believed in the Mir...

God spoke to me recently. Not through a mediated form -- albeit it was through another human being. Not through concept nor reading nor paradox nor metaphor nor memory. But right Here and Now! I was truly blown away. It was neither expected (at all) nor on a subject about which I'd been thinking. This podcast gives the outline of what happened. There were even witnesses. In the midst of an otherwi...

I've been much affected by the pictures of murdered and bombed children from Israel and Gaza in the last week, and found myself comparing these unutterably tragic losses with some of the other issues on which our world is fixed. It almost seems like there's no comparison between the bloody burial sheet of a five-year old child and the concerns that dominate much of public life. So Christ's words i...

If you want to get to the core, the very heart, of a person's -- say, your own -- experience of Grace, ask them (i.e., ask yourself) to tell you about an experience of acceptance or belovedness that came to them at a low point in their youth or childhood. Get them to tell you about that one experience of being loved personally, subjectively, for yourself, I mean, that changed... everything. Almost...

Written by Jimmy Webb and performed by Glen Campbell, "Our Movie" is a very touching song. It describes a fulfilled marriage from its beginning and right through. It really describes one's whole life in affectionate and thankful perspective. For me the song is pure Phosphorus ! In the cast I talk about soul and body, true self and false self, physical life and physical death: the promise of these...

So I was in Henley-on-Thames last week and there was this almost hidden bookshop next to a place called "The Ferret". (I kid you not.) High on a shelf there was an old leather-bound copy of Charles Dickens' lesser known Christmas stories. Not the long ones like "A Christmas Carol" or "The Chimes" or "The Haunted Man"; but short ones like "The Child's Story", "The Seven Poor Travellers", and "What...

Serving in full time ministry is as stress-full as any occupation can be. You get hit from all sides -- unendingly -- and just when you think things are beginning to stabilize, you get hit again. Plus, there is the in-built transference that is projected on you as a 'father'-figure (if you are male) which keeps surfacing, at least to some extent, in just about every interpersonal exchange you have...

The quintessence of one's continuing love of popular culture that embodies heart-to-heart communication is the subject of this cast. What makes a work of popular art "Christian"? Does it have to be explicit to qualify? Or implicit -- and therefore under the radar -- to really qualify? One thing I know is that you have to love the work-in-question, whether a song, a novel, a movie, or a tv episode,...

It's interesting how far music drives this podcast. Fer sher, I've been "out of pocket" for a month or so, but what drove me to record this new cast was one thing: music . I'd recently heard a section of The Carpenters' single "Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft" (1977) and was made speechless by Karen C's vocal. One simply had to find a place for it on PZ's Podcast. Then another song came...