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[00:00:00] Elizabeth: It's costly. Living in a community, it's costly. Being in a congregation, it's costly being a neighbor because we are not in control of other people and they impend on our space and they come up difficult times and it's not efficient. And when we remove ourselves because of those difficulty, I think ourselves shrink.
[00:00:17] I think we become less fully human.
[00:00:22] Michael: Hi, I am Michael Hyatt.
[00:00:22] Megan: And I'm Megan Hyatt Miller.
[00:00:24] Michael: And you're listening to The Double Wind Show.
[00:00:26] Megan: Well, today we are so excited to share our recent conversation with Elizabeth Oldfield. So this conversation, I y'all, I cannot wait for you to hear because she is a kindred spirit.
[00:00:39] And Elizabeth is a writer, a speaker, a podcast host, and she's focused on ethics, culture and human flourishing, emphasis on human flourishing. She's formerly the director of Theos a Think Tank, exploring Faith and Public Life. And she's host of The Sacred, which is a podcast featuring [00:01:00] deep bridge building conversations across ideological and religious divides.
[00:01:04] She's a frequent media contributor on topics of meaning, spirituality, and contemporary culture. And what we're gonna be talk about with her today is her book, which came out last year. It's just getting ready to come out in paperback called Fully Alive, edited. Explores, um, the subtitle is Tending to the Soul in Turbulent Times, and she talks about reclaiming depth, connection, and purpose in a modern world.
[00:01:26] And I, in some ways, I feel like that really doesn't do it justice because she's talking about how do we steady ourselves in a world that feels like it's changing faster than we can keep up with? It's unsettling, it's overwhelming, you know, what do we do? And so we get into that in detail, including her story.
[00:01:45] She lives in an intentional community. She calls it a micro monastery in London with her husband and children, and she embraces shared rhythms of life and hospitality. This conversation will encourage you, inspire you, and [00:02:00] be just the thing you need. If you feel like you're a little weary in the world right now.
[00:02:09] Elizabeth, welcome to the show. We're so excited you're here. I'm really glad to be here too. Anytime we have a British guest on, we know our audience is just gonna love it. You know? It's like, can you just read me a bedtime story and make me a cup of tea
[00:02:22] Elizabeth: and then we'll be done? It'll be great. The accent privilege is definitely something I'm realizing this past year.
[00:02:27] Like people think I'm 25% smarter than I am in America, and I love it.
[00:02:31] Michael: I don't think it goes the other way though.
[00:02:33] Elizabeth: Well, I think we find the American accent very warm and charming, but it has slightly different associations.
[00:02:39] Megan: That's very generous of you. I feel like that might have been a euphemism, but I'll take it.
[00:02:44] When I was, uh, listening to your book, as I mostly listen to books as I read them, I have felt like Kira Knightly was reading to me and it made my heart really happy. So thank you. If that isn't reason enough to get this book, people just get it. Okay, so Elizabeth, I [00:03:00] have so many questions and this book I just absolutely loved.
[00:03:05] As I told you before we got started, there are people in my life who I love dearly, who have a very conflicted relationship with their faith. And obviously this book is not just about faith, but I, I think that you write about it so beautifully and this is really a conversation for everyone. You set a big table and everybody's invited, and I love that so much when you were writing this book.
[00:03:31] As you know, we think about this idea of being fully alive, tending to our soul in turbulent times, which that subtitle to my and Soul right now.
[00:03:47] The faith perspective in the conversation because you are like not a, you're not the kind of Christian that people would be put off by. You don't seem like someone who would force faith into a conversation where it didn't belong. [00:04:00] Why did it have to be in the conversation about being fully alive?
[00:04:04] Elizabeth: Thank you.
[00:04:05] I think it might be helpful to know a bit of my context, which is that mm-hmm. I wasn't raised in a particular Christian home. I had a conversion experience with my teens and then I had a period of trying to be an atheist because frankly, a lot of it made no sense whatsoever. And I'm still slightly surprised to have found myself back in this particular wisdom tradition.
[00:04:24] Most of my friends, a lot of the people I interact with in my working life and in my personal life, the idea that Christianity could have any wisdom to offer in times like these seems unlikely to them. And there's been times when it seemed unlikely to me, but over the last few years, I think particularly since Covid, I have felt.
[00:04:43] So destabilized by the pace of change, by big event after big event. And I could sense how these times were forming me, were changing me into being someone who I didn't wanna be. Right? Mm. I found myself more tribal, less patient, less loving, more [00:05:00] cynical, more anxious. I was like, this is not who I wanna be becoming.
[00:05:04] And I think I'm even less use in the world now if I'm allowing these changes to continue. And I had this ridiculous realization for someone who's been in and out and around this world that Christianity is an apocalyptic wisdom tradition. That it, it has been formed by repeated times where it felt like the quote end of the world, and therefore it had so much it could teach me about how we find steadiness of soul and spiritual core strength when it feels like everything is moving beneath our feet.
[00:05:33] Mm-hmm. And so it was almost like I had to relearn all this treasure that was in a box that I supposedly knew. And the level at which that framing that this is a wisdom tradition that has steadied people through existential dread through multiple other times of great turbulence for centuries. And it's partly done it because it has this apocalyptic thing, which just means basically like looking forward to the end of the world or, or [00:06:00] however you wanna phrase it.
[00:06:01] And so I was finding medicine in it, and it felt to me like everyone around me was so desperate for wisdom, but that this particular brand of ancient wisdom was not a place where that they would ever think to look. And it's got so much good in it. And so I wanted to say, look, you don't have to eat everything on the plate.
[00:06:16] You don't have to sign up for the team. Let me just dig some of this out and offer it because it's really, really helpful.
[00:06:24] Michael: It's a good metaphor. Really good metaphor. You know, you're talking about turbulent times and the times that we live in. Sometimes I wonder, and I love your opinion on this, is it really that the times are more turbulent?
[00:06:37] There are more big change changes, or are we just aware of them? Mm-hmm. Because of the news media, social media and all the rest. And because there's more transparency than ever, it's just like we get inside the inner machinations of, you know, all the things that are happening. So, for example, we're aware of wars that are about to begin or [00:07:00] stalemate and all this stuff where in the past, you know, it'd take you seven or eight days to get the news, maybe months to yeah, know how far you go back.
[00:07:08] And by that time it's resolved. So how much of it's a perception and how much of it is a reality and does it even really matter?
[00:07:16] Elizabeth: Yeah. I often think that, and I find it very studying to go back through history and go, the black death happened, right? Yeah. It wiped out huge numbers of people. Where did they find steadiness of soul?
[00:07:26] Where did they find wisdom? Like what is Julian of Norridge saying when she's able to say, all shall be well and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well, but probably half her family was wiped out by the plague. My grandparents generation, they went through World Wars. In some ways, our lives are absurdly easy compared to previous times, and you're so right.
[00:07:47] The information overload, the sense that we have a view on things, we're just not designed to hold. The knowledge of, and I think the particular thing about climate change, geopolitics and the speed of change in [00:08:00] technology, that is upending things at an existential pace. So there's kind of rapid change, maybe more than actual increased danger than there have been in other centuries.
[00:08:10] But as you're saying, like it's all about how are we being formed when we wanna be wise people in the world who can both flourish ourselves and create the conditions for other people to flourish. The story that we're telling about this moment really matters. And I somehow wasn't able to tell myself, I was not really that turbulent.
[00:08:27] You're only imagining it. I couldn't make that stick. But what I could make stick was it's always been turbulent and we've always needed wisdom, and maybe this is more turbulent, but it sort of doesn't matter. You need to put your roots down deep into love and work out how to find some steadiness.
[00:08:41] Otherwise you can just make things worse. I love that word steadiness.
[00:08:45] Megan: I mean that just. When I hear you say that, it just feels so calming to me. Yeah. And it also feels like a realistic goal. You know, like if I think about being on a ship in a storm, which is sort [00:09:00] of what life can feel like, you know, anymore I can't calm the weather, I can't do anything about that storm.
[00:09:07] Elizabeth: Mm-hmm.
[00:09:07] Megan: But I can steady my own heart and I can even steady my own body. Yeah. You know, like I could imagine standing on a thinking of like, you know, pirates of the Caribbean kind of ship, you know? Yeah. Had you, your feet, right. You like plant your feet wide and you kind of get low and move your center of gravity low.
[00:09:25] And I sort of imagine, metaphorically speaking, it's kind of what you're teaching us to do in this book Fully Alive. What was the approach that you took in the book to help people
[00:09:38] Elizabeth: study themselves? So honestly, I never set out to be a teacher.
[00:09:42] Mm-hmm.
[00:09:42] I feel like I read a lot of books about wisdom and also within my faith in, within Christianity, a lot of books about that where there's a kind of disembodied voice where some people are imparting information, these are the answers.
[00:09:53] Like, here's your 10 point plan, here's your watertight theology. And some of them are useful and some of them are not. But I [00:10:00] never felt deeply changed, right? Mm-hmm. The moments that I think really change us is when we are able to see another human being in all their fragility and complexity and acknowledge our interdependence and feel a bit less alone.
[00:10:11] Hmm.
[00:10:11] And so I wanted to write quite honestly, and in places quite exposing about my own struggles and my temptations and where I fall down. And from that, say. You too. Okay, great. Like where might we find some medicine? What have those who have gone before us? What have our ancestors learned that we've forgotten that we could go back and pick up those dropped threads?
[00:10:35] I, I really believe in radical candor and honesty. When we are honest about our full humanity, we give other people permission to do that, and that's a necessary starting point for actually growing up our souls rather than pretending that we all know what we're doing and we're holding it together.
[00:10:50] Because my guess is there's very few people over.
[00:10:53] Megan: I often say to women that, um, I'm coaching like in my mastermind group or whatever, those women that have [00:11:00] it all together, like I haven't met them yet, and women or men, by the way, you know, nobody has it all together. We're all just doing our best to walk each other home, you know, as a great saying goes.
[00:11:13] To not take the position of, this is sort of the FedEx that shows up on your front door with all the answers, but more like it's kind of a, a travel log in a way of your own experience.
[00:11:23] Elizabeth: I'm very much trying to say, here are some ideas and some themes and some postures and some practices that I found helpful for my tradition.
[00:11:30] What might that look like for you?
[00:11:32] Mm-hmm. If
[00:11:32] this particular challenge or temptation is showing up in your life, what might you need? So it's designed to be a prompt for reflection for people to go looking for the wisdom that they need, rather than me saying, this is my solution for you. Mm-hmm.
[00:11:45] Michael: I wonder before we get into some of those practices and some of the things you write about later in the book, if we could explore this distraction and disconnection
[00:11:54] Elizabeth: mm-hmm.
[00:11:55] Theme
[00:11:55] Michael: that recurs, and I love what you do with disconnection, but could you say a little bit more [00:12:00] about distraction? Mm. And why is it more now and why is it driving high achievers especially.
[00:12:05] Elizabeth: Interesting. Yes. So it's probably helpful to know that I do talk about sin in the book, which is I did not expect to go down that.
[00:12:12] Well, I, I talk about carefully, um, as a helpful concept. And by what I mean for it is disconnection. Yeah. And so when we are thinking about, um, the things that are keeping us from fully alive and is what's getting in the way of us being fully alive, by which I mean connected. Deeply connected with our own soul, with other people.
[00:12:28] And if it is something that you want in your life with God, right? But you don't have to go there, this, these, these other moments of connection are really important as well. And so my definition of sin is disconnection. And then I go through the seven deadly sins and look at the different ways that we disconnect.
[00:12:42] And so, yes, the chapter that's called a sadia, which is the Latin, where that's often translated sloth, actually means, well, I can't tell you what it actually means. It's difficult to translate. And the way I translated it was something close to destruction. Um, failing to attend. To the things that are important, like failing to spend attention [00:13:00] and our time on becoming the kind of people we wanna be when we die, essentially.
[00:13:04] And instead getting blown around like a wave on the seashore, just responding to all these inputs that we're all dealing with. And it was, as I was thinking about it, I did have this sense that similar that we were talking about earlier, that this is not like this is a new problem, right? The reason the monks in the desert, the Desert Fathers wrote about this, and they just had a cell, right?
[00:13:22] Didn't have a smartphone. They just had a cell, and they still found, not you, you call mobile phones, cell phones, so that doesn't really work. American English, they had a small cave and they still found destruction at temptation. It's always been part of. The fragility of being a human. But right now what we're seeing is it being weaponized against us.
[00:13:41] Mm-hmm. And
[00:13:41] I think again and again as I was looking at all these temptations to disconnection, I got really angry because there is something so tender and a little bit foolish and a little bit fragile about human beings, and it's kind of beautiful and beloved. And yet we are being put in these conditions where those parts of ourselves, which don't [00:14:00] actually know how to orient ourselves towards wisdom, are being amplified and encouraged and rewarded.
[00:14:06] And the bits that know how to grow towards virtue, who, the bit of me that actually understands that fully aliveness means connection. It's continually being drowned out by distraction by these devices. There's a, um, neuroscientist called Ian Mcg Gilchrist, and he says, attention is a moral act.
[00:14:25] Mm.
[00:14:26] Where we put our attention is essentially who we become.
[00:14:29] And that was a very challenging thing to realize given if I look at my day. What am I gazing on? What am I contemplating? 'cause that's who I will become. And from that wanting to put in rituals and practices of attention to give myself some chance, some scaffolding, right? To hold back that tide of distraction that's constantly coming after us.
[00:14:50] Hmm.
[00:14:51] Michael: We recently interviewed Ian Kran. He's got a new book called The Fix and in he talks about addiction. It's kinda like the 12 steps for [00:15:00] everybody. But he says basically everybody's addicted, which is kind of similar to the sin concept. You know, we place something else at the center of our lives than God.
[00:15:09] And some of those things are really destructive and some of the things are more socially acceptable, but there's like an addiction thing. But here was the interesting thing that really aligns with what you just said. He said, A lot of people think the opposite of addiction is sobriety, but it's not. The opposite of addiction is connection.
[00:15:27] Elizabeth: Yeah.
[00:15:27] Michael: Because he said most of these addictions we do in private. Yeah. You know, there's an isolating component
[00:15:34] Elizabeth: mm-hmm.
[00:15:34] Michael: To it. And I think for all the social media and all the ways that we're connected over the internet and every other way, people are more isolated, feel more isolated than ever.
[00:15:44] Elizabeth: Yeah. I listened to that episode and I nearly cheered when he said that line because it is such a beautiful summary in my chapter on Gluttony, which is essentially me talking about addiction, my sense of what opposite addiction is transcendence in that that connection which is, goes [00:16:00] beyond ourselves.
[00:16:00] Mm-hmm. Some kind of spiritual connection. And that shot right through the recovery movement, it really helped me thinking about sin not as this terrible thing that you were gonna get beaten up with, or that you would needed to carry around this like guilty ledger of all the ways that you'd failed, but as a movement away from life.
[00:16:18] We could become aware of and repent just means turn right turn and move towards life. And that when I am caught up in these numbing behaviors, and they might be just doom scrolling on my phone, might be around slightly too much wine, just faffing buying stuff on Instagram, like whatever it is, not to go you terrible, terrible person to go.
[00:16:39] What is the hunger that I'm trying to meet through this?
[00:16:41] Mm-hmm.
[00:16:42] That actually is, has a deeper source. Mm-hmm. And he's totally right. It is in relationality, right? Is in knowing and being known, seeing and being seen. Our full humanity I think is only present when we, when we have those deep connections and those deep relationships.
[00:16:55] So I'm trying to be like, okay, put it down. Go get [00:17:00] connected. Yeah.
[00:17:01] Megan: I love that. And I love that definition of sin because I think for a lot of people who struggled with the idea of faith and of Christianity in particular, that concept is really hard to kind of become reconciled with. But I also think. It makes a lot of sense and feels just intuitively true, that we're made for more and that God wants something more for us, a deep connection.
[00:17:26] Really, communion, you know, is what we're made for. Yeah. And what oftentimes we're willing to settle for is just this terrible counterfeit. Yeah. And that's not good for us, you know, anymore than like, if I let my 6-year-old daughter eat gummy bears three times a day for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, it wouldn't meet any of her nutritional needs.
[00:17:44] Nor would it be like the highest and best expression of, of eating, you know, not just for nutrition, but actually for enjoyment, joy, you know? Yeah. It starts to make the whole thing feel more congruent to me. Less about an angry God up there, setting a bunch of rules [00:18:00] and knowing we're gonna break them, and then delighting and the punishment of them, which I think is a very unattractive way to think about faith.
[00:18:06] Yeah. So I appreciate that because it, it really makes a lot of sense back to the idea of connection for a second. One of.
[00:18:16] Of it. Talking to my husband. So I was listening to this in while I was getting ready and I'm like, honey, they like moved in with another couple and he kinda looked at me funny. I'm like, no, not like that. Like, like they decided that they were going to live with this other family and join their lives together to purposefully live in community because we have moved away from what used to be so normal, like multi-generational living and living in close proximity to other people and depending on one another.
[00:18:48] And that's pretty radical. Mm-hmm. I remember reading a story, actually, I don't know if it was in the New York Times or something years ago about a family that did this. And I simultaneously. Horrified [00:19:00] and fascinated, you know, because I just thought like I'm an introvert and I'm like, this is my worst nightmare.
[00:19:05] And also I see the virtue of it. So I want you to talk about like, why in the world would you do that voluntarily? Like being married to somebody is, is all by itself, you know, a big commitment to kind of reconcile two people in a life together. But you chose to live in even deeper community. Why? Like, what's been good about it?
[00:19:24] What's been hard about it? Tell us.
[00:19:25] Elizabeth: Yes, that's a very normal reaction. The times of London called us a middle class commune. Uh, we prefer micro monastery. Yes. It was really this growing sense of I really want to pay attention to growing up my soul. I absolutely need some steadiness. I have this sense that fully aliveness is in connection, deep connection horizontally and vertically.
[00:19:48] Certainly I was living in London and kind of busy professional worlds is mitigating against that. It's forcing us into ever smaller and smaller. Hutches essentially to live in puts huge amount of pressure on a nuclear family. [00:20:00] Friendship is hard. Everything's going online. Um, it was particularly when, uh, my husband and I hit our early thirties and we'd had this kind of vibrant sense of our spirituality really blooming and wanting to live more aligned with the radical life we see in the New Testament, actually, which is just very beautiful and how hard it is to make choices that are in any way outside the mainstream otherwise.
[00:20:21] And so it was this sense that, okay, I care about my formation. I care about trying to live intentionally, not just accidentally according to the patterns that have been laid out for me by my culture. And in my tradition. There are these centuries of people who want wisdom, who want deep roots deliberately putting their lives closer up.
[00:20:40] Together.
[00:20:41] Mm.
[00:20:41] Sharing money, sharing food, like needing each other, acknowledging our need. Not getting all our needs met by the market, without the entanglements of friendship and relationship, but making ourselves sufficiently vulnerable to meet each other's needs, which is messier, messier, more complicated, more annoying, and I [00:21:00] think helps us become more fully human.
[00:21:02] And so, yes, my husband and I met another couple at church. This comes after a long while of asking other people out and them looking at, it's like we were mad. Um, eventually met the people who we now live with. And then we went through a very rigorous process of discernment, learning about each other.
[00:21:18] We'd not at all rosy tinted spectacles about it because it can go terribly, terribly wrong.
[00:21:22] And we have
[00:21:22] kids and we really care about the impact on them. But yes, now we live as a household. We have rhythms of prayer, rhythms of hospitality, largely shared finances, a shared kitchen. And I feel, I. So grateful for it because I have so much more steadiness and so much more capacity and so much more freedom than I did when it was just us trying to follow the pattern that our culture had laid out for us.
[00:21:52] Michael: Back when I first became a Christian when I was 18, this was a big movement.
[00:21:56] Elizabeth: Mm-hmm. Yeah.
[00:21:57] Michael: And even when I moved to Nashville [00:22:00] and I joined the church that I'm currently in, there was this whole concept of walking distance churches. Mm-hmm. So that you would kind of come back to the parish idea. Yeah. Where like on Sunday morning everybody would be walking to church.
[00:22:12] Yeah. And you'd see your neighbors and your friends and the people that you're around. Yeah. And you would help each other during the week and have shared meals together and all that stuff. And so, you know, it seems to me like every technological invention that purports to connect us mm-hmm. Some times has the unintended consequences.
[00:22:32] Of making us less connected. For example, the automobile, now all of a sudden we can work in one community and live in another community and we literally don't know our neighbors.
[00:22:42] Elizabeth: Yeah.
[00:22:43] Michael: Or you could take the internet or you could take video conferencing. Mm-hmm. Or any of these things. And I wonder if, what do you think AI and robotics are gonna do to this whole equation?
[00:22:55] Especially humanoid. Mm-hmm. Robotics.
[00:22:57] Elizabeth: I'm really cautious because I believe so deeply in this concept of [00:23:00] formation, which is just a fancy way of saying who are we becoming? You know, the Jesuits famously have very developed understanding of formation. But I have come to be obsessed with how the choices we're making in the moment shape our characters and the shape of our character are, is the defining factor of what people will say about us at our funeral, which is often something I talk to my clients about.
[00:23:20] Like, what do you want people to say at your funeral and how do you work backwards to become that person? 'cause you're probably not that person yet. Let's be honest. I'm definitely not. And anything that. Attempting to remove the difficulty of actual human connection. I am always cautious about in terms of formation because my thesis of fully aliveness is deep connection.
[00:23:41] And this comes from my, this is a theological anthropology. A fancy word is just, Christians believe that humans are made in the image of a God who's already relational, right? The trinity is so weird and mind bending and we dunno what to do with it. But one fundamental fact we can take about it is relationship comes first.
[00:23:54] Mm-hmm. Like before anything else, love, before anything else. Relationship, connection, prior. [00:24:00] And you know, if the theology language isn't good for you can stand that up sociologically. You can stand that up. Neurobiologically, right? Again and again, all these disciplines, we are finding that we are not actually rationally acting individuals.
[00:24:11] We are interdependent persons made by each other, made for each other, so interdependent in ways that we're barely aware of. Basically, the quality of those relationships is the defining factor of our flourishing. Relationships are hard. Connection is vulnerable. It's scary. Other people are fragile and unpredictable.
[00:24:30] I am fragile and unpredictable. Sometimes, frankly, I'm just a bit of a cow. It's costly. Living in a community, it's costly. Being in a congregation, it's costly being a neighbor because we are not in control of other people and they impinge on our space and they come up difficult times and it's not efficient.
[00:24:46] And when we remove ourselves because of those difficulty, I think ourselves shrink. I think we become less fully human. And so my fear with a humanoid AI is that it is easier to deal with than a [00:25:00] real human because it doesn't ask anything of us. It's just there to serve us. But the more we allow us to ourselves to shape the world, to become more convenient for us to serve just our needs and our hyper individualized preferences, the lonelier and less happy we are getting.
[00:25:19] And so I'd always want to say the hard work of relationship and connection is essential and worth it, and actually does lead to more joy. It's the equivalent of the gummy bears for breakfast that you were talking about. Megan, I think an AI companion is probably gummy bears for breakfast in that it seems nice to begin with, but it's not actually gonna nourish us.
[00:25:38] I might be wrong, but that's my hypothesis. Mm-hmm.
[00:25:42] Michael: I think you're right. I think the thing that concerns me is the technology is changing faster than we can process it through any kind of ethical or moral filter, you know, it's like it's having an impact and before we can stop it or before we can think about it, the genie's outta the [00:26:00] bottle.
[00:26:00] Elizabeth: Mm-hmm.
[00:26:00] Michael: You know, I'm, I'm generally optimistic about the future, even with ai. I think we're in for some bumpy roads ahead. For sure.
[00:26:07] Elizabeth: Yeah. I'm trying to just slow down, right. Hold back, wait. Not just adopt everything that's being given to me, you know, not be a complete Luddite to try and work out whether technology is able to serve connection.
[00:26:19] It's able to serve human flourishing and use it. And if it's just convenient, have a question mark and just pause for a minute.
[00:26:27] Mm-hmm.
[00:26:28] I
[00:26:28] Megan: think that's good because we, the truth is we really don't have a framework kind of from the perspective of human flourishing, for how do we evaluate new tools and technologies and kind of assess.
[00:26:44] What are the trade-offs? What are the second, third order consequences? What are the trade-offs now? But what are the trade-offs later? Yeah. Unfortunately, you kind of only can know that in time because you kind of have to test it. But I, I don't even think we think about that. I think we're so used to this kind of [00:27:00] consumeristic way of being in the world that we just adopt something.
[00:27:04] Mm-hmm. And we don't even think about the trade-offs right now. Much less later. We don't think about the other consequences.
[00:27:10] Elizabeth: Yeah. And
[00:27:10] Megan: I think that the problem is our brains privilege, dopamine reward. They privilege our comfort. The elimination of pain. And the prioritization of pleasure so much. Yeah. And that there's like, in other words, there's something driving us to say yes, to adopting those things that is not rational and we don't really know what those consequences are.
[00:27:33] Not just, you know, kind of for our general wellbeing, but at a deeper level for our soul, for our own flourishing. Yeah. And I, my concern is, and I think part of the reason that we've kind shifted gears with the podcast and with some of our work is that we want slow down the conversation a little bit.
[00:27:52] Take a minute to remember what does it mean to be a human? Mm-hmm. What is really at stake here? Yeah. And what [00:28:00] might be lost and what needs to be protected. What's okay. Yeah. You know? And those aren't easy questions to answer or fast questions to answer. And we're certainly not anti-technology or anti innovation.
[00:28:14] We love that. Yeah. It's just that we also know, as you say, that humans have a tremendous propensity to mess things up. You use a different word, but you know, mess things up. Right. Yeah. And sometimes we don't realize we've messed things up until much further down the road when it's too late. Yeah.
[00:28:28] Elizabeth: And you're sort of just in cleanup mode.
[00:28:30] Like I do a lot of work in just kind of mainstream secular social change spaces and I'm, we're seeing a huge uptick in interest in religion, specifically spiritual practices, more generally In religion, it feels like the US is in a slightly different place, but in the UK and Europe, it felt like we hit bottom where there was a general social dismissal that there could be anything useful here and now people who 10 years ago would've been massive, Richard Dawkins fans are going, I don't know if we can do this without some scaffolding.
[00:28:59] Mm. Like what [00:29:00] you've just said, basically our default mode setting psychologists sometimes talk about it, is just responsive to stimuli, right? We're really simple, dopamine pleasure, comfort, status, whatever it is. And it is often only in rigorous spiritual pathways, which have tended to be collective and at the point they are collective.
[00:29:19] You could maybe call them religions. I. That has developed over centuries tools for helping us drop down a level to the deeper needs, to the real pathways, to flourishing to the choices that actually serve us and keep us fully alive and fully human. And so that, I'm really interested in at the moment, the space that's opened up to talk well and hospitably and humbly because the worst thing about Christians in public we're arrogant and preachy and think we have all the answers.
[00:29:47] But to say, actually, so my friend Casper to Kyle calls 'em spiritual technologies sometimes to counter some of these technologies that are deforming us and needs to go back to the spiritual technologies which have always been [00:30:00] known about and which can form us ritual and attention and communal practices and giving and scaffolding for our souls.
[00:30:10] Because without that, we are just being a. Meat puppets for the machine is what I think on my worst days. Wow, that's so
[00:30:17] Megan: vivid. Let's kind of shift gears and make this really practical for people. 'cause I know people listening are going, yeah, that just feels really true. And I, I maybe didn't have words for it until now, but there's some words now to wrap around this feeling or kind of disquiet that I've been experiencing.
[00:30:38] What do we do with that? Hmm?
[00:30:40] Michael: You were talking about busyness and how, you know, we don't have time to know our neighbors and sometimes even our family, but what are the spiritual practices? Maybe if you could even start there, how can we make space to do anything other than what we're doing? Because life seems like it's this never ending torrent
[00:30:57] Elizabeth: Yeah.
[00:30:57] Of
[00:30:57] Michael: activity and distraction. So
[00:30:59] Elizabeth: [00:31:00] Ryan Williams talks about the fact that. Structuring time and thereby structuring attention is the hidden genius of religion. So everyone knows they give or they can give ethical guidance and existential comfort. But actually if you look at most religions, what they do is they say, this is how you structure your time.
[00:31:17] And that is how you take some agency back over who you will become. You know, I joked about being in a micro monastery, but our community is very influenced by the Benedictine tradition. St. Benedict was dealing with a ragtag, unruly group of humans who also had a high propensity to mess things up. And he said, how are we gonna live together?
[00:31:35] Well, right? How are we gonna navigate our time? How are we gonna keep focusing our attention on the thing that we want to be formed by? Which in their case, in my case, is Jesus, but might be something different. And that tradition gives you something called a rule of life. And so we have a rule of life and it means not starting with, I'm so busy, where are the tiny slices of time where I can tend to my soul, but going, who do I wanna be when I die?
[00:31:57] Therefore my key values, what do I actually [00:32:00] care about? And in our case, it's prayer, hospitality, celebration, creativity. Okay. So how are we gonna structure our week so that there's time for those is put in first. So we have a practice of Sabbath where we switch off our devices and we spend a day being deliberately unproductive.
[00:32:15] And I tell you, it's really hard. And when we do it, it's really good. And every, the rest of the week gets easier. We have prior practices, we have open table cooking practices where we invite people and we get to know our neighborhood and then we go, right, what time is left for work? And then work is gonna have to go in those slots, which is really hard if you are ambitious, successful person.
[00:32:35] Mm-hmm. I actually have found I am more professionally fruitful having done it that way round. Which is interesting 'cause it turns out it's not the more time you spend, it's how, as you've been saying for years, you know what you're doing in that time, how, what you're prioritizing. But that concept of a rule of life as a way of shaping your week and your time, in some ways it's not that dissimilar from just having a.
[00:32:57] A calendar, but the monastic wisdom is [00:33:00] start with who do you wanna be becoming? What are your deep values? Put aside time for those. Otherwise, they're honestly, frankly, theoretical and then fit everything else around it and stick to it. That's the hard thing. Don't get seduced by some sexy new technique in three weeks time.
[00:33:16] This is like years. That's how long it takes to formation to really work.
[00:33:22] Michael: Mm-hmm. You know, just an insight for people that listen to this show and also have read our books, is we talk about this concept of the ideal week.
[00:33:31] Elizabeth: And
[00:33:31] Michael: I think for most people, and what you've given us is a distinction that I haven't thought of before.
[00:33:36] We talk about front stage time. You know, when you're in front of people delivering stuff.
[00:33:41] Elizabeth: Yeah.
[00:33:41] Michael: And there's your backstage time when you're preparing for the front stage. Then there's off stage. But what I hear you saying and what is beautiful. Start with the off stage time.
[00:33:51] Elizabeth: Yeah.
[00:33:52] Michael: And then let everything else fit in.
[00:33:53] Because if you don't put the big rocks in first, there won't be room for 'em. For sure. Yeah. That is really interesting.
[00:33:59] Elizabeth: Mm-hmm. [00:34:00] It's basically your soul is the thing I believe that lasts. Right. So that's the most important bit. And David Brooks is really great on this. He talks about eulogy virtues versus resume virtues.
[00:34:10] And in resume virtues, we can get all manner of help time, podcasts, books to help us become more effective and productive and successful. And high status, the eulogy virtues, how do you build an actual character there is so much less scaffolding for, there is so much less support for, and never requires much higher levels of intentionality.
[00:34:29] Mm-hmm.
[00:34:30] And it's actually really hard and lonely to do it on your own, which is why there's a genius in being in a congregation or being in a community, or perhaps a fellowship group or a women's group or a men's group, or anything where you can give yourself permission with other people to go, I actually wanna take my life seriously.
[00:34:45] I wanna take who I'm becoming seriously. What practices and postures do we need that we can slightly hold our each other to accountable on so we can be growing together. 'cause otherwise our time is gonna pass on to-do lists. 75% of which do not matter and we will never remember. [00:35:00]
[00:35:00] Megan: I can't help but think there are people listening who have been through, I myself have though I'm still going to church, but have been burned in the context of faith.
[00:35:11] They have. Oh yeah. Had some traumatic experience. They have had an experience in a church that feels indelibly harmed and you know, they, they can't imagine ever going back. And I think we've seen, at least in the US but I know it sounds like the UK is a little further ahead in kind of the rebound, but people exiting the church in mass and in some ways interestingly are coming back but into more liturgical traditions, which I think makes sense based on what you're saying.
[00:35:40] 'cause there's that scaffolding that's a part of it. How do you find a community, a spiritual community, to join
[00:35:49] Elizabeth: and be
[00:35:49] Megan: a part of without having a repeat of whatever your own traumatic history has been? I know I found that very hard. Personally. I think [00:36:00] I have found that place, but it's been long and slow and hard won.
[00:36:05] How do you get yourself to risk again and how do you find a safe place?
[00:36:09] Elizabeth: Yeah. Thanks for sharing that, Megan. That's really vulnerable and honest, and I really value that. In some ways it come, it all comes down to this, like my vision of a human is interconnected, interdependent, and we live in a world that's constantly fracturing those ties, like, and I think this is a very orthodox biblical understanding.
[00:36:25] So Luther and Augustine talk about their definition of, one of their definitions of sin is humanity turned in on itself. Hmm. Where we pull back from God and from other people into ourselves because we resist our interdependence. And the trouble is, is that sometimes that pulling back is self-protective, right.
[00:36:43] And healthy and necessary. When you've been in a community that is not functional, not healthy, not helping you become more fully human or more, more fully alive, then naturally that is gonna feel risky to go towards again. And for some people, they're just, the idea that it could be a church or [00:37:00] indeed another kind of religious congregation is just too much to contemplate right now.
[00:37:03] And I totally understand that. My observation is that outside of religious congregations, there is very little alternative. And I have friends who've tried to build this, right? I was friends with the guys who set up the Sunday Assembly, which was a kind of non-religious church movement in the uk. I have friends who were trying to do something called the Nearness, which again, was trying to create non-religious, spiritual community of people.
[00:37:25] And some of those are beautiful and flourish for a while. But they're difficult to scale and they're difficult to sustain over time. My best guess is that, and it takes so much courage because you have to be the really earnest person, right? I said in a fleeting way, you know, find a group, get a men's group, get a women's group, as if that's easy.
[00:37:42] It's not easy if you are not in a point where you can join existing scaffolding. You really have to be brave enough to be vulnerable because you keep getting rejected often. But my sense is the hunger for depth and the hunger for connection is so widespread now that if you're brave enough to keep [00:38:00] putting out those feelers, making those bids, inviting people for dinner, saying, could we have a book group?
[00:38:06] And maybe read some spiritual books, maybe from different traditions, like whatever people are comfortable with, and keep going and keep modeling both vulnerability and commitment. So this is the really key thing. The reason I, I am still in church, despite church is it is very strong scaffolding and it will be happening even without me.
[00:38:25] And it models to me that even when I don't want to, it's probably still gonna be good for me to show up. And that's so counter to our individualist culture. So I've seen it working. It's often someone who's been prepared to go against that culture and say at the beginning, here are some norms. How about we will covenant to take this seriously?
[00:38:43] How about we block this out of our diary and don't flake unless we're really ill? Or these are the conditions on which it's always a flake and otherwise it's, it's actually not okay. Like we are gonna commit to this together. Maybe we'll just do a term and see how we get on. But it's really difficult and it's really hard work, [00:39:00] which is why I think for most people looking for a congregation, if they can bear it, that feels healthy is what is still worth doing.
[00:39:05] Megan: Mm-hmm. I think that's what works about the recovery community is Oh yes, I, so those communities are jealous that the recovery community sometimes, yeah. It's like very high commitment and very high vulnerability, and I think sometimes we talk about vulnerability in our culture, like as a good thing. Like we, we want authenticity, we want vulnerability, but we're also, because of our hyper individualism, we're really down on commitment.
[00:39:33] Yes. We don't wanna commit. We don't wanna commit unless we know we're gonna like it long term
[00:39:39] Elizabeth: and it's gonna serve our needs right now. Right. Yeah. Our kind of, yeah. Top level needs, not our deep level needs,
[00:39:43] Megan: and I think commitment and intimacy and vulnerability, they have to go together or it just doesn't work if it is unsafe.
[00:39:50] Yeah.
[00:39:51] Michael: My perspective, and I've heard what both of you have said, and I agree with everything you've said, I think sometimes the church gets held up to a much higher standard than any other [00:40:00] group, because the truth is people get hurt in all kinds of groups.
[00:40:03] Elizabeth: Mm-hmm.
[00:40:04] Michael: Whether it's a trade association or a neighborhood watch program, just the nature of people is that they get political and they hurt each other.
[00:40:14] And the thing that is optimistic to me about the church though, is at least we have a tradition of grace and forgiveness.
[00:40:22] Elizabeth: Hmm.
[00:40:23] Michael: But that has to be exercised. And some of the most unforgiving spaces I've been in, sadly, are churches.
[00:40:29] Elizabeth: Mm-hmm.
[00:40:30] Michael: And at the same time, some of the most grace-filled spaces I've been in are in churches.
[00:40:36] And I don't know if you have this in the uk, but I'm a big fan of this TV series. The Chosen.
[00:40:41] Elizabeth: Mm-hmm.
[00:40:42] Michael: Part of what I love about it, first of it shows the humanity of Jesus, but it shows the disciples really struggling with unforgiveness toward each other and then reconciling. And it's just beautiful to watch it happen.
[00:40:55] And it's a good reminder for people like me. That this should be the norm.
[00:40:59] Elizabeth: It's a really [00:41:00] tender thing. And, and at the end of my chapter on Pride, which is all about community, it's, I basically have a long love song to the church in all of its bruised, broken, spiky, edged self because I think it's only when you've been outside of it for a while or you have good friends who are so hungry for community and can't find it, that you realize that and some are actively harmful and dysfunction, I don't wanna write that off, but most are just deeply human right and loving and earnest and sort of budging along and are places where people who would never otherwise meet are learning to love each other, are learning to walk each other home, and there is something extraordinary about that.
[00:41:36] So yes, I think we can both acknowledge institutional failure, which impacts all institutions and is maybe more disappointing in the church because we kind of see what it could be and go to whom else shall I go, frankly? Yeah.
[00:41:59] Michael: [00:42:00] I wanna talk about polarization and peacemaking. This shows up in the church too, right? Mm-hmm. And it shows up in every group, you know, polarization, but how can we through practice, be peacemakers?
[00:42:14] Elizabeth: Yeah.
[00:42:15] Michael: And not just respond sort of impulsively to the way everybody else is responding.
[00:42:19] Elizabeth: So this was one of the great eye-opening moments, realizing that how central this is to my faith, and how little I'd heard about it.
[00:42:27] I started reading the gospels through the, I was working in kind of mainstream anti polarization and peace building work, getting really interested in the dynamics that divide us and how easy it is to just stick to people like me. Scientists call it homophily. I call it people like me syndrome. How actually we find it stressful and threatening to be with people who are not like ourselves.
[00:42:46] And that's not just terrible people, that's all of us. These dynamics of tribalism that if we're not careful, drive us further and further apart. Jesus in the gospels is repeatedly upending. He is so disruptive of them. He's just messing up [00:43:00] all of these dynamics by repeatedly going to the most outsider person in any situation.
[00:43:04] The person, everyone else is tense, that they're even there, the person everyone else would never be seen with. He's like beeline that person. And the bit of my tradition that has this incredibly radical, difficult to apply command, which is not just love your neighbors, which is hard enough. Love your enemies.
[00:43:23] This is a very central teaching of my faith. You would not always know it from the church. You would not always know it from looking at me, frankly. But it is a cornerstone and it's been, you know, it's given inspiration to nonviolent protests and reconciliation movement, some of whom were grounded in Christianity, many of whom weren't all over the world.
[00:43:42] All over the centuries. And so I have come to believe that the best thing I can be doing in this moment to grow up my soul is to put my roots down deep into this teaching to really acknowledge, and I think it's sometimes helpful to just call it sin, to acknowledge my sin, which is that I get really contemptuous [00:44:00] of people not like me.
[00:44:01] I like to roll my eyes at people I disagree with. I like to think I'm better. I'm much more comfortable with anyone who reminds me of myself. If you start spotting that pattern in you, it's terrifying. Like if you notice who you feel warm towards, like seriously, Megan came on the screen and I was like, oh, glasses and lipstick.
[00:44:16] We can be friends. And this shows up in sociological studies. Salespeople are more likely to make a sale on the doorstep if they share a physical characteristic in common with the person that they're selling to. We are all scanning the world for fragments of our own reflection and. Many religious teachings, I think, and Christianity very explicitly says, take care with that, because you are called to love each other, your neighbors and your enemies.
[00:44:45] And so it is a series of practicing recognizing what's happening and then choosing to act differently. It's really simple, actually, and quite a lot of fun. Not easy, but it really opens your horizons and you end up with a bunch of very wildly different friends. Mm. [00:45:00]
[00:45:00] Michael: Thank you for that.
[00:45:01] Elizabeth: That is
[00:45:02] Megan: fantastic.
[00:45:04] What do you want people to take from this book, fully alive? What do you most hope that they'll walk away with and do with what they've experienced in this book?
[00:45:16] Elizabeth: I do hope they'll feel a bit steadier. They'll feel some relief. It's hard to talk about this stuff, right? When we feel existentially, very unsettled.
[00:45:24] We kind of don't wanna unsettle everyone else, and we don't wanna be negative or moaning or whining, or making it all about us. And being really honest about how overwhelming the world feels somehow.
[00:45:36] Mm-hmm.
[00:45:37] It's healing. I find it healing, but then going, okay, what can we do? Like what is in our hands? What do we have agency over?
[00:45:44] Probably my own soul? What am I doing in my actual neighborhood? What decisions can I make that are towards loving my neighbor, that are towards becoming the kind of person the world needs now? Kind of lowers that overwhelming globalizing sense of all the world's problems down [00:46:00] to, okay, what can I do? And people have been doing these things for centuries and maybe I can find some other people who are doing them and then I feel less alone.
[00:46:08] I love that.
[00:46:09] Michael: Well done.
[00:46:10] Elizabeth: Now we're
[00:46:10] Megan: gonna shift gears to our question. We, all of our guests, and you know, we talking about kind of at the beginning, focus. Double win, which means actually our mission is to help it make it nearly impossible for people not to get the double win, which is winning at work and succeeding at life.
[00:46:30] And so in your experience, what is the biggest obstacle that you're currently facing in winning at work and succeeding at life?
[00:46:38] Elizabeth: So I think this is possibly going to sound int incredibly smug and arrogant, but I feel like I have fewer obstacles than I have in other seasons of my life. And part of that's living in community, that I have a lot of support and accountability to both be living my values and to be courageously pursuing my [00:47:00] vocation.
[00:47:01] Mm-hmm. So there's all kinds of my own skills and the amount of time and trying to be a good parent, like practical things that everyone is struggling with. But the big stuff, your questions may be really grateful that there aren't, doesn't feel like there aren't insurmountable barriers.
[00:47:15] Megan: I love that. It's sort of like, um, people say sometimes, you know, what's the one solution that eliminates the need for a thousand other solutions?
[00:47:24] Or I'm, I'm butchering that, but you know, that, that kind of idea. And I feel like what I'm taking away apart from this conversation is community is the one thing that solves a thousand other problems. It creates other problems, but they're good problems. It's good friction, not bad friction. So yes.
[00:47:39] Michael: The second question we have is how do you personally know when you're getting the double win?
[00:47:43] Like what are the, what's the evidence?
[00:47:45] Elizabeth: Everything comes back to relationship for me. So when my immediate family, my husband and my kids, when we feel like we actually know what's going on with each other, when we're having fun together, when we're just alongside each other rather than living parallel [00:48:00] lives.
[00:48:00] Yeah, fun together is really big. Collective laughter is probably the easiest to spot symptom where that bit of my life is flourishing because we are all flourishing together. And when I've done a piece of work that. Again, feels like it's really connected with someone where there is a moment of shared humanity and we've both gone.
[00:48:18] And whether that's through a podcast and I know about it from an email or someone's read the book or sent me an email, but when I've done some work that is humanizing, that really feels like, yeah, that was a good day's work that I'm grateful for.
[00:48:29] Very good.
[00:48:30] Megan: I love that. Okay, last question, and I feel like you are the queen of this, so I can't wait to hear what you say, but what is one ritual or routine that helps you do what you do?
[00:48:41] And I think in this case, I would say what you do is human flourishing. So what is one ritual or routine
[00:48:47] Elizabeth: chief of human flourishing achieve of human flourishing? Human title. Yeah. Yeah. I am, I, I'm not gonna claim that. Um, I think Sabbath. That's, this is a long slow coming to the [00:49:00] conclusion that like a full 24 hours off devices in which we prioritize rest and celebration makes everything else easier.
[00:49:08] And there's lots of others. And sacred reading and singing and being part of the congregation and journaling, I have lots and lots of other rituals, but to take a seventh of the week and actively try and resist work and instead turn towards relationships and rest puts everything else into its right size.
[00:49:26] Um, so it's become a bit of a cornerstone. So what would you do on
[00:49:29] Megan: that day? I just wanna know very practically, like sketch
[00:49:32] Elizabeth: the
[00:49:32] Megan: day out for me.
[00:49:33] Elizabeth: There's a fair amount of panicking that I've forgotten to tell people that I'm turning my phone off. So that's the annoying thing about Sabbath. You have to be very, you have to look ahead.
[00:49:42] Otherwise there is very good reasons to turn your phone back on. So I have to do a lot of, like I'm turning my phone off. Where are we meeting? If we're seeing people outside the home, are we going to a thing where the tickets are on, have to be on a phone. There's just like trying to work out how to reduce the logistical nightmare, which is ridiculous, that it's as high as it's
[00:49:57] now.
[00:49:58] And then Friday [00:50:00] night we will have family dinner or house dinner. We will light a candle. And I was chatting to a rabbi friend about this the other day, was this called True Appropriation? He was like, it's the good kind, you know? And we say a prayer and then we try and play a game together after dinner.
[00:50:17] And then the next day we just try and do things that are joyful. You know, we go to the park or we'll do some art together, or we'll see some friends, you know, in lots of ways it looks like everyone else's weekend. But we are trying to do it in ways that are very boundaried around technology and which are.
[00:50:33] Attempting to slow down. I really do feel like this slowing down word has been a theme in this conversation and a theme for my life because hurrying and destruction are not how we flourish, and we're constantly being encouraged to do those things. So we need to provide, provide kind of, we're never gonna get equal pressure, but at least some counter pressure towards slowness and steadiness and presence.
[00:50:55] I love that. Thank you
[00:50:56] Megan: so much for sharing that. It's really helpful to just kind of [00:51:00] imagine what does it really look like.
[00:51:01] Michael: Elizabeth, thank you so much for being a guest with us today. We really appreciate it. I have loved
[00:51:06] Elizabeth: this conversation.
[00:51:07] Michael: Good. And I wanna encourage people, get the book.
[00:51:10] Megan: Yes. Get the book.
[00:51:11] Get the book. Get the book. And you can listen to Elizabeth's lovely voice reading it to you, which is, I mean, we don't always get to say that, you know, sometimes it's not even the author reading the book, but in this case you get Elizabeth herself reading it, which is pretty fantastic. Thank you so much.
[00:51:25] Thanks for being here.
[00:51:36] Michael: Well, that was a fun conversation.
[00:51:38] Megan: Well, all I can say is I just wish Elizabeth lived here because I think we would be best friends and I'm sad that she lives all the way in London,
[00:51:45] Michael: but that gives you a reason to go visit London.
[00:51:47] Megan: Yeah. Which I love London, so Perfect. Done. I'm there.
[00:51:51] Michael: The big idea, I walked away from.
[00:51:53] Was the critical importance of community.
[00:51:55] Elizabeth: Yeah.
[00:51:56] Michael: And it seems to me like it's one of those terms [00:52:00] that's very often mentioned. You know, we have the full focus community, we have all these online communities, but it's like the more we talk about it, the less there is of it.
[00:52:09] Elizabeth: Yeah.
[00:52:10] Michael: Because the kind of community that she's talking about that I think is so different and really resonates with me is physical proximity to other people.
[00:52:20] Elizabeth: Mm-hmm. And
[00:52:21] Michael: there's something that you can't create. I mean, it's better than nothing I suppose, but you know, a virtual community, especially a virtual community that's just text only, there's places for it, but it's not gonna replicate what happens when you live with some level of intimacy with other humans.
[00:52:39] Megan: I agree with that, and I think this is a real challenge. Many years ago when I was in college, I did a lot of research about, I. And city planning and just how that has changed over time. Like we live, um, near a historic town that was planned with mixed use zoning and things like that, right? So like, [00:53:00] houses are near businesses and it's walkable and all of that, but that's not with the advent of the car.
[00:53:05] That all changed. And most of us do not live in neighborhoods or near the other parts of our life, whether it's the grocery store or church or our kids' school or our office. Those things are usually not in close proximity to where we live. And so we spend a lot of our time in the car, and I think there's some real obstacles to that and some real consequences as Elizabeth shares to our own soul and our human flourishing and our wellbeing, because we don't have community, because it just, it doesn't come easily anymore.
[00:53:37] Michael: You know, it's, it's funny because I, I think I've tended to gravitate toward this. Without having the clarity of what I was seeking. But for example, you know, I'm three blocks from my office.
[00:53:48] Elizabeth: Mm-hmm. You know, I
[00:53:49] Michael: have an office behind my home, and then the office where everybody else is, is three blocks away.
[00:53:54] You know, I can walk to great restaurants two to three blocks away. You know, I [00:54:00] have all of my grandkids live within five minutes of me. And so that's a pretty awesome thing. Yeah. And I've often said if my church would just move where I live, I could walk to everything I, I would've no need for a car. Yeah.
[00:54:15] But there is, there has been something profoundly lost through technology, and I, and anybody knows, me, knows I'm a technologist. I love technology, but I also realize that it hasn't come without cost.
[00:54:27] Megan: And I think those costs sometimes are slower to be realized. You know, their cost to our soul, their cost to our heart, their cost to our ability to really flourish.
[00:54:37] And I love that Elizabeth, in telling her own story really frames up for us what we've lost, but also how to get it back. And I think that, you know, we are very wary on this show of talking explicitly about faith. Not because we're ashamed of our faith or anything like that, but because oftentimes it gets [00:55:00] done so badly that it's off putting to people that it just is a poor representation of what the gospel really has to offer.
[00:55:07] And I think she did such a great job of laying out with full transparency of all the pitfalls and all the things that have gone wrong, why faith is an anchor in this conversation of human flourishing and, and kind of unavoidable in a way that we are. For that and that that faith communities offer something in terms of the ability to kind of balance the scales with the con side being turbulence and instability.
[00:55:38] That steadying really comes in these ancient practices and in kind of the work of faith, like day in and day out. And I love that because to me it just feels so practical and kind of like hearty and trustworthy. I don't know how else to describe it, but that's part of what I took away was the old things are the things that we can trust, [00:56:00] even if we've had bad experiences with them, that there's something there.
[00:56:03] There's some wisdom. There's, as she said several times, I thought it was beautiful. There's medicine there and I think that's what we're all looking for, is we're looking for that medicine, especially right now is things, it feels like, you know, the center will not hold and, and I think the, the center that does hold is our faith and is in the daily practices, the sort of ordinariness of life anchoring ourselves to that.
[00:56:25] Michael: You talk about the ordinary, ordinary ness. Hard to say of life. I thought her thing about planning your non-work time
[00:56:35] Megan: Yeah.
[00:56:36] Michael: Was a key practice. Mm-hmm. And starting there now I've advocated for balancing for sure. You know, try to do your very best to put that in your ideal week. But here, I think the insight that I got, and it was a little bit of a revelation, was start with the free time.
[00:56:51] Megan: So what would you do differently? Like, like how would you think about your ideal week differently if you were kind of doing that, like flip of [00:57:00] the big rocks weren't your most important professional contributions, but your big rocks were kind of your most important soul care or connection. I don't know how we would say that, but how would your schedule look different?
[00:57:14] Michael: I dunno that it would look different, but I think that I would approach it from a different framework. You know, my work's very important and it's not just a way for me to. Support the rest of my life. You know, I think there's a real calling and a real sense of purpose in what I do. And I know you feel the same way, so I don't wanna diminish that.
[00:57:33] But I do think that observing Sabbath in the way that she was talking about is at the core of this. And it's, and it's interesting to me, and not to wax too theological, but Sunday for Christians is the first day of the week and it begins with rest. And I think too often, and if you're not religious or a faith-based person, listen to me [00:58:00] anyway, I think that a lot of times people think that rest is the reward for hard work, and as a result of that, they never actually get to it.
[00:58:09] Elizabeth: Mm-hmm.
[00:58:10] Michael: And I think the inside here is rest is the prerequisite. And so by unplugging, powering down. Focusing on rejuvenating kinds of activities like she was talking about that prepares you for making your best contribution without burnout. I think I've drifted into this idea and, and literally on my calendar, I have the week start on Monday, and I think I need to change that just for my own sense of how time works and the importance of,
[00:58:41] Megan: it's kind of like an orienting practice.
[00:58:43] It's my default on time that I have off is that I wanna spend as much time by myself at home. Yeah. Without other people as possible. Now in my life, I have five kids, three of them are still at home. That doesn't mean I'm alone, you know, usually, but it does [00:59:00] mean that I'm not doing things with other people outside of my nuclear family very often, and I don't think that's what she means by Sabbath, and I don't think that's.
[00:59:11] I think the, the idea is the restoration that is Sabbath comes from being in community and community is more than your nuclear family. That's the whole point. So that was really challenging to me to think about. The other thing I, I was thinking if I were gonna answer my own question about how my schedule would change, I've always thought it was interesting that Catholics, for example, tend to observe the practice of gonna mass every day.
[00:59:35] And you and I are not Catholics, so that's not part of our practice. But I often will go to an Anglican or Episcopal Eucharist service on a Wednesday, and I, I would love to start every day with that. You know, I think that would be a really beautiful orienting way to remember. What really matters to be anchored to truth and goodness and and wholeness in the truest [01:00:00] sense every day.
[01:00:01] And I think that feels, I always wondered like people who are Catholic, like how do they fit that in, you know? Because that seems like a pretty big commitment every day. But also, how cool to do that, I
[01:00:10] Michael: don't know if you remember this, but when we had Arthur Brooks on, who is Roman C?
[01:00:13] Megan: Yes.
[01:00:14] Michael: He and his wife go to mass every day.
[01:00:16] Elizabeth: Yeah.
[01:00:16] Michael: Kyle who works for us at the house here, he and his wife go to Mass every day.
[01:00:22] Elizabeth: Yeah.
[01:00:22] Michael: And I think it's a steadying kind of thing. Yeah. And this is why I think, darn that automobile, because proximity really creates friction for this. Because Yes, it's not like I'm gonna go to a one hour Eucharistic service and then come home, but it's a 20 minute drive there and it's a 20 minute drive back.
[01:00:42] You know? I don't wanna be making excuses, but it's just, it's challenging.
[01:00:45] Megan: Well, it's something to really think about, like how to incorporate those spiritual practices and spiritual disciplines into life. I, I don't know that that's one of the things I'm really taking away is just thinking about that. So obviously guys, if you stayed with us this long, you need to get this [01:01:00] book.
[01:01:00] I mean, we, we get nothing out of promoting a book other than just knowing what it's meant to us. But I, I think it's gonna be so meaningful to you. So I really hope you will buy the book. We have all the information in the show notes. I think it will be helpful for you in this season of being a human.
[01:01:17] It's a weird time to be a human.
[01:01:18] Michael: Yes, it is. And on that we'll end,
[01:01:22] Megan: thanks for joining us, everybody.
[01:01:24] Michael: Yeah. Thanks for hanging out with us. We'll see you next week.
[01:01:26] Megan: Bye-Bye.