Transcript

Speaker 1: The father of orphans and the defender of widows is God in His holy dwelling. God gives a home to the forsaken. He leads forth prisoners to prosperity.

Speaker 2: Welcome back to Scripture for your inner outcasts. It's May 18th, 2026, Monday of the seventh week of Easter. Today we are joined by doctor Jerry Crete, one of the co-founders of Souls and Hearts, the author of the book litanies of the heart, and a counselor with his own private practice, Transfiguration Counseling, based in Atlanta, Georgia.

Speaker 1: Hey there. I'm glad to be with you today on this Monday of the seventh week of Easter. I was especially struck by Psalm 68 today. You know, it's a startling in its directness about what God does with exiles. It says the father of orphans and the defender of widows is God in his holy dwelling. God gives a home to the forsaken. He leads forth prisoners to prosperity. So what do we hear in that? He's the father of orphans, the defender of widows, home giver to the forsaken. He's the leader of prisoners into prosperity. This is not a God who comes primarily to the strong or the already healed, or the well resourced inner systems. This is a God whose characteristic activity, whose signature really is finding the exiles and bringing them home. So the orphan is the one without a father's protection, without an inheritance, without belonging in our inner worlds. This is the Xa who came to believe it had no origin worth claiming, no safe source of identity, no reliable presence that can be claimed as a beloved. Basically, God's characteristic movement is not toward the confident, the well functioning, perfect self, but toward the exile, toward the locked room. The buried part, the one that has been told it is too much trouble, too broken, too shameful to deserve attention. So the Psalm does not say God tolerates the forsaken or eventually gets around to the orphan. It says, this is a God who is the father of orphans, the defender of widows, the home giver to the forsaken. This is divine identity. Jesus literally says, this is in the Gospel of John. Behold, the hour is coming and has arrived, when each of you will be scattered to his own home, and you will leave me alone.

Speaker 1: So he's not predicting a hypothetical future. He's naming what is already happening. The disciples, in this very moment of confident declaration. Now we believe you came from God, are on the edge of the greatest scattering of their lives. They will flee and they will lock their doors. They will go back to fishing. They will stand at a distance from the cross rather than beneath it, and they will scatter. For most of us. Trauma survivors scattering is not just something that happened once. It's a pattern. It's shaped our deepest beliefs about safety and belonging. You know, what might come up is a you know, my family that fell apart, scattered under pressure, couldn't hold together when things became hard. Or maybe it's inward and inner scattering of dissociation. Right? When the threat became so overwhelming that parts fled to separate corners. Exiles are born in this scattering, and they believe this. When things get hard, people leave. Groups fall apart. Belonging is temporary. I will end up alone. You know, this wasn't. This is not an irrational belief. It was formed by actual experience. This disciples actually did scatter, you know. So our exiles are right, right. That scattering really does happen. Each of our exiles. Right. Need to hear this truth. There is a ground within you that cannot be scattered. And that's the inmost self. That's that quality of consciousness that is curious, calm, compassionate, connected. You know, it can't be exiled, can't be buried. It can't be covered by our protective parts permanently. It might feel inaccessible at times, but it can't be destroyed.

Speaker 2: Listeners can find more content from doctor Jerry Crete, including a link to his book The Litanies of the heart and the description of today's show. Thanks for joining us and we hope to see you again tomorrow.

Speaker 1: Our lady, our mother. I'm tired of nonsense, Theotokos, pray for us. Saint Joseph, pray for us. Saint John the Baptist, pray for us.