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Two friends examining the faith they inherited, one patch at a time. Jacob and Sam are former church staff who believe Jesus invites us into a fuller picture of being human — one with room for doubt, critical thought, and perspectives that don't always fit the frameworks we were handed. Table Talk is a lab, not a platform. A place to look honestly at what's fraying, keep what's load-bearing, and practice integrating the rest in real time. Less explaining, more exploring. Good company for anyone discovering the surprising transformation downstream of surrendering certainty. Here's to faithful curiosity and patchwork spirituality.
W. Jacob Mancini (00:37)
happy World Cup Day. Is that how you say that?
Sam Strutton (00:40)
Is that
is is that is there a day? Is that a day?
W. Jacob Mancini (00:45)
Dude, your team
your team won, bro.
Sam Strutton (00:48)
Mexico?
W. Jacob Mancini (00:49)
dude, you you're not even watching?
Sam Strutton (00:52)
I was wondering is World Cup Day a thing?
W. Jacob Mancini (00:55)
I don't I'm sure it's not. But today is the start of the World Cup.
Sam Strutton (00:57)
⁓ yeah. It's not.
Okay. Dude, I'm going to I'm I'm going to a World Cup game on Monday.
W. Jacob Mancini (01:04)
Yeah.
What? Not not in Houston.
Sam Strutton (01:12)
no in Atlanta.
W. Jacob Mancini (01:14)
dude, I was gonna say if you're in H Town, you have to tell me. That's awesome. In Atlanta. who's playing?
Sam Strutton (01:17)
No, I'd like to know.
It's Spain versus ⁓ shoot, hold up. Spain versus Cabo Verde?
I think that's a
W. Jacob Mancini (01:36)
I
I'll nod and and act like I know who those teams are.
Sam Strutton (01:41)
Spain?
W. Jacob Mancini (01:42)
We're
Sam Strutton (01:44)
Like the country. You know.
W. Jacob Mancini (01:46)
Never heard of it. ⁓ yeah, I needed to I'm trying to see the map from fourth grade. No, ⁓ f from your time living in Mexico as a missionary kid, how how much does that still live in your blood? Like how much s do you still, you know, eat and breathe soccer? Or do you?
Sam Strutton (02:11)
Not as much as ⁓ my brother, my dad. Like they're big soccer fans. They they've always been big soccer fans before we even moved down to Mexico. ⁓ I enjoy playing the sport. I don't quite follow it like professionally. And then the World Cup is like obviously the World Cup. I kind of just follow that. ⁓ we used to do this thing at the ⁓ at the children's home where every year
all of the kids would get to pick. We do this whole like kind of raffle like selection system where the kids would get to pick a country kind of. They get raffled it and they get to pick. But you get you get kind of picked or assigned a country and then it you just kinda like you get prizes if your country wins. So every obviously everybody's rooting for Mexico and everybody wanted to be Mexico and you get it like you get to make your you get to like got like like white shirts and you get to like paint it the like colors of your flat.
W. Jacob Mancini (03:04)
You're putting the fl the flag.
Yeah.
Sam Strutton (03:06)
Yeah, you put the flag
on your shirt. And then ⁓ we had like prizes and stuff if you're if you made it to certain stages in the tournament. So ⁓ it was really cool. I think I got Ghana one year and I dn I don't know how far I made it.
W. Jacob Mancini (03:23)
kinda yeah, it's kind of like gambling for kids. Like you're you're like, dude, I'm I'm go I'm going for that prize. Give me that jackpot.
Sam Strutton (03:25)
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, if you
got Argentina, Brazil, Portugal, Spain, you were pretty much like guaranteed top five. ⁓ and then my dad got he got Holland. And I remember Holland, I think it was Holland or Germany. One of them, he got one of them, and then they beat Mexico out of the the World Cup.
W. Jacob Mancini (03:35)
Yeah.
That's awesome.
Sam Strutton (03:54)
And so he wore his jersey on on market day when everybody floods the street and like fills the whole street with markets and you get to go shop and stuff and it's like an open air market. He wore his jersey out there and there were people who were cussing it, cussing at him, like flipping him off and just like they're so mad at him and he was just like, My team won for the twenty minutes team is a sign team for the the World Cup.
W. Jacob Mancini (04:07)
Yeah.
Cute.
I'm not sure that's a winning strategy for a missionary. In Mexico. That's awesome.
Sam Strutton (04:20)
No. ⁓ No. ⁓ yeah, I
don't think those people felt the love of Jesus when he wore that shirt.
W. Jacob Mancini (04:30)
But it does say something about your dad's courage and the ⁓ I'm not ashamed of the gospel of Holland. Yeah. have to see how your team does. What if if I had to pull a team out of a hat right now and give it to you for your childhood bracket, like emotionally, what would you be hoping for?
Sam Strutton (04:38)
of the World Cup.
⁓ I've always loved Argentina.
W. Jacob Mancini (04:56)
Gonna claim Argentina.
Sam Strutton (04:58)
You're claiming?
W. Jacob Mancini (05:00)
No, I said you're gonna claim I should claim it. I have a I have a friend living there and I love mate. Have you ever even had mate?
Sam Strutton (05:02)
⁓
Okay, I had to I I this is out on like I just had to look up if they even qualifies. They are, so you could we're good to go.
W. Jacob Mancini (05:10)
You can have it.
Maybe I'll take Chile if they're qualified.
Then we can be arch rivals.
Sam Strutton (05:26)
You gotta take Brazil. I don't even know if Brazil qualified for C in
W. Jacob Mancini (05:30)
Chile did not qualify. So
Sam Strutton (05:33)
Group C. They're in their group stage with Morocco and Haiti and Scotland.
W. Jacob Mancini (05:38)
I'm gonna watch the Argentina game and make a cup of mate, drink it in my traditional, you know, Chilean Argentinian mate cup with the filtered metal straw. You know what I'm talking about? Yeah, dude. I'll FaceTime you. We'll check in. Dude, we're back for what were you gonna say? What what were you saying?
Sam Strutton (05:48)
Mm-hmm.
Alrighty.
Yeah, no.
That just realized we're matching.
W. Jacob Mancini (06:04)
yeah.
You know, I like that color.
Sam Strutton (06:09)
I like
that color. So
W. Jacob Mancini (06:12)
And yeah, so we did we did color coordinate for episode two here. ⁓ we hit record, as we said in our pilot. Welcome to Table Talk. And this is kind of the ⁓ the wild west. This is kind of like you you made it past the pilot, and now you're into yeah, the finger guns are out, and this is uncharted territory. No one actually knows what's going to happen this episode. ⁓ and that's how we wanted it. Yeah.
Sam Strutton (06:42)
Yes, sir.
W. Jacob Mancini (06:43)
⁓ wow. ⁓ now I feel like I need to say something important. ⁓ one fun thing coming from the pilot was I don't know about you, but I I got feedback from our from our two listeners. At least the two
Sam Strutton (06:58)
Go. I got feedback
from one. Mutualist.
W. Jacob Mancini (07:02)
Yes. So that means we had three.
I feel loved because of course when you start a project ⁓ like a podcast, you know, you're gonna have family who is supporting and and good friends. And so many people were kind of cheering us on.
Are you cool talking about some of the feedback? I thought it might be fun to just, you know. So one person just one of one of the two just cussed us out. ⁓ so
Sam Strutton (07:22)
Yeah, let's do it.
W. Jacob Mancini (07:30)
So yeah. I'm sure no. Well, no, not really. ⁓ one of one of the two ⁓ was a family member who said it was I love this actually. ⁓ they said the Krishna Murdy quote, which was one of the most ⁓ spontaneous parts of that episode for me, because I had just seen it in my algorithm. But that quote that said, once you teach
Sam Strutton (07:30)
Wait, for real?
W. Jacob Mancini (07:57)
The child, the name of the bird, the child will never see that bird again. they were wrestling with that because They said, Well, but is naming is naming actually the problem or is labeling? ⁓ and so they brought up Genesis 2, which anytime someone brings up Genesis one or two, I'm on the edge of my seat already, you know. But so
⁓ in Genesis two, you have the creator you know, walking around the desert and there's water, there's a spring, and God is is ⁓ throwing pottery and making a human in Genesis two, which by the way, I have to pause here and say, I just last week threw pottery for the first time on a double date. Bro, it is so hard.
It's so hard. And so I have
Sam Strutton (08:52)
Wait,
what what about it? It's hard. Like, give me some context. What's
W. Jacob Mancini (08:57)
It just looks easy because it looks like it's spinning on the wheel you know, it's spinning and it looks like you just t kind of put your hands on it and it starts to take shape and I never thought about this before. If that is not centered on the wheel, like right in the center, if you move it out off center at all, then when it when it turns, does it can just get a life of its own and you're kind of like wrestling it, you know, you have to keep it in the center.
Sam Strutton (09:25)
That's
that's that's humanity right there. We moved from the that's the whole story. That's sin in a nutshell. We moved from the center of God's throwing wheel and now we're just
W. Jacob Mancini (09:33)
Yeah.
We're just a propeller, basically. Yeah. We're just flapping around. We're supposed to be a little vessel. ⁓ so anyway, that's where God's at, right? Creating the human. And God is creating a human who is alone with God, and God says it's not good for the human to be alone. So you know the story. So then God, what's fun is the in context, God actually fires up the wheel again.
And is throwing more pottery and is making animals. And the animals are being paraded in front of the human and God's like making them in real time. And it says to see what the human will name them in search of a partner, right? For the human. And that story is all about God and this human in partnership looking for a essential other or this this equal partner for the human. And it involves naming.
So God's asking, hey, what what do you want to call this? And God's on the edge of God's seat to see what you know, Adam, this human partner is gonna call these things. But that doesn't, that story doesn't sound like the the end of curiosity, does it? It's like this quest, it's this partnership. You know, there's a dynamic even with the Genesis motif of ruling and reigning, that naming is the beginning of that vocation where.
⁓ it's part of how you are going to get to know these these creations, these creatures, and take care of them, you know. So I just thought that was great feedback, pushback, because naming can be generative when it is part of a quest, part of kind of that Proverbs, you know, twenty-five, ⁓ seeking and searching out. It can be the beginning of seeing.
I think the Krishna Murdy quote ⁓ wasn't ⁓ contradicting that, but casting naming as like more of a labeling, more of like a you know, there's a way to name things that is the beginning of seeing them or the the beginning of of learning about them. And there's a way of naming that says, I already know what that is. What what are your thoughts on that? I we hadn't talked about that yet.
Sam Strutton (11:23)
Yeah.
Yeah, no, I that's fantastic. I think I think my mind immediately went to as well, like as you're talking about Genesis and you're talking about God throwing pottery and showing these creatures to the human to see what the human would like react and name them. ⁓ I was thinking about the quote and in the quote it's it's you who are naming something for the child.
Right. Does that make sense? So it's like so to to kind of like pair that with the the Genesis, like to synthesize the quote to Genesis, it would have been like if God was naming things for the human to see them. Like if he's making it, showing to the human being like that's a giraffe, that's a elephant, none of these are your equal partner. Like but he's not. He's putting in front of the human so like the equivalent of the Genesis for the
W. Jacob Mancini (12:19)
Yeah. Hmm, yes, yes.
Sam Strutton (12:49)
the ⁓ the Krishna mur murdi? Is that the the the quote would have been like
W. Jacob Mancini (12:53)
Yeah, yes.
Sam Strutton (12:59)
for the the the child will start to see the bird when you ask it what it is. Like like I don't know. Like like a I could just see how that like the feedback just opened up like layers to that with Genesis where yeah there is a a a way of naming things that is helpful. ⁓ I think there's a way of naming things that is that opens up the
W. Jacob Mancini (13:06)
⁓ dude, yes.
Yes.
Sam Strutton (13:25)
conversation and then there's a way of naming things that like shuts down the conversation, which I think was that that's kind of what you were saying about or correct me if I'm wrong, but it kinda sounded like that's where you're going with that.
W. Jacob Mancini (13:36)
Yeah. No, that that layer that you saw just makes it come alive for me. That's that is it, I think. And as a dad, I love that experience with Shiloh, with my son, getting to see the world through his eyes. And yes, it that dynamic that you described of suspending my judgments, suspending my categories, my labels. And when he gets to
In his curiosity, in his ⁓ you know, beginner's mind, when he gets to start the conversation and then share what he's seeing, that he is, he is seeing it. And and I'm seeing it that way. And that it's fun to think of God in that position with us, you know. And I think we've talked about this before, but I think that also we might might want to step over this rabbit hole, but that has a ⁓ that
Sam Strutton (14:13)
Mm.
W. Jacob Mancini (14:33)
whole cascading set of implications for God's sovereignty and how we think about you know how how we resolve some of the some of those things maybe it's not so ⁓ cut and dry right if if God is on the edge of his seat with us, partnered with us, wanting to see through our eyes, what what would that mean for how God is God?
Sam Strutton (14:44)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah. Yeah. I I you brought up like having kids and like that kind of made me think of that like I see it so much now that a lot of my family members are having kids or have recently just had one and the joy and the like the life that it gives the parents and I watch this like happen on a daily basis. Every Sunday I when we have Sunday lunch I see this happen. But when there's something new, something ⁓
unfamiliar to the child, the joy that it brings a parent to say, What is that? Like to at knowing full well what it is, to ask the kid what it is. And to like ask more questions and get the kid interested in whatever it is that the parent has some idea of. ⁓ but they're right, there's some sort of like translating joy of watching
W. Jacob Mancini (15:27)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah. Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Sam Strutton (15:47)
someone begin to understand something for the first time and so and it's not telling them what it is it's and it's asking them what it is and then asking them how they're understanding it how they're seeing it. ⁓ so I I see that so much now and it's like it brings me joy and I'm not even their parent. I'm just their Uncle Sam. So
W. Jacob Mancini (16:05)
Yeah, dude.
Whoa, you're their Uncle Sam? That is your Halloween costume, dude. You it's gotta you gotta get the red, white, and blue going. Yeah. Okay. Yes, sir. Roll reversal. You're drafting me. ⁓ Bro, my wife, as you know, has a rare metabolic disorder called PKU.
Sam Strutton (16:20)
Yeah.
W. Jacob Mancini (16:31)
And so speaking of experiencing things for the first time, she's never bitten into protein. She's never had she can't eat protein. So she's never bitten into a steak, you know, or and so there are treatments coming out and we're not on one. She's n she's not on one currently. And we've had, you know, there's been seasons PKU is not easy to manage. ⁓ it's particularly hard when you're trying to grow your family and
For women to get pregnant if they have PKU. It's very challenging. So we have our Shiloh is a miracle. We have ⁓ a story there. But when she when she was pregnant, she had this momentary increase in her ability to eat protein because Shiloh was actually partnered with her, helping her digest protein. And so she tried salmon during that time for the first time. And I can't wait until she's on a treatment long term and we get.
Sam Strutton (17:17)
No.
W. Jacob Mancini (17:26)
I get to have that almost parent to child relationship with her of like just sitting wide-eyed across from the table on a date and watching her like taste her first good steak. But when she ate salmon, she said the funniest thing. And you this will click with you, but it's it's just what we're talking about. It's how you don't you don't see things when they become familiar, when you stop thinking, when you stop, you know, being curious. She said, it's like sticky. Like when I when I bite down.
Sam Strutton (17:37)
Thank you.
W. Jacob Mancini (17:55)
my teeth like stick together. ⁓ She's like, I didn't expect that. And I was like, What are you talking about? And I took a bite. I'm like, yeah. Yeah, it is. It's like it does. It makes like a little like spring sound when you bite down into it. Anyway. So all the fun bits of learning and curiosity that we get to enjoy from family, little ones. ⁓ do you feel like
Sam Strutton (17:55)
I think.
Yeah.
W. Jacob Mancini (18:23)
I I can talk about the second piece of feedback. Do you feel like ⁓ you wanna riff on that more? Do you have any other experiences of in your faith or otherwise of of the beginner's mind?
Sam Strutton (18:26)
Yeah.
Well, not to go down another rabbit hole, but I feel like that I feel like just that understanding too of like
walking with somebody like walking with somebody by means of questions instead of answers is not common in faith. ⁓ which is so like the dichotomy of it is so interesting that like that's kind of the at least in my experience, ⁓ it's been answers are the kind and loving way to explain the the bird of faith.
Right. And this I mean we I mean, we kind of hit on this in the the initial pilot episode, but ⁓ so I guess not to beat a dead horse or whatever the saying is. ⁓ but just that like I I'm so interested in how that dichotomy shifted from the way that God like introduced the human to new things, but wanted to see their reaction to it and how that whole process then became
a a faith that was rooted in telling people what things are about God ⁓ and not letting people at well not not not sorry not not letting people ask questions but maybe even like guiding the questions or ⁓ providing the answer before the question is asked about God. And I think that brings up the whole sovereignty conversation too where it's like I don't think I ever asked questions about God's sovereignty.
W. Jacob Mancini (19:54)
Mm.
Sam Strutton (20:19)
Until I had questions about it that I didn't feel like I could ask anymore because somebody showed me the hummingbird and was like, that's how God sovereignty works. Does that make sense?
W. Jacob Mancini (20:26)
Hmm.
Yeah, I think so.
Yeah. I feel like a basketball kind of swirling the rim of the rabbit hole right now. And like I it kind of makes sense. I kinda wanna go into it, but I I I'm not sure. I know there was another feedback and and I th I wanted to leave room for you to share yours too. Let maybe we take God's sovereignty on another another day. It'll come up again. But but yeah, and and I honestly I've as I said, I'm always down to talk about Genesis one, two.
Sam Strutton (20:36)
Okay.
Yeah.
Another time. Hey well.
W. Jacob Mancini (21:01)
any scripture. But yeah, I in so many ways, for me, the tree of knowing good and bad, is the symbol of you know that that ⁓ reversal instead of our relationship with God being characterized by wonder, permission to explore, right? Permission to fail because we are loved and we're connected.
⁓ that's the tree of life. That's the original ⁓ setup. I see the tree of knowing good and bad as this knowledge that that creates ⁓ dualism, good, bad, right, wrong, black, white, ⁓ hummingbird, robin,
that I think is the Bible's way of giving us those kind of that origin story of like how this went wrong is like there's a human failure when we reach for certainty or when we reach for that.
fruit, it breaks the it breaks the connection that we had ⁓ with God and kind of inverts it. Does that make sense to you? is that what you were kind of thinking of?
Sam Strutton (22:07)
Yeah. Yeah. I feel like
We are we're teetering around the rabbit hole. So I I'll say yes to that and then I think we'll I'll save some thoughts for the rabbit later on.
W. Jacob Mancini (22:22)
No, don't
Sam Strutton (22:22)
you had one more ⁓ one more feedback. I had kind of a quasi feedback. ⁓ we can talk about those and I think we can just revisit the conversation 'cause I don't think it's going anywhere. I think it's it's a pretty it's a pretty big rabbit hole. I don't think we'll lose it that easily.
W. Jacob Mancini (22:39)
Instead the elephant in the room, it's the rabbit hole in the room. It's just a crater. It's just a crater there. ⁓ yeah, the other feedback I got was was good. ⁓ was also fun. It was about the quilting metaphor. And ⁓ yeah, another loved one of mine. So many friends were just very positive, and some family gave more detailed feedback. So love you, fam. ⁓ th thanks for listening. ⁓
Sam Strutton (22:43)
Exactly.
Three
W. Jacob Mancini (23:07)
I'll shout out my grandma for this one. She my my sweet grandma who's kind of the matriarch of the family and and has just lived a long life of of ⁓ you know faith, faithful love. ⁓ she said, and again, this is a small, I think, shot at us for talking about quilting naively. Cause she was kind of like, Well, once again, like my sister. Yeah, quilt quilting. Yeah, yeah, dude. I mean she
Sam Strutton (23:07)
Okay.
You like a professional quilter?
W. Jacob Mancini (23:37)
I mean, I won't speak for her quilting sk skills. We'll we'll have to bring her on as a guest. but she she she said, you yeah, so you have patches on a quilt. You have the, you know, you have these maybe theological panoramas as pat you have these pieces, but the the actual substance is what's in the quilt. What what actually keeps you warm is love. She just kind of pulled all that together from.
Sam Strutton (23:42)
Let's go. ⁓
Mm-hmm.
W. Jacob Mancini (24:07)
the which was a new layer for that metaphor and I I thought it was sweet. I thought it was beautiful. ⁓ I like to think of the patches as as serving love. Like that, you know, if you if l I don't know what to call it stuffing. Like if you just I should have asked her I should have asked sorry Graham. If you just had love, so to speak, in this kind of like loose, you know
Sam Strutton (24:27)
⁓
W. Jacob Mancini (24:37)
material, it wouldn't have form, it wouldn't, it wouldn't actually keep you warm, right? So it's like the quilt provides this structure and like these theological pieces that we have ⁓ fit together in such a way that that we're covered in love, right? Like they kind of tell the story ⁓ and and order that love in a way that is human, in a way that is tractable. Anyway, so I thought that was well, do you want to riff on that?
Sam Strutton (25:07)
my goodness. Okay. That's I would genuinely love to have Graham on and just have her explain quilting and then we just like sit there and let let it marinate the the the analogy. ⁓
W. Jacob Mancini (25:08)
embarrass us further with with our lack of cultur knowledge.
Mm-hmm.
And
we can repent and dust in ashes.
Sam Strutton (25:28)
Exactly. The best way to repent. ⁓
That the the the the stuffing, that's a whole nother dimension that I didn't even think about. ⁓ but that makes so much sense. ⁓
Because I've I mean, I can think of experiences where I have like a a like a skinny little thin blanket on me and it does nothing versus having like a stuffed quilt and it's just like trapping in the heat and making it warm and cozy and
Like I guess where I get lost in that analogy now
Is the goal to contain love within our theology? Or is it to just hold it as loosely as possible inside? Right? So I don't know if that question makes sense, but like ⁓ I think where the analogy may start to break for me, and I don't know if it's just quilting or I haven't thought about it enough in that sense, but
Love obviously has to have some sort of parameters to define what it is. If any anything that exists has to have some sort of parameters to define what it is. So so must love. So then if you think about it, if you think about a quilt, right, you could think about it as one gigantic blanket where the edges are sorry, the ed for the YouTubers I'm pointing and I'm drawing a big rectangle. where the edges are all like knitted in and it's just one big patch.
But that's I don't know if I've ever seen a quote like that. I feel like that's just a blanket and then it would just have stuffing and it's moving all around and it's like it could fall all the way to the bottom and then the top has no stuffing. Does this make sense?
W. Jacob Mancini (27:14)
Sounds a pillow.
Sam Strutton (27:16)
A pillow, yeah. But like a really bad pillow. ⁓
W. Jacob Mancini (27:20)
Yeah. Very
like a a planar pillow. A v large two dimensional pillow. Not a good pillow.
Sam Strutton (27:27)
Right. So then
you have these like squares that each contain some of the fluff, some of the stuffing, or different shapes that are containing some of the fluff and some of the stuffing. And so by virtue of having these structures and shapes and patches all over the the quilt, the fluff, the love is contained, but it's also distributed across the whole of the of the quilt. So I don't know if this is if this is all makes sense.
But my question would be then, man.
W. Jacob Mancini (27:58)
Think so.
Sam Strutton (28:04)
What in what way is love best defined and distributed amongst the quilt? In what way is love best defined and distributed amongst my understanding with theological patches? ⁓ maybe this one patch over here is too big and the stuffing's getting a little jumbled all in one spot. Maybe it needs a bit more defining, or maybe this one spot's way too defined, it doesn't have any stuffing in it. And it there's no love there now. This one theological patch is holding down all of this space and it doesn't have any room for stuffing, it's all knitted tightly.
W. Jacob Mancini (28:13)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm. ⁓
Sam Strutton (28:32)
So I don't know. I could see it the analogy going much more broad from from that ⁓ from that feedback. And so that I'll have to think about that marinade in it a little bit more.
W. Jacob Mancini (28:33)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
And I love that it that we get to think about it, that we get to talk about it. I think quilting originally was for us about theological workshopping,
Sam Strutton (28:48)
Mm.
W. Jacob Mancini (28:54)
we're willing to have something that is a little bit messy, but but authentic, ⁓ something that's ours. And to add the dimension of love as the substance of that.
⁓ it d I think it does make the analogy better. It goes from just this intellectual pursuit of the goal is to keep thinking, to keep noticing, to keep quilting, to th the tension that we described where the the big thing is love. ⁓ and I for me, I hope that, you know, Meg, my wife and I actually talked talk about this and ⁓ had a conversation not long ago about this. You know, why why be Christian ⁓ at all?
you know, ⁓ if love is the big thing, because we don't need cr Jesus to be loving, you know, I in a sense, like we don't need a religion to be loving. So I I think the way that I come at that is to say, well, there is this quilting that I'm invited into and and you know, I've been introduced I was handed a quilt, I was introduced to this Christian textile, so to speak, this template of, you know,
it's religion, it's spirituality and it's it's Christian. I was introduced to Jesus as a teacher who transformed me. Like in in the process of just like living with this quilt, in the process of e exploring it's not exploring theology, it's it's asking questions all the way from it's you know, what is okay, I have a Bible. Where do I start? To how do I love my neighbor to into like
Along that arc of my life, ⁓ following Jesus and quilting and staying curious ⁓ has been a story of about love. And so
Whatever the kind of intellectual and theological bent that I might have along the way, for me needs to map love, like you said, across my life. And I think good theology does that. Like I think if we were to talk about God's sovereignty, or if we were to talk about you know, any any big kind of picture part of the Christian faith, it needs to come back to how does love get into that corner of not just of my mind.
But then of my life in that way, of you know, ⁓ waking up tomorrow and showing up in love. So I'm trying to I'm trying to agree with you and Graham and just say to the degree that the patches and the quilt give love structure, give us something to kind of ⁓ like attach our lives to and and live into. ⁓ I think it is valuable. And I think that's that's why I am Christian, right? Because
Jesus gives you a path, you know, and ⁓ it's I think I think you can try to love ⁓ using other paths. But the w the one thing I would not want to have is no path. I you know, I would not want to just kind of be unmoored and just ⁓ having nothing but my own reference points for love because there's thousands of years of faithful.
Sam Strutton (32:06)
Yeah.
W. Jacob Mancini (32:16)
humans who have gone before us who have, you know, lifetimes of of experimenting, of quilting. And so I feel like in this tradition we've got the best shot at at becoming people of love. Yeah. I don't know. I I'm I'm sure that only made some sense 'cause I need to think about it more too, but
Sam Strutton (32:19)
Yeah.
Yeah.
No, I love that man. I yeah, I was gonna ask ⁓
As you were saying that, I was kind of thinking about how
along the lines of like why Jesus. ⁓ and I remember I don't know if it was you. You can hopefully you take this as a compliment. I don't know if this was you or Tim Mackey that I heard to say this. It was probably you. But it was something along the lines. I think it was probably both of you honestly. I think I probably heard it from Tim Mackey and then you probably taught on it at some point. ⁓
W. Jacob Mancini (33:08)
My heart. I do take that as a compliment. It was probably Tim Mackey.
That means that it was definitely
from Tim Mackie. He said it first.
Sam Strutton (33:23)
⁓
but it was something along the lines of like Jesus shows us what reality really is like he he opens our eyes to what is really real and at the core of reality if I mean if we're not to get like super meta but like if God
W. Jacob Mancini (33:40)
Mm-hmm.
Sam Strutton (33:49)
Created all things, sustains all things, however, you want to understand God as a being, as I am, he's at the core of everything. And if God has defined himself as love, then love is at the core of all reality. And so
to center your life around Jesus is to center your life around around love. ⁓ that's how I've understood like why Jesus. ⁓
W. Jacob Mancini (34:18)
Mm-hmm.
Sam Strutton (34:21)
And I think as far as I've studied, which is not much, I I feel like Jesus has explained it the easiest. ⁓ I haven't studied any other rabbi or anybody else who's talking about love ⁓ the way Jesus has. And I think that that's what captivates a lot of people when they first have that encounter like you were talking about, where your life is utterly changed because love met you. ⁓ and we understand that love as a human being named Jesus.
W. Jacob Mancini (34:36)
Mm-hmm.
Hm.
Sam Strutton (34:52)
⁓ who taught us what it means to l to love and what it looks like. I I think that yeah. ⁓ so I yeah, I was going to ask I was I was gonna ask like how
W. Jacob Mancini (34:56)
Yes.
Yeah, yeah. Keep going.
Sam Strutton (35:11)
If God is the center of all reality and God has defined himself as love, so love is the center of all reality. ⁓ and we we kind of you and I have personally struggled with like defining God, ⁓ in a lot of senses, in his sovereignty, and in the way that he reveals himself in his word, and how we can should we take that as like that's the way he is, ⁓ all the verses that talk about how he doesn't change and things like that, it just kind of gets I feel like it kind of gets complicated to try and define God.
⁓ which I think is the point. ⁓ but I was going to ask if God is reality and if reality is love, how then do we go about understanding love and discerning it versus defining it? Does that make sense?
W. Jacob Mancini (36:04)
Yeah. I think yeah. Yeah. ⁓ Well how
Sam Strutton (36:06)
Yeah. I can expand on that if you I don't expect you to have an answer.
That's just a a question that's surfaced as I was listening to you talk. And that's that's my that's my word salad.
W. Jacob Mancini (36:15)
Yeah.
Dude, yeah, it's a salad bar tonight. What how would you start answering that? ⁓ responding to that. Not you know, not a polished answer.
Sam Strutton (36:27)
Yeah, so the question how do we discern love versus define love, right? ⁓ I think I would start with experience and how have you experienced love? 'cause I feel like experience is one thing that every human has and every human can vouch for their own experience of something.
And so the ways that you've experienced love in your life, I feel like are tangible ways to discern where it is and like what it looks like. Does that make sense? ⁓ go ahead.
W. Jacob Mancini (37:02)
Yeah, I think so. You kind
of start there. You kind of start with experience. Everyone does. And s for some, it's actually a negative experience of not receiving love that that is instructive, which is tragic when, you know, especially for young young people in situations on that that we haven't experienced, you know, abusive situations, th things like that. maybe going upstream of that question just for a second, why is it important
Sam Strutton (37:08)
Yes. Yeah.
Mm-hmm. Yes, yes.
Yeah.
W. Jacob Mancini (37:32)
Like why why are you even ⁓ suggesting that discernment might be a needed alternative to defining love? Does that make sense? What because I think for a lot of Christians, love is defined. It's like, well, love is the tr you know, we're gonna speak the truth in love, or like a lot of Christians tend to think like love has a pretty straightforward definition. So what do you mean? Like, why why are we complicating that?
Sam Strutton (38:00)
Yeah.
can you re-ask that question of like the upstream question?
W. Jacob Mancini (38:03)
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah. So when when you said, are we are we defining love? Are we discerning love? My question was, can we go upstream of that fork in the road to ask why, you know, why not why not just settle it? Why not just say, okay, well, this is what love is? Like what what do you mean discern? Why, why is discernment part of this? ⁓ that was kind of where I was going is
Sam Strutton (38:12)
Mm-hmm.
Okay. Yeah.
W. Jacob Mancini (38:31)
You know,
what what what warrants us to even
slow down enough to ask that question in the first place.
Sam Strutton (38:41)
Yes, I think I okay, I'm I remember where I was going this. I think I was going back to the point about God being love. And if God is love, then if if we believe that God is personable, if he is a being of personality and not just some like force that exists with like quantum rules that he has to follow, if he's a person
W. Jacob Mancini (38:48)
Mm-hmm.
Sam Strutton (39:07)
I I think we fail at this at the t at I think we we make a mistake at the very beginning if we try and define a person. Like I don't think anybody likes to be defined. You are this, you are not that. ⁓
W. Jacob Mancini (39:17)
Mm.
Sam Strutton (39:24)
That doesn't mean that there's anyway, I won't go down that rabbit hole. But to def I think starting upstream and asking the question like, hey, have have we in this understanding of love, have we defined God in a certain way that isn't ⁓ that's why I kind of feel the need to go.
W. Jacob Mancini (39:37)
Yeah, interesting. Mm-hmm.
Sam Strutton (39:44)
the discerning versus deciding, I think was the word I used. ⁓ route. Because you can discern things about people. ⁓ as you spend time with them, you can learn like, hey, you know what? I've learned that ⁓ Jacob likes to drink water from a true gallon water bottle that could crush it at any moment if he wasn't super strong.
W. Jacob Mancini (39:48)
Right. Yes.
⁓ yeah.
Sam Strutton (40:10)
Like I can discern that by watching you and spending time with you and having a relationship with you. ⁓ but if I just defined and said Jacob only likes drinking Diet Dr. Pepper out of his giant water potter. That's just I'm just I'm like defining a part of who you are and what you're doing by an observation that I'm making, but it's not.
W. Jacob Mancini (40:33)
Mm.
Sam Strutton (40:38)
I don't know. I d I think discerning takes relationship. It takes questions. It takes asking. It takes seeking. It takes trying to understand the person to understand who they are and not who you want them to be. And I think that's like probably the reason to go upstream of the of that like initial discerning versus deciding what love is is like, hey, is this really
about love or is this about God and who we want him to to be and who we've kind of gotten comfortable or who what kind of God makes us comfortable and once we've decided that then we can decide what love is from there on out. Does that make sense?
W. Jacob Mancini (41:08)
Mm-hmm.
does make sense. I think the genius of what you said is it's from first John, God is love. ⁓ I if if what scripture is trying to convey is that the mystery of God, like the the infinite, the infinitude, the you know, the boundlessness of God and the mystery that could never be put into a box is how we need to be thinking about love as well.
Sam Strutton (41:22)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
W. Jacob Mancini (41:46)
Then, right, that's the, I think, the move that is brilliant that you're making. Like if God will never fit in our boxes, then neither will love. ⁓ if God is this beautiful mind, as Timeki says, behind all things and in all things, as Paul says, through all things, and in him we live and move and have our being, there's mystery in that. Maybe there's more mystery in love too, than we have accounted for.
or th than we have kind of acted out. ⁓ which is funny because one of my favorite Bible scholars actually specifically targets that Ephesians speak the truth in love verse by saying that in the Greek, the verb there is actually not speak, speak the truth. It's not actually speaking is the verb. The verb is the word for truth, spelled as a verb. And it's not a verb in Greek. So it's this word play, truthing in love.
Which is to kind of say
Truth is not this static thing either. Like, truth is this animated thing fueled by love for Paul. Like that's the church has God's love kind of poured into the tank, and then God's truth is lived out as the community, you know, witnesses to the good news of the kingdom in lives of love and you know, service and and so on. So
I think that's brilliant to kind compare the inscrutability of God with our feeble attempts to kind of control and manipulate love and decide what it is and define it using our our small minds. So ⁓ thank you for that. I don't know how we got here anymore, but I feel like maybe a better analogy for quilting for us is just two dudes sitting in a room full of like deep craters, and we're just trying not to fall into one of them.
Sam Strutton (43:44)
It's just like that movie Holes, you know, just digging. That's you and me.
W. Jacob Mancini (43:50)
Yeah. I yeah, maybe I need to like put a cowboy hat on next time, have a glass of whiskey.
Sam Strutton (43:58)
⁓ Mm-hmm.
W. Jacob Mancini (43:59)
So did you have
some f feedback that you got from this thing?
Sam Strutton (44:03)
feedback plus God is love question mark. ⁓ I'm actually gonna go try and I don't know if I'll read it. ⁓ 'cause I don't know if I actually have permission to. But it was good feedback. it's just a dear friend of mine. ⁓
W. Jacob Mancini (44:06)
Mm. Question mark.
You're just being you're just being humble, dude. We all know that he said or she said, You have the best podcasting voice on the market. Let's be honest. Cause that was the main feedback I think that came through.
Sam Strutton (44:37)
He did say I missed hearing your voice. I don't think he meant it in the fact that my voice is podcast worthy or not. ⁓
W. Jacob Mancini (44:44)
I think I think we
all know how he how he meant it.
Sam Strutton (44:48)
Anyway, I I also don't have permission to share his name. But he would just it was just ⁓ just super positive, uplifting, proud of us. ⁓ I I actually then just said, Hey, like I miss your voice too. Love talking with you, would love to have you on. So he may make a guest appearance and ⁓ we'll we'll see. ⁓ but it was just love and he was a great conversation partner ⁓ for me during a time where I felt
like I didn't have too many of those people who we could have safe spaces and conversations with. And he has been and continues to be just an incredible friend and conversation partner in safe space. So ⁓ if you're listening to this, you know who you are. ⁓ lovey bro. ⁓ we'd love to have you on at some point, but I'll I'll text you about that.
W. Jacob Mancini (45:21)
Mm-hmm.
You will have to reveal your identity if you come on the show.
Sam Strutton (45:42)
Yeah. You could you could wear a mask. You wear like a b plastic Batman mask. Just like
W. Jacob Mancini (45:47)
Okay.
Wait a second. I'm wearing the cowboy hat and whiskey. Our guest is in a mask. What are you wearing?
An Argentina jersey.
Sam Strutton (45:58)
I guess, yeah.
W. Jacob Mancini (46:00)
With
with your mate.
Sam Strutton (46:02)
Yeah, it's just some face paint.
W. Jacob Mancini (46:05)
Okay.
That's awesome, man. Well, what do you actually want to wear, dude? You you can answer. I'm sorry, I cut you off.
Sam Strutton (46:16)
I I have no idea. I'm looking around my room like what could I wear? I don't know. It'll be a surprise.
W. Jacob Mancini (46:24)
Well, how about instead
of answering, yeah, you just wear it next time. You just come on.
Sam Strutton (46:30)
Long the word something.
W. Jacob Mancini (46:31)
I love it.
Dude, what else is kind of ⁓ percolating for you as we wrap up here? I I had one thing to to ⁓ rattle off if there's time, but I I feel like I've also been talking too much. I'd love to hear from you. What's
Sam Strutton (46:46)
I don't know. I
I I say go for it, bro.
W. Jacob Mancini (46:49)
Well, I'd love to hold space for you or our listeners, anyone who wants to interact, our guests who might who might make appearances to also just share What are you kind of thinking about? What are you reading? ⁓ I'm reading this book. I started reading it after our last recording called Make Your Home in This Luminous Dark. I mean.
Chef's Kiss ⁓ for the name. That's James K.A. Smith, one of my favorite authors. He is ⁓ just a marvel to read. His his writing is just like it's prose poetry at times. So anyway, ⁓ the book is about.
the cloud of unknowing, which if if you're not familiar is a classic kind of mystical Christian text. ⁓
I just finished chapter one recently. And in chapter one, I was amazed how much certainty comes up. And so James Smith is a philosopher by training and a professor, and he kind of has his own story of.
A deconstruction of sorts, you know, and an undoing of of certainty and what comes with that for him. And so the book explores art and mysticism and and questions. And so chapter one, he cites this ⁓ little paragraph that is written by a naturalist named Barry Lopez. So I'm gonna read the words of Barry Lopez from chapter one of this book, and ⁓ this is an illustration of
Barry's account of a day wandering in traditional Walpiri land in Northwest Australia. ⁓ so I'll read the I'll read the ⁓ paragraph and then we can I can riff on it and you can too.
a bit. My goal that day. He's wandering around North Northwest Australia. My goal that day was intimacy, the tactile, olfactory, visual, and sonic details of what to most people in my culture would appear to be a wasteland. This simple technique of awareness had long been my way to open a conversation.
With any unfamiliar landscape. Who are you? I would ask. How do I say your name? May I sit down? Should I go now? Over the years I'd found this way of approaching whatever was new to me consistently useful. Establish mutual trust, become vulnerable to the place, then hope for some reciprocity and perhaps even intimacy.
You might choose to handle an encounter with a stranger you wanted to get to know better in the same way. Each person, I think, finds their own way into an unknown world like this Spine Effects plane. We're all by definition naive about the new. But unless you intend to end up alone in your life, it seems to me you must find some way in a new place or with a new person to break free of the notion that you can be certain.
of what or whom you've actually encountered. You must, at the very least, establish a truce with realities not your own.
So realities, not your own capital R reality being God, being love. I l to me this just fits in at the end of this conversation and also in my own processing of of ⁓ much of this. What do you what do you wanna say about that?
Sam Strutton (50:41)
If I could be honest, I feel like I need to read it like four or five times. I feel like
Yeah. Okay. ⁓
W. Jacob Mancini (50:53)
Well, you got time? I'll read it four more times. Just kidding.
That's okay, you don't have to respond if you don't want to.
Sam Strutton (51:04)
Yeah. I honestly I don't know. I
W. Jacob Mancini (51:08)
For an for a naturalist and maybe maybe I didn't give enough context, for a naturalist to be wandering around in an unfamiliar place and to be asking questions like, Who are you? How do I say your name?
my favorite part of this is when he says I found this way of approaching whatever was new to me consistently useful. Establish mutual trust, become vulnerable to the place, and then hope for some reciprocity and perhaps even intimacy. I I think I've done this subconsciously, un you know, unwittingly. I think about before I became a dad, I was in the Tetons with my dad and brother and it in
My my grandfather and like it was just this ⁓ men's trip. And we're in the backcountry of Wyoming and you know, carrying everything on our backs, spent several nights there. And there's you just have these moments of like I am so small. What's that old phrase about like nobody goes to the Grand Canyon and and says, like, I'm so big? Like I'm, you know, like when you when you're in these n n national and we talked about national parks a little bit last time and how faith is kind of like
This exploration and this like being set loose into territory that is not tame, that is not mine. It's not controlled by me. It's not even like slightly under under my thumb, you know? And like you can kind of harden against that. You can brace and resist and like try to control what you can and like get into a survival mindset, or you can like sit on a rock and look up at a at a vista and say, What is your name? Like
Sam Strutton (52:22)
Yeah.
W. Jacob Mancini (52:45)
Who are you, Mountain? And there's a certain vulnerability and ⁓ like ⁓ a kind of like ego ⁓ dismantling. And you kind of make yourself fully available to something that is other than you, and that's it. Like that's all you can do, and just in the hopes that you get something back. I don't know that I've done that a ton with places like this.
aut like the guy who wrote that. But I think what James Smith is doing in this first chapter of this book is to say, like, that stance or that posture ⁓ characterizes a kind of true knowing or a true wisdom.
Sam Strutton (53:30)
Sign
W. Jacob Mancini (53:31)
That's so much of our certainty industrial complex of education and, you know, ⁓ I mean, even what we call higher education for pastors, ⁓ master of divinity. do we think that we're mastering anything? I think we do, you know, because we create these dogmas and these categories. So anyway, this is not about mastering anything. This is about
laying bare, opening yourself up to an other, a genuine other, and just holding out for the good news of something to be given back, something to be revealed and reciprocated. ⁓ and
That way of being in the world is what wisdom is all about, is what true knowing is about. Anyway, maybe that's all it is. you want to add anything?
Sam Strutton (54:27)
I feel like
the way that he described that and the way that you just reframed it as a posture. I feel like that just completed my thought. Like, or that just that just rounded out, smoothed out, clarified for me what I was trying to understand about.
this whole God love conversation, I feel like the two conversations are merging because it is it's it's relationship. It's his relationship. It's all about relationship, it's his relationship with the terrain. It's it's it's our relationship with God. But what was his name? ⁓
W. Jacob Mancini (55:00)
Barry Lopez.
Sam Strutton (55:02)
Barry Lopez, if he's asking questions. Like he's not trying to define the landscape. He's not trying to determine what it is, what it isn't, where it stops, where it ends, where it starts, what you know. He's asking questions to get to know.
And what were the two there were two points that followed it up?
W. Jacob Mancini (55:21)
Yeah, he said, then hope for some reciprocity and perhaps even intimacy.
Sam Strutton (55:26)
Yeah, I love that.
That part for me clicked when I start thinking about trying to encounter God. ⁓ 'cause I feel like if it was some sort of like simple formula,
I think a lot of people have told me and kind of painted this picture that God is easy to find. ⁓ that and and that that picture is painted.
In the light of God is easy to find if you can, if you know what you're looking for, if you've determined what God is, if you've determined what that relationship with him is already, then he's easy to look for. He's easy, he's easy to find. But if you enter that relationship with questions, with hope for reciprocity, for something to come back, and that curious asking questions, trying to know more.
W. Jacob Mancini (56:00)
Yeah.
Sam Strutton (56:18)
Not for the sake of obtaining knowledge, but for the sake of relationship, then the best thing that could happen is God responds. The the ultimate best thing that happens is intimacy, which has already been extended by God. the original engager with a giver. Yeah, he's the original giver of relationship.
W. Jacob Mancini (56:34)
Giver, yeah.
Sam Strutton (56:41)
And it would make sense that to be an image bearer of that.
Would mean
To seek relationship.
in that way by asking questions by trying to learn by trying to remain humble and curious by trying to ask questions and not forcing anything about any relationship but merely being open to that reciprocity if it's there and intimacy at best with people with creation with God it just that like clicked for me
W. Jacob Mancini (56:53)
Mm-hmm.
Sam Strutton (57:13)
That's a way of understanding the reality of love experiencing life in that posture of curiosity and question asking and seeking relationship with all. Does that make sense? I don't
W. Jacob Mancini (57:28)
Yes,
yes. Well, what comes to mind is love is patient, love is kind, love is, you know, the chap the love chapter in First Corinthians thirteen, I believe. none of those things are determined by a single point of reference. Like it's what you just said. All of those things are open-ended. Patient with whom? Under what circumstances? Kind.
Sam Strutton (57:34)
Mm-hmm.
W. Jacob Mancini (57:56)
Like no one gets to just be a self-proclaimed kind person. You know, if you want to find out if you're kind, you gotta ask somebody. Have I been kind to you? And so there's this, yeah, there is this reciprocity. If God is the ultimate giver, what is this gift that we've been given? And then what does it mean for us to give back? You know, and like anyone who's ever given a gift knows that you can give a pretty crappy gift.
Sam Strutton (58:06)
Yeah. Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
W. Jacob Mancini (58:26)
If you don't do your research and like know what the other person is about. You know what I mean? so we're always getting out of that single point of reference. We're always getting out of ego We're always invited to
Sam Strutton (58:30)
Yeah.
W. Jacob Mancini (58:36)
Fully join God in generosity, hope for the best, and find out what intimacy can be. But there's no guarantees with love. Jesus it could be argued he is the most loving human that has ⁓ that has shown up here. And he was executed by the state, capital punishment. So
Sam Strutton (58:50)
Yeah.
Yeah.
W. Jacob Mancini (59:04)
Maybe the maybe the project is more like the movie Holes where you're just ⁓ you know, it's just a lot of ⁓ maybe there's a lot of hardship and ⁓ and being misunderstood along the way. ⁓ maybe the movie holes makes the whole thing cause totally confusing.
Sam Strutton (59:31)
I ⁓ I I was tracking until you brought that up.
W. Jacob Mancini (59:36)
Now
I'm just thinking about my cowboy hat and whiskey again.
Sam Strutton (59:39)
Yeah.
W. Jacob Mancini (59:40)
That's okay, we'll cut it. And when I say we'll cut it, I mean we will not cut anything. There's very minimal editing here. We don't have time for that. Yeah, yeah.
Sam Strutton (59:50)
Hmm. A few coughs, a few things.
W. Jacob Mancini (59:55)
Dude, I think I think we need to wrap it up. Because
We said a lot. we've got some rabbit holes to come back to. We've got other people we want to bring on at some point. It's in a good spot, man. I'm loving this.
Sam Strutton (1:00:08)
Yeah. that went by so quick. I I just looked at the time, it's crazy.
W. Jacob Mancini (1:00:11)
I know, dude.
Hey, if you are listening, ⁓ and if if we haven't directly shouted you out as one of the few listeners that has responded to us, welcome. We're glad that you're ⁓ in the conversation. You can always go to tabletalk.fm and ask a question
or, you know, follow us where you find podcasts, all that. ⁓ yeah, it's it's just we're we're honored to be here and ⁓ just enjoying the ride. You wanna sign us off, Sam?
Sam Strutton (1:00:45)
Yeah. Thank you all again for sticking it out with us. ⁓ until next time, the only thing that matters is faith expressing itself in love. Peace.