Tag Archives: Dorothy Day

Ep48 God is a Trickster

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 41:28 — 38.0MB)

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Father Len reveals how and why God uses loving trickery to expose truth and help us understand and live our purpose.

Highlights, Ideas, and Wisdom

  • Father Len explores the common theme in the religious mythologies presented in Joseph Campbell’s “Power of Myth” that first got him thinking about God as a trickster back when he was in junior high school.
  • The trickster in every religious mythology is a rebel who is creative and helps humanity in unexpected, backwards and upside down ways.
  • The theme of the trickster God, the God who turns things upside down, is also present in the Bible.
  • Father Len shares the story of Moses, the coward with a stuttering problem who becomes the greatest prophet in the Old Testament to illustrate God’s unexpected, upside down, and backwards ways.
  • The Bible tells us God’s ways and wisdom don’t necessarily follow straight lines or human logic with lines like: “Eyes have not seen, ears have not heard what God has in store for us.”
  • Father Len shares his theory on why God loves to play the trickster.
  • The mystery of God means we can never truly understand the infinite. The God of infinite love and infinite possibilities.
  • Truth can be very tricky.
  • Father Len shares a Native American religious myth to illustrate why God sends us tricksters in life.
  • When God created the world, he gave every single creature a gift that must be shared for creation to work properly.
  • We crave clarity. We demand things be either horizontal or vertical, hot or cold, black or white, right or wrong, good or bad. But, God provides ambiguity and less clear lines that must be fully explored with an open mind to be understood.
  • God is willing to forgive what we consider unforgivable.
  • Father Len uses stories about the “Feast of Fools” and the “Feast of the Ass” to illustrate the value of tricksters in religion and life.
  • We need tricksters and fools to keep us from getting trapped in our orthodoxy and thinking we have the answer to everything in life.
  • There is real danger in orthodoxy that boxes God into simple neat little answers.
  • The heart of any civilization is its spirituality.
  • God sends us people like Francis, Dorothy Day, and Catherine Doherty who seem foolish and silly at first, but in actuality they are tricksters sent by God to expose truth.
  • Tricksters have this sacred role to help us laugh at ourselves, see the world from different perspectives and expose hypocrisy and foolishness and our spiritual rigor mortis.
  • Christ is the ultimate trickster and holy fool. He does everything in unexpected ways. He destroys our enemies by making them our brothers and sisters. That’s a great trick. He destroys death by welcoming death. That’s unexpected.
  • God is the trickster who’s always overturning our ways.
  • Habits have a way of deadening the impressions from our experiences, causing even the holiest of things to become superficial or lost.
  • When things happen in our lives appear to be silly or foolish, could it be the trickster God trying to help us see what is real and true?

Ep36 Anger and Fear Are Not the Answer to Loss and Disappointment

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 21:37 — )

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Father Len offers perspective and advice to those who feel anger and fear after the recent national election or following any loss or disappointment in life.

Highlights, Ideas, and Wisdom

  • Father Len’s concerns about the effects of what he refers to as “post traumatic election syndrome” inspired this episode.
  • Father Len shares a personal experience from a trip to Colombia to put election induced anger, fear, and anxiety in perspective.
  • Father Len explains why joy, determination and patience, not anger, are the remedy for injustice.
  • Jesus implores us to responsibly control the emotions in our hearts, without excuse.
  • Anger clouds our hearts and minds.
  • When you’re angry is not the time to figure out how to respond to what’s causing your anger.
  • “When you’re angry or in a bad mood at work, just go home because you’re just gonna make everyone you work with miserable.” – Sage advice from Father Len’s former bookkeeper
  • History is not logical. One of the best things that ever happened to Christianity was the fall of Rome. It actually helped Christianity spread.
  • History’s greatest and most effective activists, like Martin Luther King Jr and Dorothy Day, turned their anger into steely determination based on prayer and peace.
  • Anger often turns people away from your cause.
  • We need to place our hopes in eternal truths:
    • Christ is our King, not a political group, political faction, or any nation.
    • Faith and love, not anger will unite our country.
  • Father Len’s tips for calming anger:
    • Breathe deeply through your nose.
    • Pray
    • Place the source of your anger in a world 10 years from now and try to imagine if it will really be the big deal or emergency you think it is now.
    • Stop or limit your “doom scrolling” (constantly checking the news for stories that will trigger your anger and anxiety)
    • Focus on an upcoming joyful event in your life.
  • Father Len introduces his “St. Jolly Project” to add more fun and joy to life.
  • It’s the little things in life that make a real difference. Like a song that suddenly puts you in a good mood.
  • Prayer to Fast from Incivility

Ep14 Finding Lost Faith

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 27:31 — 25.2MB)

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Father Len explains what causes a loss of faith and gives listener Jennifer some ideas for finding her lost faith.

Highlights, Ideas, and Wisdom

  • Father Len explains the difference between faith and belief.
  • Faith is like a muscle. If you don’t use it, it will atrophy and you’ll lose it.
  • Faith is like a seed. It’s a gift from God. We must prepare the soil in which it grows. The soil is our hearts. The best means for preparing the soil is prayer and reflection.
  • Faith is like water. It needs a path to flow. Prayer and reflection dig the “trench” that allows faith to flow.
  • Prayer and reflection are habits that give birth to faith.
  • Father Len introduces one of his favorite tools for feeding and deepening his faith, “The Daily Examen” created by St. Ignatius.
  • The daily practice of gratitude will make you a happier person and deepen your faith.
  • “Feeling Good: the New Mood Therapy” by David D Burns M.D.
  • Life is a matter of negotiating problems.
  • Troubles in life do not cause faith to evaporate. Quite the opposite. We can find the presence of Christ in all of our problems.
  • “God whispers to us in our good times, but shouts to us in our pain.” – CS Lewis

Ep8 How do we know God is real?

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 16:28 — 15.1MB)

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Father Len reveals that evidence of God is always present in us and around us, in all aspects of our lives. He explains why some of us recognize and accept this evidence and others don’t.

Highlights, Ideas, and Wisdom 

  • What evidence are you looking for? What evidence are you willing to accept?
  • CS Lewis was head of the atheists in England until a walk through nature made him begin to realize he did believe in God. He then came to recognize lots of other evidence of God in his life that he hadn’t permitted to affect him.
  • People see only what they want to see. They don’t see the world as it is. They see the world as they are.
  • All of life is evidence of God. There’s something quantitatively different about life itself versus inanimate life.
  • Love, joy, pain, suffering, it’s all evidence of God.
  • Father Len uses a monopoly game analogy to explain the difficulty people have recognizing and accepting evidence of the presence of God.
  • “The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief” by Francis S Collins
  • Dorothy Day was a confirmed atheist until she held her baby daughter for the first time and instantaneously felt an overpowering sense of love and joy.