On the Way Podcast

We live in turbulent times. Amidst the ecological, political, and economic crises dominating news headlines, it can be easy to feel overwhelmed by a sense of doom about where this whole thing is going. Is it possible to face these very difficult realities with honesty and insight, while resisting both the fantasy of naive hope and the paralysis of complete despair? Brian McLaren is an author, activist, and teacher, returning to the On The Way podcast for the third time - but the first time in-person - for a conversation about his new book, Life After Doom. Recorded in Brian’s home town of Naples, Florida, this conversation explores a compassionate, creative, and courageous way of facing a complex future. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Amidst all our wrestling with the big questions of life, faith, and meaning, how do we move beyond our minds to a deeper, embodied experience of what it is to simply be loved? As Dom continues the podcast's Northern Hemisphere excursion, he joins Wm Paul Young (author of The Shack, Crossroads & Eve) in his home of Washington State for a conversation about the transformative power of being known and loved at the very centre of our being. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Peter, Sue and Dom sit down to share how these many conversations across 7 years with wise and thoughtful people from around the world and closer to home have shaped their thinking and their lives. What shifts have happened in the world and the church across this time and how did the conversations reflect such change? How does sharing our wonderings, both amongst friends and in the public square, help us navigate cultural and global change as we seek to be people “on the way”? See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Amidst the endlessly complex and varying longings, fears, passions, and possibilities that animate our lives, how do we find the courage and clarity to step into the path that’s truly calling to us?  Rob Bell knows this journey well. After many years as an author and speaker in the emergent faith space, Rob has followed the lure of life into a new path of fiction writing with the publication of his novel, Where’d You Park Your Spaceship? In this episode, recorded in Ojai, California, Dom & Rob share a conversation about the voices we choose to listen to, the freedom of leaving old lives behind, and the unknowing at the centre of it all.  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Carl Jung once remarked that "life is a short pause between two great mysteries", and it is in the midst of this pause that each of us are given the task of creating a life of depth and meaning. But with the psychological baggage of our personal histories and the many ways we've learned to adapt to the world around us in order to fit in and succeed, how can we find the courage to step fully into our own story and show up as the person we're here to be? Dr. James Hollis is a Jungian analyst and author, and joins Dom via Zoom in Washington D.C. for a conversation about how we can find the courage needed to respond to the summons of the soul - wherever it may lead us. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Dom Fay is travelling and here once again from Pete Rollins' apartment in Belfast comes a special New Year podcast release to explore how the real object of our New Year's hopes may be found in our failure to achieve them. This is an existential crisis within an hour's listening enjoyment, teaching us that being human means that at the heart of our desires is the desire for desire itself. Instead of seeking to find a way out of the human condition, this is an invitation to find the life within it. Happy New Year! See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Are we drawn to landscapes that echo the symptoms of our soul? Desert spirituality knows that the God of the vast spaces is an experience of the sacred where we can find ourselves completely undone, stripped of our usual protective identities and driven to awe-filled silence. Safer images and experiences of God are disrupted by the God of wild imagination we find in the wilderness. Author and theologian, Belden Lane joins Peter, Dom and Sue in a conversation that traverses the inner terrain of love, loss and beauty even as it imaginatively takes us in wonder to canyons and forests, deserts and rivers which all reveal the God who may be found always speaking in and through creation, the first sacred book.  Belden C. Lane is Professor Emeritus of Theological Studies, American Religion, and History of Spirituality at Saint Louis University. His interests include the relationship between geography and faith, wilderness backpacking in the Ozarks, the magic of storytelling and desert spirituality. He is author of many books including “Backpacking with the Saints: Wilderness Hiking as Spiritual Practice” and “The Great Conversation: Nature and the Care of the Soul"See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Understanding human desire, the way it is caught and the way it can lead us to scapegoating and violence is foundational to understanding what it is to be human. Drawing on the work of René Girard, James Alison joins the podcast once again to explore the essential goodness of desire while reinterpreting the doctrine of original sin in ways that help us understand our human condition with gentleness instead of shame and condemnation. This conversation explores how contempt thrives where we are manipulated by feelings of shame and remain unconsciously trapped in rivalry. James points us to the hope found in facing the truth about ourselves, the power of forgiveness and the possibilities for genuine togetherness found when we are prepared to die to cheap ways of belonging that there may be peace. James Alison is a Catholic theologian, priest and author. His principal claim to fame is as one of those who has done most to bring the work of the great French thinker René Girard to a wider public. In addition, he is known for his firm but patient insistence on truthfulness in matters gay as an ordinary part of basic Christianity, and for his pastoral outreach in the same sphere. https://jamesalison.com/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The Uluru Statement from the Heart urges Australia to come to terms with its history. This year the slogan, “History is calling” reminds us that the past is never the past- particularly when it has been forgotten or wilfully misunderstood or ignored. How might we better know our own story and so mature as a nation? Professor Henry Reynolds joins the podcast to share how so many of our legal and historical assumptions about the way Australia was settled are groundless. The conversation travels into the realm of International European Law at the time and the many voices who spoke out against the annexation of the continent and the violence of the Frontier Wars. Henry Reynolds, author of the recent book, “Truth-telling: History, Sovereignty and the Uluru Statement,” is considered one of the nation’s leading authorities of the history of Australia’s Indigenous people. His many books have enriched our understanding of our past and point the way towards a more hopeful, and truthful, future.  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

How does an Indigenous person express spirituality grounded in country in the wake of colonisation and the continued colonial nature of our institutions and systems? Dr Garry Worete Deverell, a Trawloolway man from northern Tasmania, joins the podcast to explore country and kin as the building blocks of life and spirituality and the web of past, present and future which is expressed as 'the dreaming'. Paying attention may be the first step in practising a faith that is at home in this land even as we long for the reconciliation which begins in listening to the truth of Australia's violent colonising history. How might we attend to Indigenous voices so that Christian faith and spirituality becomes grounded in caring for country and one another as we cultivate together an imagination for a transformed future? Dr Garry Deverell is a Trawloolway man, connected to the north east of Tasmania. He is the Academic Dean of the School of Indigenous Studies at the University of Divinity in Melbourne, and the author of Gondwana theology: A Trawloolway man reflects on Christian faith.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

There have been many conversations about the interface between science and theology and the rich understandings that can result. There have been few explorations, however, of the way science can inform and lend insight to our understanding of the public worship experience. Dr Kenneth Miles, specialist in radiology and nuclear medicine, joins the podcast to help us see how individual acts of worship and the practices around our gathering can be understood through the lens of neuroscience and psychology. This conversation considers the way experience leads to encounter and ritual and symbol offer a doorway beyond ourselves, while remaining profoundly embodied.  Ken is author of the new book, From Billiard Balls to Bishops: A Scientist's Introduction to Christian Worship.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

It is said that stories make us what we are. If that is true, then perhaps creating stories about ourselves may help us to see more clearly who we are and who we want to become. Fictional author of the Lindchester Chronicles, Catherine Fox (Wilcox) joins the podcast to talk about the power of story and the way characters can become real and help us embrace even the messiness of our lives with empathy and compassion. These are stories that make us laugh and cry, but, beyond that, offer the possibility for making peace as we see perspectives different from our own, and perhaps foreshadows the possibility of grace. The narrator of these tales from Lindford says it better than anyone; “Escapist Anglican nonsense? Perhaps, but like travellers on a train who see the sun bouncing off puddles and distant windscreens, readers may get a glancing reflection of some bright truth from the lies fiction tells.” The Lindchester Chronicles are often described as a twenty-first century answer to Trollope’s Barchester, and are written in real time, sharing contemporary events through the lens of the characters who live and work in the Diocese of Lindchester. Catherine Fox is an established and popular author. She has a degree in literature and a PhD in Theology and lectures at Manchester Metropolitan University.  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Being aware of the water in which we swim is not always easy. Dr Peter Kline joins the conversation to help us to see more clearly the culture in which we are immersed that we may understand the way it has constrained our desire, providing the delusion of freedom. More than that, the promises of a neo-capitalist society ultimately can never be fulfilled as we attach our deepest longings to narratives that actually prevent us from attaining what we most deeply desire. Has hyper-individualism and pressure to perform and enjoy our lives robbed us of one another and trained us to buy into the wrong dreams?  Dr Peter Kline is the Academic Dean and Associate Professor of Theology at St Francis College, Milton. He has a Master of Divinity from Princeton Theological Seminary and a PhD in Theological Studies from Vanderbilt University, with a special interest in negative theology.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Pádraig ÓTuama joins On the Way in St John's Cathedral for a live recording of this conversation which explores the power of language to build up or destroy, open us to curiosity or shut down understanding, to wield shame or honour the beauty of human dignity and this embodied life. Pádraig tells some of his story and reads a number of his poems that reveal the power of poetry to tell the truth about our life and humanity. Poet and theologian, Pádraig Ó Tuama’s work centres around themes of language, power, conflict and religion. He presents Poetry Unbound with On Being Studios, a podcast that has gained over 10 million downloads since its start in 2020 — and also the author of Poetry Unbound; 50 Poems to Open Your Life.   From 2014-2019 he was the leader of the Corrymeela Community, Ireland’s oldest peace and reconciliation community. With undergraduate and postgraduate degrees in theology, multiple professional qualifications in conflict mediation (specialising in groups), he also holds a PhD (Poetry & Theology) from the University of Glasgow.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Human beings are a symbol-making, ritual creating, story-telling creatures, but how do you put words to mystery? Steven Shakespeare joins Dom, Peter and Sue to explore the art of creating liturgy and language around God and our experience of the sacred. While language is so often inadequate, it is also full of wonder and richness that conjures meaning and opens us to new connection and creation. Liturgy structures our movement through sacred space and allows us to be participants, not consumers, held in safety as we travel together touching that which is at the heart of human longing. Steven Shakespeare is a philosopher, writer and priest whose central concern through his work is to “sense how the divine is embodied and expressed in Christ, in creation, and in all the different bodies that make up the community of creatures.” Along with his other publications, Steven is known as a writer of liturgy and prayer through works such as “Prayers for an Inclusive Church” and “The Earth Cries Glory: Daily Prayer with Creation”. He has recently published a collection of ‘prayer poems’ for the Christian Year “Come Holy Gift.”See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Coming out once is challenging, but Jayne Ozanne describes coming out three times: first as gay, then coming out as Christian to her LGBTIQ+ friends, and finally as evangelical to her Christian LGBTIQ+ friends. In this boundary crossing, Jayne has listened to many stories and engaged in dialogue with faith leaders all over the world, from the Pope to the Archbishop of Canterbury. Through her advocacy, Jayne has steadily cast a more hopeful vision for the church, helping religious groups across the globe develop and promote a positive ethic towards lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex people. On her Australian Tour for World Pride, Jayne joins the Dom, Peter and Sue to share her story, explore the difficult territory of division in the church and the hope that can be found in the God who always brings new life to birth, often in surprising ways. Jayne Ozanne is a prominent gay evangelical who works to ensure full inclusion of all LGBTQ+ people, particularly LGBTQ+ people of faith. She is Director of the Ozanne Foundation, which works with religious organisations to eliminate discrimination based on sexuality or gender identity.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

How did our modern Easter come to look like it does today? Author, anthropologist, and spiritual director Alexander John Shaia returns to the podcast to explore the origins of our current understanding of Easter, as well as the call to deeper union, fellowship, and love that was at its heart. Recorded in-person with Dom in Alexander John's current home town of Muxia on the northwest coast of Spain, this episode is for all of us approaching another Easter wondering how to move beyond that which divides us and discover a more abundant sense of communal life.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The way we narrate our past shapes our present and our future, but sometimes our memories are reduced by the generality of the stories we tell- stories shaped by our fears and our wounds and not faithful to the embodied particularity of our lived experience. Too often our spirituality has been dismissive of the body and our religion has conformed to dominant narratives of power that whitewash pain and injustice, leading away from life and freedom. We experience and remember the particularity of both pain and joy in our bodies, however, making a spirituality at home in the body vital if we are to recall the sacred dignity of our humanity and open ourselves to the Spirit’s slow work of healing and liberation. Cole Arthur Riley, creator of Black Liturgies and author of This Here Flesh: Spirituality, liberation and the stories that make us, joins Dom and Sue to talk about the power of an embodied spirituality and the dignity of the stories that make us. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Home is a word that carries so much longing within it. Many artists have explored the foundational homesickness central to the human experience - this sense we each carry of being disconnected or separated in some way from the home we long for. In this episode, Dom returns to his ancestral home of Belfast to share a conversation with author, theologian, and philosopher Pete Rollins about where our longings for home come from, this primal sense of disconnection that we all carry, and why we desire what we do. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.