Cross’s article took aim at opponents of women’s ordination in the ACNA who, in her view, have fallen short of “basic Christian behaviour” in their disposition towards female clergy in the province. “Those who oppose women’s ordination,” she urged, “should acknowledge that women priests are legitimate ministers within the church’s current framework, even if their personal beliefs differ.” In bolded letters, she added:

ACNA priests on one side cannot continue to publicly question the legitimacy, faithfulness, or spiritual authority of those priests on the other without facing public discipline.

She then called for the Anglican Church In North America (Unofficial) group on Facebook to “drop the ACNA name” as she believes it “has become a forum for regularly denigrating women’s ordination and women priests.”

Three ordained members of the group in question—the Revs. Matt Kennedy (creator/admin), Jady Koch (moderator), and Nick Lannon—triggered a micro-controversy on Substack when they dismissed Cross’s remarks as evidence of an ascendant “Longhouse” in the ACNA. When they were presumably called upon to explain what they meant by the word, they linked to a 2023 First Things essay titled, “What Is the Longhouse?”

The essay’s pseudonymous author, a Twitter/X user known as L0m3z, was eventually identified in 2024 as Jonathan Keeperman—a former English professor who now splits his time between cohosting a Blaze Media podcast with Christopher Rufo and running the far-right publishing house Passage Press (hence the Substack controversy).

According to Lomez, “the Longhouse refers to the remarkable overcorrection of the last two generations toward social norms centering feminine needs and feminine methods for controlling, directing, and modeling behavior”—especially speech. He argues that Longhouse speech norms, characterized by “consensus and the prohibition on ‘offense’ and ‘harm,’” are “enforced through punitive measures typical of female-dominated groups—social isolation, reputational harm, indirect and hidden force.” In other words: cancel culture. Thus, he issues the following rallying cry:

We must resist the soft authoritarianism of the Longhouse’s weepy moralism. We must not succumb to hysterical pleas for more safety, more consensus, more sensitivity.

In a clear nod to Costin Alamariu (better known as Bronze Age Pervert or BAP), i.e., the online personality who originally introduced the Longhouse thesis to dissident right circles, Lomez laments that the Longhouse “distrusts overt ambition”—that it “censures the drive to assert oneself on the world, to strike out for conquest and expansion” (emphasis mine).

BAP had written in Bronze Age Mindset that “anyone born with a will to conquest and expansion [emphasis mine again] will feel thwarted now, will awaken at a young age to find themselves in a world pervaded by an evil and smothering shadow that seeks to blot out their spirit and break them.” This smothering shadow is the Longhouse, and it is the reason why not even the likes of Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, and Mark “Zuckerface” can “just kill a man and take his wife.”

That’s right. For BAP, a truly masculine world is one in which the richest and most powerful among us need not be restrained by such feminine concerns as the rights of other people. “The Constitution, the ideology, the doctrine of rights, is all so much nonsense and has nothing to do with any of this,” he writes. This is why he longs for the Bronze Age—a time when might made right and “men had life and force.”

When —wife to Rev. Matt and beloved subscriber to this newsletter—addressed concerns about the fascist undertones of the Longhouse framework two weeks ago, she suggested Helen Andrews’s “Great Feminization” thesis as a less charged, though equally effective, substitute. Andrews wrote in Compact magazine last October that “everything you think of as wokeness involves prioritizing the feminine over the masculine: empathy over rationality, safety over risk, cohesion over competition.” Her primary concern was over the rule of law:

All of us depend on a functioning legal system, and, to be blunt, the rule of law will not survive the legal profession becoming majority female. The rule of law is not just about writing rules down. It means following them even when they yield an outcome that tugs at your heartstrings or runs contrary to your gut sense of which party is more sympathetic.

In his response to Andrews’s viral piece, Richard Hanania pointed to Donald Trump’s “open contempt for the rule of law” as evidence that “it’s a mistake to think of a masculine-feminine spectrum that overlaps with a truth-seeking spectrum.” Once a prominent critic of feminization himself (so much so that Lomez cited him in the First Things piece), Hanania now admits to having “become disillusioned with the discourse around feminization.” Instead, he suggests that “if you’re worried about objectivity, well-functioning institutions, and the rule of law, then those are the debates we should be having.”

Gideon Scopes (yet another pseudonymous writer) echoed Hanania in Quillette magazine last December:

I’d rather see a Supreme Court with nine female justices who are committed to our Constitution than the confirmation of even one male justice who believes that the First Amendment is outdated or that offensive speech should be criminalised.

Scopes and Hanania, it appears, both believe that the fault lines we should care about are not between men and women, or even between masculinity and femininity for that matter. I am inclined to agree with them. The words “masculine” and “feminine” are simply too difficult to define when it comes to religious and sociopolitical matters. For example, while BAP believes that the constitutional democratic order many of us live under is inherently effeminate, the values and principles which undergird it—e.g., truth-seeking objectivity and the rule of law—are what mainstream voices typically have in mind when they advocate for a manlier approach to public life.

Is masculinity, then, primarily about conquest and expansion, or is it about justice and self-control? And is femininity the enemy of the conquistador, or is it the enemy of the cheeky comedian? Different people have different answers to these questions, and that’s the point. For the sake of a more meaningful discourse, therefore, perhaps it is best to prioritize precision in our speech.

Personally, I like the fact that I live in a world where Zuckerface is not allowed to kill me and steal my hypothetical wife. That said, I do like the fact that I publish my newsletter on a platform which also hosts the work of extremists like BAP. And similarly, I like the fact that boomers in my denomination have a Facebook group where they can communicate without the threat of imminent censorship (save, of course, for the internal witness of the Holy Spirit). Anyone who shares these values is someone I automatically trust—whether they be a man or a woman.

And with that, allow me to leave you with a (somewhat) tongue-in-cheek comment I posted earlier this week:

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Our most recent one had to do with comedian Shane Gillis’s performance on Saturday Night Live last weekend. Gillis made headlines by stating that he hadn’t been to the gym in so long that he “didn’t know women just dress like whores now.”

“Have you seen the shorts?” Gillis asked his live audience.

Actor Dan Levy was less than impressed with the comedian’s comments:

Women wearing short shorts at the gym does not make them whores. It makes the men calling them whores misogynists.

I found Levy’s take ridiculous and assumed Vic would agree. I was wrong. Below is the clip I sent her and the exchange that followed.

Vic: Well, I think it was a misogynistic comment.

Sach: Actual whores 50 years ago dressed more conservatively than your average female gym rat today. I’m a “live and let live” kinda guy but I also believe in calling a spade a spade 😂

Vic: I hear what you’re saying generally, but I don’t believe this is calling a spade a spade. It’s a man using his position of power and admiration to degrade women. What “whore” has meant at various times in history is irrelevant in my opinion.

At present, it is not a compliment (despite secular feminist efforts) or a mere description (it has negative connotations). No average woman wants to be called a whore, that’s crazy.

If he said “Woah, women are scantily dressed,” I’d say he’s accurate. But that’s not what he said. I believe it was intentionally degrading in order to be surprising and appeal to a certain crowd.

He doesn’t really care if women are being objectified, he’s not concerned for their modesty, and he’s not looking at them as people. He’s making fun of them and implying it’s their fault that men view them as whores. That doesn’t sit right with me.

Women’s responsibility for protecting men from lust and modesty in the Christian world is another conversation. Here, he’s just making fun of them.

Sach: What’s the difference between “Woah, women are scantily dressed” and “Woah, women dress like whores?” Genuine question, not a gotcha.

Vic: One is a factual description without antagonizing language. The second is a degrading statement that actually doesn’t provide any context. How a “whore” dresses is actually not descriptive because it’s so subjective.

Sach: Okay, I think you’re right that they’re different. Certainly in a completely serious, non-ironic context they are. But in a comedy setting, the rules are completely different. Then again, we’ve never fully seen eye to eye on comedy so that’s probably a dead end hahaha.

Vic: Yeah, I think we need to watch/tame the tongue. It’s our rudder and though I support free speech, that doesn’t mean we should prioritize humour. I can’t imagine Jesus making that joke and that’s my North Star.

And even in this case, I’d push against the comedy caveat. Comedians say things I don’t like alllll the time lol and we’ve talked about that.

I still think this case is different. It’s not bringing anything new to the table. He’s just being gross.

Sach: Jesus is the King of Kings. Comedians are court jesters. Can a comedian really be expected to handle social and cultural conversations with the tact of a monarch? Is that even their job?

For example, I would never speak like Shane Gillis from the pulpit. But when I go to Rogers Arena to see him live, I’m also not expecting him to talk like my priest.

A comedian can (and perhaps should) go places that a clergyman won’t. Both are called to communicate truth, but in very different ways. The difference between the West and less civilized societies is that we don’t typically restrict people’s freedom to self destruct via strict laws (think hijabs, etc.). But the thing which historically allowed for decorum and virtue in the public square was social shame/stigma which implicitly called people higher. The more that construct implodes, the more decadent behaviour we witness on the daily (from the pothead incel strolling through the grocery store in his pyjamas to, yes, the young woman wearing next to nothing at the gym). Good comedy (which is to say truth-telling comedy) is one of the tools that can potentially bring back that healthy dose of social shame we’ve lost but used to benefit from.

I don’t think DJ is being a misandrist here, for example. I think she’s doing society a service.

Vic: Okay, then Jesus wouldn’t be amused by this court jester’s jokes. I think applying WWJD to every scenario is short sighted and problematic, that’s fair.

I don’t think Shane is communicating truth, though. That’s the big thing for me. He doesn’t provide detail or political commentary. He calls women a nasty name and moves on. He’s not shaming in a way that provides a solution.

I think we should be shaming him and people like him for being crude. That’s what Dan Levy did. I think social shame works (my sister loves to talk about this actually lol) and has its place culturally.

But let’s compare and contrast Dakota and Shane.

1. Men are inherently always in a position of power over women. Curse of the fall from Genesis 3:16. Women are agreeable and vulnerable in a way a man simply can never be. I’m not saying men don’t need to be protected, but from the start it’s different.

2. Dakota’s saying that flip-flops aren’t a good look and that it suggests poor hygiene. Shane is saying that women are dressed like whores. It is much more of an attack on character and identity than Dakota’s comment.

3. At the core of each joke: Men can be smelly (not earth-shattering to identity); women are sluts (speaks to the character of a woman and her most intimate and special asset). In theory, yeah, both groups can just change their outfit. Even so, Dakota’s kind of saying, “Hey, men, in case you didn’t know, it’s gross!” Shane is saying, “Wow, you must be a whore. I know because of your outfit.” I get that I’m doing a little bit of eisegesis there, but I’m using context and perceived intent.

To kick it back to Philosophy 105, I think what you’re saying is:

If P (Shane’s comedy successfully shames people into positive change), then Q (society will benefit). P, so Q.

But I’m like bro, P isn’t proven. I don’t think Shane successfully shames people into change. Comedy as a whole and specific comedians sure. But not this instance.

Sach: I agree with you that Dakota speaks less crudely than Shane. However, I still support both of their rhetoric. A world where Dakota’s views are normalized gives us more gentlemen. And a world where Shane’s perspective is more or less ubiquitous creates more ladies. He may be “gross” and “crude” in his speech, but not nearly as gross and crude as many women are in their dress. Perhaps a level of crudeness is required to shine a light on moral decadence.

And even if not, the likes of Levy fixating on the crudeness of Shane’s comments while giving a free pass to the behaviour Shane is calling out are the biggest jokes as far as I’m concerned.

Vic: Sorry, but I fully disagree. Going back to Genesis 3. I think, like you’ve said, we just don’t see eye to eye on this.

Sach: Aye, two people can’t agree on everything.

Vic: I don’t think women are dressed crudely; I think they’re misguided. Encouraging them in their inherent value is going to promote change. Shame won’t. It’s just deeper and more nuanced. Same reason pre-teen girls wear crop tops and low-rise jeans, and women in their 20s don’t.

Sach: They dress inappropriately precisely because they are misguided. A world where Christians tell them of their value while comedians make decadence less comfortable might be the best recipe for their flourishing.

Vic: With all due respect (and I mean that very sincerely), I don’t think it’s possible for you, at present, to grasp the psyche of women and the consequences of Shane’s words (and similar jokes). It is that deep, it is rooted in misogyny, and I believe it does have more adverse effects than positive ones.

I don’t want that to be taken condescendingly. You think very critically about the world and I admire how you grapple with things. But I think it’s just soooo the tip of the iceberg. Women’s expressions of sexuality and modesty, need for protection, vulnerability, and all that is just not something that can be understood easily by men (If at all. Maybe fathers get it).

Being shamed for dressing inappropriately is just not going to be successful. I guarantee it.

Sach: I always appreciated how respectful you are (so no need to qualify your “with all due respect” haha), and I hope the feeling is mutual. This is fascinating partly because it rhymes with something my second sister told me last summer. Something about the vulnerability of a woman and how difficult it is for a man to fully grasp it. Maybe this is where fiction can do things nonfiction never can. Surely there is a way to understand the whole picture without having to become a father first lol.

Vic: I feel respected, don’t worry, I’m just an agreeable woman at the end of the day and fear offending people ahaha. Yeah, maybe start reading lots of Jane Austen.

Sach: Maybe I’ll watch the films 😂

Vic: Also, Marcello Hernandez is a great example of getting women and empathizing with women. Just be a fly on the wall and be around women as a quiet observer. We don’t need to fully understand to be fully understanding if you know what I mean.

Sach: I like Marcello. Doesn’t strike me as a pick-me à la Dan Levy.

Vic: Accurate ahah. Also, I’m sure there are millions of things I’ll never understand about men. C’est la vie.

Sach: Hahahah. Probably. Do you have specifics in mind?

Vic: I’ve never once fantasized about rescuing people from a burning building for one.

Sach: Have you fantasized about being rescued from one though?

Vic: No, I just never think about burning buildings ahaha.

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There’s a theological phrase which I’m sure at least some of you in this sanctuary have heard before. It’s the idea of the Already But Not Yet. It’s the idea that there are things which God has promised us which we experience to a certain degree but the fullness of that promise is still in the future. We can dwell with God now and He lives in us through the Holy Spirit, but at the same time, the fulfillment of His promise is still ahead of us when we’re physically with Him in heaven, for example.

There’s all kinds of examples of the Already But Not Yet in our lives. There’s obviously the fact that we’re on earth and one day we’ll dwell physically with God in the New Heaven and New Earth. There’s also just normal realities of life. For example, for me, I’ve lived in Medicine Hat now for just under two months. And before that, I worked in a city in British Columbia called Surrey.

And I worked for almost a year, this nonprofit job where I was working admin. And — all love to everyone who works admin here, who has worked admin — but it just wasn’t... It just wasn’t my cup of tea. And I was getting really tired of it. And I was dreading going to work like basically every day.

And then one Friday morning, I was on my way to work. And I opened up my Mail app and there was an email forwarded to me by a priest in BC. And the email was from Pastor Roland and it had the job description of the internship that I’m doing now. And I remember reading it and I was like, this is a Godsend. And now here I am. So in a sense, I was in this place that didn’t feel… It felt like there was more, but that’s where I was. And I’m sure many of us can relate to that experience.

The Israelites related to that experience. The passage, the Old Testament passage this morning from Deuteronomy chapter 8 is basically a speech from Moses to the Israelites who are about to enter into the Promised Land. They’ve been in the wilderness for 40 years. And Moses is giving them, like it was mentioned earlier, he gives them a warning not to forget God in prosperity. Verses 7-10 read:

⁷For the Lord your God is bringing you into a good land of flowing streams and pools of water, with fountains and springs that gush out in the valleys and hills. ⁸It is a land of wheat and barley; of grapevines, fig trees, and pomegranates; of olive oil and honey. ⁹It is a land where food is plentiful and nothing is lacking. It is a land where iron is as common as stone, and copper is abundant in the hills. ¹⁰When you have eaten your fill, be sure to praise the Lord your God for the good land he has given you.

Moses is aware that, sometimes, as human beings, we receive an amazing blessing, even a blessing that we’ve been praying for, and we forget to give thanks for it. Something else I noticed in the passage was in verses 2 to 4, where Moses, instead of kind of casting the vision for how the Israelites should thank God in the future when they get to the Promised Land, he kind of looks back and he calls them to remember the 40 years in the wilderness. He says:

²Remember how the Lord your God led you through the wilderness for these forty years, humbling you and testing you to prove your character, and to find out whether or not you would obey his commands. ³Yes, he humbled you by letting you go hungry and then feeding you with manna, a food previously unknown to you and your ancestors. He did it to teach you that people do not live by bread alone; rather, we live by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord. ⁴For all these forty years your clothes didn’t wear out, and your feet didn’t blister or swell.

Moses is reminding the Israelites that not only is God faithful to His ultimate promise, but even in the wilderness, God was present. We tend to think that God is only worthy of thanks when He has fulfilled the promise at the end of the story. But the truth is that even in the in-between, even in the wilderness season, even when I’m commuting to this admin job in Surrey day in day out, God is still faithful, even in those seasons.

It is very intuitive to thank Him when He has answered a prayer. I mean, for those of you who have children, you’ve taught your children that when someone does something nice for you, you say thank-you. It’s one of the magic words, right? However, it’s less intuitive to thank God when you’re still waiting for that prayer to be answered. When you’re still waiting to be pregnant with your first child. Whatever it may be.

It’s less intuitive. And yet, this is what Scripture over and over again calls us to. One of the experts of this posture was the Apostle Paul himself. In today’s New Testament reading, Paul says:

I have learned how to be content with whatever I have. ¹²I know how to live on almost nothing or with everything. I have learned the secret of living in every situation, whether it is with a full stomach or empty, with plenty or little. ¹³For I can do everything through Christ, who gives me strength.

That’s an amazing posture. Whether in heaven or on earth, whether in Medicine Hat or Surrey, whether in the Promised Land or wilderness, God is worthy of our thanks. There’s a woman in our congregation who actually inspired me last week just with how she lives out this teaching.

I was in the lobby with Pastor Roland after the 10:30 service and she was coming out of the Fellowship Hall, and Pastor Roland just gave her a colloquial, “How was your week?” or “How are you doing?” Something like that. And then she had such a, such a positive response that we were both kind of taken aback. And then Pastor Roland kind of was asking her specifics of what made her week so good. And I’m not trying to make fun of her (They say imitation is the highest form of admiration, so whoever you are, this is out of love).

I think word for word, she was like, “Well, if you can’t think of anything to be grateful for, you’re not looking hard enough.” And she said that verbatim. “You’re just not looking hard enough.” And you could tell she meant it. She wasn’t just saying it as a cliché. Both me and Pastor Roland thought it was very funny.

She is someone who practices the art of gratitude every single day. She thanks God no matter the season. She thanks God for the big things, but she also thanks God for the small things. One of my theories of why the nine lepers didn’t come back to thank Jesus after He healed them — I think one of the reasons that only one leper went back to Jesus in the Gospel story — I think part of the reason is probably that the nine who didn’t come back just weren’t in the habit of giving thanks.

One of the things that happens when we only think to thank God when He’s answered a prayer or when He’s fulfilled a promise, we get out of practice. And then when those times come, we haven’t been grateful. So it’s hard to turn it on. This is why, when LeAnn Greenwood asks me how to title this sermon for the YouTube page early in the week, I’m going to tell her that the title of this message is “Gratitude Is a Muscle.” I say that because if we fail to exercise this muscle in the wilderness, we will find that it has atrophied by the time we get to the Promised Land.

We are called to be like the one leper who did come back to thank Jesus after he was healed of leprosy. But the only way to become like him is to thank God even before He has answered our prayers. In that same spirit, I want to share with you something that I’m thankful for on this Thanksgiving Day.

When you look at one of the verses in the Gospel story, I think it was verse 3, when the lepers see Jesus coming to the border of Galilee and Samaria, they shout, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!”

Now, one of the things about leprosy that was really, really difficult is that it’s not just a skin disease that has physical consequences but, because it was so highly contagious, people who had leprosy were ostracized and marginalized from the community. These are people who hadn’t hugged their family members, probably ever. These are people who craved that human connection that they were made for, but had been deprived of.

And so this is where their desperation comes from when they see this Teacher, this Master, this Teacher, Jesus, who’s been healing people, and they’re desperate to be healed of this leprosy. I don’t think, well, I know for a fact that no one in this sanctuary today suffers from leprosy per se. But I’m sure that at least some of us struggle with a type of spiritual leprosy which prevents us from coming into community with people the way we would want to.

I think one word that you could use for this spiritual leprosy is shame. One of the things that sin does in our lives is it makes us ashamed. It makes us scared to be seen and to be known by other people. And so we retreat almost as if we had leprosy.

But the good news, just like Pastor Roland reminded us at the top of the service, the good news of the Gospel is that Jesus — through his life, death, and resurrection — paid for our sins. Forgiveness is available, and healing from leprosy, healing from shame is available. And there’s nothing you’ve done, nothing you’ve thought, nothing you’ve said, which exempts you from the free gift of forgiveness in Christ. He loves you on your worst day as much as He loves you on your best day. And that is one thing that I’m certainly grateful for this Thanksgiving!

Let me pray for us, and then we’ll head into our next song:

The Metaphor

Reality is narrative and our only job is to make it beautiful.

By James Taylor Foreman

His Saturday morning Substack posts (including today’s) have become a staple of my weekend reading, and it was a pleasure to chat with him about a handful of them this week.

The Metaphor

Choosing Penelope

Riley and I were married on a Saturday in a small Los Angeles church…

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a year ago · 87 likes · 12 comments · James Taylor Foreman

Chisel

The Telos of Cornhole

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a month ago · 32 likes · Chisel and James Taylor Foreman

The Metaphor

Slop Suggests the Existence of Its Opposite

I’ve met a shocking number of people who became religious or spiritual after a horrifying personal experience of evil. They all say almost the same line: After that, I knew for sure evil was real, so I realized its opposite must also exist…

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a month ago · 118 likes · 25 comments · James Taylor Foreman

The Metaphor

I See Nietzsche Fall Like Lightning

I'm going to take an ill-advised stab at assessing the world's most pretended-to-be-understood philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche…

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2 years ago · 84 likes · 25 comments · James Taylor Foreman

We also discussed the Christian qualities of actors and writers, the differences between Los Angeles and Louisiana, Southern Gothic literature, psychedelics, and why you should befriend elderly church ladies. I hope you will enjoy the episode as much as I did! And if you feel so inclined, go ahead and

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Sermon Notes:

I. Intro

Good morning, church. I am honoured to be sharing today’s homily with all of you. I am so grateful to each of you for enabling me to serve Victory this year as I learn from our excellent clergy. And, although I have not yet met every single one of you, I have been touched by the warm welcome I’ve received from those of you I have met.

One of the joys of my last few weeks has been the three seminary courses I’ve had the pleasure of beginning. I’ve been taking a Holy Spirit course on Tuesdays, a preaching course on Thursdays, and an introduction to diaconal ministry on Saturdays. Funny enough, yesterday’s diaconal class also happened to be on preaching. Although I probably shouldn’t be telling you that in case I do a bad job today!

I was doing the reading for my Holy Spirit course a couple of weeks ago and I came across a prayer called the Sequence for Pentecost. I want to speak a part of it over us as we dive into today’s sermon:

Come, oh Holy Spirit!
Come, power of God and tender sweetness of God!
Come, you who are both motion and rest!
Renew our daring,
Be our companion so that we will not feel lonely in this world.
Create in us intimacy with God!

In Jesus’s name we pray,
Amen.

II. It ain’t over ’til it’s over

I don’t know if you can relate to this, but growing up, I was completely useless at sports. I know Pastor Roland can relate, but don’t tell him I said that.

The only sport I was kind of okay at was soccer. One of the sayings I would always hear as a soccer player and fan was: “It ain’t over ’til it’s over.” I did some research this week and it turns out that the saying actually originates from baseball. A coach by the name of Yogi Berra is said to have used it in 1973 when his team — the New York Mets — was the lowest-ranked team in the National League. The Mets went on to win 21 of their subsequent 29 games and wound up winning the National League. The coach’s words proved 100% correct. It is indeed not over until it is over.

You might be wondering why I’m telling you this story. The reason I’m telling you this story is because when I spent time in this morning’s Gospel passage throughout the week, I couldn’t help but think of Berra’s quote. The landowner in our passage hired men at 5pm for a job that had begun at 6am.

Think about it. That’s quite remarkable. And, as we know, he ended up paying those men the same rate that he would later pay the earliest workers. I don’t know about you but, to me, this story screams: “It ain’t over ’til it’s over.”

I would say that it’s pretty evident the landowner in this story represents God. You could also say that the land being worked represents the mission field. I am reminded of the sign above our main exit—You Are Now Entering the Mission Field. I don’t care if you’re 9 years old or 90 years old this morning, God is hiring for the mission field. That’s because we all have a job to do for His Kingdom. Our job is to spread the good news of Jesus Christ.

III. MOTION & REST

In today’s New Testament reading, we read words from a man — St. Paul — who dedicated his whole life to this mission:

There is a fascinating tension here. Paul longs to physically dwell with God in heaven. While he waits to be called home, however, he pairs his longing with labour. He goes on to describe himself in verse 27 as a “citizen of heaven.” He knows that he is no longer of this world. He knows that he now belongs entirely to God’s Kingdom. And yet, as he awaits his homecoming, he is focused on doing the King’s bidding here on earth.

In this way, he mirrors the Lord Jesus Himself, who, being God in human flesh, certainly understood what it was like to be a foreigner in this world. He no doubt longed for heaven, even as He laboured here on its behalf. He showed us that the Christian life is one of longing and labouring for home. He missed being in the physical presence of His Father, but he had a job to do while He was on earth: to announce that the Kingdom of God is at hand.

When it was finally time for Him to go home, He made sure to leave us a helper, His Holy Spirit, to aid us in our longing and labouring. Our opening prayer described the Holy Spirit as motion and rest. This is because the Spirit is the one who gives us motion for the labour we are called to do in the mission field, all while reminding us that the rest we ultimately long for is with our Heavenly Father.

He helps us experience the power of God and the tender sweetness of God. He renews our daring and He is our companion so that we will not feel lonely in this world. All in all, He makes it possible to live the Christian life just like Christ did: Looking forward to heaven while proclaiming the Good News on earth.

This brings me to my next point. What is this Good News we are called to proclaim on earth? The Bible says in Romans that “beautiful are the feet of messengers who bring good news.” But what is the good news we are meant to bring into the mission field?

Isaiah 55:7…

He will forgive generously. The good news, folks, is that God not only forgives us our sins, but He forgives generously. So generously that it is often difficult to for us to fully believe it. It sounds too good to be true. Luther understood our struggle for faith. He wrote in the Large Catechism:

Indeed, the human heart is by nature so hopeless that it always flees from God and imagines that He does not wish or desire our prayer, because we are sinners and have earned nothing but wrath. Against such thoughts, we should remember [the] commandment [to] turn to God, so that we may not stir up His anger more by such disobedience. For by this commandment God lets us plainly understand that He will not cast us away from Him or chase us away.

He will not cast us away from Him or chase us away. This is amazing news. The language reminds me of King David’s prayer in today’s Psalm.

He wanted God and he was aware that God wanted him:

And yet, He couldn’t quite rest in the truth. After all, He knew all too well what it was like to be rejected by family. (1 Samuel 16)

He was wrestling with his demons, but the Spirit of God was upon Him and would show him the truth:

This is the God who is calling you home today. He is waiting for you with open arms. And he wants to hold you close.

Nicky Gumbel, one of the pioneers of the Alpha course, describes God as the “perfect parent” in his commentary on Psalm 27. He lists seven characteristics of God the Father:

His faithfulness is without question. His generosity is perfect. His affection is tender and loving. His presence is permanent. His acceptance of you is unconditional. His communication is up-building and for your best interest. His authority is right and true.

Sin does separate us from Him. But Jesus came down to bridge the gap, to reveal God to us, and to pay for our sins once and for all, so that nothing can stand between us and the love of God.

IV. The night is coming when no man can work

Professor: There’s no point in writing anything in your 20s. When you’re young, you aren’t wise. You’re bursting with too much energy and enthusiasm. Thus, you aren’t rational. You can’t produce anything original and you’re going to make plenty of mistakes. To write well, wait another 15 to 20 years.

Mircea Eliade: But, Professor, if I wait another 15 to 20 years, maybe I’ll be dead by then.

It ain’t over ’til it’s over, but the work day does eventually come to an end. John chapter 9 tells us that the night is coming when no man can work. This applied to the labourers in the parable. Their work day ended at 6pm. It applied to St. Paul. And it applies to every single one of us.

Today’s Old Testament reading encouraged us to (quote)

It is clear that God has appointed “today” for us to seek and to call on Him. There is an inherent urgency to His call on our lives.

Whether you’re 9 years old or 90 years old today, the truth is that tomorrow is not promised. This is why today is the day to believe the Good News, to believe that it is not too good to be true, to enter into relationship with the God who loves you. And this is why today is also the day for every Christian among us to enter the mission field.

V. Outro

And as we are strangers and pilgrims on earth, help us to prepare for the world to come, doing the work which you have given us to do while it is day, before that night comes when no one can work. And, when our last hour shall come, support us by your power and receive us into your everlasting kingdom, where, with your Son our Lord Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit, you live and reign, God forever, Amen.

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Living as Creatures

A little pop culture, interviews, family stuff, Christianity, and humor.

By Ben Christenson

I reached out to him last Saturday afternoon about appearing on the podcast and we ended up recording our episode on Wednesday morning! Ben has become one of my favourite writers this year, and it was a pleasure to chat with him about his journey from Anglicanism to Eastern Orthodoxy, his approach to cultural artifacts like books and movies, his philosophy of marriage, his writing career, and of course, the four types of young Christians he knows.

Other Ben Pieces Discussed

• “It’s Not Me: Obsession and the Horror of Self-Recognition”

• “Every Young Man’s (Real) Battle” with

• “COVID Taught Me How to Get Married” with The Living Church

Books Mentioned

• War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy (1867)

• Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling (1997-2007)

• Twilight series by Stephanie Meyer (2005-2008)

• The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction by Alan Jacobs (2011)

• Welcome to the Orthodox Church: An Introduction to Eastern Christianity by Frederica Mathewes-Green (2015)

• You Are What You Love: The Spiritual Power of Habit by James K.A. Smith (2016)

Movies & TV Shows Mentioned

• The Godfather by Francis Ford Coppola (1972)

• Robin Hood by Wolfgang Reitherman (1973)

• Pulp Fiction by Quentin Tarantino (1994)

• Spy Kids by Robert Rodriguez (2001)

• The Lord of the Rings trilogy by Peter Jackson (2001-2003)

• How I Met Your Mother by Carter Bays and Craig Thomas (2005-2014)

• High School Musical by Kenny Ortega (2006)

• Transformers by Michael Bay (2007)

• The Dark Knight by Christopher Nolan (2008)

• Phantom Thread by Paul Thomas Anderson (2017)

• Euphoria by Sam Levinson (2019-present)

• Anora by Sean Baker (2024)

P.S. If you would like to opt out of receiving emails for future podcast episodes, you may adjust your email preferences here. And as always, this episode is available to stream or download on both Spotify and Apple Podcasts. I hope you will enjoy it!

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I had the pleasure of sitting down this summer with Dr. Andrew T.J. Kaethler—an expert in theological anthropology who serves as the Executive Vice President and Benedict XVI Chair of Theology at Catholic Pacific College in Langley, British Columbia. He is also the author of The Eschatological Person: Alexander Schmemann and Joseph Ratzinger in Dialogue, published in 2022, as well as co-editor of Mapping the Una Sancta: Eastern and Western Ecclesiology in the Twenty-First Century, which was published in 2023.

That same year, I had the pleasure of taking a Theology of the Body class with him at CPC and would return a year later for his directed study on Eschatology and the Christian Life. This episode of Zoomed Out covers a lot of the same ground that these courses did. We also discuss monastic life, the difference between tradition and traditionalism, Dr. K’s favourite books, his favourite saints, and what it truly means to be a Christian—not to mention some excellent published articles he has written over the years (links below).

Dr. K Articles Discussed

• “Stability at the Heart of Culture: The Relevancy of the Benedictines and their Liturgical Life” with Adoremus Bulletin

• “Eschatology: Dying to Live” with Humanum Review

• “From Idol to Icon: Learning to See Through the Body” with Religions

Novels Mentioned

• The Second Hell by Charles Williams (1929)

• The Diary of a Country Priest by George Bernanos (1936)

• The Great Divorce by C.S. Lewis (1945)

• Laurus by Eugene Vodolazkin (2012)

Nonfiction Works Mentioned

• Confessions by St. Augustine of Hippo (397-400 AD)

• The Dialogue of Divine Providence by St. Catherine of Siena (1377-1378)

• Everlasting Man by G.K. Chesterton (1925)

• Introduction to Christianity by Joseph Ratzinger (1968)

• Man and Woman He Created Them by Pope John Paul II (1979-1984)

• Searching for and Maintaining Peace by Fr. Jacques Philippe (2002)

• Jesus of Nazareth: From the Baptism in the Jordan to the Transfiguration by Pope Benedict XVI (2007)

• Time for God: A Guide to Mental Prayer by Fr. Jacques Philippe (2008)

P.S. If you would like to opt out of receiving emails for future podcast episodes, you may adjust your email preferences here. And as always, this episode is available to stream or download on both Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

It is no secret that North American Anglicans have been deeply divided for many decades now. In the United States, The Episcopal Church (TEC for short) has existed for almost 250 years and was the only major expression of Anglicanism in the country until the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) was founded 17 years ago. It is important to note that the ACNA was only ever founded due to TEC’s longstanding commitment to holding the most unrecognizably Christian of liberal stances on various social issues. TEC has maintained a pro-choice position on the question of abortion since 1967, for example, and famously consecrated — if one may use that word here — an actively homosexual man to the office of bishop in 2003. The ACNA was originally established as a bulwark against the moral rot indicated by these decisions.

In October 2025, it would ultimately join the majority of global Anglicans in breaking communion with the Church of England and with all others, TEC included, who have “abandoned the inerrant word of God as the final authority.” This is why South Carolina’s ACNA bishop drew headlines last month when he combined with the state’s TEC bishop to dedicate a new chapel at a local school.

As a member of the ACNA myself, I will refrain from weighing in on the Episcopalian reaction to the event—assuming that there has been much of one at all. I wouldn’t know. What I can comment on, however, is the intra-ACNA discourse surrounding what I will refer to from here on out as Porter-Gate.

On the one hand, there has been a choir of voices raising principled concerns over the symbolism of Bishop Edgar’s actions on August 18th. Drawing on St. Paul’s statement in 1 Corinthians 10:17 that “we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread,” the Rev. , for one, takes particular issue with the fact that the two bishops in question served the Lord’s Supper together at the service which followed the dedication of St. Timothy’s Chapel. Self-described curmudgeon inquires along similar lines: “Why continue ACNA if our bishops can recognize and commune with TEC bishops as they please?”

The reliably sassy yet refreshingly earnest , meanwhile, “wouldn’t want even to pass out a bowl of soup with a person who said she is a Christian but did not believe” the authentic Gospel. She clarifies, though, that she would happily “eat soup with any kind of person—pagan, Zoroastrian, Witch-Tokker—who was mainly interested in the soup and had no clear thoughts about ‘the Gospel.’” She insists that she is not being “pedantic.” Rather, she simply believes that the Gospel is a “matter of eternal life and eternal death.”

There is, of course, another side to the Porter-Gate fallout within the ACNA. It is represented by a cohort of clergy who unequivocally stand behind Bishop Edgar and his performance at the traditionally Episcopalian Porter-Gaud School. One of them, the Rev. , makes a distinctly mission-focused defense of the bishop:

I think we need to be thoughtful and careful about these kinds of intersections but not so careful that we remove ourselves from ministry to people. ACNA needs to continue to be heavily involved in P-G because God has been blessing the ACNA chaplains' work there. We have to be able to exist in the same spaces. We can't just pull back from the world because of "doctrinal purity." We know what our doctrine is and we know where our mission field is.

This is not to mention that, as the Rev. helpfully points out, one of America’s foremost Anglican seminaries — Wisconsin’s Nashotah House — has been known to regularly have “TEC bishops come and give communion to ACNAers.” Father Daniel adds:

We’re either into this total separation or we’re not.
Let’s get some clearer guidance, College of Bishops!

Bishop Edgar himself, in a letter delivered to the clergy in his diocese a week after Porter-Gate, humbly called for the College of Bishops to “spend a season of prayer and reflection on these issues and provide guidance for how we interact with the Episcopal Church in these unique settings.” “As a bishop in the church,” he continued, “I will follow the College’s conclusion.”

The Rt. Rev. Julian Dobbs, acting in his capacity as Dean of the ACNA, responded swiftly. “The Anglican Church in North America is not in communion with The Episcopal Church,” he wrote, “and those who hold ecclesiastical authority in our Province bear a solemn responsibility to uphold this position.” Dean Dobbs promised to “lay the seriousness of this situation before the bishops” at their scheduled meeting in Plano, Texas later this month. He will “ask them to consider… what faithfulness to our Lord and the faith we have received requires of those who have been entrusted with ecclesiastical authority.”

Bishop Edgar has since been charged with “just cause for scandal or offense in violation of the disciplinary canons of the ACNA.” He has accepted the charge and will be “disciplined by the College of Bishops when it gathers later this month.” I agree with the Rev. ’s take on this news:

I can only imagine how hard it is being the focus of a public controversy, while also being a bishop who represents an entire diocese, and its varying commitments, dispositions, and goals. Acknowledging your mistake, repenting of your sin, and accepting the judgment of your brothers is the right thing to do. This was good for [Bishop Edgar], and it is certainly good for the church.

I also agree with Father Wedgeworth’s critique of the wider discourse surrounding Porter-Gate:

Sometimes the jerks are the jerks. But sometimes people misidentify the jerks and end up becoming jerks themselves. I’ve seen plenty of name-calling and poor form all around.

Between out-of-context appeals to the Sermon on the Mount and strange calls to “touch grass,” there has been no shortage of unfair and dismissive argumentation from the very people who have made a habit of advocating for charitable speech online. My personal favourite example comes courtesy of my aforementioned stack-fren:

I am simply concerned that arguing like a mean girl is unlikely to lead us anywhere good.

Speaking of girls…

Anyone who knows anything about the ACNA knows that the singular most contentious issue in our province is the question of women’s ordination—commonly referred to as WO. Allow me to take this opportunity to hearken back to the Rev. ’s exhortation last July to apply Burnette’s second rule for engaging in charitable discourse — Always represent the other person’s view fairly — to our intra-provincial discussions surrounding WO. In Father Roseberry’s words:

Too often we caricature one another. Complementarians are accused of diminishing women. Egalitarians are accused of surrendering to modern culture. While those accusations may occasionally fit particular individuals, they do not fairly describe the convictions of many faithful Anglicans on either side.

He is correct in acknowledging that some complementarians do indeed oppose WO — whether they realize it or not — out of a deep-seated misogyny. By the same token, many support WO because their worldview is indistinguishable from the woke Left’s. That said, assuming positive intent and “steelmanning” rather than “strawmanning” our opponents’ positions is the only way to ensure that our dialogue will prove itself both productive and God-honouring.

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Contentment. What a concept.

and I enjoyed a lovely chat about it earlier this summer in which she suggested to me that the tension between dynamism and contentment will likely be a defining feature of my life. It was a timely conversation given my frequent complaints about feeling “stuck in the matrix” in the weeks prior.

A few days later, I would interview for a pastoral internship in Alberta and would go on to be offered the job within a couple of weeks. It promised to be an upgrade from my previous gig in almost every way: shorter commute (by a country mile), more creative, more social, more aligned with my vocation (as far as I could tell), and far more suitable for writing on the side. I am officially one full workday into the new job and can already confirm that I was correct in my assessment thereof.

What I was slightly less correct about, however, was the effect that it would have on my soul. You see, I had come to blame a lot of my spiritual drift in the preceding weeks and months on the gruelling demands of the corporate grind. A two-hour-plus daily commute, for example, was always going to be a lethal hindrance to my prayer life, I thought.

These lines from Wendell Berry’s poem, “The Thought of Something Else,” came to capture the cry of my heart:

Another place!
it’s enough to grieve me—
that old dream of going,
of becoming a better man
just by getting up and going
to a better place.

Now that I am standing here, in my own version of the “better place,” I can finally admit that superior conditions do not necessarily make for a better man. Neither can they yield contentment. Not on their own, anyway.

was kind enough to send me a draft of his forthcoming After Progress a few months ago. One of the main thinkers who influenced his book was the twentieth-century German philosopher Max Picard. In 1934, fifteen years after relocating to Switzerland, Picard published one of his most notable works—Die Flucht vor Gott (German for The Flight from God). I was nothing short of mesmerized when I first read excerpts from it in After Progress. This is why I decided to listen to the whole thing as I took the scenic route from Surrey, BC to Medicine Hat, AB over the weekend.

Its opening line was among its most quotable:

While Picard’s “man of faith” joyfully embraces his identity as God’s very image, the “man of the flight” seeks instead to “realize his own existence.” He has his eyes set on myriad “possibilities” through which he may attain to “fragments of his own nature” in a desperate bid to manually construct his own personhood. Rather than receiving his humanity, he is hellbent on achieving it.

As a result, his face appears lifeless—especially compared to that of the man of faith. According to Picard:

In the face of the flight, the eyes are no more than a pair of faint lamps—lamps which no longer glow for a single soul; only for themselves as they pass along the road of the flight.

In the face of faith, on the other hand, the eye “not only takes something as it gazes,” but “also gives, in its gaze, something to the thing.” Its generosity stems from a “superabundance” which the face of the flight can only dream of, “for it is the superabundance of God.”

Jesus used the words “healthy” and “unhealthy” when He contrasted these two lifestyles two thousand odd years before Picard:

It has been said that what Jesus is stressing in this passage is the importance of focus. In other words, what our hearts and minds choose to focus on can either bring light or darkness to our beings. Those who “seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness” (v.33a) are focused on heaven and reflect its glory. Those who focus on the “things” (v.33b) which God has promised to those who seek Him first, on the other hand, miss out on His light—what Picard calls His superabundance.

Their resulting dissatisfaction — discontentment, if you will — can yield one of two outcomes. We can either double down, or we can surrender.

IN THE CHAPTER TITLED “The Organization of the Flight,” Picard offers a glimmer of hope to the dissatisfied strivers — of whom I am, if you have not yet caught on, a card-carrying member:

Herein lies the central conflict: Part of me will not yield to the flight, and yet the other remains positively threatened by God. Picard continues:

The flight from God is the root of all discontentment. Of course it is, since God is the ultimate Source of all goodness. Surrendering to His loving pursuit of our wayward souls, therefore, is the only way to become truly content. As shared at an evening in Vancouver two weeks ago, the word “contentment” — when distilled down to its Latin roots — denotes a state of “being held together.”

It is God who holds all things together. It is He who pulls together our fragmented selves and reconstructs them into the perfect image He envisioned long before the foundation of the world. And it is “he, he and no other,” to quote Picard once more, “who wills to pursue the fleeing; so that he, the swiftest, may always be the nearest to those in flight.”

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And grant, O most merciful Father, for [Christ’s] sake, that we may now live a godly, righteous, and sober life, to the glory of your holy Name. Amen.

The 1662 and 1979 versions of this ending are identical, save for the fact that they both substitute ‘now’ for ‘hereafter’ and ‘your’ for ‘thy.’ The 2019 BCP is thus left wanting in the aura department, though I am not too concerned about that. My concern is instead with the bolded word in the above quotation—the word ‘sober.’

I had a mentor in high school (Mr. Davenport, as we referred to him back then) who once told me that he thought of me as “serious about the serious things in life and casual about the casual things.” It was obviously a compliment—one that I felt I hardly deserved at the time. Nearly a decade later, I still struggle to think of myself as a serious person. I have witnessed myself make far too many unserious decisions to unreservedly associate myself with the ideal of sobriety.

Some might say I’m too much of a jester. I’m inclined to agree, although the label holds infinitely more weight coming from a Captain America1 figure than, say, from a Clavicular. While both gentlemen are known for amassing the bulk of their muscle tissue from serums rather than sit-ups, at least Steve Rogers did it to fight the nazis. Braden Peters, on the other hand, just wanted to mog harder. What is more, he thinks you should do the same.

“Most people are extremely jester,” he argues. Why? Because they “have completely misprioritized lives.” In his view, going to the pub with your mates to watch Sunday football is the “worst thing you could do.” Instead, “you should be on PubMed reading various different studies on how you can looksmaxx.”

This is what a sober life looks like for Clavicular: Set aside the booze, not because drunkenness leads to debauchery2, but because too much beer will increase your body's estrogen, thereby decreasing your SMV (sexual market value). Judging by the empty can of Old Style Pilsner currently sitting next to me, my stock must not be looking so good.

On a more serious note — see what I did there? — it almost goes without saying that Clavicular is confused regarding what serious things we ought to be serious about in this life. Just over six decades ago, C.S. Lewis came at the topic from an entirely different angle. “Joy is the serious business of heaven,” he wrote.3 But how can joy be serious business? I have found Dr. Peter Kreeft immensely helpful in answering this question.

“Joy is more than happiness,” Kreeft writes, “just as happiness is more than pleasure.”

Pleasure is in the body. Happiness is in the mind and feelings. Joy is deep in the heart, the spirit, the center of the self.4

The following graph, courtesy of , sheds some light on what Dr. Kreeft is getting at.

To quote the psalmist:

“You show me the path of life.

In your presence there is fullness of joy;

in your right hand are pleasures forevermore.”

— Psalm 16:11 NRSV

In other words, joy comes from abiding in the presence of God. If we must only be serious about one thing in this life, then let it be that. Everything else is secondary. Happiness is temporary, and pleasure is fleeting. Living for either leaves us unsatisfied, and optimizing one’s SMV can only yield so much ROI (return on investment—another one of Clavicular’s favourite phrases).

Yesterday’s verse of the day happened to come from the following passage in Colossians 3:

¹So if you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. ²Set your minds on the things that are above, not on the things that are on earth, ³for you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.

I am convinced that if the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was to convince the world he does not exist5, then the second greatest trick he ever pulled was to rob mankind of joy by keeping our eyes fixed on temporal things.

Men great and small have been destroyed, and kingdoms ravaged, by the vain pursuits of pleasure and happiness with little to no regard for God. Sobriety demands of us to daily reset our gazes upon His face, knowing that happiness and pleasure will flow naturally from eternal life with Him. It is sobermaxxing, after all — not looksmaxxing — which truly fulfills the human heart.

Designed in 1775 by Colonel Christopher Gadsden, the flag was a defining artifact of the American revolution. Similarly to Benjamin Franklin and other contemporaries of his, Gadsden was drawn to the image of a rattlesnake because rattlesnakes only strike when they have been provoked—much like the American colonies vowed to do against anyone who dared threaten their freedom.2

Two-and-a-half centuries later, the spirit of the rattlesnake still encompasses much of what it means to be an American.3

Although I grew up in Rwanda and now live in Canada, my own love of freedom has at times led me to jokingly refer to myself as spiritually American. I am reminded of a session I attended during staff training week at my old summer gig with the Salvation Army. The purpose of the session was for me and my coworkers to discern which values we held most dearly in our respective lives.

We were each handed a list that contained dozens of words — words like faith, family, fun, success — from which we then had to pick the two that most resonated with us. After scanning my list for 5-10 minutes, I finally circled my top two: freedom and truth. To this day, I don’t think there are many things I care more about than those two concepts. Because without truth, everything is meaningless. And without freedom, I am nothing. My life happens to me, and I am powerless over it.

Jesus seemed to understand the importance of freedom and truth. Not only did He understand their importance as separate entities, but He also understood that real freedom is contingent upon truth. For if mankind is born into a state of slavery to sin as He argues in John 8:344, then freedom must be a by-product of submitting to the truth of God’s word.

This is why secular conceptions of freedom can so easily run counter to freedom as understood in Holy Scripture. Modern western culture tells us that we become free whenever we are unshackled from constraints, limits and restrictions. You do not have to be gay or trans to find this proposition attractive.

I, for one, hate being told what to do every bit as much as the next he, she or they. My closest family and friends can testify to that effect. And when “pro-choice” protesters scream “My Body, My Choice,” I understand why they are so angry—my opposition to abortion notwithstanding. Maybe that’s why I relate to Simba’s “I Just Can’t Wait to Be King” so much.

[YOUNG SIMBA]
No one sayin’, “Do this”

[YOUNG NALA]
No one sayin’, “Be there”

[YOUNG SIMBA]
No one sayin’, “Stop that”

[YOUNG SIMBA & YOUNG NALA]
No one sayin’, “See here”

[YOUNG SIMBA]
Free to run around all day
Free to do it all my way

This might as well be the anthem for libertarians and freedom lovers the world over. But it is not a Christian anthem. Not even close.

Father Chad: Living Free

My pastor preached a sermon called “Living Free” four weeks ago in which he contrasted freedom according to the West (what he termed “self-form freedom”) with freedom according to Jesus (i.e., “Christoform freedom”).

Self-form freedom, according to Fr. Chad, is “ultimately an issue of lordship—it’s wanting to live apart from any Lord but me.” Towards the end of his message, he added that while straying sheep are in a sense “free” from their shepherd, “it’s a self-form freedom that in the end is really no freedom at all.” Nevertheless, these sheep will “often use the language of freedom.”

As tuff5 as Barry Goldwater’s headline quote from the 1964 Republican National Convention was, for instance, extremism in the defense of liberty can most certainly be a vice.

Christoform freedom, on the other hand, is an entirely different affair. It is “not about a disconnect or an autonomy but about a unity, about a communion [with Christ].” As underscored in my comment section two months ago, “Jesus calls us to fully realize our uniqueness in him.”

Our freedom in Him is never an end in itself, however. Service is its endgame. To quote the prayer book’s Collect for Peace, “to know [God] is eternal life and to serve [Him] is perfect freedom.”

Mama Mugz: Living Crucified

I may be biased, but I am hard-pressed to think of anyone who embodies the self-sacrificial posture of service to God and neighbour we are all called to better than my own mother. For years, I have watched her pray prayers which directly contradict what her agenda would be if self-concern were anywhere close to a priority of hers. I texted her about a month ago to challenge her on such a prayer. She sent me a voice note which put me right back in my place.

For those of you who only speak one or two of the four languages featured in this 60-second excerpt, she began by reminding me that God is sovereign and that we must submit to His will for our lives. Submission to God’s lordship is, after all, a core component of what it means to be a Christian.

She then referenced both Romans 12:16 and Galatians 2:207 as she reminded me that she exists as a living sacrifice to her God and that, when a person becomes a Christian, they no longer live for their own sake but rather for Christ. Pleasing God, therefore, is all she cares about. And if it means disregarding her own preferences when they conflict with God’s perfect will, then so be it.

“I think none of what I’ve just said is news to you,” she casually said towards the end of her note.

She was technically right, but her words still hit me like a truck. They echoed the end of Kristin Maguire’s aforementioned contribution to my comment section. Referring to God’s radical invitation to every Christian, Maguire wrote:

It is bold. It is emptying oneself out to be filled to overflowing. It is losing one’s life to find it. It is the way of the Cross.

This calling to die is incomprehensible to those of us who are still chasing self-form freedom. But for those of us who seek to embody the Christoform freedom Christ died to offer us, death to self is good news. It means we can finally live unto God.

The Rattlesnake vs. The Christian

While the rattlesnake concerns itself with its own business, the Christian concerns himself with the business of God’s Kingdom. And when the rattlesnake hisses “don’t tread on me,” it does not have service in mind. It is up to no good. When the Christian declares those words, however, he is addressing the sin from which Christ died to set him free.

He wants freedom from sin, so that he might become unshackled in his pursuit of God’s kingdom and righteousness.

I want that freedom too.

Martin Shaw wrote in chapter three of Liturgies of the Wild that, “with mentoring, someone in the red can really get things done for the good.” He added that “they kick ass once they cop on to the notion of service.”

This is why I am grateful for my mom, my pastor and every other voice which has helped shape my don’t-tread-on-me impulses for the better. Their wisdom inspires me to kick ass to the glory of God.

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The Liturgical Home

🏡 Author of The Liturgical Home 🏡 Sharing history, traditions, recipes and activities to help you celebrate the Church Year in your home.

By Ashley Tumlin Wallace

Sacha and friend of the podcast Ashley Galvin were blessed to sit down with her — albeit virtually — to chat about liturgical living and her journey in, out of, and then back into the Anglican Way.

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This episode is available to watch in full here on Substack and can also be listened to wherever you get your podcasts!

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We hope that you will find it equal parts enjoyable and edifying.

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These colours — namely: red, black and white — are “of great significance in many stories” according to Shaw and are associated with qualities that “flesh out something of the getting made process within myth.” In other words, once one knows what to look for, it is easy to find traces of each colour in coming of age stories down through the millennia.

A prominent example of this phenomenon is the classic German tale “Der Eisenhans,” commonly referred to in English as “Iron Hans” or “Iron John.” In it, a young prince dons “a suit of red armour”1 on the first day of a competition for his eventual bride’s hand. He then appears as a “white knight” on day two of the “festival,” before riding in on a black horse for the contest’s third and final day.

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I found it quite interesting when I read the story for the first time on Wednesday night that it was specifically when the prince was fitted with his black armour and riding his black horse that he was wounded with the point of an enemy’s sword. This was because I remembered Shaw’s description of “the black”—i.e., that it ‘has to do with failure, descent, vulnerability, melancholy and self-knowledge.” Put another way, the black is “not about what worked, but what didn’t.”

Eddie LaRow’s piece on the making of Abraham Lincoln this week was as good an exposé on the black’s formative powers as any that I have read. “Lincoln’s melancholy was far from a liability,” writes Eddie, “it was an asset.”

The legendary president’s melancholy “fueled” him according to Eddie:

He wrestled with it, and often won. His lifelong experience of contending with darkness gave him a moral register that more cheerful men simply could not reach. He had lived too long in the shadows to flinch from what he found there.

Just as in Abraham Lincoln’s case, the black tends to find most people around middle age, if not later. The red, on the other hand, is “most acutely associated with youth.”2 This is no doubt why I have seen so much of it in myself of late.

“The red,” in Shaw’s estimation, “is to do with life force, power, survival, grandeur, ego.” It is a “kind of fuel” that “gives you the courage to… dream big, pack a suitcase and head out on an adventure.” The red is what allows the titular character in Good Will Hunting (1997), for example, to head west in pursuit of his dream girl by the end of the film.

It is also what animates young Simba in The Lion King (1994) as he musically expresses his longing for freedom and autonomy in “I Just Can’t Wait to Be King.”

Speaking of waiting, the red is similarly responsible for a young Alexander Hamilton’s bashful response to a question about his identity in the 2015 musical that bears his name.

He believes that the answer to Angelica Schuyler’s question is “unimportant” because there are “a million things” he has yet to accomplish. “But just you wait,” he adds.

In the words of Martin Shaw, “someone in the red is not crippled with self-doubt but can act decisively in their ambition to get ahead.” Shaw continues:

Ambition is the key word here. It’s an individualistic position, not a community one. Not really. It’s about breaking from the pack and winning the race. It’s about working up a head full of steam and receiving the praise. The red likes an audience.

It almost goes without saying that the red can lead to catastrophe when left unchecked. However, it is also a fact that nothing great has ever come to fruition in this world without a healthy dose of the red setting hearts on fire for worthy causes. “Without the red,” remarks Shaw, “you will struggle to get the book finished, the move completed, the project launched.”

This tension is precisely what I had in mind when I told my pastor at a gathering of my church’s men last month that I desired to hold on to the positive aspects of my restless spirit whilst simultaneously letting go of the negative ones. Reluctant to attribute any virtue to my state of spiritual restlessness, he encouraged me to find a different word for the energy I was attempting to describe. After all, it had only been a matter of weeks since he had preached a sermon on rest from the book of Hebrews.

I suspect that conversations such as this one will go a long way towards shaping my red drive for the best. To quote Shaw one last time:

Without mentoring, the red can create a warlike personality or community. With mentoring, someone in the red can really get things done for the good. They kick ass once they cop on to the notion of service.

In “Seeing Red (Pt. 2),” I will endeavour to share more of what my mentors — men and women whose histories are coloured with more than just one shade — have been teaching me about the red. I hope that their wisdom will bless you as much as it has blessed me.

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I am Loki of Asgard

How did writing on the internet bring me to identify with one of the most notorious supervillains in comic book lore?

If you are anything like me, then you, too, have experienced what it is like to be so obsessed with a particular vision that everything else in your life — from relationships and work to proper sleep and nutrition — ends up taking a back seat to your all-encompassing pursuit of glorious purpose.

Ever since I became a Christian in 2010, I have witnessed an unrelenting war raging in my heart between my passion for God on the one hand and a drive for earthly accomplishment on the other.

In middle school, this drive manifested itself most clearly on the soccer field as I channeled my inner Premier League centre forward on sunny Friday afternoons in my native Rwanda (at least that’s what I thought I was doing). My love for the beautiful game would eventually be eclipsed by a love of theatre after I caught the acting bug in a high school production of “Beauty and the Beast.” I then went on to enrol at Trinity Western University as an acting major before switching into the school’s professional writing program two years later.

Seeking opportunities to put my writing degree to work post-graduation, I launched my Substack publication in October 2025. Though I did not know it at the time, this move was also the beginning of a new chapter in my lifelong struggle with disordered loving.

There is obviously nothing wrong with loving one’s craft. There is not even anything necessarily wrong with being ambitious vis-à-vis one’s practice thereof. However, as argues in her essay, “I write for the internet. You shouldn’t trust me,” there is often much more than mere passion or ambition underlying an artist’s quest for excellence.

“I want to be true, pure, and clear,” Ashcraft writes, “but I want more fervently to be seen and to be loved.”

Her candid confession reminds me of the year I auditioned for a play at my alma mater — long after I had dropped my theatre major — simply because I had missed being on the receiving end of the opening night crowd’s love and adulation. Sure enough, I would return to the stage within the span of a semester, just in time to soak in the electric atmosphere once more.

While I do not regret my decision to come out of acting retirement for one last hurrah that fall, the thought process that led me to do it was an early indicator of my innate impulse toward garnering attention and affirmation through my art. This impulse, truth be told, has proven quite difficult for me to keep at bay in the seven months I have spent writing on Substack so far. As my friend admitted in a piece he recently wrote for :

We desire more followers. Desire more money. Desire to have the next break through article or post.

I must confess that the prospect of “making it big” — whatever that means — has all but captivated my imagination for much of this year. As many of us know all too well, however, the trouble with being captivated by any object wrongly desired over God’s face is that such things have a way of holding us captive before we even know it.

In his 1995 masterpiece, “Moving from Solitude to Community to Ministry,” Henri Nouwen shared some wise words for those of us who find ourselves in this predicament:

You have to listen to the voice who calls you the beloved, because otherwise you will run around begging for affirmation, for praise, for success. And then you’re not free.

The voice which calls us the beloved is, of course, the voice of our Heavenly Father—the One who “destined us for adoption as his children through Jesus Christ, according to the good pleasure of his will” (Ephesians 1:5 NRSV).

I cannot help but wonder if Loki of Asgard, too — had he allowed himself to truly receive his adoptive parents’ love for him — could have avoided the emptiness which wound up fuelling his villain arc.

After all, when his brother confronts him about his genocidal machinations at the end of the first Thor movie, he reveals that he seeks “to prove to father that I am the worthy son.” In other words, he has succumbed to the very temptation Jesus overcame in the wilderness. To borrow again from Nouwen’s Solitude-Community-Ministry article:

“Prove you’re worth something.” “Prove you have any contribution to make.” “Do something relevant.” “Be sure you make a name for yourself.” “At least have some power—then people will love you; then people will say you’re wonderful, you’re great” …

These were the voices Jesus heard right after he heard “You are my beloved.”

I may not be any worthier of carrying Thor’s hammer than Loki but, like him, I have a Father who has declared me worthy of His love all the same. Furthermore, like Jesus, I get to rest in my Father’s love—along with a multitude of brothers and sisters who, like me, “are carrying heavy burdens.” (Matthew 11:28).

It is precisely from this restful posture that I intend to keep writing without losing my soul.

I’ve just dropped off my friend at the ferry terminal but my workday will not be starting for another ninety minutes.

The strange heaviness of heart I awoke with at the crack of dawn has not faded so I begin doomscrolling to lighten the mood. I am also an intellectual though, so — naturally — it is my Substack feed which I am mainly perusing. An article entitled “I’m Learning How to Pray” catches my eye.

Its author, a blogger named Makinsay, confesses that she does “not often sit in silence and solitude for any meaningful length of time.” She is aware that she is missing out, which is why she has resolved to “set aside specific time for prayer”—time “to submit anxieties, to confess idolatries, to sort through [her] affections and desires.”

She is inspired by Jesus’s interaction with Mary and Martha in the tenth chapter of Luke’s Gospel:

Makinsay’s article features Johannes Vermeer’s 1654 painting, “Christ in the House of Martha and Mary.” I am mesmerized. Maybe even a tad emotional. It has only been a matter of hours since I was pondering this very scene.

THURSDAY NIGHT. 11pm.

My roommate Kyler is singing to Jesus and playing his guitar in our living room. I, meanwhile, am pacing in my room, “worried and distracted by many things.” They are all good things—at least I think so. But they feel so urgent. The truth is, they feel considerably more urgent than sitting at the feet of Jesus does right now.

Not only are my self-imposed Substack deadlines calling my name, but I am set to spend much of my weekend volunteering—first at an Apologetics Canada conference and then at my own local church the next day. Surely, there will be plenty of time for abiding after the work is finished, I tell myself. Jesus is not going anywhere anytime soon, is He? Something tells me Martha of Bethany would have been all too familiar with my line of reasoning.

The seventeenth century French philosopher Blaise Pascal, in his legendary Pensées, famously argued that “all of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” Centuries earlier, in his equally influential Confessions, St. Augustine had written thusly about humankind: “Our hearts are restless until they rest in [God].”

One can easily argue, on the basis of these two strikingly similar ideas, that man’s inability to sit quietly in a room long enough to rest in his Creator constitutes his deepest heart issue. Maybe that is why I have chosen to go to sleep without praying tonight—because my heart is sick (with sin), and not because I must drive Kholine to her boat first thing in the morning.

THE LATE ANGLICAN CLERGYMAN and apologist, Fr. Thomas Mckenzie, wrote in his 2014 The Anglican Way of the historical Anglican church’s “strong tradition of contemplative activism.” Among the “fruits of contemplation” he lists in the book are “knowing God’s grace, resting in his presence [and] being detached from the world.” These fruits, Mckenzie argues, “can fuel our service to others.”

In other words, Christian contemplation leads to Christian activism. Being with God leads to doing for God—or, better yet, to doing from God. In his chapter on Christian activism, McKenzie writes that the New Testament writer James is the “unofficial ‘patron saint’ of the Christian activist.” He then goes on to quote directly from the second chapter of James’s epistle:

“So contemplation by itself, if it has no activism, is dead.” (Sacha Mugisha Version)

Our being with God is indeed ineffectual if it does not propel us further into practical love for our fellow man. Fair enough.

What happens, though, when it is our activism which is left “by itself,” having no contemplation? I believe Jesus addresses this question towards the end of His Sermon on the Mount. As per Matthew 7:

²¹“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven. ²²On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ ²³Then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; go away from me, you who behave lawlessly.’

I hear echoes of 1 John 3:

⁶No one who abides in him sins; no one who sins has either seen him or known him.

Jesus’s real followers know and are known by Him. Their inner lives are transformed through contemplation, and their outer lives reflect that. Jesus’s fake followers, on the other hand, have no time for abiding in, beholding or contemplating His beauty. They may possess impressive ministry resumes, but their relationships with God are barely existent; their inner lives utterly untransformed.

Herein lies a sobering warning to me and all my fellow Martha types. The ultimate price of allowing service and activism to distract entirely from abiding in Christ is high. Contemplation must come first—in the same way that faith begets righteousness, and not the other way around (Romans 4:3). This is why Jesus told Martha that her sister had “chosen the better part” in the Luke 10 story. Mary got it. I want to be like her.

Vermeer’s painting is now nailed to my wall and I hope that it will inspire me such that — when I am not anointing Jesus’s feet (as Mary would go on to do with costly perfume in John 12) — I will be sitting at His feet, hanging on every word that comes out of His mouth.

Lord, have mercy.

Sacha had the pleasure of chatting with him recently about a variety of topics pertaining to life as a young person in North America. Their conversation touched on everything from today’s complicated job and dating markets to the state of the American dream in 2026.

There will be no video version of this episode due to technical difficulties but the audio is now available on all platforms, including Spotify and Apple Podcasts. We hope you will enjoy this latest episode of the Zoom Out Pod!

— Sacha and Dayton

The last student to present her work was third-year English major Madeleine Headley. Her piece deservedly went on to be crowned as the night’s most popular, after which I asked her if she would be willing to let me share it with my subscribers. She graciously agreed, and I am delighted to now be publishing it.

— Sacha

Call to Adventure

Coquihalla Highway

The dark trees whip past the window as we wind up the meandering pass in the middle of the mountain range. The rear windshield of our minivan is obscured by a large playpen and various portable highchair parts while I am tucked in the back between my brother’s booster seat and the tightly packed suitcases. The metal fan at the top keeps dislodging onto my shoulder and my brother drums on the cupholder console in time with the song that plays over the speakers. The crooning banjo of Mumford & Sons doesn’t typically lend itself to rock drumming, but this doesn’t stop him from attempting a rousing four-on-the-floor beat. The baby begins to cry.

Serve God, love me, and mend.

This is not the end.

I look out the windshield ahead of me. I have come to the conclusion that I will be a martyr. I will go overseas to make a difference somewhere, then die bloodily on a far-off shore, or at the end of a long and sleepless night in a foreign prison. I will tell everyone about the love I have known, and refuse to recant in the face of death. I am ten years old and am convinced that to die for love must be the greatest of adventures. I have little notion of the cost, but am sure I have been called.

*

It’s unknown who first coined the phrase about possible plots. There are only two kinds of plots in all of literature: A person goes on a journey, and a stranger comes to town. It has been attributed to Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Gardner. It feels true of life, these plot ideas— that you either meet the stranger or are one. Either way, the story is about a traveler. Either way, a road trip is involved. Either way, in all the stories, this usually begins with a call.

*

There are seven of us in the van, not including the dog, and my siblings are weary before we are two hours in. Being an older sister is surely a kind of martyrdom, I think, as the fan falls on me again.

Crossing the Threshold

A28 Autoroute

This is not the longest road trip I have been on, but it feels like it at this point, someplace near where Belgium blurs into France. The twenty-five members of my missionary training school are stretched across the last four rows of the lime green FlixBus, which has taken us dutifully from the north of the Netherlands, where we spent the last week. We are meant to be choosing which outreach trip we will take part in: Uganda, Thailand, or the Middle East. I am eighteen and, believing that I will change the world, flip open my Bible to the last place I left off and point.

The trees of the Lord are well watered, the cedars of Lebanon that he planted.

Can there be this little difficulty in discovering where I am to go? Surely there must be more conflict required for such a choice than this?

*

Ursula Le Guin is exceedingly wise. Conflict, she says, is one kind of behavior. There are others, equally important in any human life, such as relating, finding, losing, bearing, discovering, parting, changing.

*

The bus speeds towards Paris, and I am sure that this will be the point of no return.

Belly of the Whale

Damascus International Highway

We connect through stories, I have learned over the last four weeks in Zahlé. We arrive in Beirut after many hours in a church van, travelling across the country from the far east to the coast.

The family in the refugee camp next to the Syrian border wanted to hear Bible stories when we came to their tents to talk over rice and chicken.

The elderly Lebanese woman was animated when she picked up her food package from the non-profit facility. Doing my best to pick out the French from the Arabic of her colloquial medley, I realized eventually that she was telling us about her children when they were young.

I have believed for a long time that we are creatures of story. We are irrevocably bound to it, just a whole raveled mess really, of word and skin and salt and narrative.

And it was through stories that we connected with two young men in a park who then invited us to meet their wives and tell them more. My roommate politely refused to abscond to a second location and in my zealous indignance, I was 50/50 on whether she kept us from being trafficked or prevented them from hearing the gospel.

I no longer feed the martyr complex of my youth, but my stunning lack of preservatory skills warns that I haven’t fully let it die.

*

Le Guin again. Change is the universal aspect of all these sources of story. Story is something moving, something happening, something or somebody changing.

*

The twanging guitar riffs us over the lush mountains that press the sprawling city to the sea.

Sigh no more, no more,

One foot in sea, one on shore.

My heart was never pure.

How much of this was all for my own glory? I’m not sure now. How much of this was me wanting to save, or seem holy, or change things on my own terms? I have little but the abyss of my doubts now, and the certainty that I am making no difference at all.

*

The Greek word to be is γινομαι. This equally means to become. Being and becoming are inextricably linked. To exist is to become. To be at all is to be in the process of transformation.

Temptation & Transformation

A96 Autobahn

The forest lining the highway is the same shade as the terracotta tiles that all German roofs are made of. This is my second time in Europe, this time for the wedding of two members of my outreach team. I watched them meet in France, fall in love in the Middle East, and begin dating during our time in Romania. A year and a half later, I meet the rest of my friends in Germany.

We drive the Autobahn from Munich, through Austria, across the length of Switzerland to the French town where the wedding takes place.

Love that will not betray you, dismay or enslave you,

It will set you free,

Be more like the man you were made to be.

*

« Le mariage existe pour que la prostitution n’existe pas. »

The pastor and I disagree on why God made marriage. I do not think it’s for prostitution control.

But it is true, I think, that we assume that sacrament means we will not be tempted. We think that it will be the sweeping vows that hold us fast forever, rather than the small, continued choices in the unnoticed, unglorious moments of our lives. It would be easier if it were just the once, a single acceptance of the death of our selves. But it is in the many little deaths that we live our lives, or create a marriage, or remain in the faith we have chosen.

*

I come to realize that there are times when it is harder to live for a faith than to die for one. Martyrdom is noble, but so is sanctification, that ordinary process of change, that becoming which happens in our being, the crux of all our stories, really.

*

Other meanings of γινομαι:

To begin to be, as in, holy or a spouse

To arise, like questions or the light.

To appear, as on the horizon or in mirrors.

To be made, like bread or love.

To be done, like taxes or justice.

To come into existence, as would an embryo, or the spring.

The Return

Coquihalla Highway

The plinking freneticism of the mandolin, the steady kick atop a tambourine, and whirring dark trees take me back a decade earlier, or to the many times since that we have driven this road.

There is a design, an alignment

A cry of my heart to see

The beauty of love, as it was made to be

*

The call, as it turns out, is not to some other place, nor to a glorious death, nor even to my homeland, but rather, to be and to become, at sea or on shore, to give myself to love wherever my feet are, in all of the ordinary ways.

*

Serve God, love me, and mend,

This is not the end.

If you have made it this far and feel so inclined, be sure to comment on, like or restack this post. And if you would like to receive more faith insights from me and my zoomer friends directly in your inbox, go ahead and hit that subscribe button.

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Last but not least, if you are also a Gen-Z Christian who likes to think/write about God, you are more than welcome to join the subscriber chat and throw some ideas around. I would love to feature more young writers on Zoomed In!

— Sacha

Amidst this exciting season for him, it was an absolute honour for us to host him on our podcast for the first time. We cover lots of ground in this episode—everything from the effects of modernity and Gen Z’s well-documented loneliness epidemic to looksmaxxing and the pornification of the parasocial through platforms like OnlyFans.

Eddie does a brilliant job, as always, of communicating how the Gospel of Jesus Christ and His Church are the answer to every human ache that is betrayed by the various trends we discuss. You may access our full video interview for free on his Substack.

After Progress

Interview: Zoom Out Pod - How an Ancient Faith Roots a Restless Generation

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7 months ago · 1 like · 1 comment · Eddie LaRow and Sacha Mugisha

The audio version is also available either through our Substack or through your preferred podcast provider (Spotify and Apple Podcasts included). We hope you will enjoy this conversation as much as we did!

— Sacha and Dayton

Our latest guest is Kiri Jane Erb. Kiri is an apologist, church planter and educator based on Vancouver Island, where she lives with her husband Josh and their three children. She is also the award-winning author of the newly released Love, War and the Mess in Between—a novel which manages to blend riveting historical fiction with incisive theological and philosophical reflections.

We thoroughly enjoyed chatting with her about her writing process as well as unpacking the various themes in her book. You can buy it today wherever books are sold, although we recommend Indigo for our Canadian listeners and Barnes and Noble for our American ones. Amazon is also a great option no matter where you live.

As always, this episode’s audio will be available on all podcast platforms (including Spotify and Apple Podcasts) pending cross-platform syncing. You may also access the full video episode by becoming a paid subscriber to Zoomed In today.

Subscribe now

We hope you will enjoy this conversation as much as we did!

— Sacha and Dayton

Our latest guest is Kiri Jane Erb. Kiri is an apologist, church planter and educator based on Vancouver Island, where she lives with her husband Josh and their three children. She is also the award-winning author of the newly released Love, War and the Mess in Between—a novel which manages to blend riveting historical fiction with incisive theological and philosophical reflection.

We thoroughly enjoyed chatting with her about her writing process as well as unpacking the various themes in her book. You can buy it today wherever books are sold, although we recommend Indigo for our Canadian listeners and Barnes and Noble for our American ones. Amazon is also a great option no matter where you live.

As always, this episode’s audio will be available on all podcast platforms tomorrow, but you may access the full video episode by becoming a paid subscriber to Zoomed in today!

Subscribe now

In Christ,

Sacha and Dayton

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