At Sea with Justin McRoberts

“If you really wanted to help, you’d up and move to Africa.”It was a few minutes after I’d just spoken at a college chapel and a particularly fired-up student was trying to convince his classmates to resist child sponsorship in favor of a more radical and, in his mind, more holistic response to the problem of extreme poverty. His suggestion that a serious person would uproot their entire lives in response to the information they’d just been handed is as dramatic as it is… problematic. See, aside from the white-savior complex that response borrows from, it also ignores an often overlooked opportunity the privileged have, because of our privilege; access to the hearts and minds of other, privileged people. Because, somewhere in the mix, that student was right that there is a link between the way people like me live and the tragic circumstances in which far too many other people live; that I should change the way I live if I’m serious about changing things for folks in extreme poverty. But/and… one of the opportunities I am afforded because of my position is to change and grow in a way that inspires and informs and even leads other people in my same position. And that’s not sexy work to do. In fact, it can look suspiciously like compromise and slowness. (sometimes it is)This is why we like to tell the stories of the families who sold everything and left for Fallujah without a plan. I thank God for those stories. They’re just not mine. That’s not David Zach’s story, either. David, like I did, ran headlong into stories about human trafficking along the way he was already traveling. And the decisions he’d made about how he could respond, as a person of privilege, to leverage that privilege and power are truly powerful. I was thrilled to talk with him about his history and his work.  Check it out.  Links For Justin:Read Justin's SubstackOrder In The Low - NEW Book with Scott EricksonCoaching with JustinOrder In Rest - New Book of PoemsOrder Sacred StridesJustinMcRoberts.comSupport this podcastNEW Single - Let GoNEW Music - Sliver of HopeNEW Music - The Dood and The BirdThe Book - It Is What You Make itHearts and Minds Amazon Barnes and Noble

“Sometimes, God gives us glimpses into the enormity of the work at hand, not to increase our capacity to do a larger work or more work but so that the work we can do becomes more vital and less optional. We are compelled to do the work we can do because we cannot do all we want.”I wrote that on the way home from a 10 day trip to India with Compassion international. It was, to be entirely honest, a life-altering trip for several reasons, including a very humbling breakdown I had on day 9 of that trip. Guided by our hosts, a small group of us got to visit several church communities who were helping to feed, educate and provide medical care for kids who, without the open door of the Commission program, would most likely live without those necessities. Of course, I’d been on trips like that before. I’d seen extreme poverty in Central America, South America, Kenya, Uganda… and yes, it was always heartbreaking. But (and I know I sound distant, privileged, and desensitized) I was never entirely overwhelmed. I pretty much always felt like I had a grasp on things, philosophically, anthropologically, politically, and even theologically. But that 9th day in India… I fell to pieces. We’d gathered toward the end of the evening with Compassion staff and partners from all over the world. Several groups were visiting Kolkata at the same time. I remember starting to feel something like dizzy listening to German staff talk about the former prostitute who walked into the middle of the street in one of Kolkata’s red-light districts, only to be surrounded and mobbed by dozens of current prostitutes who consider her a mother-figure and care-giver. In the van on the way to that gathering, I remarked to my friend Bob that, on that drive, like all our others, every mile was covered by people.  It was wearing on me that, for over a week, there were crowds of human lives extending as far as I could see and beyond… there was no break. No open space.. just sea after sea of humanity… So. Many. People. And earlier that day, we’d visited the convent where sick and destitute people received care from Catholic sisters; sisters who walked the block around their building, sometimes daily, to see if anyone had left children there to be picked up (or… in other cases, trampled). And before that, across town, we were invited to witness a religious ceremony at the temple to the god Kali. Around the temple were hundreds of women and children (and a few men), holding animals in their arms or on leashes, waiting in line to sacrifice that animal to Kali. There were animal screams inside the walls and the iron smell of blood got thicker the deeper into the temple we walked. The sacrifice, we were told, was to appease Kali so that Kali would not wreak havoc on peoples’ lives. Some of those sacrifices, we were also told, were of animals the family would much more greatly benefit from if kept alive; for milk and meat or farmland grazing. “Religion,” I thought to myself “can be so utterly detestable.” And got to thinking about the thousands or even millions of tiny gods, including diminished and manipulated forms of Jesus, that folks like myself made sacrifices to regularly; sacrifices of time and money and friendship and mental health and dreams and on and on… and that’s when the unraveling began… It’s. All. So. Much.  There. Is. So. Much. Wrong. So that, by the time I stepped off our shuttle at the end of that 9th night and walked past the armed guard who held the line between the slum next door to our hotel and the crisp, clean hotel itself … I was dizzy and nauseous and couldn’t tell as clearly where the line was between real and imaginary, between what I knew of the world and what I projected onto it or between what I believed about goodness itself and what I simply hoped was true so I could feel better about the way I lived. There’s a fair bit of the rest of that night I don’t recall. I know there were tears and some pacing and some attempts at coherent prayer. Eventually, I found myself in the bathroom mirror, working away to remove my beard. I had flashed back to a moment several months before when a friend’s Rabi had pulled me aside at a party to tell me I needed to cut off my facial hair; that a beard was a sign of wisdom and I was far too young to have earned it. My buddy was embarrassed for me and apologized. But something about the moment stuck with me, apparently. Because here I was scraping away at my face feeling very much like I didn’t deserve to wear a beard. I’d been confronted by realities in my world I could make no sense of and that shook me pretty bad. I needed a way to show my contrition; a way to make clear I knew I had been wrong about how smart or understanding or how powerful I was. But even that thought, as right it might be, felt like it missed. If the cumulative effect of this moment was only that I felt bad,… that didn’t seem right. So, as I washed off my face, I felt my mind settle a bit and, in what little bit of peace and clarity I was gaining, turned my attention back toward the reasons I was in the country, to begin with. Compassion International had invited me to India because I was one of their speakers; I was and an advocate for children growing up in extreme poverty. And no, right there and then, the job I was doing on the scale I was able to do it flat out didn’t seem like it was big enough … And if my personal goal was to eradicate poverty entirely that week (or maybe even in my lifetime), then .. no.. nothing I do is enough. Not on that level.But maybe the point of this didn’t have to be that I felt bad about how little I had to offer. Maybe what I could do instead of simply give in to my circumstances and say “it is what it is” and “I am what I am,” is learn to soberly take my life more seriously in light of how very serious things are in the world I am choosing to love. Because things are VERY serious. And that should be overwhelming. But if I am to think of myself as more than a tool in the Divine tool belt whose value is determined by its usefulness and effectiveness, then just experiencing guilt at that moment was too small a thing. To be humbled? Yes? To be demoralized? No. See, this is the thing I find in my friends and sisters and brothers who are neck deep working in areas like hunger or extreme poverty or even human trafficking and slavery… The “wins” and victories are few and sometimes small and infrequent. The depth of the darkness is… pervasive and seemingly relentless. It can be overwhelming. And it should be. But what if that means I can offer my time and talents and efforts and energies, NOT because I’m effective and powerful, but because the people I’m offering myself to are worth it. Maybe that makes it a work of love And maybe that’s the key, long term; maybe that’s why awareness of the 40 million people living in slavery waxes and wanes and oscillates as wildly as it does; our effectiveness can be called into question, sidelining our efforts and sometimes crushing them, altogether. But if we are committed to loving people, the effectiveness of our plans has a much broader context and, when things seem dark and heavy, the love we are committed to says “do what you can with all your heart. You aren’t here to win. You’re here to love.” Links For Justin:Read Justin's SubstackOrder In The Low - NEW Book with Scott EricksonCoaching with JustinOrder In Rest - New Book of PoemsOrder Sacred StridesJustinMcRoberts.comSupport this podcastNEW Single - Let GoNEW Music - Sliver of HopeNEW Music - The Dood and The BirdThe Book - It Is What You Make itHearts and Minds Amazon Barnes and Noble

It was somewhere in the early 2000s when I got a package in the mail from a friend, who had just taken a job with an organization that purported to rescue people from slavery. And I've got to admit, and especially at the time, it was something of an embarrassing admission that I had no idea that that was a need. It blew my mind.There are people in slavery, there are still people in slavery. And it still does actually kind of blew my mind, but in a different way. Since that time, I've had the opportunity, the privilege to be a partner with a few different organizations that do exactly that work. They rescue people living in slavery, they imprison and prosecute the men, predominantly men who run black market, slave organizations.And two things continue to pop up for me.The first being what I just mentioned, that it's awful, it's tragic, it's actually mind-numbing, that human beings would sell and buy other human beings, specifically that human beings would sell, or buy children.Secondly, I'm saddened at not just the cultural pattern, but even the pattern in my own life, by which I recognize or in which I recognize that I don't maintain a regular concern, I lose focus about or towards this particular dark corner of the world. There are seasons when I do or we do focus on human trafficking on human slavery, the fact that we're still buying and selling human lives, and then there are seasons, that it's just not urgent. It doesn't pop up. It isn't in my regular everyday conscience.And so I champion, the lives the voices, the energies of the people, who do fight this battle, who do dig in they after day after day. And really specifically over the next couple episodes, I want to highlight to folks who come from backgrounds really similar to mine, and have not just again, but have maintained that pace,beginning with Alan Smith, who's a dear friend of mine that I got to speak to a few weeks ago about this organization that he has started working with, that allows him to place a year's worth of work among adolescents in a different sphere of life into this really dark corner and bring a bit of light. I enjoyed the conversation. I think you will too check it out. Links For Justin:Read Justin's SubstackOrder In The Low - NEW Book with Scott EricksonCoaching with JustinOrder In Rest - New Book of PoemsOrder Sacred StridesJustinMcRoberts.comSupport this podcastNEW Single - Let GoNEW Music - Sliver of HopeNEW Music - The Dood and The BirdThe Book - It Is What You Make itHearts and Minds Amazon Barnes and Noble

I ran into a friend recently whom I haven’t seen in a while. And at first, I didn’t recognize him. Some of that had to do with the time between meetings. But more of it had to do with context. The last time I saw him was in California in the Sierra Nevada foothills.This recent meeting was in a town called Goshen, Virginia. He and I were walking into buildings adjacent to one another and caught each other's eye. Then we did “that thing;” just staring at one another quizzically and awkwardly until he (his name is Mike) said “McRoberts!?” There were hugs and high fives and that “guy” hug with the clasped palms thing in the middle. I’m guessing you’ve had a similar moment: seeing someone or something you know well enough but in a context that threw off your expectations. Them? Here? No.. that can’t be. They belong somewhere else,… right? Part of what has been exposed in my religious training is that this happens to me, in relationship to God, somewhat regularly. An “encounter” or a moment of clarity is cast into substantial doubt because, .. well. God doesn’t go “here;” God goes to certain places at certain times (and sometimes in certain ways). This isn’t to say that those places and spaces and times and ways are, in and of themselves, problematic; more so, they become problematic when I try to stuff the entirely of my expectant longing for God into them. They can’t hold that. They break. What if the spaces and places we call “sacred” were less like consumer packaging and more like training grounds; always pointing beyond themselves and humbly aware of their transience. May it be so that I learn to see The Divine there (goodness, truth, beauty) so that I can recognize Divine love and movement everywhere else… not so that I would know where to go should I desire to find it. So, The 10 am -11 am hour on a Sunday The specific words of specific prayersThe specific chord progressions The specific genre of music or art are all fineBut/And/Also…They are small. So small. Alexander Schmemann, in his book “For The Life of the world” criticized what he called “the religion of this world,” suggesting that too much of it has called this one, small area of life “sacred” and, in doing so the way we’ve done it, rendered the MAJORITY of the rest of life and the experience of life “plain” or ‘other” or even “bad.” That’s terrible religion. And if those of us at the helm of contemporary religious machinery are truly honest with ourselves, we have to admit that this is the case, at least in part (if not in large part) because we’ve made it this way. If I am a gatekeeper to your spiritual/religious experience or if something I’ve created is THE place and way you see The Divine, then you need me and you need what I make and I get to keep my job and my power. This takes me all the way back to the poetic, prophetic challenge issued by the writers of Genesis, who, in the third chapter, expose the core, human temptation to “be like God, knowing good and evil.” It is a temptation, in part, to set the parameters of reality and decide where things should go, including The Divine. But God is who, what, and how God is, wherever God is. Just like my friend Mike is Mike, wherever he is. And getting to know him how and where and when I did should mean that, when I discover him on the other side of the country, I recognize him.. as Mike. May it be so for you and I in relationship to each other and may it be so for you and I in relationship to the Divine and may it be so for us who continue to forge pathways for people to encounter God - that we would not be gatekeepers. We would set the stage for folks to come into an encounter with the Divine by which/in which they would learn to see God however God shows up, wherever God shows up. Links For Justin:Read Justin's SubstackOrder In The Low - NEW Book with Scott EricksonCoaching with JustinOrder In Rest - New Book of PoemsOrder Sacred StridesJustinMcRoberts.comSupport this podcastNEW Single - Let GoNEW Music - Sliver of HopeNEW Music - The Dood and The BirdThe Book - It Is What You Make itHearts and Minds Amazon Barnes and Noble

In the book Prayer: 40 Days of Practice, I take a swing at unpacking the word “spiritual;” not an effort to redefine the word for all users, but an effort to expand its application to meet my own experience and expectation. I do so by way of a kind of allegory; one in which a young man visits a religious guide of some kind, I think I call him a priest in the actual chapter, and shares that something feels wrong in his connection with The Divine. He describes it as a kind of pain in his chest; one he experiences most keenly at night when he lays down to reflect on his day. After describing the discomfort in some detail, the young man expects a particular kind of “spiritual” response from his priest friend. But that priest friend reaches into his bag to retrieve an antacid, saying “Son, you have heartburn.”My hope is that the story expands a readers’ take on what it means to think of themselves spiritually. That, instead of “spiritual” matters being those that are disembodied and separate from financial, social, physical, mental, or emotional ones, thinking spiritually is about seeing all those aspects of one’s existence as integrated, sacred, and attended to by The One Who Holds All Things Together. And while the story presents a bit more prescriptive role from the priest, that expanded expectation regarding what is “spiritual” is part of the work of spiritual direction. And spiritual direction, as a practice and a profession, deserves a whole long look before we go simply and easily defining it. If living spiritually has to do with considering every square inch of my life worth the attention of God, then learning to practice that kind of life takes a very nuanced, very detailed, and (dare I say) very personal help. That has been the role of spiritual direction for me and one I have longed to play in the lives of others. I am currently apprenticed to Tara Owens who is a spiritual director and the founder of Man Cara Ministries. Her wisdom and experience have been on the revolutionary side of enriching for me and because I know my attempts at passing along the things (and the ways) I’ve come to see by way of her guidance, I visited her in Colorado Springs so that I could pass along our conversation. I think you’ll dig it. Check it out.  Links For Justin:Read Justin's SubstackOrder In The Low - NEW Book with Scott EricksonCoaching with JustinOrder In Rest - New Book of PoemsOrder Sacred StridesJustinMcRoberts.comSupport this podcastNEW Single - Let GoNEW Music - Sliver of HopeNEW Music - The Dood and The BirdThe Book - It Is What You Make itHearts and Minds Amazon Barnes and Noble

A few weeks ago, I was in a contraption with a few folks my age and older who were voicing concerns about all the “information” kids get online. During that conversation, statistics were thrown around about how much data we’re subject to. Apparently, every person creates something like 1.7 MB of data every second, which amounted to 2.5 quintillion data bytes per day. ThatIsA Lot At some point, someone said something about kids knowing too much. I don’t remember the exact phrase but it was something along the lines of “it’s just too much information. They’re overwhelmed.” That.. gave me pause. Something about it rang true, but not entirely. You see, I wonder if the hang-up here isn’t that there’s too much to know; I wonder if it’s that I feel responsible for caring about all of it... or even too much of it. And saying I don’t care about everything can be a slightly troublesome thing to say. Because “everything” is a very long list and it includes things you might think are REALLY vital; maybe even essential. So, as I confess my limitation of care, I just might be telling you that I don’t care about the things you care about the way you care about them or to the same depth… and now… now we might have a problem. And that… that’s overwhelming; to feel like I have to overextend my care or even pretend to overextend my care in order to remain true to my tribe. What if I care about the hungry teens in Pleasant Hill / Martinez, CA who are sleeping in cars around the corner from their local HS instead of at home so they know they can get to school on time … but my heart isn’t drawn to the clean water crisis in Sub-Saharan Africa?What if I spend the lion's share of my charitable, care time and energy in the area of child exploitation and human trafficking and, because I do, I don’t know enough about trans persons or biology or the science in the mix? What if I don’t care about what you care about? And what if it scares me to tell you that? What if it’s not the amount of information available to us. What if it’s the degree of responsibility we feel we have to have for that information; I don’t have the time or energy or the resources to effectively and consistently care for more than a few things. That’s just true… and I know it’s true. I also know it’s true that there are absences on (or from) my care list that have been disappointing to more than a few people. And that’s been a point of stress at times; Moving the question from “what do I care about?”To “what should I care about?”Author and Missiologist Michael Frost gets a lot of questions that basically boil down to the question of care. Because he’s in the field of teaching religious-minded about responsible “mission,” he regularly converses with folks who are searching the world around them for urgent needs to fill so that they can participate in the Grand Work of Redemption and Restoration. Rather than prescribe to folks attention to “that which matters most,” Michael turns the question towards people To whom are you called? Who will go with you? Michael redirects issue-focused conversations to the people whose actual, human, soft, and precious lives are affected, altered, damaged, or saved; the people whose fundamental value is the foundation of value for any and every “issue” or idea in all of human history. This is why I have been so richly blessed by David Dark’s commitment to Reality. It is her complex and sacred humanity that is David’s doorway into care for issues and ideas like criminal justice, responsible citizenship, and a more comprehensive expression of what it means to be “Pro-Life.”  “To love a person” David has written, “is to love a process.” Yes. Also, to love a person is to enter into a world full of ideas and dilemmas and issues, but to find them in their proper context; encased in the soft, impermanent flesh of humanity.So…What if we’re not so much overwhelmed by the amount of information available to us; what if we’re simply distracted by it. And in our distraction, we lose touch with what enlivens us; what grounds us what makes any and all of the 2.5 quintillion daily data bytes worth a thing.That our hearts are not build to simply KNOW the world and those who live in it; we are built to care for the world and those who live in it…. So far as we are capable.  Links For Justin:Read Justin's SubstackOrder In The Low - NEW Book with Scott EricksonCoaching with JustinOrder In Rest - New Book of PoemsOrder Sacred StridesJustinMcRoberts.comSupport this podcastNEW Single - Let GoNEW Music - Sliver of HopeNEW Music - The Dood and The BirdThe Book - It Is What You Make itHearts and Minds Amazon Barnes and Noble

When I am asked what I do, I often say that I try to prove language for the process of faith and art. I think that does a decent job of describing my work, even if it’s a bit nebulous. Thing is, language shapes and defines cultures; the difference between one culture and another is often a matter of difference between the words we’re using for the same things.. or even the same experiences. This is why David Dark is one of the very few second-time guests on this podcast. His very peculiar and precise use of language stretches my imagination to reconsider the words I’m using and more seriously consider many words I avoid. In this second conversation, we cover a lot of ground (as we often do when we talk), but spend the lions share of our time on, not just a word, but a name: Reality Winner That name, and the life of the woman that name references, has been a lightning rod for David on many levels. His continual responsibility to that names has brought to life conversations about what it means to be a patriot, what it means to be a Christian, what it means to be a citizen; words whose ideas propel whole cultures. Check it out Links For Justin:Read Justin's SubstackOrder In The Low - NEW Book with Scott EricksonCoaching with JustinOrder In Rest - New Book of PoemsOrder Sacred StridesJustinMcRoberts.comSupport this podcastNEW Single - Let GoNEW Music - Sliver of HopeNEW Music - The Dood and The BirdThe Book - It Is What You Make itHearts and Minds Amazon Barnes and Noble

It’s likely you’ve heard something like “You’re being emotional.” Or “let’s not bring emotions into this.” And it’s likely that, when you heard it, it was said in the context of the conversation is about something very, very serious; something serious enough that, were we to “get emotional” or “bring emotions into it” we would complicate it and muddy it. That has been my training (cultural and institutionally) as well.That the more real and consequential the thing we’re talking about is, the more important it is that we distance ourselves from whatever feelings we might have and rely on the numbers. Don’t get caught up in sentiments. Look for the bottom line or at least the dominant trends. Now, I don’t have the time or space here (nor, if I’m honest, the expertise) to dissect what is meant by “feelings” in a lot of these moments; what I am comfortable saying is that it’s a pretty bold move at any point to look at a list of vital human traits like:Intuition Memoryor even triggered responses or trauma and entirely throw them out because they make the math feel funny about being so cold and… well.. unfeeling. Is it enough to feel something? Or to have feelings about something? I suppose that, nowadays, before I attempted a straight answer to that, I’d get a little bit Jesus-y about it and turn the question on its head; Is it enough to know the numbers? because no... it’s not enough. It’s not enough to separate any one aspect of human life (or the experience thereof) from all the others and then prioritize that element as more vital or primary; making all other experiences and moments subject to it. Do the numbers matter? Yes. But only insofar as those numbers represent patterns of very real, often highly individualized human experiences and (lookout) feelings. Does the way I feel matter? Thank God yes. And if, when I look at the numbers, I find myself alone in the way I feel about something, I get to ask some good/hard questions about how I see and experience my own life. It is hard to be whole. It is hard as an individual and even more so as a collective. In part, it’s hard because being whole doesn’t always come with being at peace (within myself or with those I’m living life with). So if we’re talking about sexual violence, yes, the numbers matter, but they aren’t as weighty as the life’s worth of trauma the woman you’re talking with is carrying because she was one of the “one out of four.” And if we’re talking about climate change, yes, I get that you need to drive or fly for work (so do I) and that your kids might go to different schools in different parts of town and have sports…  but when we look at the statistical realities the scientific community has offered us, it’s probably worth considering what patterns we might help set by our personal, individual changes and sacrifices. It’s hard to be whole. Because becoming whole is a processAnd it doesn’t resolve. So, feelings change and the numbers keep growing.Because sometimes the feelings are the facts and sometimes the facts don’t feel right and, therefore they aren’t right.Because being human always means knowing or assuming or believing or (dare I say it) feeling that there is more to who I am individually and more to who we are collectively than the particular metrics can measureWhether those metrics are feelings or factsWhether it is math or connection Or memory or sentiment There is always more.    Links For Justin:Read Justin's SubstackOrder In The Low - NEW Book with Scott EricksonCoaching with JustinOrder In Rest - New Book of PoemsOrder Sacred StridesJustinMcRoberts.comSupport this podcastNEW Single - Let GoNEW Music - Sliver of HopeNEW Music - The Dood and The BirdThe Book - It Is What You Make itHearts and Minds Amazon Barnes and Noble

I’ve come to pretty fundamentally believe that some things cannot (and should not) be discussed outside of personal experience. That might sound odd coming from someone with a relatively traditional education in western philosophy. But… here I am. One of the keenest examples of that is gun violence. The way I see it: despite the numbers, despite the mathematics, everything stops with the phrase “I lost a loved one.” Or “I almost died.”All that math and all those statistics only matter in light of the value of human life. And the value of human life is established in places outside of Mathematica and statistics; Places we call “emotional” or even “sentimental.” Taylor Schumann’s accounting of gun violence is personal. And that, in my opinion, makes it powerful. Not because the story is dramatic or even culturally triggering. But because, as a matter of statistics fact, there are only so many people who have heard gun-shots near them and faced the actual reality that they might die at the end of a gun. Taylor Schumann has.And because she has, I believe her and think what she says matters. I think you will, too. Check it out.  Links For Justin:Read Justin's SubstackOrder In The Low - NEW Book with Scott EricksonCoaching with JustinOrder In Rest - New Book of PoemsOrder Sacred StridesJustinMcRoberts.comSupport this podcastNEW Single - Let GoNEW Music - Sliver of HopeNEW Music - The Dood and The BirdThe Book - It Is What You Make itHearts and Minds Amazon Barnes and Noble

Sometimes, there aren’t sufficient words for a moment or a season or a feeling. The other side to that coin is that sometimes the wild, the unexpected, or inexplicable … serve the blessed purpose of breaking the words we are used to using and inviting us to make something new from their pieces. This is one way to talk about poetry. I think of the way the Scriptures of my own religious tradition open with poetry in the strange shadow of timelessness, orderlessness, and the Creative Will of a Being beyond comprehension. That same collection of histories and prophecies and reflections and wisdom texts ends with poetry in the blazing light of a hopeful future beyond either chaos or order or death or time itself. Poetry is, among other things, a way to say “There is more here. I can’t hand it to you plainly, so I’ll point in its direction and, in so doing, honor the complex and  beautiful reality of… well.. reality”For Pádraig Ó Tuama, many of the realities that frame his personal and cultural history necessitated a treatment and use of language that bent towards the poetic. Pádraig's work is born of political strife, poverty, and a dominant religious culture that often largely denied his humanity; it is work that suggests regularly and beautifully, that there is more here. I’m a fan of his and had been looking forward to this conversation for years. I hope you enjoy it. I think you will. Check it out.  Links For Justin:Read Justin's SubstackOrder In The Low - NEW Book with Scott EricksonCoaching with JustinOrder In Rest - New Book of PoemsOrder Sacred StridesJustinMcRoberts.comSupport this podcastNEW Single - Let GoNEW Music - Sliver of HopeNEW Music - The Dood and The BirdThe Book - It Is What You Make itHearts and Minds Amazon Barnes and Noble