On the Way Podcast

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

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

Join Jungian analyst James Hollis, known for his insightful writings on the human psyche, as he delves into the call of the soul. He discusses the profound process of individuation, emphasizing the journey to reclaim one's true self amidst societal pressures. Hollis contrasts mere symptom treatment with depth psychology for genuine healing. He highlights the art of discernment in understanding our desires and the importance of aligning with our true selves to find authentic happiness. Get ready for a rich exploration of self-discovery and meaningful living!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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