Episode 285 - Curt Thompson, "The Deepest Place: Suffering and the Formation of Hope"

Welcome to another episode of "Restoring the Soul with Michael John Cusick." In today's episode, we dive deep into suffering, hope, and the transformative power of relationships. Join us as we explore the intricate connections between our understanding of God's glory, the importance of vulnerability, and the development of character. Curt Thompson shares insights from his book that shed new light on old truths, bringing a fresh perspective on suffering. We'll also discuss the role of community and the presence of the Holy Spirit in the process of healing and transformation.

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Curt Thompson website
The Deepest Place: Suffering and the Formation of Hope

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Transcript

Curt Thompson: 0:00

Do people a great character often are not ones who are necessarily aware of it, it's those around them that see this. And we see character and others that themselves, they often don't recognize, I don't see myself as a person of humility or a person patients. But the reason that I don't, is because those things that I'm working on are typically coming from places of suffering, places where I've had some painful part of my story that has really been troubling. And I have yet decided in the context of community on going to go to work on that. And this is what perseverance is about. And then character actually becomes a secondary byproduct of all this work that we're doing to persevere, to allow Jesus to form us in the context of suffering.

MICHAEL CUSICK: 0:55

Dr. Kurt Thompson, my friend and hero of thinking and writing the so glad to be talking with you again. Dude,

Unknown: 1:05

I, I have so look forward to this, we had to put this off once and I was disappointed. And that was my scheduling stuff. And I'm just so grateful to be in the room with you. It's

MICHAEL CUSICK: 1:18

so so good. Well, I want to jump right in. And otherwise I give our readers the treat of you and I bantering because we know we've gotten to know each other in the last four years. But yeah, I'm so grateful for your new book, The deepest place suffering and the formation of hope. You have been speaking on a whirlwind, you've been doing podcasts and different appearances. And this is a message that is unlike any other approach, or book that I've read on suffering, you gave me the privilege of pre reading the book and doing an endorsement. And I said this in the endorsement. And I'll say it again, that this book is in an elite class of maybe two or three books written in the last 100 years, on the subject of suffering. This isn't a class all by itself. So thank you.

Unknown: 2:10

Very kind, you know I've in in talking about this, Michael, I think it has, I don't know that I would have I don't know that I knew this when I was writing it. But in the wake of that, I think, I think I mean, you you know this as you also sit with people who are suffering, and often they come to you, they come to us in ways that they're suffering, and they don't even know it, necessarily. They're just trying to get through their day. And I think that I people ask, Well, why did you write this? I think it is to honor the suffering that we encounter as human beings. And you know, it's kind of it seems to me that the Christian story that the story of Jesus is, is the one story that honors suffering in the world, it doesn't elevate it, it doesn't say that it's good. It says that it is not the way it's supposed to be. And at the same time, it does not show shower contempt upon it. It honors it by being present, Jesus comes in his present with it in a way to pull us out through to the other side in. And, you know, that's, that's my hope that those who are suffering would know that we, that the God of the Bible wants to be with us in that space, in order to redeem us and to transform us through the suffering and even transform the suffering itself.

MICHAEL CUSICK: 3:37

And all of what you just said is so hopeful. So I hope to unpack that. Kurt, you wrote in the book, that your desire was to give people a reminder of what has been understood for three millennia. And that is that we go through suffering and not around it. And that's the only way that it can be redeemed. So talk about that.

Unknown: 4:04

Well, uh, you know, Eastern metaphysics work to separate us from suffering in a way that has it not necessarily being real. Western metaphysics, in some respects do the opposite in that we do everything we can to identify suffering and then eliminated but also at the same time, with our advancement in science, we were kind of trained to believe that we shouldn't suffer the sufferer shouldn't be a part of our world. And so it feels really quite off putting when it happens. There's something wrong with the world as if we forgotten that this actually is the world that we really do live we live in a world in which to be human is to suffer. But if we are willing to be present to our suffering and have relationship with it, in which we notice See that others are with us in that process, which, of course, is the story of the Gospel, the story of the Bible that God is with us. That it is God's witness, if you will, it's the witness of a, of a psychotherapist who's with your clients deeply in the deepest places, that they come to discover that the carnage and the horror and the terror of the isolation of suffering can be transformed because someone is actually coming to be in that space with them. And that's what I'm in many respects, I'm hoping that any of our listeners who are reading the book, recognize that the book is an attempt for us to come to be with those who are suffering, and that is how we come through it, it's to not come through it on my own I, I don't cope with my suffering, we cope with my suffering, and we cope with your suffering, we are going to do this together. And that that appears to be exactly what was happening with Jesus on Good Friday, and coming out through the other side of resurrection.

MICHAEL CUSICK: 6:08

One of the things I so appreciated about the book and continue to appreciate and I'm flying out shortly to officiate a funeral in another town of a very expected elderly friend. And so I'm bringing the hardback of your book because when I originally read it, it was the PDF, and I'm going to reread it. And the reason for that is, I found that I learned so many other things about God in his heart, and his nature, and even ideas like character and perseverance and hope. I learned so many things because you bring just a different emphasis, where you take a concept like character, or hope and what that is and how that relates to suffering. And you shine a light on it from just a different perspective. And I went, Oh, and I've talked to people about your books. And even recently, I was with a friend who is with you at dilemma kiss. And people were coming about how Kurt said this was just so slightly different. And it just opened up this door that made me understand so much. And I think that's a gift you have with, with topics that people are familiar with, but bringing not only the interpersonal neurobiological lens, but how you enter that, integrate that with other science with theology, and then of course, the clinical ability to sit with someone in compassion. So I say that to honor you know, what are cause you, as you take this perspective of looking at this, from the three millennia perspective, going back to the pre Christian Era, I think that's so important, because today, we just assume that what The Zeitgeist is, is, that's, you know, of course, not affecting me. That's not how I see the world because I'm a Christian. But we often get swept up in that. And suffering is something that has been true since virtually the beginning of time, and in all cultures and all around the world. But we have an approach to it that really is counterproductive and does not serve us well.

Unknown: 8:11

No, no, in fact, it creates, we might even say greater suffering. Because in some respects, there is some element in which, if I'm suffering, and I think I shouldn't be the very notion that I my system is responding to my pain in a way that it is, in a way that it shouldn't be responding. That kind of also takes on a certain quality of condemnation, there's something wrong with me for suffering in the first place. And this is this is part of, you know, we live in a in a culture that is increasingly fearful, increasingly fragile. And we are doing everything we can, for instance, to protect our children, we've gone from helicopter to lawnmower parenting, for example, everything that we can do everything we can to protect those around us from having any kind of injury or wound of any kind. And as such, we don't get the opportunity to experience some kind of pain and learn that we can actually tolerate this, we can move through this. And so when real pain does come and suffering emerges, there is some sense of which somehow I could have should have been able to have done something to have avoided this in the first place. And pardon me, we we we soon though, come to realize, you know, you can't avoid this suffering this coming for us. And we don't say this with some kind of as if it's a some sinister plot. We would say that this is what a first century Hebrew who's receiving Paul's letter in Rome the letter that's the basis for this book You know, suffering is a normal part of daily life in many respects for them. And the real question is for them, like, how am I going to respond to this? How am I going to have that kind of relationship with suffering? And I this is where I think the whole notion of the the experience of the gospel and how that gets translated, I think, in many embodied ways in the psychotherapy consultation room is meaningful for us.

MICHAEL CUSICK: 10:27

Talk a little bit correct. And this may be more appropriate for the end of the conversation, but you said something that I want people to miss, and that is that God is with us in our suffering. And I believe that, and I believe, therefore, that God suffers with us that might abuse was his abuse, that someone's trauma is God's trauma. But that raises the question, well, if if God was there, then why didn't he stop it? That kind of thing? And I don't want to get into theodicy questions of why does God allow suffering, but what I'd like you to unpack is more of the witness idea. So that that that's, that's an idea. That is I've talked with people about that initially, they sometimes give pushback on that, like, I don't want to go there, because because that's what I've been told in the past, you're talking about something far more deep. And something that becomes an embedded reality?

Unknown: 11:21

Well, you know, you know, Michael, I would typically like to just begin with some with some simple, normal experiences of life. So for instance, women typically have pain in childbirth. Now, this is not pain that lasts typically for much longer, in most cases than a certain number of hours, maybe days, but usually, it's certain number of hours. But no one, no one would argue or deny the fact that there is a certain kind of suffering that takes place when you're giving birth to a child. Now, granted, we have lots of other evidence that's circling in my awareness that like, you know, we do this all the time. And we've done this for, you know, for many millennia, and like, we're gonna get through this, because this is how we do this. And so I can have this, but in the moment, there is, there is suffering, and it makes a difference. If there's a midwife, it makes a difference. If my husband is with me, if my partner is with me, in this, even if I am, even if I am, even if the partner is not able to mitigate the pain itself, there is a sense in which the with Ness changes one's over all experience, James Cohen, who's a researcher at the University of Virginia that has a marvelous set of research experiments that he does with college students, because of course, they'll do anything for food. And he what he will do is, he will subject them to a somatic pain response, he'll pick their the bottom of their foot, while he has them in a functional MRI machine. And he both measures how much pain they experience. But then he also measures the experience of emerging stress in the brain. From an functional MRI standpoint, what's my stress level, like the distress of my stress, that's separate from the measure to the somatic pain that has been registered up through a different part of my spinal cord. And he puts them in the FR MRIs. And he does the, you know, the pinprick thing, and so forth. And then he repeats it. Only this time, he has the student hold the hand of a close friend or a loved one, while they're in the FMRI scan. And what is reported over and over and over again, is that the student, there is no change in the student's sense of somatic pain, there is no change. But there is dramatic reduction in their overall experience of distress, in the presence of this pain because someone is holding their hand someone is with them. In this regard. This gets to the heart of how it is over and over and over again. In the scriptures. How often God simply says, I am with you. I am with you. Now, in our in, in your you are deeply familiar with this and you utilize this this notion of of attachment and how much we utilize this when we were when we were doing work with clients. This notion that attachment is not just about an abstract idea of somebody being with me a percent of it is a felt thing in my body. I feel your presence, you know, to this day, September 2019. We're standing in at that retreat with you. When you hold me in an embrace in a hug, like I've never had before. And it was life altering for me because it was not just someone who was affectionally giving me a hug this was someone who is going to be was with me in ways that no one had been with me in that way. This notion of wiseness not just that a person is with me like the chair is with me in the room, but that a person is so with me that I sense them Sensing my distress. And when I sense them, sensing my distress, my distress is mitigated. My distress shifts, it does not mean that my pain goes away. But just like those students in James cones, fMRI scanners, my overall experience of my suffering is formed differently, it is shaped differently, because of my awareness of someone else's awareness of my pain. And this is a game changer for us. Because we are so trained, primed as humans in our culture, to live as these siloed individuals, in which I should be able to do whatever it is I need to be able to do to succeed in life by myself. And so when pain and suffering comes for me, even that is something I think I should be able to manage on my own, I somehow have to figure this out, without being aware that perhaps part of why I'm there in the first place, is because I've long been too disconnected from others in my life.

MICHAEL CUSICK: 16:32

Wow, that phrase, my awareness of someone else's awareness of my pain, that's, that's really big. And you address this in the book, and you certainly have addressed it in your last couple of books, plug for them, anatomy of the soul, the soul of shame, the soul desire, and this is a beautiful extension of your previous books. But there are life experiences that prevent us, sometimes from sensing that another person is sensing our pain.

Unknown: 17:05

Right. And I think part of part of the challenge is, you know, as we as you as also, as you're aware, the patient walks into your office. And the first thing they're going to do is try to outflank you, the first thing they're going to do is, you know, tell you why they're there and all the while then begin to try to avoid why they're there. And because the intimacy that they actually are looking for is also the thing that is most terrifying to them. And that is it's it's intimacy, that is often the place where our deepest suffering often lies. And it's not just or you might say, Well, gosh, my suffering is with my chronic myalgia my suffering is my rheumatoid arthritis, my suffering is with my with my child, who is a special needs child, who will be with me until they are 40. And I'm going to be cured, and I have my own. So this isn't going to stop. And which we say, right, and I'm not leaving the room. For as long as your pain is with you, I'm going to be with you. And, you know, this is the other thing that many of our patients come into our offices with, they, they don't just come in, because their suffering is so great that they want it to end quickly. They also need their suffering to end quickly, because there is a part of them that is sure that if this takes too long, at some point, you, Michael, my therapist are going to give up on me. They don't say this, they know that you never would write so forth. And so but there is a part of them, that has had lots of experience of people giving up on them. And this is why they come to our offices fully convinced that we needed to do this pretty quickly. Because if I don't do this, if I don't get better fast enough. At some point, my suffering is going to outlast Michael as well. And that just layers on one more element of the suffering that I have, which is this conviction that I'm this if this lasts for too long. You're not they're not going to tolerate me.

MICHAEL CUSICK: 19:13

Which is why it seems both in my clinical work and in my life, my personal life, that there is an ambivalence about relationship and being connected to others. On the one hand, I desperately want it but on the other hand, it seems too vulnerable. Right? You are you then this leads us into the discussion about the formation of hope. And in my mind, at least the link is that, that your book is not about the topic of suffering, and the theological idea of hope. But your book is really a book about relationship and connectedness to others in the midst of these places of pain. So for the person that thinks they're going to read this book, and somehow now I can get through my suffering without having to be vulnerable. This really is an invitation to relationship And it's in relationship that you write, that hope is actually formed in the very place where it's least likely to be experienced. Talk about hope. Yeah,

Unknown: 20:09

well is one of the one of the beautiful things I think about the what? Another way in which Interpersonal Neurobiology has been, at least helpful for me, I'll say is that it helps us learn how the human mind, actually, you know, the mechanics of how the mind works. And one of the things that we discover is that my concept of time, what the brain does around the notion of time, is that the brain anticipates a future, but only based on the memories that it is collecting of its recent past experience, I only anticipate my past is really what my future tends to be. So this is why we talk about remembering our future. But hope is a future state. I hope for something that's going to happen in five minutes, or five weeks or five years, I hope for these things. But that hope, of course, is only going to happen, if I'm having experiences right now that I can encode as being ones of effective living of flourishing, that when I encode them, they then become the hard deck out of which emerges my anticipated future. But what if my experience right now is one of suffering? What if I'm in pain right now? Well, the real question is, am I alone, without suffering? Am I alone with my pain, because if someone is with me in this, what I come to understand is that even though I am in pain, your presence mitigates this powerfully. It's not allowing me to be alone with this. And if this is the experience, I'm encoding, oh, I'm in pain, but I'm not alone, which gives me an experience of being at ease even in my distress. If I collect lots of those kinds of moments, what this means is that I as I think about my future, I can be hopeful, not just because my pain goes away, because maybe my pain is not going to go away. But I'm going to be hopeful, because I anticipate that I am not going to be isolated in my pain, I anticipate that someone is going to be with me. Now, of course, we Christians, talk about a day in which hope is not grounded in the complete elimination and absence of all distress or pain. That's what death is about. Death is about just stopping things. But hope for a Christian is this conviction that God is fully with us fully with us. And if he is able to be fully with me in the presence of my pain right now, in the presence of Michael in the presence of others who are with me in this pain, I then can begin to imagine. And embodied more, I can imagine a time in which someone will be with Me in which this pain doesn't exist, which only expands my hope for what the new heaven and earth can be like, not because my pain gets eliminated right now. But because the presence of others that are coming through that pain, make the relational love that I encounter, that much more intensified. And that becomes the thing that I'm going to hang on to this becomes the hope that does not put us to shame, the hope that does not disappoint us, as Paul writes, because God's love is being poured out to us through the Holy Spirit. And we have that in the embodied experience of the encounters that we have with the body of Jesus.

MICHAEL CUSICK: 23:57

So in some ways, when the classic question is asked, Where is God when it hurts, whereas God in suffering, that God is spiritually there in a very real way, but he's also there in the people that he brings into our path and into our lives that are in fact embody.

Unknown: 24:17

Exactly, and we would say and again, you know, just as a personal personal example, you know, the encounter that you and I had now back four years ago. Like I see where we were standing, I still feel it, I sense it. And I returned to that I returned to that moment, over and over and over again. And in so doing, it is easily available to me when I'm in other spaces where I'm not feeling completely like I'm in my best place. I have something that I can turn to to do this. And in this way These embodied experiences that we encounter with the people of God, become representations for God that enable us to actually imagine the presence of Jesus, because we've had real experiences with real people in real time and space.

MICHAEL CUSICK: 25:20

I love that. And this is one of the reasons why in the trauma work that we do, and in attachment work that we'll invite people to come up with maybe one or two or three scenes in their mind, or in the eyes of their heart that are safe places that are peaceful places where there's some kind of deep connection. And then as people do the work that can dysregulate them or bring back fear, they've got that place that they can go to within. And so you speak of hope, as a kind of muscle that we need to develop you. I like the phrase, you say that hope doesn't just plop out of the sky. And it's not given to us like that. It's a muscle of sorts that has to be developed to talk about that.

Unknown: 26:05

Well, again, this is this notion of formation, we say that hope is formed. And the beauty of this, I think, I find is that hope is something that about which we have agency, we, a lot of times when we think like I just I literally like hope that I'm able to hope, I hope that something magically is going to happen over which I know I don't have much control, but that I'm hoping will happen for me or to me. And what we're saying is that we can actually develop so that muscle enables us to access these moments repeatedly in our memory, that creates a foundation for hope that enables us to anticipate a future, we're hopeful find us. An example of this is when we're doing work in these confessional communities. And this happens in individual psychotherapy as well, where there's a moment of great of transformation, a moment where someone really feels felt a moment where somebody is being seen in a really powerful way. It would be easy for us to let them have that experience. And then we let just the course of the group setting carry on. And we move beyond that. But instead, what we will typically do is that we will pause the process. And we will invite them to wait and begin to tell us what just happened here. And who are the people in the room that were involved with what just happened? And what did they say? And what did they do? What were their words? What was it about them their facial expression, their tone of voice, so forth, and so on. And once they have described that, we will say to them between now and next week, we want you to go home and write the screenplay of what just happened here. We want you to write this out, we want you to repeat this, we want you to immerse yourself in the memory of this experience, in order for this to take up residence literally in the neural networks of your brain. And we want you then every day to revisit what's just happened here, this last five to seven minutes, we want you every day once a day to revisit this, to embed this. And in this way, they are literally forming hope for the future. By embedding this memory into their neural networks, that becomes something that they can recall something that they can appeal to, in other times when things are not actually feeling so wonderful.

MICHAEL CUSICK: 28:34

Which Which brings me right back to that old testament invitation to Hear O Israel, remember, remember, remember what who God is what God has done and to remember the people and write that that's not just some silly a massive act of imagination, but it's actually remembering the feeling in the experience of other people feeling them. That's not that witness. Can you talk a little bit more about the confessional communities? I know that that's really taken off as a part of your work and what you're doing as you oversee your ministry and your practice, but just for people that are listening, I want them to be able to learn about that.

Unknown: 29:16

Yeah, well, it's, it's kind of emerged and grown out of what we've done here in the practice, it is a combination of, you know, we would say that it is primarily something that we form for the purpose of formation. It's it's the primary mission of this, it's for spiritual formation. Now it is. It operates under kind of the the style of group psychotherapy dynamics. It operates with us doing a lot of a fair bit of psychoeducation on occasion with psych with interpersonal neurobiology, but always with an understanding that the Holy Spirit is in the room and is at work, always with the understanding that all the conversation that we're doing isn't To act of prayer, that what we are doing is gathering and we are expecting the Holy Spirit to go to work not as something magical, but as a function of what we are doing actively. And we pay a lot of attention to storytelling, we pay a lot of attention to the process that's happening in the room. We have a particular particular liturgy, in which people tell their stories as they begin this process. When people leave the groups, eventually we have a particular liturgy for people to say goodbye, because we don't say goodbye very well in our culture. And in this way, this becomes a crucible within which people can have an experience of transformation that is able to access not just one brain that have a therapist, but it's actually part of me able to take advantage of multiple people being in the room. And it really appeals to what I call, you know, the physics of relational Mass Effect. If I sit in a room where I'm experiencing empathy from my therapist, that's very, very helpful. If I'm experiencing empathy from sixth or seventh or other eight other people. That is a different ballgame for me and for my mind. And over time, when I develop relationships with people in this space, by whom I'm as deeply known as I am anywhere in my life, I come to discover that I begin literally, in my mind to take these people with me into the conversations that I have, in the boardroom, in the bedroom, in the kitchen, you know, on, you know, on the playground, everywhere that I'm going to go, in order for this to be where real life happens as much as anywhere, so that those other domains in my life can be equally transformed. We thought we you know, we have two ways that we do it, we have two, what we call time limited groups that run for a few months. And then we have ongoing confessional communities. The last, you know, there's many of which have lasted for several years.

MICHAEL CUSICK: 32:06

And I know a lot of the men that have been part of our intensive programs, including the weekends have started confessional community. So where would people go to get more information about that? Yeah, well,

Unknown: 32:18

there's two, there's two routes, there's two lanes. For what for what we're doing right now on for online training that you get, it's through our small nonprofit called the Center for being known. You can go there, thus cbk.org, where we are setting up online training for folks who are the lay public doing this for six months at a time. That's one way for people to do it. in person training in person intensives are actually taking place, we're conducting these in our practice, new story, behavioral health. And those are in person experiences two and a half day experiences that take place in Northern Virginia. And we've had people that have come from all over the country for those in the same way that you know, you've had folks come to your intensives as well, Michael, and you can go to New Story behavioral health. And when you get to the landing page, you'll see opportunities for applying for those as well. They're

MICHAEL CUSICK: 33:17

fantastic. Thanks for sharing that. So not just for people that want to do the work and participate. But people that as a result of that work want to actually do this, and facilitate that transformation for others. Right. Right. All right. Hey, let's come back to the book. Because the big question I have is, I love how you tied together. The Romans passage Romans five about the suffering producing perseverance, which produces character which produces hope, and just between you and me, since no one else is listing my favorite chapter in the book. My favorite chapter in the book was character. And I maybe it's just me, but like, every time I've read about character in the past, it's it's it always feels wooden, and legalistic and about rule following, but you talked about something very different. So talk about how those three are related?

Unknown: 34:10

Well, you know, I think I'll start at the end, which is, you know, when it comes, if we think about it, apart, apart from what we read about in the literature, that character, whether it's personality or the, you know, these traits about of who we are, that are tend to be fairly resilient tend to be fairly staid and ongoing. Apart from that, you know, when we think about a person's character, we think, Well, what are the what are the elements of who that person is? That are the elements that we can count on, we know that this person is a person, they are reliable, they are kind, they are patient, or they're easily irritable, or they're impatient, or they're, they're chronically late, or they're they have these character traits we these these things we say, and you know, people have D Character people that we would say, oh my gosh, that person is so patient. So kind of like all the fruit of the Spirit. You, as it turns out, the people who are people of deep character would be the first people to tell you that they don't think they are. They would be, you know, you said, like, oh my gosh, like, you're such a person of humility, or you're such a person of patience. And they're gonna say, like, Okay, I don't know where you're getting that. And the reason that they don't know where they're getting it is because they're so deeply aware of the parts of them that are impatient, that they're just working on it, they're working on it, working on it, working on it. Hence, people of great character, often are not ones who are necessarily aware of it, it's those around them that see this. And we see character and others that themselves, they often don't recognize, I don't see myself as a person of humility, or a person of patience. But the reason that I don't, is because those things that I'm working on are typically coming from places of suffering, places where I've had some painful part of my story that has really been troubling. And I have yet decided in the context of community on gonna go to work on that. It's like, you know, the golfer who like, who's, you know, who's short, or short iron game is just really bad. And they say, like, I've got a horrible short iron grain game. So I'm gonna go practice this, and I'm gonna go over and over and over and over and over with this. And this is what perseverance is about. And then character actually becomes a secondary byproduct of all this work that we are doing, to persevere, to allow Jesus to form us in the context of suffering. And in this way, the other thing that I would say that is true about this is that I don't become a person of character, we enable me to become a person of character, we enable you to become a person of character. None of this do I do on my own? These are things that are only happening because other people are willing to stick around and love me long enough, while I can make my mistakes, and keep persevering, hoping that you don't leave the room, which so far you've elected not to, for which I'm very grateful, Michael, speaking of which,

MICHAEL CUSICK: 37:24

I think you just described something for why have felt that a lot of the writing and conversation on character has been so wooden, is that it always implies that if I if I just get really clear and motivated about doing the right thing, then I really don't need people. And I'll just go be a person of character. And I'm thinking, I'm thinking that character really requires vulnerability. relationally. And that never occurred to me before, it always felt like an internal personal thing. No character is what you do when no one is watching kind of thing. Right?

Unknown: 37:58

Right. Right. And it means that is true. But we would kind of like return to a three year old, for instance. And we would say that when a three year old, we think a three year old woman when she goes off to preschool, that Oh, there she goes, she's just going off to preschool as if she's going on her own. And indeed she is. Right, she's doing the thing that she does when her parents aren't looking. But the reality is, she's taking her parents with her, she's able to do what she's able to do because her parents have been creating secure attachment within her. And she takes a deeply embedded memory of mom and dad deeply embedded memory of repairing ruptures, all kinds of things such that she can go with comfort and confidence, not because everything has been perfect, but in fact, because lots of things haven't been perfect. And yet they have done the kind of work that they need to do in community. And so in order for my character to eventually emerge, the way that it is, it necessarily is going to require my willingness to be in a community in which my worst parts are able to come into the room, so that I can address them so that others will be willing to address them with me.

MICHAEL CUSICK: 39:13

I'd love that. Kurt was we're wrapping up and need to need to you don't you don't have all day but you've been so generous with your time there was a there was a quote by Leslie newbiggin, who you quoted extensively in the book. And it was the glory of God is a reciprocal relationship that is freely given. And something inside of me leapt at that kind of the light coming on, but I'm not exactly sure what it means. It's one of those statements of I like that and it's true but so will you help me to understand that more?

Unknown: 39:46

Well, when you know I've been so mean Leslie new begins work has been so formative for me. And not least of which his being his commentary Around the Gospel of John. And he points out throughout, but begins in the very first chapter in that prologue, those first 18 verses, how when we beheld the glory of God, the glory of the Son of the Father. newbiggin points out that throughout God, John's gospel, without denying other elements of what glory, what we what we're referring to when we talk about God's glory, His grandeur, his beauty, His power, His Eminence, all of his transcendence, all of those things are all true. newbiggin is highlighting one element of glory. And that element has to do with this nature of God's utter, lavishing love of the Son. And the sons deep love for the Father, which is necessarily by definition, in acted like responded to by obedience. This is how he loves the Father, and how the Father loves him in delight. And then I think I talked a little bit about, you know, CS Lewis's sermon, the weight of glory, when he talks about this notion that, you know, if you if you think about a dog, for those of our listeners, who are dog owners, if you if you love your dog, and your dog loves you, you come home, and your dogs, your dog meet you at the door, and they're just a ball of joy, because you're home, and then you respond to your dog. And the moment you start to respond to your dog, your dog just can't take it, your dog is so delighted. Your dog is just out of its mind, with delight at your delight in him. And Lewis talks about how this glory of the dog, this glory that the dog shares have, is his awareness, that there's no greater glory even of the master than the Masters delight in the dog. And this is what newbiggin is pointing to. That glory for us is not just that we will share in God's grandeur and his power and all those things. But the primary resource of our knowing God's glory is that we are the object of his utter delight. And that when we like a dog are glorying in God's delight in us. It becomes the game changer for what happens when we suffer. Because if this is how we are immersing ourselves on a regular basis, if we are taking in on a regular basis, this awareness of God's delight and doing so not just by immersion in the scriptures, and immersion in worship, immersion in prayer, but also immersion in a community in which we are being vulnerably open to others who are being vulnerably open with us. This sets the stage such that when suffering emerges as it invariably will. We are people who come to it already primed as people who are securely attached, people who are working on making peace with God who is not at war with us. And people who are immersed in the awareness that God's glory is in part about his delight with us. Such that it enables me in the context of vulnerable community to continue to persevere, develop character, and hope.

MICHAEL CUSICK: 43:34

Courage, thank you for consistently being a heart and a mind and a person and a brother, who takes very, very old truths that go back millennia and go back to the teachings of Jesus and speak about them in new and lifegiving ways. This book is going to help so many people for decades and decades and decades. And I think that this book, The deepest place, suffering in the formation of hope, is going to be around in 100 years. So thank you, that's very common. Well,

Unknown: 44:09

you're You're most welcome. And dude, it is. don't deserve my life. I've said this to you. And you're no small part of why that's true. And so I'm just I'm just really grateful for this. And for our time together today. I'm just so grateful. Thank you.

Brian Beatty: 44:27

So we've wrapped up another episode of restoring the soul. We want you to know that restoring the soul is so much more than a podcast. In fact, the heart of what we have done for nearly 20 years is intensive counseling. When you can't wait months or years to get out of the rut you're in our intensive counseling programs in Colorado, allow you to experience deep change in half day blocks over two weeks. To learn more visit restoring the soul.com That's restoring the soul.com