Are We All Addicts? The Hidden Attachments Shaping Our Lives

• The Typology Podcast with Ian Morgan Cron 

• IanMorganCron.com 

• The Fix by Ian Morgan Cron 

• The Road Back to You by Ian Morgan Cron 

• The Grace of Letting Go, audio from Ian Morgan Cron’s 2025 retreat at Laity Lodge 

• The Big Book from Alcoholics Anonymous 

• Carl Jung and 12 Steps origins 

• Chasing Francis: A Pilgrim’s Tale by Ian Morgan Cron 

• “I do not understand what I do…” Romans 7:15-20 

• Robert “Bob” Goff 

• Enneagram types 

• Introducing the Enneagram with Richard Rohr 

00:00:00:00 – 00:00:21:08
Ian Morgan Cron
So addiction arises when the unquenchable human desire for union with God misdirected and pathologically attaches to a person, a substance or a behavior.

00:00:21:10 – 00:02:11:04
Marcus Goodyear
Lately, I’ve been nostalgic for 2007, before smartphones, before universal Wi-Fi. Back then, community was bigger than just a group chat and messier. I miss the mess of people talking over each other. These days, I find it harder and harder to be present. I can be sitting in one room while mentally traveling across headlines and boxes and group texts.

I can be near people I love and still not be fully with them. Honestly, my relationship with technology feels a little bit like an addiction. I just, I like the feeling that I can know everything. Checking headlines from around the world before I’ve had my coffee. I like the feeling that I can be everywhere at once. Texting my son in California and my daughter six hours away, and my friends in Germany and Norway.

When my phone buzzes with an email or a comment or a text, I feel needed and I can fuze that feeling with purpose. I imagine myself connecting to the wider world while actually missing the world that’s right in front of me. Okay, maybe I’m not addicted to the technology itself so much as that feeling. It gives me this illusion of power and importance of being indispensable.

According to our guest today, we are all addicts. Addiction, he says, is what we humans do with our pain from the H. E. Butt Foundation. This is The Echoes Podcast. I’m here with my co-host Camille Hall-Ortega. Our guest today is Ian Morgan Cron. He is an Episcopal priest, a Wall Street Journal bestselling author, a psychotherapist, and an Enneagram teacher.

We’re excited to talk with him today about his new book, The Fix. Whether you struggle with an addiction or know someone who struggles. This is a conversation you don’t want to miss. And we do want to note that this conversation is like kind of PG 13. So just be aware of that. Ian, welcome.

00:02:11:06 – 00:02:14:04
Ian Morgan Cron
Thank you. It’s a delight to be here. Thanks for having me.

00:02:14:06 – 00:02:18:13
Camille Hall-Ortega
Yes. We’re so excited to have you. I’ve got lots of questions for sure.

00:02:18:14 – 00:02:29:09
Marcus Goodyear
Yes, yes, I want I want to start with the one from the from the intro. In your new book, you say that we are all addicts. I mean, are you serious? What does that mean?

00:02:29:11 – 00:02:33:16
Ian Morgan Cron
I love that. Are you serious? Are you serious, Clark?

00:02:33:18 – 00:02:40:12
Marcus Goodyear
Yeah, but. But really, like, I don’t know. On the one hand, I know what you mean, but on the other hand, like.

00:02:40:14 – 00:05:34:12
Ian Morgan Cron
We’re not all addicts, are we? Yeah. So let’s just talk about let’s just define addiction, because I think that may be where the rub is here. Right. So addiction arises when the unquenchable human desire for union with God misdirect and pathologically attaches to a person a substance or a behavior. Right now, I don’t know anybody who can’t cop to that, right?

Like like, even the earliest church mothers and fathers in the desert. Right. Like third and fourth century, they spoke about addictions at great length. They only called them attachments. They were the, you know, the clinically we came up with the word later addiction, but they spoke about attachments and you knew that you were in the grips of an attachment when you would use a person or a substance or a behavior in excess of your need for it for purposes other than that for which they were intended.

And as an ends rather than a means to a legitimate end. And look we have to kind of just be careful here because look it’s I’m not giving you the diagnostic and statistical manual definition of, of an addict. Right. And we’re talking in more sort of human theological kind of categories. Right. What people don’t realize about Alcoholics Anonymous is that it’s secret or sort of it’s anonymous co-founder was the great Swiss psychiatrist.

Carl Jung. And Carl Jung had this incredible correspondence with Bill W, the founder of AA. And in one of the most amazing letters, he says, he basically describes all addicts and alcoholics as frustrated mystics. Oh, wow. But listen, there are some listen. There’s different gradations of addiction, right? There’s mild addiction. There’s moderate addiction, there’s severe addiction. There are some addictions that are relatively benign, right?

There are others that are fatal if not treated quickly. Right. So I mean, this is a big topic. I just think for our purposes, we could just say that the human condition is such that we have these disordered loves to borrow an idea from Saint Augustine. Right. And when these loves are, in play, it diminishes us and it diminishes our capacity to love God and to love ourselves and to love others.

And therefore, we should all be regularly doing a little bit of an inventory of our spiritual life, looking for attachments and addictions that are, are, again, diminishing us.

00:05:34:14 – 00:06:00:06
Marcus Goodyear
Yeah, yeah, yeah. You said that an addict is a frustrated mystic, or that’s one way to think of it, which I love. In some ways, I think of your work on the Enneagram, which is how I first came to know you not know you personally, but know your work, as a kind of a mystic project. Do you think of your work on the road back to you as, mysticism?

00:06:00:07 – 00:07:06:04
Ian Morgan Cron
I’d never thought of it in those in that category. I would probably say that my life’s journey began as a Roman Catholic boy. I really came to faith in the Catholic Church as a young boy. Powerfully. Really. And I had a very good church experience, a terrible educational experience with the Catholics. I well, that’s not true. I did my graduate work in a Catholic seminary, so I had a great experience as a little kid, not so great, and then came to, you know, kind of a different kind of conversion in, you know, my young life years and, you know, as a kid, very positive, but but my heart has always been rooted liturgically and sort of located in, in and drawn toward a contemplative theology. So I would say if, if, if by mystic, you mean, appreciating those dimensions of God that are not knowable. Yes. Then the answer is yes.

00:07:06:06 – 00:07:28:10
Camille Hall-Ortega
So interesting. And I am very curious because we’re talking about, your previous book about the Enneagram, The Road Back to You. And I’m very curious what road led you to writing about the facts. How did these two things come together? Because we have lots of questions about how to think about these two things together.

00:07:28:12 – 00:08:20:06
Ian Morgan Cron
I’ll tell you an interesting story about sideways way into this, right? Like, yeah, here I am. I’m an Episcopal priest. I am a therapist. I’m a speaker. I’m an author. I’m a trained spiritual director. All these things. And I’m like, it’s so frustrating because I find myself, you know, kind of in this place of. I just admired everyone who had one thing on their business card I like.

I was like, what is wrong with you that you cannot figure out what you do vocationally? I remember driving by all those ranches, and I remember having the sudden realization that my life’s mission was to help people enter into a deeper conversation with the mystery of their own lives. Wow. Yeah, that was my life’s calling.

00:08:20:06 – 00:08:21:13
Camille Hall-Ortega
That’s awesome.

00:08:21:15 – 00:09:05:23
Ian Morgan Cron
So when you look at my books, that’s kind of what they are, right? Like, I just tend to gravitate toward topics that help me help others enter into a deeper conversation with the mystery of God and their own lives. Right? Like just trying to figure this out. So books like the Enneagram, books about the 12 steps, memoirs, books about Saint Francis, you know, it’s like then that was a big sandbox in which I can play around and go looking for juicy things that I’m like, oh, this changed me.

I wonder if some other people would like to hear about it, you know? And that’s how books get born. For me. It drives publishers crazy because they would love me to write only Enneagram books forever and ever. Amen.

00:09:06:03 – 00:09:08:03
Camille Hall-Ortega
Sure. I’m sure, I’m sure.

00:09:08:05 – 00:09:30:08
Ian Morgan Cron
And I’m like, yeah, sorry. Yeah, yeah. I’m always like, sorry. That’s not what this tiger does. It’s just that I’m like, oh, wow. The 12 steps have had such a meaningful impact on my life. How can I present them to others who could equally, who could derive equal benefit, though they themselves may not consider themselves addicts or alcoholics in the traditional sense of the word?

00:09:30:10 – 00:09:31:01
Camille Hall-Ortega
Yeah, yeah.

00:09:31:05 – 00:09:35:18
Marcus Goodyear
Can you can you talk about the impact 12 steps have had on your life?

00:09:35:20 – 00:10:29:06
Ian Morgan Cron
Sure. Yeah. So I first went into recovery for a drinking problem in 1987. That’s a long time ago. I was a young guy. You know, I would never say that I was. I mean, I was, you know, probably, an alcoholic in college. I mean, you know, I mean, if I were to be quite frank, I went to 12 step groups for about 4 or 5 years.

At that time. And then I just, I sort of, for reasons I understand, kind of phased out and stopped working a program of what we would call active recovery. Right? Yeah, yeah. Then a bunch of years go by, I get and I, I don’t have any problem with alcohol or any mood altering substances. Multiple decades.

00:10:29:08 – 00:10:30:02
Camille Hall-Ortega
Wow.

00:10:30:04 – 00:10:53:14
Ian Morgan Cron
And then prescribed some medication. And it’s a long story. It’s in the book. That eventually became, a crisis for me. Initially, I wasn’t thinking to myself when I started those medications. Oh, guess what? This is a relapse or this is you, you know, you know, because it wasn’t drinking.

00:10:53:16 – 00:10:54:00
Camille Hall-Ortega
Yeah.

00:10:54:02 – 00:11:34:12
Ian Morgan Cron
Right. And but it was by the time I figured out. Oh, crap. I got a problem. It was too late. Like. Like I was already too far down the wormhole. So I returned to the 12 steps as a way of life and then began to realize, oh, my gosh, that the theological just beauty of these steps and the depth of them is so great.

And you don’t have to be an alcoholic or an addict to derive the same benefit from them that addicts and alcoholics do get from, you know what I mean? Like, it’s like, this is just a design for living that anybody could do, and they would derive remarkable benefits for their lives.

00:11:34:17 – 00:12:06:07
Marcus Goodyear
So we’re talking about this broad definition of addiction, this broad definition of attachment. I love I love conflating those two ideas or bringing them together. And yet we’re in a country where traditional addictions and substance abuse seems rampant. Alcoholism seems rampant right now. Although I guess alcohol is on the decline because cannabis and some other drugs are becoming more available.

Can you speak to the rate of substance abuse in our country right now?

00:12:06:09 – 00:14:20:05
Ian Morgan Cron
This we we have a catastrophic addiction problem in this country. And it’s not just with alcohol and drugs though. Those are enormous. How about gambling? Do you have you have any idea of how big the gambling problem is getting in our country? I get a call all the time from parents who I just recently got a call from a parent.

I got two 14 year old kids who now have a gaming addiction. They had twin twin sons. They have. Right? Like they’re gaming all night, right? They’re missing school. They can’t or technical, gambling. I mean, there’s there are. So there’s kind of a how do I want to say this? The possibilities for addiction are legion, right?

It’s just it’s it’s it’s legion. So when the human hearts desire for God begin, misdirect, and attaches itself compulsively to a person, a behavior, a substance, then an addiction is off to the races. Okay? And I run into pastors, good people of faith, struggling with addiction. And when I do, you know, some of you know, I’ll get a call.

Someone says, can I talk? And then I always know it’s going to be about porn. And then I’m like, okay, sure, we can have coffee. You’re the 350,000th person who’s wanted to talk to me about this. Yeah. And, and they’ll they’ll pour their hearts out and I’ll be like, And I’ll be like, is that all you got?

Then they’ll be like yeah that’s it. I’m like, well welcome to doing dumb human stuff. You just doing dumb human stuff. It so part of what the goal of the book was, was to also to get it out of this kind of a Texans thing. It’s like, no, this is just dumb human stuff. And there’s a way out of this dumb of if you just you steps are a great way out.

And listen like this should be clear about something you know, someone comes to me and they say I have a drinking problem, or my past so-and-so has a drinking problem. I’m like, no, they don’t. They have a drinking solution.

00:14:20:07 – 00:14:22:18
Camille Hall-Ortega
Wow. Oh, that’s good.

00:14:22:19 – 00:14:23:04
Ian Morgan Cron
They don’t.

00:14:23:08 – 00:14:24:04
Camille Hall-Ortega
That’s good.

00:14:24:06 – 00:15:50:09
Ian Morgan Cron
You don’t have a porn problem. You have a porn solution. And suddenly what awakens in people is a new kind of compassion and understanding. Yeah. Because in the mind of the addict this isn’t a problem. It’s a solution. It’s a solution to a problem. Very rarely do I meet guys that have porn problems. And Camille, to be honest I don’t work with women in that capacity.

But yeah, I did. I’m assuming the same would be true, that, honestly, I’m always like, this isn’t about sex. This isn’t this isn’t just isn’t it? This is about something much deeper in the human soul that you’re you’re trying to address a kind of interior distress. Often it’s just depression or anxiety or both, or loneliness or a sense of powerlessness or whatever it is.

And you’ve just you’re clever little mind just attached itself to a behavior that, in the short term, works in the short term. It worked. It made you feel better. The problem is it’s it’s always escalating. So it’s going to keep demanding more and more of you, until there’s no freedom left in you. And now you’re just a tyrannized kind of, an enslaved person.

Yeah. Oh, yeah. And that’s that’s what these things do.

00:15:50:11 – 00:16:30:17
Camille Hall-Ortega
Yeah, I, I, we talked about how you came to, you know, from this idea of Enneagram to, the 12 steps. And I’m also curious, as you’re talking about these things, the problem in the solution, how you see those two things work together. Do you see, people, when they’re doing their identity work and Enneagram work, do you see, connections between Enneagram types and, folks who are more prone to certain types of addiction or how do you see these two things come together?

00:16:30:18 – 00:17:32:12
Ian Morgan Cron
Yeah. Great question. Well, it’s interesting, right? Like, first of all, sometimes I hear people say, oh, I have an addictive personality. And I’m like, actually clinically speaking, I just don’t believe there’s any such thing as I see every different type of the Enneagram types in the rooms of AA in a oh, a whatever the thing is, right?

Yeah. Do some personalities have maybe a little bit more problem with impulse control? Maybe. You know, I guess you could argue that sevens and eights have a little bit, but I mean, a lot of ones, you’d be surprised in the rooms of recovery. And part of it is just trying to quiet the mind of the inner critic. You know, the voice of the inner critic and and, so but I see I can’t say I see any one type more than other types in the rooms of recovery.

I although, you know, it’s interesting when you, I do a workshop on the Enneagram and the 12 steps of recovery and, and, you know, you could say that, you know, okay, so what’s your Enneagram type?

00:17:32:14 – 00:17:35:09
Camille Hall-Ortega
It’s been a topic of discussion. I’m an eight, right?

00:17:35:13 – 00:18:06:14
Ian Morgan Cron
Okay. So I could argue that the your passion of lust, which is this need to powerfully engage with others in the environment, right? Immediately engage with others in the environment is a kind of, and, and your need to assert strength and control over others in the environment in order to mask your own vulnerability and weakness is itself a kind of addiction that is reflexive to you.

00:18:06:16 – 00:18:08:17
Camille Hall-Ortega
Yeah.

00:18:08:19 – 00:18:11:13
Ian Morgan Cron
Is that true? Or had you been successful?

00:18:11:13 – 00:18:13:16
Camille Hall-Ortega
Can I plead the fifth? No, I.

00:18:13:18 – 00:18:16:00
Ian Morgan Cron
Yeah, yeah, sure you can.

00:18:16:06 – 00:18:20:06
Camille Hall-Ortega
Feeling very vulnerable and yeah, I think that could be true.

00:18:20:08 – 00:18:49:05
Ian Morgan Cron
And I could go through all nine types and talk about reflexive patterns of behavior that seem to have an addictive quality to them, because honestly, here’s how we could find out, you know, what you would experience if you just simply stopped that behavior. And if you began to exhibit patterns of withdrawal. This could then I would begin to go “Isn’t that interesting?” Yeah. Yeah.

00:18:49:06 – 00:18:51:20
Camille Hall-Ortega
Just thinking about it gave me a little anxiety.

00:18:51:20 – 00:19:54:13
Marcus Goodyear
I want to take a moment to affirm Camille. I think she is absolutely an eight and she’s been helping me understand her, her passion and curiosity in a way that, because I, I’m A78. And so I was telling her just before this call that my, my desire to be an adventurer is kind of in partnership with this desire to be immediately engaged with my environment.

And I actually am jealous of her ability to come in with the strength and clarity that she shows and that jealousy sometimes creates in me. Something that I need to correct and remind myself that no, no, no, she’s just being passionate. She’s just being curious. And I need to let that happen because it’s so important for her and she’s so good at it.

And, Marcus so I yeah. So thinking about the Enneagram and these personality types, I know if that’s the right phrase, it’s a it’s really helpful for showing empathy and and being grateful for a person’s truth.

00:19:54:15 – 00:19:57:04
Ian Morgan Cron
Yeah absolutely I agree.

00:19:57:06 – 00:20:20:01
Camille Hall-Ortega
Can you tell us more about that Ian. Because we of course there’s we’ve seen you know your books and also the resources that you have in your work with, with folks for their enneagram types. Can you talk to us about how the Enneagram can be helpful in interpersonal relationships and not just self work, but also in how we interact with others?

00:20:20:03 – 00:22:50:15
Ian Morgan Cron
Yeah. I mean, I think most people come to the Enneagram very curious about other people, not themselves. Right. I mean that’s good for a little bit more like, okay, I got this crazy mom, I got to figure out my crazy mom. And then the process, you know, or the, you know, sometimes they come in wanting to understand themselves because, listen, the I always tell people like, the greatest mystery, you got to face every day is you.

Yeah. You don’t understand yourself. And Paul talks about this in Romans, right? I don’t understand why I do the things I don’t want to do and don’t do the things I want to do. I mean, it’s like you’re a big mystery to you, and you’re a big mystery to you. Imagine what you are to everybody else. I mean, you’re confounding.

We are right. And so I think what’s so beautiful about the Enneagram is, is it. It is not perfect. It is not the gospel. Right. It’s an interesting tool that is sufficiently true. In other words, like it’s not it doesn’t give you an MRI of the personality. Doesn’t show up on an MRI, right. Yeah. So we are talking about approximations of what’s going on inside.

Right. So it gives you a low definition picture of what is happening inside nine different kinds of people. Right. Who we see in the population enough that we should be curious about them. Right. Yeah. And if you hold it that way, kind of hold it lightly and realize that even if it gave you 10% more clarity about you and others in your life, that is actually 10% more clarity is a gigantic step forward in terms of, progress and and insight.

Like that’s huge. I think it can do that. I don’t think it’s, you know, I’m always the one who’s talking people off the Enneagram. Everyone thinks I’m going to be the one who’s like, you know, banging the drum. The Enneagram is everything. And I’m actually the guy who’s always telling people it’s interesting, it’s helpful. Let’s not get too crazy with it.

Just use it for what it is. Don’t take it to the. Yeah, like out to some wild place of, you know, sometimes I hear people talking. I’m rich. Aurora and I had a conversation about this once, and Richard was like, he was he had gone to some big major conference and he hadn’t been at one in decades. And he said, I came back and I realized this is like their religion.

00:22:50:17 – 00:22:51:21
Camille Hall-Ortega
Yes.

00:22:51:23 – 00:23:02:13
Ian Morgan Cron
And he said, it’s not a good religion. And I went, you’re absolutely right. It is not a good religion. It’s an interesting spiritual tool. But don’t make it your religion because it’ll be really disappointing eventually.

00:23:02:15 – 00:23:16:22
Camille Hall-Ortega
Yeah, it’s that rigidity of, I identifying with this very strict categorization that you go, you see, you can see that it can be weaponized, that it can be.

00:23:16:22 – 00:23:17:20
Ian Morgan Cron
Oh yeah.

00:23:17:22 – 00:23:20:11
Camille Hall-Ortega
Yeah. Oh, all of those things I’m sure you’ve seen.

00:23:20:11 – 00:23:57:04
Ian Morgan Cron
Yeah. Oh, yeah. Because, you ought to see the look on people’s faces when I tell them that they aren’t. They’re personality. Like, they look at me like, yeah, I’m like, did you actually think you were your personality like that? That’s who you are. And I’m like, actually, what what the Enneagram reveals is that’s not who you are.

That in fact, well, at least from from a Christian interpretation of it, we would say that who you are is hidden in Christ, that there is this essential self behind the personality that gets forgotten because you’ve been so over identified with who you are. As these patterns of thinking, feeling and behaving.

00:23:57:06 – 00:24:42:20
Marcus Goodyear
At Laity Lodge, we we have lots and lots of speakers. Laity Lodge is the adult retreat center that is sponsored by the H. E. Butt Foundation. And in the 90s, Phyllis Tickle came out for what I believe was essentially an AA retreat. And this was in, I’m sorry, this wasn’t in the 90s. This was in 2005. In fact, she came out the weekend I joined the foundation.

How interesting is that? Oh, wow. And and she’s talking about the the connection between the AA program, the 12 step program and the, the institutional church. And so I’d like to just play a quick clip of her speaking in 2005 about 21st century Christianity in America and the origins of AA.

00:24:42:22 – 00:25:40:06
Phyllis Tickle Audio
What Wilson does when he comes along is he says, you know, those of us who are hurting, those of us who are now urbanize, those of us who have fallen on hard times with alcohol can help each other better than the church, can help us. It’s a significant thing. Those who are hurt are better healers of each other than are those who refuse to be hurt.

And Protestant clergy, then, as now to a large extent, was very reluctant to say, I’m hooked on heroin or any of those other things, very reluctant because they had to be somehow better than the rest of us. Bill comes along and he says we can help each other. Second thing he says is we can help each other in small groups, because if they get too big to be intimate, it isn’t going to help.

The small group movement begins. There.

00:25:40:08 – 00:25:42:03
Marcus Goodyear
What do you think?

00:25:42:05 – 00:28:05:08
Ian Morgan Cron
Well, the first thing I think is Phyllis was a friend of mine and she was an early champion of my work. And, so just hearing her voice got me a little teary eyed because it’s been so long since I’ve heard her speak. Been so good to hear that, boys. I mean, listen, she’s on to something, right?

Like. All right. It’s crazy. I go to 3 or 4 meetings a week. I went to a meeting just a couple hours ago in a church basement. I regularly see miracles of mind blowing. Just mind blowing stuff. Okay. There was a guy there. Maybe a guy in my meeting today. He’s 20 years old. Two years ago, when he came in, he was living in the back of his car.

I mean, he was so far gone. He’s living in the back of his car now. He’s married, he owns a home, he has a job, and he’s inherited a couple little kids from his wife’s first marriage. And he goes to he’s been part of a church that he sort of returned to a church tradition, and he’s been sober for two years now, forever.

People were saying, this guy is hopeless. He will. He’s just going to die. That’s how it was. This was going to go. He’s a hero. And he was a heroin addict, an alcoholic. He has a powerful spiritual awakening as the result of working those steps. And now you would look at him and you say, if I showed you the before and after picture, you’d be like, how did that happen?

Yeah. But now that’s happening in church basements where lots of these 12 step groups meet all across the country. And I always laugh and I’m like, oh, I say to their pastors sometimes, do you have any idea of what’s going on in your basement? Do you have any idea of how Jesus and the Holy Spirit are showing up in your basement and radically altering people’s lives in a way that makes the book of acts look real?

Yeah, like like people’s lives are being saved downstairs and they’re like, I don’t know, we just rent it and I’m like, you really need to figure out what’s going on down there. Like, because if you could bring what’s going on down there upstairs, you you’d have to buy a much bigger building. Yeah. Like like if you could bring that level of human transformation upstairs.

Well, and I tell them it’s possible, but you know.

00:28:05:10 – 00:29:05:00
Camille Hall-Ortega
I was so good I when I hear that clip and she first begins talking and she’s saying things that are really weighty, and she says something akin to hurt people help heal. Yes. A little better. Yeah. And and that is, that is, something that many people would go, whoa, you know, kind of raise their eyebrows out because we hear a lot hurt people.

Hurt people. Right. And so this idea of hurt people being better healers, of hurt people, it’s to me, really getting at the the idea of empathy and how even though, it’s a harder lesson when we have to learn it for ourselves right before we can help other people really get at what’s going on there. There’s something to be said about fully understanding someone else’s junk, because it’s been yours, too.

00:29:05:00 – 00:29:27:02
Ian Morgan Cron
Yeah, yeah, but look, this is just this is just the spiritual calculus, right? Of of of the gospel. Someone asked me recently, why can’t the church be more like a great question? You know, because that’s what everyone wants to know. Like, what if this is so great? Why can’t the church be more like, yeah, I was like, oh, it could be.

But it first have to admit that it’s an alcoholic.

00:29:27:04 – 00:29:28:20
Camille Hall-Ortega
Yeah.

00:29:28:22 – 00:29:32:13
Ian Morgan Cron
It’s first going to have to admit that it’s a mess, that it’s screwed up.

00:29:32:17 – 00:29:34:00
Camille Hall-Ortega
Yeah.

00:29:34:02 – 00:30:23:17
Ian Morgan Cron
Yeah. And really feel that at a very deep level. I’m not sure if it’s ready to do that. This whole idea of like. Yeah, of course it makes sense. We have a wounded Christ, but we should expect wounded people to help people. This should not be a big surprise. You know, there is some kind of that kind of thing that happens with the wounded, and we are wounded for each other.

I just I do think that we, we need to learn the power of, leaving out of the place of weakness versus power, like, like there is a power in leading with weakness. Yeah. And I’ve seen it in the rooms of recovery, and it works. That for sure works. She’s right.

00:30:23:18 – 00:30:50:10
Marcus Goodyear
When the normal story you hear in 12 steps is similar to the one you described. A guy is down and out. He’s living out of his truck. He’s hit rock bottom. And there’s something about hitting rock bottom that helps people be honest. What does it take for the church to hit rock bottom? What does it take for individuals who maybe haven’t hit rock bottom to acknowledge that they are addicts?

That they need the kind of help you’re describing?

00:30:50:12 – 00:31:35:04
Ian Morgan Cron
It’s a very tricky question. I mean, first of all, not everybody has to hit a bottom like the one I described, right? You don’t you don’t have to. Listen, I you can be a soccer mom who figures out, you know, oh, I’m codependent, and I need to go to meetings because my codependency with my mom or my children has gone off the walls, and it’s making my life unmanageable.

You don’t have to have, like, needles hanging out of your arms or sitting in jail. This is stereotypes people have about people with problems like this. You know, it’s ridiculous and unhelpful. I think, you know, Bob Goff once said to me, he goes, you know, we and everybody gets to pull their shoot at whatever altitude they choose.

00:31:35:06 – 00:31:37:07
Camille Hall-Ortega
Oh that’s good.

00:31:37:09 – 00:31:37:15
Marcus Goodyear
That’s.

00:31:37:15 – 00:31:37:22
Camille Hall-Ortega
Good.

00:31:38:00 – 00:31:39:21
Marcus Goodyear
I love snow. That’s right.

00:31:39:23 – 00:31:53:04
Ian Morgan Cron
And that’s the truth. You can you can choose to pull your chute at 10,000ft or at ten feet. Just recognize that the longer you wait, the more likely it’s more likely that you’re going to be experienced more damage.

00:31:53:06 – 00:32:16:16
Camille Hall-Ortega
It’s it’s really tough. And I love this idea that you spoke about if if the church kid could have and it’s, and it’s on the main floor what it has in the basement. Can you just as we’re nearing time, can you tell us if what hope looks like for something like that? How can we be hopeful about that future?

00:32:16:18 – 00:34:02:15
Ian Morgan Cron
Yeah, here’s what I think the church is great at and why I think it’s so important. The church has a story. The.

Does a remarkable job of clearly explaining why the world is the way it is. Okay, so we have a story. It’s a very compelling story. When told intelligently, it has practices that speak to the deep longings of the human heart. So, for example, you know, as I mentioned earlier, I’m a priest, so I actually became a priest because of the Eucharist.

I didn’t become a priest because I wanted to preach around churches. I became a priest because of this profound love for the liturgy in the Eucharist and wanting to be involved in that. And so for me, like, okay, so when you think about the Eucharistic, this is where we’re getting into the mystical stuff, okay. Like, all right.

So you think about the Garden of Eden, but what went wrong. Right. This is what went wrong. Grabbing, grasping, taking. Right. That this is Eve’s posture of grabbing. Right. Adam’s just right. And the solution to that problem is this. Yeah. This is what happens at the Eucharist, at the Eucharist, you put your hands out like this and you can only receive it.

You can’t take communion. Really? You have to receive communion. Yeah. That is the antidote to this. Yeah. This is also a brilliant visual illustration of what an addiction is.

00:34:02:17 – 00:34:03:23
Camille Hall-Ortega
Right? Taking, grabbing.

00:34:04:00 – 00:35:08:08
Ian Morgan Cron
Taking versus receiving. So I’m like all on board with church. When it’s healthy. I completely love it. I’m in thousand percent. Yeah. Now there are a lot of contemporary distortions of church. I’m not a very big I’ll be honest with you. I’m not a big lights, camera, smoke machine kind of guy. I, you know, I don’t think I honestly don’t think you should carry Starbucks into church.

You can do that when you go to Starbucks. People should have an experience of an alternative world. When they go into a church, they shouldn’t have the same kind of experience they get when they go into a restaurant with, you know what I’m saying? Like it’s like, oh my gosh, we’re missing the point here. Like, you should make a church should feel strange to people.

It shouldn’t feel. Yes, normal, uncomfortable. They should go in and going, what the hell are these people doing in here? This is really odd. Like because we’re talking about another kingdom, another a kingdom, not of this world. So you should go in it and be a little disorientated. Actually. You party, you should be like, but also drawn because something inside of you is.

00:35:08:10 – 00:35:10:07
Camille Hall-Ortega
Is stirred.

00:35:10:09 – 00:35:22:03
Ian Morgan Cron
Is stirred in. Yeah. Almost has a profound sense that as strange as this thing is, it sure smells true.

00:35:22:05 – 00:35:49:00
Camille Hall-Ortega
It’s really good, but it kind of returns us back to where we started. Like you said, this, this God shaped hole, how we are finding our ways to understanding that if you’re a person of faith, filling that with Jesus as opposed to things or people or whatever, all the addictions we’ve talked about, that that opportunity exists in a way that’s so freeing.

00:35:49:00 – 00:35:56:07
Camille Hall-Ortega
So that that’s just beautiful work, Ian, as we’re wrapping up here, because I know we’re over time working folks, connect with you.

00:35:56:09 – 00:36:23:00
Ian Morgan Cron
Yeah. Thank you. They can just go to my website, Ian Morgan Chronicle. All my socials are at Ian Morgan Chron. Lots of stuff for them to learn there about various and sundry things that I do, but super fun conversation. We went up and directions that you know, who knew? Yes. And that’s always fun. So hopefully I didn’t say anything, you know, so provocative that, people will be storming you with Ian.

But if they do, let me if they do, feel free to let me know.

00:36:23:05 – 00:36:23:16
Marcus Goodyear
Right. Yeah.

00:36:23:16 – 00:36:24:14
Camille Hall-Ortega
Forward to you.

00:36:24:18 – 00:36:46:17
Marcus Goodyear
We hope they do. We hope they do. And, just, so your new book, The Fix. Yes. I would actually really recommend this book for people. It’s a great introduction to the 12 steps if you don’t know it, if you’re working the 12 steps, there’s lots of books out there. And, Ian, you’re a very good writer.

So I would encourage people who are working the steps also to get this book.

00:36:46:19 – 00:36:47:12
Ian Morgan Cron
Thanks.

00:36:47:13 – 00:36:50:20
Camille Hall-Ortega
Thank you so much, Ian. We’re so grateful. We appreciate you.

00:36:50:22 – 00:37:09:23
Marcus Goodyear
The Echoes Podcast is written and produced by Camille Hall-Ortega, Rob Stennett and me, Marcus Goodyear. It’s edited by Rob Stennett and Kim Stone. Our executive producers are Patton Dodd and David Rogers. Our original music is by Johnny Rogers. Special thanks to our guest today, Ian Morgan Cron, subscribe to Echoes magazine.

00:37:10:01 – 00:37:13:09
Ian Morgan Cron
I absolutely do. All right, I love that.

00:37:13:09 – 00:37:36:05
Marcus Goodyear
And you can subscribe to by visiting us at echoesmagazine.org. You’ll receive a beautiful print magazine each quarter and it’s free. You can find a link in our show notes. If you’ve enjoyed this episode, follow us wherever you listen to podcasts and be sure to leave a review because it matters. The Echoes Podcast no, Because magazine are both productions brought to you by the H. E. Butt Foundation.

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