What We Can’t Stop Thinking About

• Dave Nienhaus — the difference between darkness and the deep, and what the church gets wrong about suffering  

• Sally Lloyd-Jones — what children have taught a beloved children’s book author about connection and art  

• Andy Crouch — technology as the sorcerer’s apprentice, and what we lose when we outsource our humanity  

• Lydia Dugdale — hope is not a feeling but a discipline, a daily choice to orient toward a future good  

• Ian Morgan-Cron — addiction, the Enneagram, and a Big Bend backpacking trip Marcus will never forget

We think of hope as this thing we put on something. We hope in a person, we hope in a device or an object. You brought up Lydia Dugdale and I loved the way she defined hope. She says that the things in the world cannot bear the weight of our hope.

Hi everyone. We are deep into the second season of the Echoes podcast. When we launched this show almost two years ago, we made a pretty deliberate choice that we wanted the conversations to speak for themselves. We would bring in the right guests, we would ask them real questions, and we hoped that something important would find its way to you. Which I think it has.

We’re nearly two seasons in here, we’re in our second season, and so it just feels like a good time to sort of pause for a minute. No guest today, it’s just me and you, Marcus. Which I know it’s no guest to hide behind, right?

I feel a little exposed, which is, I don’t know, that’s like the story of my life. It’s probably good for us, right?

I feel a little bit of the same, but I think it’s good. And so I thought we could just spend some time reflecting on what the show actually is. What we’re hoping for the people who are listening, what we hope for ourselves, what we’re getting out of it.

Yeah, and also I think to share some stories about how these podcast episodes don’t stay in the studio. We talk about them a lot in the Foundation. They help inform, they’ve become almost an internal comms tool for those of us who work in the Foundation. But more than that, we have been hearing back slowly from listeners. And it was really encouraging to hear these things that we record in the studio having a life of their own.

Yeah, absolutely. I have experienced some of the same where folks are, you know, it’s a conversation starter that we’re asking questions that people are really thinking about and want to converse with us about even, you know, off air. And I think, yeah, that’s a gift. And today really is about us kind of talking about that sort of thing of what is the Echoes podcast? What do we hope to accomplish? What particular conversations continue to draw us back in? Yeah, what sticks with us and sharing that back with you.

And so Camille, I’m going to turn this on you.

Oh, why? Why do you do this?

That is a good question. I know that, you know, going into this whole venture, there was a lot of uncertainty. I had not co-hosted a podcast before. But I think, yeah, but what I, what drew me was this idea that these guests that we invite, these conversations that we’re having, they’re worthwhile. They are sometimes tough. A lot of times really fun. They can be lighthearted. We can laugh together. But there are these questions that sort of get at the core of who we are as people and who we are together as community. What does it look like to go through hard times and lean on others, whether they’re light or heavy or tough or perfectly reflective of who we are as people? They are questions and conversations that can stick with us because they matter.

Yeah. I mean, the mission of the H.E. Butt Foundation to tell stories of wholeness, to help people find transformation that they can take back to their communities. I mean, for me, that’s a lot of what motivates these conversations. How can we highlight people who are doing that work, who’ve experienced some kind of transformation that they’re spreading, they’re becoming agents of wholeness? And I never get tired of talking with incredibly smart, incredibly thoughtful people and learning from them and just being somebody who gets to ask questions of folks like Andy Crouch and Dave Nienhaus and Lydia Dugdale and Sally Lloyd-Jones. And then last season, John Guerra with his confetti canon story of Easter gone haywire for him.

But to go to your question, I think the one this season so far that really, really stuck with me most was Dave Nienhaus, which is the episode titled What the Church Gets Wrong About Suffering. And in that book and in the podcast, he explains this a little bit, that so many Christians are used to the idea of the dark night of the soul and darkness as God’s absence and something to be aware of and to work through like St. John of the Cross and the dark night of the soul. And he said, but in the Bible, there are two things. There’s the deep and the darkness. The darkness is over the surface of the deep. And he explains that for him in his reflection of the scripture, he has found that the deep stands for chaos and uncontrollability. It’s the waters that are crashing about us. And he says, when God withdraws and leaves us in the darkness, that is an opportunity to grow. God is trusting us to grow. But when we’re in the deep, when we’re in the chaos and the uncontrollability of the world, that’s just part of being alive. You haven’t done anything wrong. And it’s not great, but you can find God in there.

I love what you said, Marcus, especially because our time with Dave was one of my favorite times as well, because so much of what he shared stuck with me. I think probably what I would highlight there for me is that mental health and mental health struggles can be such a taboo topic, especially in our society, but especially in the church. And so what I loved about Dave is that he is leaning so hard into the fact that when we share our vulnerabilities and resist and struggle against these ideas of taboo topics in the church, we encourage others to do the same. I love that he can just get across those ideas so eloquently.

I also, when I’m thinking about episodes that stuck with me, yeah, for me too, Sally Lloyd-Jones is such a gift. She is just, her mind is a marvel, in my opinion. Her mind is a marvel. And so that time was just so sweet with Sally. And I enjoyed that she was able to talk about, not just because as a children’s book writer, you would think that she would have a lot to say about what her books are teaching kids, but we had so much of our time with her, was her talking about what kids have taught her. And I think that was so sweet to see that it’s because she is able to connect in those ways and learn and hear and listen to kids who are so often kind of tuned out, right? It was like, you’re just young or that kind of thing. No, she has this gift of connection with children that very clearly informs her beautiful art. And her spirit is just gorgeous. And so what a gift that conversation was to me.

I’m curious also, Marcus, if you saw any through lines in this season, if you saw any sort of themes come across the episodes that we shared.

Yeah, I mean, this feels a little strange. And I don’t know how much this through line is just because we kept bringing the questions to people. But there’s been so much talk in some of the episodes about AI. We’ve come back to that several times with people. For Andy Crouch, it was staying human in the age of AI. So that’s an episode specifically about it. But it came up with Lydia Dugdale. It comes up with several of them. And for me, the anchor that I look to now from the season so far on this topic is when Andy Crouch talked about a Goethe poem, which I did not know was a Goethe poem called The Sorcerer’s Apprentice. So it’s where it’s the origin of the Disney cartoon with Mickey dressed up as the sorcerer’s apprentice and all of the dancing brooms. And he says that AI and technology in general is our attempt to find magic, to find a cheat code for the world, he says. He says we want to be lazy. I don’t think he uses that term. But it’s like we want everything to be so efficient that we find ourselves going to the gym with a forklift, because we think the gym is about lifting weight. And it’s not. It’s about self-transformation. And so trying to be honest about what technology does, AI in particular, just because it’s so, I mean, even since we started this podcast, it’s grown so much.

Oh, gosh. Yeah. Yeah. It’s a little hard to keep up. And that came up over and over. Everybody else, I think, is also thinking about this.

Yeah, for sure. How about you? Was there a throughline that you found?

Yeah, I think the same for me would be not specifically AI, but perhaps loneliness and technology and how those two things can marry and create tension and sort of play. And yeah, certainly, Andy Crouch stuck with me, just thinking about the work of relationships and how God meant it to be and how we were created to be in relationship with one another and how technology can make that better and easier and more efficient and how it can also create crutches and can make us more disconnected when often it’s intended to help connection. And so, yeah, I think about how Andy talked about that. And I think about, I harken back to season one also, when we talk to Warren Kinghorn and several guests about how we’re lonelier than ever and what that looks like.

And for me, I think that throughline of loneliness and technology and sort of how those two come together can be seen throughout because we see things like mental health coming up and we see that come up. We see things like addiction come up with Ian Morgan-Cron and we talk about creativity with Sally Lloyd-Jones and we think about, again, how so many aspects of technology can be really helpful in all of those things, in relationships, in creativity, and then they can also become problematic, the dark side of all of those things where we can become addicted, where we don’t want to put our phones down long enough to have a conversation in real life. And I think reflecting on these things, being able to talk about these things in real time with real folks, especially with the amazing guests that we have been able to welcome, these experts that are researching these things or speaking about these things on a regular basis or living out these things on a regular basis is amazing, but it’s also just sort of food for thought for us and for our audience, for our listeners to go, am I picking up my phone too often? Am I disconnected from the people around me because of technology? Am I using technology as a crutch? Am I lonelier than I have ever been, even though I have the opportunity to be more connected than I’ve ever been? These are things that are hard to think about, that are difficult to reflect on, but just having these conversations during our podcast episodes and being able to spark conversation outside of the time that we’re recording our podcast is important and helpful to me for sure.

Yeah, the idea of our relationship to technology is something that’s almost always on my mind. This is something I was very aware of as we were raising our children. They’re both out of college now and I have had to put a lot of barriers in place for myself with my phone, especially, but also with my computer. I now often don’t take my computer home or I take it home turned off so that there’s that reboot process. If I need to, I can reboot it, but it’s not just flipping it open. Same thing with my phone. I have an app on my phone that blocks about 90% of what my phone does at six. I can turn it off, but it takes about three minutes to turn all of those blockers off. I do turn them off probably two, three times a week when I need to do something on my phone. I’m not rigid or weird about it, but I just find it helps me be present with my wife.

It helps me be present. We went to the Kerrville Folk Festival this weekend and I left my phone at home because I’m going to the Folk Festival. I don’t need a phone. I need to be present and listen to these incredible artists who have flown in from all over the country to play music on the guitar and with the violin and with the keyboard. A friend of mine texted me in the middle and wanted to connect at the Folk Festival and I didn’t get that text. I apologized to him the next day, but it’s absurd that we would feel that we need to be always available all the time instead of just being present.

I think that the key to not feeling lonely in part is to just be aware of the relationships in front of us. You’re talking about the complications of relationship and friendship. I think technology has caused me at times to believe the lie that relationships can be cleaner than they are. They’re just always messy.

It’s messy. They’re just always tense. Maybe because I’m in every relationship I’m in and I’m a naturally tense person as you know, but working through that mess and giving grace to the real people across the table from you, you just can’t replace that. If you try to, you’re being something other than human, I think. I don’t know.

Yeah. No, that’s right. Relationships are naturally messy. It’s making me think of one of our first episodes of the season, which was with Dr. Patton Dodd, our boss. Right. Go Patton. And I’m just thinking of how he was so vulnerable and honest in his book about his father and his family and his mother. And how, yeah, he paints a really tough picture of how relationships can be really hard.

And I think about Mark Roberts. I think about Mark Roberts talking about how relationships can change over time and how as we are getting older and we’re in this sort of last third of our lives, how things can be, can be, well, you’re not there yet. You’re not there yet, but how we can, how things are different that you’re in a different season of life. And I think a lot of that for me hits home for me personally, but also for me as a mom. I think about how am I to be raising my kids to value relationship, to value connection, to understand the benefits and the harms and the dangers of technology, to be thinking about how, what it looks like to fall into addiction, what it looks like to, yeah, to grieve well, thinking about Lydia Dugdale. So much, so much of what we learn, I don’t just think about me or my community and the people around us, but also I think about it from the vantage point as a mom. And what can I take from this conversation that could be helpful to me and my parenting?

Yeah, you brought up Lydia Dugdale and I loved the way she defined hope — that we think of hope as this thing we put on something, we hope in a person, we hope in a device or an object. And I mean a real person, like I put my hope in my parents or I put my hope in my children or my spouse. And she says that the things in the world cannot bear the weight of our hope. And instead she reframes hope as a habit, a discipline to orient ourselves toward a future good that is clear and possible that we can reach.

And I think that that is, that message has been really helpful for me to return to this year because it’s been a hard year, you know, we had these July 4th floods back in Kerrville and I have been in a community that is struggling to regain hope. And so to acknowledge that hope doesn’t always feel hopeful. Sometimes hope feels like a discipline and a choice. I am going to choose that the future will be good. Yeah. That’s been quite liberating because I have to choose it sometimes, a lot. Way more often than I would like to admit.

And I think technology sells us false hope. It sells us easy hope and it can’t be easy. It’s got to be this discipline. It’s got to be a decision that requires commitment.

Yeah. You’re bringing up Lydia, Dr. Lydia Dugdale, and I think of her and then I just think of all of our guests. And I think we have these heavy hitter guests and I’m wondering if you, like me, have felt nervous bringing on these really smart, amazing folks or intimidated because I know then I would be in good company. I’m curious.

Oh, absolutely. I mean, I think the most recent one, well, I was a little starstruck with Ian Morgan-Cron. My daughter and I took a trip to Big Bend where we bought his book, The Road Back to You, which was sort of a big Enneagram book and my daughter was 15 and she had just gotten her driver’s permit. So we’re driving to Big Bend and we hiked three nights in the back country of Big Bend, Camille, and you have to carry your water. Yeah. We were carrying 32 pounds of water into the mountains with us and Ian Morgan-Cron’s book and it was, seriously, it was life-changing for us. It was a core memory for my daughter. We saw bears. It was incredible. There was one point where I thought we were just going to die out here. That’s how, and people like, that was not a melodramatic thought. It is dangerous. And we were so remote. We didn’t see people at one point for 24 hours. We were entirely by ourselves in the wilderness. And so to bring that experience to the man who wrote the book that helped shape that experience for us was, it was intimidating and helpful. I mean, he, I actually, after that conversation with him, I went to an AA meeting that week to sort of rediscover 12 Steps firsthand. I was so inspired by the way he talked about it.

Yeah. Yeah. How about you? Who are you nervous about?

Oh gosh. Well, yeah, definitely Lydia, but I was very, very nervous for Alyssa Wilkinson. I was thinking, I was thinking this is—

The New York Times film critic.

The New York Times film critic. And I love movies, but I confessed to you and to our producer, Rob Stinnett beforehand. I was just thinking, I don’t know if she’s probably reviewing a lot of the movies that I see, because I like, you know, just like light, you know, kind of deal. And so I thought, I feel very, as to borrow a term you used, Marcus, I felt very exposed. But then actually it was just wonderful. Alyssa is so with it and very well-rounded. So I did not feel like she was silently judging my movie taste, but instead we had this wonderful conversation about how film and art really shape who we are and our histories and our futures and our communities. And she, as always, was just so insightful and it was wonderful. I really enjoyed it, even though I was very nervous for sure.

Yeah. Yeah. She was great.

What do you hope listeners are getting after these sessions, after they listen to a podcast? What do you want them to do?

Honestly, I hope that they experience something like what I experienced, which is, of course, we have plenty of background work that we do to prepare for these podcasts. But after these conversations, I walk away each and every time, which I don’t say that lightly, each and every time after each of the conversations, I walk away and I have a moment of reflection. I think there is something or often many somethings that was food for thought for me. And so I hope that our listeners hear an episode and gain some food for thought that they can reflect on personally, but then maybe with friends, maybe with family, maybe they, it sparks questions, good, healthy questions that they can ask people in their lives that they trust, people in their lives that they want to build trust with and that those questions can possibly lead to something more. Maybe not. Maybe it’s just the questions. Maybe it’s just the conversations. But I hope that the time is a spark.

For sure. Yeah. What about you?

Yeah. I mean, I hope they review us and give us five stars.

Yeah, that’d be great. I mean, I’m kidding. I’m sort of kidding. Yeah, they could also do that.

Yeah. Yeah. The thing that I have felt in these conversations is how close we all are to really deep conversations if we open ourselves to it. Now, I mean, in some ways, you know, we have the luxury of talking to these people from Duke University and all over who have pretty big bona fides. Yes. But coming prepared to a conversation requires just thoughtfulness and awareness. And I’ve been trying to bring more of that to all of my conversations with my friends in a way that doesn’t require anybody to be, you know, a Duke University professor. I keep picking on Duke here. It’s just, it’s so easy to say. It’s so fun.

So, you know, I think what you said that it would be a spark, but that it would be a spark for connection. And, you know, that could mean kind of the social media thing that you share an episode with somebody. But I think it’s more likely sharing the content with somebody. You know, I talked to my dad and we’re having a conversation. I say, well, that reminds me of this episode of Tim Shriver’s podcast from last year, or it reminds me of this episode from this other podcast I love recently from Curtis Chang’s podcast, The Good Faith. And I’ll just sort of share a little anecdote, not in a way that pressures him to go download and listen to it, but just brings it into the conversation and helps a little bit of God break through maybe.

Yeah. I really like that this time and this podcast connects so deeply to the mission of the H.E. Butt Foundation. And Marcus, you have shared with me before, and I’d love for you to just re-share here, how you see this space and how it connects to a space people have described as loving before, which is Laity Lodge, and how it’s sort of this open door, if you will.

Yeah. When I came to work in the Foundation in 2005, so 21 years ago, one of the first things I did was go to Laity Lodge and went to the Cody Center, which is their art studio and exhibit space. Laity Lodge is one of the programs of the H.E. Butt Foundation. And John Cobb’s egg tempera paintings were in the center inside this tabernacle thing. And they were so beautiful and so theologically rich. You can find this online if you look for John Cobb’s paintings. And then I went into the Great Hall and I heard from over the years just absolutely incredible speakers like N.T. Wright and Albert Borgmann and on and on and on. And those speakers and the content of those retreats shaped me into the person I am. They transformed my life.

And I feel this — burden doesn’t feel like quite the right word — but I feel this impulse to try to bring that vision to others as much as I can, not in a savior complex way, but just this: I just want to share it more. And we have six thousand hours of audio from Laity Lodge over the years. And we’ve always struggled with how can we bring what happens at the Lodge to a broader audience. We don’t want to manufacture anything. We just want to share some of that goodness.

And so much of what happens at the Lodge is really relational. It’s being able to hear wisdom from N.T. Wright and then have dinner with N.T. Wright because the retreat is so small. You can’t do that if you’re just turning N.T. Wright into a collection of audio talks that you download into your brain. And so hopefully by having these conversations with people, it’s as if we’re at the Lodge, at a table, having dinner, me, you, our speaker and our listener.

I love that, Marcus. I’m really glad that we took this time. We have maybe a couple more episodes to wrap season two, and then we look toward the future. Maybe season three. We hope you’ll listen. We hope that you will like and subscribe and download and write a review and send to your friends because that definitely helps us out. But really, we mean what we say when we say we hope it’s a spark for you. So I’m glad we got to take a moment, a pause together, Marcus, and just reflect on our time thus far.

Thanks for the combo. Yeah. Doing this work with you, Camille, has been one of the highlights of my professional life. I have loved this breakfast. It’s so much fun.

Yes. Back at you, and I mean it. Thanks.

All right. Thanks, everyone. Keep listening. Keep listening.