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BONUS (15b): Going Deeper With Pastor Jim Mueller
234 Plays4 years ago
In this bonus episode, Jill Devine sits down with Laura Fleetwood and Jim Mueller to ask the questions she had while listening to Episode 15.
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Transcript
Introduction to Jill Devine's Podcast
00:00:00
Speaker
The following podcast is a Jill Devine Media production. Christianity has become known for judgy people, strange words, ancient stories, confusing rules, and a members-only mindset. This is why I stayed away from the church for so long, but it's not supposed to be that way. I'm Jill Devine, a former radio personality with three tattoos, a love for a good tequila, and who's never read the entire Bible.
00:00:24
Speaker
Yet here I am hosting a podcast about faith. The Normal Goes Along Way podcast is your home for real conversations with real people using real language about how faith and real life intersect. Welcome to the conversation.
First Ash Wednesday Experience
00:00:40
Speaker
No stranger to the podcast. Jim, you were here for episode four. So you know how this works. I'm going to ask my questions based on the conversation you had with Laura. Like Laura said at the end of the last episode, Ash Wednesday was my first time practicing that. Yeah. And I'm going to start there because boy, was that an emotional day. Some of the kids at the school are walking by me like, what is wrong with her? Why is she crying?
00:01:07
Speaker
So I just want to explain this to you as how it all worked out. So we're sitting there. We're at chapel, which is for the school. It's in the morning of Ash Wednesday. So Laura is sitting in front of me and it comes time to get the ashes. And I just kind of like started crying and she looked at me and she said, what's wrong? I said, I don't know. I'm just really emotional by all of this.
00:01:32
Speaker
This is my first time getting ashes and then I'm going to get to see my oldest who's five get ashes for the first time and
00:01:40
Speaker
I don't know. And then I also said another aspect of this is after this, my husband and I are heading to our will and trust lawyer and signing all the stuff to finalize everything when we're gone. And that's a lot. So I'm waiting to get ashes and I get them and I'm
00:02:04
Speaker
crying and then I see my daughter get them and I start crying and then I go to the signing of everything and I'm crying and I get back to the office and I'm just like a hot mess, just a hot mess and then I look at everybody, I'm like, wait a minute.
00:02:23
Speaker
I'm going to service tonight. Do I keep these ashes on and go get reashed? They're like wipe them off. I said, oh, I can do that? They said yes, wipe them off and get ashes again. You'll be doubly blessed. Everybody would be jealous if you walked in and you already had your ashes.
00:02:41
Speaker
Or they'd be like, what are you doing? It was a very powerful moment for me. And then at that service, too, my sister came with me and that added a layer of emotional stuff. You said that mostly, is it Catholics and Presbyterians that usually are the ones known for Ash Wednesday and getting the sign of the cross on the head? Is that right?
00:03:05
Speaker
Yeah, Roman Catholics, Episcopalians, Lutherans, those tend to be ones, but I'm finding it more in communities that never had the practice are starting to adopt it.
00:03:15
Speaker
Well, because I never knew about it and I was talking to my dad and as we've talked before, he grew up Catholic. He goes, you get ashes? I said, I know, I didn't know I get ashes. I don't even understand. So that was confusing to me as well.
Physical Symbols in Faith
00:03:32
Speaker
So why are people now starting to adapt to it more? I think for a lot of my Christian friends out there who don't come from maybe a more traditional background,
00:03:44
Speaker
They love the freedom and spontaneity to their faith, but I think they've also realized that maybe some more physical symbols, some physical responses. Like you think about how we pray. I mean, you can drive your car and pray. You don't have to close your eyes, you don't have to fold your hands, but I know when I was a kid,
00:04:06
Speaker
I did. I was kind of taught or modeled to, hey, close your eyes. You fold your hands. If you can, you actually kneel. So for my bedtime prayers, I often knelt beside my bed. Well, why did I need to do that? I think that prayer posture helped maybe my focus. It was a lot more about me and my focus
00:04:27
Speaker
And the fact that when I'm in position, I know what I'm there for. Again, you can pray when you're driving your car, you can pray when you're on a run. That's all great. In the same way that in a lot of traditional churches, you might be baptized just one time, but a lot of times they would leave a baptismal font with water in the front of the church so when you came in, you would put your finger in it and you'd make the sign of the cross every Sunday.
00:04:55
Speaker
and they would do that to remind themselves of their baptism that they were washed clean by Jesus and that he's with them. So I think for a lot of Christians who didn't grow up with some of those traditions are realizing maybe some of these postures, maybe some of these physical signs, maybe there's some use to a lot of this.
00:05:12
Speaker
And I know a lot of my friends who are in Baptist churches have said to me, I really love that in your church, you commune often. And they'll ask me, I'm not really sure why my church communes so infrequently. And so I think what we're starting to see is more and more churches are like,
00:05:33
Speaker
saying maybe a lot of these older traditions would be really useful. The Bible doesn't necessarily prescribe how much or what. It never even talks about putting ash crosses on your forehead. But if it's a discipline that helps you focus, then that would be a good thing. What you had said at that service that night, you said, look at one another. Aren't we weird? Aren't we Christians weird? And it actually made me think of
00:06:02
Speaker
the person that, if we describe them as unchurched, were to come in and
00:06:09
Speaker
It's a really weird feeling because I personally like our church because there are some of those traditions. And again, like I said, this was my first time getting ashes, but I'm specifically talking about the Lord's Prayer, the Apostles Creed and communion. Those resemble safety to me, but I could see someone coming in going, what is this stuff? What is this? This is weird. This is uncomfortable. And,
00:06:37
Speaker
That made me think of Ash Wednesday too, but I think if you hear what it's about and you learn about it, that's what helps. And like, that's why this podcast is so important to me because I'm learning these things too. You don't have to feel weird to do these things. Well, as you said, we are weird. This is what we do, but it is a reminder.
00:06:59
Speaker
You know, I love that this podcast is called normal goes a long way, but yet there's some weird stuff. There's some weird stuff to believing that when you die and you're buried, you're not going to stay there. There's some weird stuff to believing that when you lay hands and pray over somebody, God can heal them miraculously. There's some weird stuff to it. And so embracing some of that weirdness, it's good. It's at the very least, it's a conversation starter for somebody who walks in and says, oh my gosh,
00:07:29
Speaker
What are you guys doing? At least it's a conversation starter.
00:07:33
Speaker
Okay, so then that is something that I probably would not have been prepared for if I was stopped on the street with the ashes on my forehead and somebody said, what is that? And I would probably say, Oh, it's Ash Wednesday. And then they would say, what is that? 30 second elevator pitch. Do you even have 30? Does it even need 30 seconds?
Significance of Ash Wednesday
00:07:52
Speaker
What would you say? It's an old tradition that the church does to remind all of us that we were made from dust and we're going to return to dust and we need a savior.
00:08:01
Speaker
Can you talk about the two things that we should have in our pocket? Yeah, this is a Jewish rabbi said this, so give me no credit. But I love it. I love it. And I like to think of it during the season of Lent. He said that everybody should have two pieces of paper, one in each pocket. One of them should say, I am dust. The other should say creation was made for me. And the trick to living well is to know which pocket to reach into.
00:08:31
Speaker
Because sometimes, sometimes, life's beat you down a little bit. And sometimes you think everything's against you. Or sometimes you're experiencing some real suffering. You need to reach into the pocket where God reminds you, I make creation for you. You are so important to me. I love you. Like all of this was meant for you. Like when it's apple season, make some cider and enjoy it. But then there's other times.
00:08:58
Speaker
where we messed up. There's other times where we're not treating people the way that we need to. There's other times where maybe we're letting so many distractions get in the way and you reach in the other pocket and you remind yourself, hey, I'm just dust. I'm dust.
00:09:18
Speaker
You know, the world doesn't revolve around me. I'm not the most important thing in the world. And I reach in there and I just remind myself how fragile life is. So again, we all need to be reminded of both. I am dust. This life is fragile. Your life is fragile. And like you said, it's emotional to go in and to work on your will. That's emotional.
00:09:42
Speaker
because you're planning for something you don't wanna happen. You're planning for your kids to be without you. You're the one that wants to protect them. You wanna take care of them. But you're planning as if you might not have the chance. And to all parents, we know we gotta do that. But that realization's hard. It's hard to think you're just dust. And yet, you can reach in the other pocket and remind yourself, creation was made for me.
00:10:08
Speaker
For anybody who's out there who doesn't realize how valuable you are, God sees it. And God wants to show you that it's there. And it's the job of pastors and other spiritual thinkers to remind you how valuable you are. Just make sure both pockets are ready to be listened to.
00:10:30
Speaker
on the subject still of ashes, one of the things with the little kids that you said to them, or all the kids actually, you said you have the option for us to put the ashes on your forehead, on your hand, or we can just give a blessing. Do you offer that for adults too? Yeah. You know, I don't remember on Ash Wednesday that night, if we said that to everybody, we actually usually do.
00:10:57
Speaker
I don't think you did, which then I was like, oh, is this just for the kids? Yeah. You know, I think for the kids, it is spooky. It is. Yep. Which is not bad because actually talking about death is kind of spooky. Funny enough, that night on Ash Wednesday, I remember only one thing that the crowd said, and it was a little girl. And I said, we are all going to die. And a little girl said, no, we're not.
00:11:23
Speaker
And I'm sure for her's perspective, I'm not dying right now. And I didn't want to make her scared that she's going to die right now. But yet, any parent knows, it's when you introduce your kids to the first funeral, we all wonder, what am I supposed to say? How do I say it? Because this can be really scary. Yet, it's important.
00:11:45
Speaker
It's important. So they understand also how precious life is. And then they can also ask the question, is this all there is? And of course, I believe no, there's far more going on. But it was just funny to have that call out from a little girl like, man, pastor's going nuts today. He thinks we're all going to die. Yeah, sweetheart, I'm sorry. We will. Mom's like, thanks. Yeah.
00:12:12
Speaker
but not today. Not today. By the way, everybody, if you don't know where ashes come from, I joked once on a service that our ashes were sponsored by a funeral home. A friend of mine in our church had a funeral home and it was a complete joke, of course. I mean, it's a terrible joke to make, but they laughed and I laughed. And then after church, I was out in the lobby and I was greeting people and a concerned lady came up to me and she said, pastor, isn't that illegal?
00:12:42
Speaker
I said, no, no, no, no. No, we actually take the palm branches from Palm Sunday, where Jesus entered into his, towards his cross and towards his tomb. We used previous years palm branches and we burned them to create those ashes. So when we're talking about where these ashes come from, it's all symbolic. It's all symbolic in the story of Jesus.
00:13:06
Speaker
What is sackcloth? Think about a potato sack. Okay. More or less, that's what it is. So you were instructed to cover yourself in something like that and ashes? In the Ninebites did. That's a old, old story, by the way. So that goes way back to the time of Jonah. I think several hundred years before Jesus was even around, but that tradition, you even find it in people groups today.
00:13:33
Speaker
where during times of mourning, there are some women when they become widows, they wear black for an entire year. They cover their faces, veil their faces, and kind of like a nun.
00:13:45
Speaker
They completely cover themselves in black. There's others that they literally put on coarse clothing, like sackcloth, like a potato sack, that sort of course check texture to physically feel and physically symbolize to everybody else what they feel on the inside.
00:14:05
Speaker
And I'm gonna tell everybody, there's something about that that actually is healthy. When you're really grieving, it's not healthy to keep it in. Any good therapist would tell you that. But there's something about the physicality of grieving, of having that big cry, or even draping yourself.
00:14:39
Speaker
draped themselves in it, but you could see it on their spirit that that grief was staying with them. And grief is super healthy because grieving allows you to express this is not how it should be, whether it's death, whether it's divorce, whether it's grieving the loss of a job and not knowing an unfortunate, when you grieve that, you're actually doing a very healthy exercise. You are,
00:14:45
Speaker
in a symbol of your grief that seems healthy.
00:15:06
Speaker
proclaiming this is not how the world should be. I want better for the world and I'm so thankful that God does as well. Okay.
Mardi Gras to Ash Wednesday Transition
00:15:14
Speaker
Yeah. And I seriously had no clue
00:15:19
Speaker
that Mardi Gras and Fat Tuesday, is this right to say they were part of religion? They were originally, for sure, 100% born out of religious communities. I am going to think that you're correct that on Bourbon Street or even in good old St. Louis, most of those people do not know. I had no clue. I just, I thought that was a whole separate thing and just a thing.
00:15:47
Speaker
No clue. Yeah. And hey, I like Mardi Gras. I've been to several Mardi Gras. I've done it in New Orleans and I've done it here in St. Louis. It's a lot of fun. But I don't know if people around me realize what I believe. So I think actually in the crowd of people, there's a lot of people catching beads who are going to turn around the next day and they're going to have their prayer beads out.
00:16:12
Speaker
or they're gonna have the ashes on their forehead. There's a lot of people in that crowd that have a lot of fun on Tuesday because they know what Wednesday is about. It's just, we don't always see it in the moment. Until this year, I had no clue. I mean, I wasn't at Mardi Gras this year, but all the years past, the times that I did, no clue, none. Fascinating. I don't recommend starting Ash Wednesday with a hangover.
00:16:37
Speaker
But I do recommend knowing what it's important to fast and to be humbled and when it's time to feast and to have a lot of joy. Like knowing that when you need that in your life is really critical. All right with the fasting and and I don't know I felt like I read this during my lint reading in the Bible but maybe I read it somewhere else.
00:17:03
Speaker
because I was thinking fasting for no drinking, no eating, but I thought I read that that could mean one big meal a day, but
Fasting and Spiritual Practices
00:17:13
Speaker
you have to make sure that all the rest of them are very small. And is that somewhere in the Bible or where am I getting that?
00:17:21
Speaker
The concept of fasting is in the Bible. We only have a couple of examples of what an individual did, but different communities have practiced different styles of fast for centuries and centuries. And what we see in some religions is also very similar to what we see
00:17:40
Speaker
in the Christian religion. For a lot of people, they fast from meat the entire season of Lent. For other people, they fast during the day. What is popular today is a diet routine called an intermittent fast. Right. They fast and then they have their big meal at night. Then there's others where they might fast just from lunch. So you eat in the morning and you eat at night, but you fast during the daytime.
00:18:07
Speaker
Whatever it is, of course, you want to make sure you're healthy, you want to make sure to talk to your doctor, and you want to think about this. But nobody should ever think that this sort of practice is in and of itself unhealthy. It's something that people have been doing, let alone Christians, let alone religious communities. People have been doing forever.
00:18:27
Speaker
Nowadays, we attach words to it like intermittent fast, detox fast, and it's all about diet. And it's okay to talk about cleaning up your diet and living healthy. That matters. That is spiritually important to at least consider. But what we don't want to do as Christian people is divorce the idea of fasting.
00:18:50
Speaker
from our commitment to prayer. The two go together. And Jesus himself prescribed fasting with prayer, especially when you had important things that need to happen. There's even a point where he's talking about his disciples are asking, why couldn't we drive these demons out of these people? And Jesus says, oh, that kind of demon requires fasting and prayer, not just prayer.
00:19:13
Speaker
we can only wonder what kind of demon that might be. But at the very least, we can understand that to Jesus, there's power in fasting. Two more points or questions. The first with the giving up, I was talking to a friend recently and she said, because I've never practiced that giving something up. Again,
00:19:35
Speaker
not something that I have grown up with. And she said, instead of giving up something, she adds something. And there is a woman who on Instagram, she's a friend of ours, and she had said, I'm taking a social media break. Instead of, and I'm paraphrasing, but like, instead of Instagram, I'm going to be adding daily devotions. Instead of Facebook, I'm going to add
00:20:04
Speaker
morning and evening prayers or something like that. And I thought, I feel like that's more powerful than taking something away. Not that, I mean, again, to each their own, but I had never heard of those either, of adding that kind of stuff into your life during this time. I think you make a great point. I think it would be very disappointing to fast from something and not to replace it with something good.
00:20:31
Speaker
take away something that's not helpful, add something that's really helpful. I think your friend's dead on. I think you make a great point and whether that is simply reading the scripture, doing a devotion, praying for people that you wish you did but you don't often find the time to do it,
00:20:50
Speaker
or just going out in the world and practicing extra kindness, whatever it is, I think taking away and then adding back is a really good idea.
00:21:02
Speaker
And then to wrap it up with what you wrapped up in our last episode involving the family.
Involving Children in Faith Traditions
00:21:10
Speaker
And I think that that's huge because the kids are always listening. Whatever it is you're talking about, they're always listening. We don't give them enough credit at whatever age. But I do have a little bit of a
00:21:23
Speaker
I wrote down how old do you start that tradition? And I know you can start it as soon as they're born, but especially with you having four kids, was there this moment like, okay, we're going to really make this our particular tradition. This is how we're going to word it. This is how we do it. Because I think with a five and a three year old, we're starting there, but it's got to be on their terminology too.
00:21:52
Speaker
Well, I want to give credit to my wife because she's great at disciplines and she's great at putting intentional practices in. It's something I really appreciated about her. And so I always followed her lead in terms of how we would implement those things.
00:22:08
Speaker
But one thing we did is we wanted to do it together and so once you have multiple kids, you might do the thing that's really good for the five year old and let the three year old participate, observe, only to some ability. I would approach it that way because by the time like I had four kids,
00:22:29
Speaker
Even the babies in the room, we're not exclude the baby. We're all going to church. We're all gonna do the thing. We're all gonna say the prayers. And when my kid was one, he might not have talked very well, but he'd mouth the Lord's Prayer with us, because we said it every week. So I think whatever it is you're doing, I would, yeah, absolutely, take the idea of what your kids can understand and what might be special for them and go that route.
00:22:57
Speaker
but I wouldn't excuse anybody from the room. They all need it. Our kids need it from as young as we could possibly start them. Just keep them in the room. When you talk to me about Thanksgiving, I know that's going back a lot of episodes, everybody. We had a little Thanksgiving special that you put out and I loved,
00:23:18
Speaker
that you caught that and that you quoted me, but it's the way I look at the Thanksgiving table. You know, don't have a kids table and an adult table. Get everybody around the table. Let the adults mentor the kids. The kids mentor the adults. Like, it'd be really sad if we never watched a movie with their kids because they have kid movies and we have adult movies. It'd be really sad if we didn't get into the scriptures or pray together. And I promise you that
00:23:45
Speaker
even when you're reading a storybook kids bible. When you're doing it with your children, you'll get as much out of it as they do. That's a part of being a parent. When you're serving with your kids, when you're learning with your kids, you will be blessed as well. This is the time that God's called you into. The time of parenting is the time for you to do those things with your kids. You're doing it for them.
00:24:08
Speaker
you're doing it with them and therefore you're also doing it for yourself. And I learned a lot from them when they, you know, come home from Sunday school or school. I'm like, oh, that's what it is. And that just reminded me when you guys were talking about just Google something, you can find something that will maybe resonate with you. I 100% agree with that. There's
00:24:32
Speaker
A reading, her name is Polly. She is the owner of Horatio Printing and it's for women. And so it resonates with me, this reading plan. And then on her Facebook group, she asked these questions that can get you to think.
Childlike Wonder in Faith
00:24:47
Speaker
So you're reading the questions and then you're reading the Bible. And just yesterday was the reading of Matthew 17 and 18.
00:24:58
Speaker
But she said, pay attention to what he is talking about with having to be childlike. What does that mean to you? What does that mean in all of this? And basically the disciples came to Jesus and asked, so who is greatest in the kingdom of Kevin in heaven? He called a child.
00:25:17
Speaker
And had him stand among them, truly I tell you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Therefore, whoever humbles himself like this child, this one is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. And whoever welcomes one child like this in my name welcomes me." And there's more and more and more. And the question about that is what does that mean to you? And I said,
00:25:40
Speaker
To me, it means children are wondering. They are asking the questions without a filter. They're wide eyed. And then it's like when you come home from school and you learn something really exciting and you tell your parents, hey, did you know this? Then as adults, that's what we do to others. We just go out there like, oh my gosh, did you know? Did you see this? Did you know this?
00:26:09
Speaker
These children, that's how we should live.
00:26:12
Speaker
Yeah, so you said, you quoted the Bible. Yes. As childlike, not childish. Yes. And so everybody think about children. They wonder about things. All the time. Like you said, they are not guarded. They will just speak their mind. They're curious about everything. In fact, as a parent, you know that the minute you put that wall socket protector in,
00:26:40
Speaker
your kid wants to mess with it like and in some ways like of all the ways we could describe how children are and what makes them unique and why Jesus would want to encourage us to be like them. When my kids were little my wife asked me to build a ginormous sandbox. It was eight feet by eight feet or 12 feet by 12 feet. It was so big. There was one day we had a party at our house and there were like almost 20 kids in it at one time.
00:27:07
Speaker
Which means that when they walked in my house, it was eternally a sandpit in my house and that annoyed me. But if you think about it a little bit more, what are kids doing? They're doing exactly what God did at the very beginning of Genesis.
00:27:22
Speaker
God's playing in the dirt and he makes something and he breathes the spirit into it and humanity came to be. And then what is Jesus doing in the garden when Mary shows up? She thinks he's a gardener at first. She doesn't recognize him. Why does she think he's a gardener? I'd like to think Jesus is playing in the dirt, just like at the beginning of creation, he's recreating something.
00:27:47
Speaker
And when I see children at play, when I see children experimenting curiosity, oh, there's a lot that we adults can learn from that. I think that devotion you were going through, I think that steered you in exactly the right place because we all need that challenge of the playfulness, the joy, the curiosity,
00:28:08
Speaker
the openness just to say what's on her heart, you know? Kids can laugh in one moment, scream in the next, and maybe we could use a little bit of that too. Thank you, as always, for your wisdom, your experience, your insights. Really appreciate it. Yeah, just a fellow traveler with you. We're just journeying in this world, doing the best we can, and we forgot to make it all good. So thank you, everybody.
00:28:33
Speaker
Thanks for listening to this episode.
Connecting with the Podcast Community
00:28:36
Speaker
And if you would like to follow along online, normal goes a long way.com also on our social media outlets, Facebook and Instagram at normal goes a long way. And if there's any way that we can help you in your faith journey or, you know, answer a couple of questions, just don't hesitate to reach out. That's what we're here for.