PZ's Podcast

John Zahl recently said that God seems to be interested not so much in preventing our suffering as in redeeming us from it. (I might add, through it, even.) My long friendship with the theologian Jurgen Moltmann, who died June 3rd at the age of 98, began with a somewhat dramatic "happening" that lines up with JAZ's statement. This new cast describes what happened. When I went to Tubingen in early 1992 to begin doctoral studies in theology there -- with the warmest sacrificial encouragement of Mary, our three sons being "in tow" -- I got there only to find out that the actual man with whom I had hoped to study was pretty cool about the whole thing. He was perfectly nice, but it turned out his English was not up to his own standard. So he was (moderately) happy to help overseas students who came from other universities but was reluctant to take on a foreign student "full time" on his own ground. He was just cool -- in temperament, I mean. I did not know where I stood. In any event, Herr Moltmann observed this; and one day, during a kind of barbecue in his garden, when he saw that I was wrung dry from studying Hebrew durch Deutsch and was also receiving little encouragement from the other Great Man, he piped up and said this: "Paul" -- addressing yours truly by his first name was a wonder in itself within that setting at that time --"Paul, I like you. He won't help you. Forget about him. I will take you on, and yes, it will be about Justification!" Herr Moltmann added the last sentence because he knew that I was not "about" his own celebrated specialty, the Theology of Liberation. He knew that I was really not "about" any _of his principal interests. But that didn't seem to matter. Apparently _I mattered. Jurgen -- as he wanted me to call him forever and ever, amen -- never stopped helping me. And helping Mary, and helping John, and helping David, and helping Simeon. In fact, we made it! Our whole family made it. Herr Moltmann (Jurgen!) was the subject of Glenda's "Run to Me", and I was the object. One is beyond thankful. Forever. p.s. You can respond to the fundraising appeal by clicking here (https://interland3.donorperfect.net/weblink/WebLink.aspx?name=E353807&id=2).

Now "here's a howdy-do" (The Mikado, Gilbert & Sullivan). How does Joe Meek shed light on that ascendant movement -- and it still is ascendant -- within New Testament scholarship and interpretation? Let me say how. Admirers of Joe Meek's amazing productions like to say that he was way ahead of his time in terms of technology and recording innovation BUT that the songs themselves, almost all of them, in their many hundreds, are sentimental, corny and juvenile. But they're not! They may sound that way, but just listen to the words. They're about "guys and gals", the denizens of Grease and also of To Sir, with Love, and -- wait for it -- everybody. None of Joe's songs -- not a single one, except maybe, at the very end, one, entitled "It's Hard to Believe It" -- are about issues or groups or themes. Every song Joe ever chose to produce is about love: love gone wrong, love gone right, love fulfilled, love disappointed, love obstructed, love enabled. The evidence for this preoccupation is in the lyrics -- and oh, about 99.999 % of them. The same is true in relation to the New Perspective on Paul. The evidence that that movement is founded on an imposed "story" or paradigm, is overwhelming. That is, if you actually read the Letters of St. Paul. Or the Book of Hebrews, from start to finish. Christ came to give us a New Covenant, not a sort-of "expanded" version of the Old. The Old is passed away, behold the New is come. For years and years, I have tried to say this. (One is instantly accused of "supercessionism" if one says it. And that seems to end the argument. But the accusatory term is arbitrary, linguistic, and freighted.) The evidence of the New Testament is in fact overwhelmingly contrary to the evisceration of Grace that has been dynamized by the New Perspective. Joe Meek underlines this. His lyrics confirm it. A little "icky" at times they may be, but relationships that strive for mutual love can also be icky. Joe's songs mirror an odd truth: life is about individual men and women who are trying to find... belovedness, and therefore love in return. Dear New Testament interpreters, read the Letters of St. Paul. Read the Letter to the Hebrews. Read the Gospels -- all of them. And read 'em again in the light of Joe Meek! The subject and meaning is staring you in the face. LUV U.

Consideration of these (thousands of) new "Tea Chest" tapes from Joe Meek is such a blow to old assumptions. For example, I thought I knew his music pretty well. Even dedicated a book to him once, despite his having been dead since 1967. So now come out a Ton, a TON of new recordings by the Man Who Heard a New World. And almost all of them are fine. Many are actually spectacular. They have been sitting in cases, possibly deteriorating and entirely un-heard, for 57 years. "Self Portrait", performed by Glenda Collins -- and this cast begins with her solo a cappella rendition of the song -- is beyond profound. It almost says the entire Bare Essentials of what it is to be a human being. I would only root the singer's vision of herself in God. Funny thing is, I think she would have, too. I am certain Joe would have. (He was a believer, and grew up in the Church of England. He is interred at the parish church of his childhood.) We know very little, and whatever we do know -- really -- comes from outside ourselves. We know one thing, which we rarely know we know: we each need love, individual love for each one of us in our individuality. Everything else is "like the chaff which the wind blows away". Joe Meek, the Tea Chests, and his lightning-like inspirations -- they are a part of the "staff of life". LUV U.

The new release of hundreds of Joe-Meek tapes and tape-excerpts from the "Tea Chests" of yore is a fresh flashlight into the nature of reality within this broken/fallen world. Did any of us have any idea of how much good material is contained within these acetate tapes that were packed up in the aftermath of Joe's horrible death? Probably not. We either feared that the tapes had deteriorated over many decades of storage OR that the substance of them would disappoint us. Neither fear proved true! The surprise-factor within almost everything Joe Meek recorded is without equal. Everything -- and I mean, everything -- he touched came off strange, oblique, jaw-dropping, unexpected, contradictory, and memorable. His artistic achievement -- maybe like Mozart's -- reveals ceaseless inspiration from outside himself. His work is Sibylline. Now that the tea chests are giving us a chance to hear again, to hear anew, Joe's "New World" (1960), the triumph of "our" world, its flesh, and its devil over God's fire and Truth is seen through anew. All the world's "narrative"-making collapses in the light of Joe's uncommon fire. The Bible is confirmed, the New Testament is revealed, the fecklessness and "Wheel in the Sky" despair of everyday human life that is lived on its own terms -- all of that is lit and revealed anew. And, dear listener, do not forget to listen to the next cast. It is entitled "Self-Portrait". LUV U.

It was quite arresting, decades ago, when a young artist in New York City told me that, despite appearances -- she came across as confident and hopeful -- she felt inside herself as if she were an egg that had been hurled against the wall, broken in a hundred pieces and dripping down the white paint. In other words, she was "Shattered" (Rolling Stones, 1978). But you never would have known. Not in a thousand years. Gosh, I learned something that day. As in, appearances can deceive. As in, things are often felt more strongly than a person wants to let on. As in, "in bref", things inside are considerably more serious -- let's say, wounded -- than you (or anyone else) would ever wish to let on. This cast describes the human condition as more serious than we sometimes imagine -- maybe than we ever imagine. At least until it happens to us! ABBA makes a fresh appearance, via the refrain to "S.O.S."; and Rudyard Kipling, too. T. S. Eliot wrote once that some of Kipling's short stories feel divinely inspired. "On the Gate" may be one of them. You decide. Dear Egg Hurled Against the Kitchen Wall: I am with you. More importantly, He is with you. He doesn't turn away. (This eggman has experienced that Miracle himself!) LOL

I keep hearing the word "nimble" these days. It comes up in relation to declining and therefore merging church institutions, in which a press release declares that the sale of a church property or the merger of two diminished churches or dioceses will now enable the Church to be more "nimble" in relation to community outreach or the desire to build bridges to the world. What the word hides is institutional attrition. It is a way of putting a brave face on empirical defeat. (It's a little like the adjective "nuanced". Watch out.) I saw so clearly at the recent Mockingbird Conference that the renewal of the Christian Church is not tied to a horizontal strategy or even a quality of enterprise. The renewal of the Church consists in its re-affirmation of the One-Way Love of the Gospel of God. The pain of individual experience is so widespread that all it takes is a word -- a pastoral "position", we might say -- of empathetic attentive love for the person in pain to be helped beyond measure. Because the word of empathy and compassion is the Word of God's Grace. One saw this in almost innumerable one-to-one conversations at the Mockingbird Conference. (Didn't you?) Personally, I could not feel less "nimble" -- tho' you may remember that I was a total jock in PZ's school days! The fact is, helping is not about nimble. It's about One-Way Love and the Divine Compassion for sufferers in all shapes and sizes. That's the ticket. Oh, and even if Noel Coward was a committed agnostic, the scene between disconsolate mother and ghostly son in Scene Two of Coward's play "Post-Mortem" (1930) touches on the Greatest Thing in the World. I don't think he ever wrote a greater paragraph than the speech which the grieving mother makes to her ghostly son. LUV U. (And it's not "complicated".)

Mary Zahl was recently the guest on an episode of a podcast known as "The Brothers Zahl" (out this summer). The subject of the cast was parenting, and I can think of no better illustration of a good parent. Mary listed three core themes of enduring motherhood/fatherhood that feel utterly right to me. They are (1) complete dependability when your child is little; (2) no control or pressure when your child is growing -- let them or her pursue their own interests; and (3) try to detach from your grown child's life most of the time, tho' not always. Sometimes -- if very occasionally -- you may have to intervene. I was awed by my wife's reflections, the mother of our three grown sons. I also couldn't help theologizing a little, for each of her three themes has a direct relation to the Christian Gospel. (1) mirrors the One-Way Love of God's Grace. (2) suggests the continuing solution of Grace to the problem of Law. (3) connects the "Eastern"-sounding insight of non-attachment with the Christian fact of God's Incarnation -- God's personal intervention in this septic world. This cast is also a sort of pre-op moment for the Mockingbird Conference, which begins this Thursday in Manhattan. Do join us if you can. Mary and I will be there, and hundreds of others, too. I'll speak about parenting, tho' Mary (by my side) is the best authority on that front. This cast is dedicated to Larry Brudi and Bob Smith, and reverentially, to Dickey Betts.

I wonder if you are ever struck by the ubiquity of this phrase at the end of every checkout line in the known universe: "Do you need a receipt?". Or, in grocery stores, "Find everything you were looking for?". Or, again in every cell-phone (business) call on earth: "Is there anything else I can help you with today?" In an earlier day, it might have been: "Paper or plastic?"; or, even earlier, "VHS or Beta?" I believe these everyday reflexive questions are an expression of the World, the Flesh and the Devil's active desire to shut down anything that might resemble or enable a real exchange between persons. In this cast I tell some stories of interchanges at the 'cash point' in which the reflexive words of the cashier suddenly fell apart, and the real person came through. The truth was out! Now here's an either-or statement: Everybody all the time is sitting on a major inward issue. I used to think that was an overstatement, and should be diluted to something like: Most people at some point in their lives find themselves sitting on an engrossing inward concern that they are reluctant to share with anyone else. But experience has taught me the further truth: Everybody all the time is sitting on a major inward issue. You the Listener will need to decide what you think about that. But one thing I do know and for absolute sure: The answer to life is not bound up with the question of whether I need a receipt. LUV U!

You can't help noticing, if you study Soviet-Era Iron-Curtain sci fi illustrations and posters -- an activity which I feel sure governs your every waking minute -- that there are ZERO aliens or extra-terrestrial forms of life to be seen. The Soviets and the East Germans, who did in fact excel in graphics concerning space exploration, never ever bring UFOs or alien inhabitants of other planets into the narrative, either visually or narratively. Yes, maybe Tarkovsky "un tout peit peu" once, but he was exiled pronto from his homeland. There is a connection between the mandatory and aggressive atheism of Communism and the definite exile of any trace of openness to extra-terrestrial life. It's just an observable fact. So while you may enjoy Iron Curtain sci-fi for its pragmatism and occasional heroism, it is also totally un-cool, un-fun and un-hopeful. Where would you and I be without the possibility of answers that come from outside ourselves? As I say in the cast, relevant to a recent movie review of an old (but now Blu-Rayed) "film noir", nihilism, whether New or old, is ultimately suicidal. It is also self-sufficient in principle and therefore a crash-landing in real life -- with no survivors, by the way. So, hey, keep your mind open. Keep your heart open. And moreover, as Holy Week really teaches, God is Good; We Are Not Alone; and everything has a Purpose. LUV U.

I'm trying to put into words the core principles of accessible Christian theology. Not mentally or intellectually accessible, but feeling-accessible -- heart-accessible -- and therefore actually and experientially accessible! Karl Barth promulgated what was called a "theology from the top down". He saw himself as opposing theologies "from the bottom up". But it was a false dichotomy. We start from where we are -- and in base-level terms, where our hearts live (and die, sometimes daily); and then we are in a position to listen to Hope that travels from the top down. Theology, in other words, is neither from the top down (solely), i.e., entirely vertical; nor is it from the bottom up (solely), i.e., entirely horizontal. Christian theology is Up the Down Staircase! Oh, and I hope you like ABBA. "SOS" is one of the great songs of the Glacial Age. Not to mention Ash's track at the end of the cast, which is moving straight from the top end.

I don't tire of quoting Thomas Cranmer's 'meme' that goes like this: "What the heart loves, the will chooses, and the mind justifies." That is so true to life. Now note its difference with the sentence quoted in part one of this cast by my old episcopal acquaintance in Australia: "Nothing can be loved at speed" (M. Leunig). But the heart always loves at speed! Perseverance and steady, thoughtful loving exists, yes, but as a fruit of heart-love: Its fruit -- its consequence -- its effect. And the heart, I say again, always loves at speed. You could almost say this is the secret of life. Cranmer certainly said it. You and I know it from experience. Almost all our core decisions were made "at speed". We didn't think them through before making them. Our heart was "caught", and so it went and "So It Goes" (B. Joel, 1990). When we said 'yes' to God, or when we first said a real prayer, it "Only Took a Minute, Lord'. We didn't "count the cost". We probably should have, but we didn't in fact. By the Grace of God, our hearts were so "warmed" (John Wesley on May the 24th) that the warm lasted. The warm kept heating us as long as life went on. "Listen to the Warm" (Rod McK., 1967). So, um, well, OK, I, ... Listen to your Heart. LUV U.

An old acquaintance, an Australian bishop, has been quoting recently from a popular cartoonist and kind of pop philosopher "Down Under" named Mike Leunig. The bishop quoted an aphorism from Leunig in relation to his long-term hopes for the Anglican Church in Australia: "Nothing can be loved at speed". When I heard my old colleague quoting Mike Leunig, a 1975 disco hit by Tavares flashed instantly into my mind: "It Only Takes a Minute, Girl (To Fall in Love)". What this sudden flash told me was: It's not true -- it is not true that "nothing can be loved at speed". One's heart in fact always loves at speed. Almost every big decision you've ever made was made "at speed"! The heart moves no other way. The heart loves at speed. Incidentally, people rarely say this, at least where they could be heard. You don't want to be thought to believe that "It Only Takes a Minute, Girl". That sounds un-wise, un-"nuanced" -- the worst possible thing you could ever be regarded as being -- and imprudent. Nevertheless, it is the way life is. When you review your life, how many decisions you made were actually made in a flash, in a lightning-like "AHA" ('Take on Me') moment? Please tell me. You didn't choose the college you went to based on ... thoughtful ratiocination. You didn't choose the profession you chose based on... weighing all the pros and cons. You didn't marry the gal/guy you married on the basis of... thought. (Did you?) This cast is about inward (heartfelt) truth vs. outward (rationalizing) truth. When you are dying, I believe you will only know the former. LUV, PZ

Personally, I think that one's most cherished tunes come from ... oneself. By which I mean that the music you love may say more about you than about the music itself. You hear a Pretenders single and it calls you instantaneously back to the person you were when you first heard it. "Don't You Forget About Me" by Simple Minds has the power to instantly recreate the mood you were in when you first saw The Breakfast Club in the theater. Or maybe it brings to mind and heart the person you were with when you saw it! I seriously ask you, Why do you like the music, and especially the rock 'n roll music, that you still like? Why does a particular song have the power to evoke tears -- like in two seconds? Why? Tell me, please -- I'm deeply interested. And why interested? Because I care about you. I care about your heart. I care about the assimilation of both your negativity -- which often has its origin in long ago experience of pain -- and your positivity -- which can boost you up when other things pull you down. How would you begin this podcast? I mean, with what music would you open it? And conclude it? Incidentally, the Spirit of God spoke to me during the recording of it. You'll notice a change which takes place near the end. So I left it in -- the unexpected change -- because, well, it witnesses. LUV U!

I've been thinking some about "borderland" states, meaning extremely strong states of mind and feeling that are not necessarily explicit, but are nonetheless real. Borderland states of mind are when you are in despair concerning your life, or your primary relationships, or simply the way you feel inside. Sometimes the borderland state is positive -- for example, when you fall deeply in love, or when somebody reaches out to you in selfless concern when you are "all fall down". More often, the borderland is negative, and can result in self-destructive acts or even suicide. Rod McKuen (d. 2015) was a magician of the borderland. His songs, performed with that hoarse, breaking voice of his, are almost all addresses to the borderland of human feeling. They are almost all slightly "abnormal", expressing laconic extremes of feeling. Their "kitsch" -- as they are sometimes pigeonholed -- is only as kitschy as extreme states of feeling are kitschy. We want to jump off a bridge or call up everyone we know to announce our euphoria or whisper our disappointment to the ends of the earth. Rod McKuen's songs are hymns to the borderland. You could almost say they are a little "off". But who is not a little off? His songs actually carry huge promise. Note that this cast references a recent sermon from Brad Knight, who spoke from his own borderland to the borderlands inhabited by his hearers. He hit the mark! Podcast 377 is dedicated to the Very Rev. James G. Munroe.

One just can't get over that repeating, concluding forcefulness of Los Straitjackets' music by which they almost always save the best for last -- like in the wedding at Cana, sort of. They light up the sky in the last third -- sometimes even the last fifth -- of their covers and their songs. Like you and me could do! And especially if we could take the heartfelt learnings of the last third of our lives and import them retroactively into our lives' stressful, burdened second third. Now that's what PZ is trying to do for you today. "For you the living/This Mash was meant, too". I am trying to impute what I believe has inspired me in recent times to one's listeners' stressful and demanding adult lives. I can't tell you, as my now deceased colleague in South Carolina used to tell me almost every time he saw me: "Relax, Paul!" He meant well, yes, but it only made me feel always worse when he said it. What I want to say is more like this: "Let me take you there" ('Strawberry Fields', 1967). Let me take you in your now to a place of focus on the Big Things, the Big Heart, the Big Connection/s. I feel sometimes like the character 'Emily' says she feels in the last act of "Our Town". Recently dead, she returns to the scene of her 12th birthday, and longs for her parents and brother -- and herself back then- - to see what's really going on. Not to-ings and fro-ings and "process", but rather real love and real care and real gestures and real connection and real feeling -- real heart! Will you let me be to you today, dear Listener, a surrogate for Emily? "Let me take you there" -- to a life not of obvious burden and exhaustion, but a life of optimism and promise and satisfaction and joy. That's what PZ's Podcast is all about. LUV U.

Heard a sermon last night that cut to the quick. It evoked the image of a "new priesthood" -- a new movement of God in the New Year. The preacher's vision of life and the work of God in the world felt inspired to the first power. And then I thought of Jack Kerouac -- right in the middle of her sermon. I thought of his amazing book, on practical Buddhism no less, entitled Some of the Dharma. Kerouac and the preacher were on the same line. Then something else came to mind: the jaw-dropping last act of Thornton Wilder's "Our Town". Each of these three 'productions', i.e., Paula White's sermon, Jack Kerouac's spiritual diary, and TNW's seminal play: they were all saying the same thing. To wit, the Truth of life lies in every case under the surface of the world. What you see, and even what you think you want to see, is not the Lasting Thing. God's work is infinitely higher than our desires and our ratiocination, tho' at times linked with those things. Ultimately, what God is doing is different from what we think is going on. What a relief! What a redemption (of our pasts)! What a Promise of real action! So I'm hopeful for 2024. Hope you can be, too. LUV U. PZ

On December 29th, 2023 Mary and I have been married exactly 50 years. What a marker for us! (I truly feel it and celebrate it.) This marker-episode concerns the primacy of individual belovedness over any and everything else, including career and professional achievement. This primacy becomes instantly apparent whenever you get sick, or find yourself in the neighborhood of death, or experience a catastrophic fall from perceived security. The cast goes on to echo Meister Eckhart's enduring maxim, that "If you cannot find God, go back to where you lost Him." Or, in everyday experience, If you cannot find belovedness in the marriage you have, go back to the point in time when you did have it, when you did feel it. That works in life-long marriage, and every time! Finally I give a brief synopsis of Mary's and my own marriage, of 50 years, from its "Peter Pan's Ride" beginning, to the "Pallisers Theme" return-to-basics. I sure hope you like this. Podcast 374 is dedicated to Mary Cappleman Zahl, the Girl I Married.

Bishop Colin Buchanan died November 29th in Leeds Infirmary, and there’s been almost no coverage of it — not even in the Church press. Astonishing! Colin was one of the most influential ministers and scholars in the Church of England during the 20th Century. Yet it seems today as if he almost never existed. This podcast is a reflection on the anonymity of death. It also references Robert Blair’s superb poem from 1743 entitled “The Grave”, together with the sublime illustrative plates that William Blake created to accompany the poem. And, believe it or not, this is a Christmas podcast! The cast is dedicated to the Very Rev. Laurie Thompson.

This Christmas podcast is in honor of Mary's and my 50th Anniversary, which comes on December 29th. She and I are both in thankful awe of having made it thus far. And happily! To me this is worth celebrating. The cast sets out two requirements, or better, signs, as I see it, for an enduring marriage. The first is the romantic connection. Our marriage began with that in first place. There simply has to be a romantic (i.e., male-female) connection for the relationship to start -- or, perhaps better, for a relationship to be able to turn towards marriage. And then, once married, you find yourself needing at almost regular intervals to return to that initial romantic foundation. It is not enough for him or her to be my "best friend". That is certainly true -- Mary is my best friend! -- but the romantic element is prior. Friendship is not marriage. (This is why, incidentally, boys and men wince to the core when a girl or woman tells them they want to be just friends. And believe me, even when your husband hears you saying that he's your best friend, he seizes up inside. He won't tell you that, but his heart is stopping the minute you say it. Even tho', as I report, he is in fact your best friend.) So point one of ""We've Only Just Begun" (1973) is to underline the priority of the romantic connection over all else. (This is true, believe it or not, even when you're 75.) The second foundation stone of an enduring marriage is faith in God. Natch', you may see the specifics of that in different terms from those of your wife or husband. He may be reacting against Five Point Calvinism and you may be reacting against Baptist rules concerning conduct. But a shared root-implanted faith in God who is "Higher Than I" is indispensable for the navigation of problems. For the record, Mary and I have read the Bible and prayed together every morning early for almost all the years of our marriage. It's not a law, and it's not even a recommendation. But it's an observation. I don't know where we would be -- especially in the stressful times -- if we hadn't had a shared faith in a personal God. Like Mary's totally enchanting smile (and the response it created in me -- in the Fall of l969, in fact), Mary's openness to God was core for me. It is still core for me. Oh, and listen to the closing track, a Christmas track of the highest magnitude. Do give it time until... that last third (per usual) with these artists. Merry Christmas to us all, and Happy Anniversary to my wife of 50 years, Mary Cappleman Zahl. This cast is dedicated to our three sons: John A. Zahl, David W.F. Zahl, and Simeon McLean Zahl.

That's a fun movie, from 1976, in which a group of Victorian English people are mistakenly rocketed into inner space, right down to the core of the earth. (What they find, well, you can probably imagine.) But the title and the premise are good: There's newness to be found at the center of the earth -- our earth, our core. This is the heart of the Christian Faith. God will always speak to beleaguered humans, but rarely until we get to the earth's core. The core is where we live; the core is where our "Heart and Soul" (Cleftones, 1961) feel (as one); the core is where our pain comes undisguised, unmasked. There, in the core, is where we meet God; or better, where the Saving God meets us. The cast circles over 'Theron Ware', 'Babette', Lloyd Bridges as 'The Loner', right over to Rod Serling's superb "They're Tearing Down Tim Riley's Bar". But we are "Circl(ing) for a Landing" (Three Dog Night, 1968). I can never rest until we land -- land at the Earth's Core. Merry Christmas to you all, and God Bless Us Every One. Podcast 371 is dedicated to a true fellow traveler, Tom Agricola.