#112: A Theology of the Ordinary (with Julie Canlis)
“The Son’s mission is not only the Cross but involves all of human life. The Son inhabited all parts of human existence to transform them and become the one from whom our ordinary lives can now be lived. This is an extra-ordinary benediction upon our ordinary lives.”
This week, theologian, lecturer and mother Julie Canlis comes to The Puddcast, to talk about ordinary, embodied holiness. Julie is the author of A Theology of the Ordinary, and we discussed how the Holy Spirit connects us to our bodies in normal, everyday ways and how the full life of Jesus transforms all of the mundane moments of our lives into sacred pathways of holiness. We even discussed John Calvin, as Julie’s framework for understanding Calvin’s beliefs goes contrary to much of what I thought I knew about Calvinism. I highly recommend this conversation to you, it is full of earthy hope and simple love for creation and life.
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Once you’ve listened to this, make sure to check out the raw and uncut B-Side interview where my friends and I unpack the conversation in even more detail. Available exclusively on Patreon.
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Transcription
Jonathan Puddle 00:04
Hey friends, welcome back to The Puddcast with me, Jonathan Puddle. This is Episode 112. My guest today is theologian, writer, mother, wonderful speaker, gifted teacher, university professor, Julie Canlis. We talk today a lot about her book, A Theology of the Ordinary, which has been hugely helpful to me in the last six months. My wife and I both love this little book, it's tiny, you can read it in like half an hour, but it is really quite transformative. So today we talked about that, we talked all about the Holy Spirit as, as an agent of embodiment in our life, about how the life of Christ is a life in a body. That means that the ordinary things that bodies do: eating and drinking and working and, you know, cleaning, babies' butts sometimes, are sacred holy things. And so there's a whole bunch of stuff in here to do with the mystery of life and creation, slow migration back into our bodies as a part of our spiritual formation. We talk a lot about John Calvin as well. There's a lot of fun stuff here. We also make mention of Father John Behr, and a course on the Gospel of John, I'll talk more about that at the end. The Gospel of John course that Julie was a guest speaker on is available for you to take. And there's an upcoming course on the Book of Revelation, which Julie will be speaking at as well. And I will share more about that, as well as links to material in the show notes and talking about it at the end. Let's get into the show. Julie, this is very exciting. I'm so grateful for you making the time to be here today. Your your book has touched me more than any in the last probably six months. And so it feels special just to be able to sit down and connect with a human being, especially in this disconnected, weird season of life. So thanks. Welcome to the show.
Julie Canlis 02:14
You are welcome. And I've needed it as much as everyone else has. So it's been it's been a good prophetic work to myself.
Jonathan Puddle 02:23
Yes, that is exactly it. Okay. So prophetic works in the context that I grew up in, were the big showy, flashy acts, right? It wasn't uncommon—and it still remains not uncommon—in the church movement of which within which I serve, for people to get up from the front, and get a prophetic word with someone's phone number in it, and of crowd of 1000 people and someone's like, Oh my gosh, that's my number. And the person comes up, and this person reads out, like, their children's names and all these things. And then God has some word for them. And it's, it's always big, and it's always loud. And I, I understand there was goodness in the genesis of these movements and the charismatic movement, especially which I'm a part, in reclaiming, hey, like, like what Eugene says, Eugene Peterson, "Everything in the Bible, let's believe that's all for today." And so, but there's this busy, loud exceptionalism that has become so normal, had become so normal to my spirituality, that when I picked up your book, A Theology of the Ordinary and I read you just going over and over about non-extraordinary goodness, I was powerfully provoked, in really good ways. What, what brought you here and into this message? And and what's your journey in all of this?
Julie Canlis 03:55
That's a great question. I think, probably, my internal driver, is what brought me to this message. I'm a firstborn of six kids, Type A girl, um, you know, role model youth group girl. And when that gets into your bones, really young, and a love of Jesus, a deep love of Jesus and being particularized by him at a very early age, learning to begin to follow the Spirit in high school. And yet, I could only hear that voice in Type A ways which becomes very oppressive. And, and for me, it was type A for you. It could be certain Pentecostal ways. You know, whatever that is that makes you go, "That's what it means to be successful at this Jesus thing." That's what it looks like. And so that's what I need to be doing. And I was very I was, I had a deep natural love of God, but I didn't know know how it should look like except for in my American Christian youth group "rah rah rah" culture. And, and so that was all. And I think that was all fine. Like, I think it would be terrible if I said, "That was terrible." I have nothing but gratitude for the people who raised me who showed me Jesus, who gave him to me in their own incarnational settings. But just like the people of Israel had to have fire and clouds to lead them, that was basically I think God's way, the only way he could get their attention. And he's always trying to move us, you know, from places of immaturity to maturity, and I think that always looks more and more quiet. That's what I that's what I've experienced. I had a... I went to Regent College when I was 23, and began to do seminary work. And the most extraordinary thing happened (using that word tongue in cheek): God disappeared. And I was in the midst of the most wonderful theology with the best teachers who were caring for my soul as well as my mind. And somehow, in the midst of that, I lost the presence of God. And I think it took me 20 years to say, that was God's greatest grace to me. And I spent, I spent the first couple years looking for sin, imagining what I had done wrong, because that was the formula I'd been given. But, but God just went quiet. I even went to the Toronto Blessing like, okay, Lord, if this is what it's gonna take, I'm not a charismatic, but bring it on. I'm open to anything you want to give me. And there was 200 people on the stage, and everyone was slain in the Spirit, and I opened my eyes and I looked around, I realized I was the lone tree standing and, and yet, in this strange way, where it wasn't even, I've had the Lord speak to me before, this wasn't even one of those, the Lord speaking to me in a quiet voice, it just slowly permeated my being—the Lord, comforting me and saying, "My silence is the way I'm going to be speaking to you for a while." And I had no category for that. I had no, not only did I not have a category for that, you can't succeed at that. You can't do anything about it, you just you have to go quiet in some really wonderful ways. So that's, that was the beginning. That was me in my 20s, then I moved—just to make a long story short— moved to Scotland to do some PhD work. We started... well, we were we took a newborn with us—babies kept coming. I would write from 5am until three or 4pm. And then it was time for dishes and laundry and diapers and cooking. And and in many ways, it was the most focused time of my life. And, and the the ordinary work, or as Kathleen Norris would call it, laundry, liturgy and women's work, you know, the quotidian mysteries, they saved me from the life of the mind—being too... isolating me too much. So I really think my I survived the Ph. D process—which is a really difficult, lonely, you have to face your worst enemy, which is yourself—I think that whole process I was saved by the ordinary and, and it kept me rooted and grounded in kids and, you know, snacks, and all the things that are important during those early years. And then we decided to stay for another seven or eight years because Matt got us... a very small parish. And that was again part of this slow formation. This this I didn't know I was being formed, but the Lord was forming me through his silence and through the ordinary and through now being done with PhD work. And rather than plunging into a teaching position or writing, I was plunged into a Manse, as they call the house attached to a little Church of Scotland Parish, 300 people in our village and a garden, which was mine for the making. So that's, that's what began everything. And then so finally, at the end of our 13 year odyssey abroad, we moved back to America and that's when I started seeing America as if for the first time, with with these new eyes, that... but I realized the formation had begun 20 years earlier at seminary. And and you may know this, but one of my professors who just happened to be... it was his second year there. I didn't know much about him, his name was Eugene Peterson and, and I went to his office because I was struggling so much with reading the Word. And the Word had always been my life, it had always been such a source of joy for me, and you opened it and like God just spoke. And now, now all of a sudden, it went quiet. And I was trying to what do they say in Scotland, "Squeeze blood out of a turnip." I was spending longer and longer reading the Bible, because I just thought, I must not be doing it right. I must not be doing it long enough, the Lord must want me more repentant, more on my knees, spending more time. And so I went to Eugene's office, and I told him of this terrible thing that had happened to me, could he please help me, tell me what to do? I said, "Give me a discipline, you know, give me something." And he like tugged my Bible, he took it away from me, grabbed it from my hands, and he put it on his top shelf in his office. And then he started hand picking all these novels. And he said, read these, and then you can come and get your Bible back. And, and that, I think he just wanted me to start seeing the different ways that God was alive and well, I was alive and well, but I needed to open my eyes to that reality. And I, I needed to be able to return to Scripture with fresh eyes. So that was, that was the beginning of being of slowly having my eyes opened. Or, as he says, in one of his books, I can't remember, he says, "becoming a spy of God's grace." So stopping the introspection that was killing me, and beginning to look in other places for God's aliveness, my aliveness, creation's aliveness. And I think that process began deep work in me of the theology of the ordinary, at least longing for I wish someone had told me this earlier. Wish I'd read something about it. I wish I hadn't been handed just the missionary stories of Hudson Taylor or things that were gloriously extraordinary. But not for me as a young mom. And, you know, that that's it.
Jonathan Puddle 12:09
Oh, that's that strikes so close to home. Julie, I spent 13 years on staff at the Toronto Blessing church.
Julie Canlis 12:15
Oh, my goodness,
Jonathan Puddle 12:16
That's my career.
Julie Canlis 12:18
Wow, maybe you even prayed for me.
Jonathan Puddle 12:21
Depends what year you were there.
Julie Canlis 12:22
[laughs]
Jonathan Puddle 12:23
We, my family moved from New Zealand to Toronto, in the 90s, to become a part of the movement. And so like, all of that is where I grew up, in many ways. But my first church was a Presbyterian Church, in New Zealand. And I have, I have, in a sense, spiritual roots in the Church of Scotland. My grandmother was a MacLeod and no, sorry, my grandmother was a McGregor, and my wife is a MacLeod. That's so interesting. Similarly, I can trace all these different echoes and roots and calls, right. Like we live in the city; we live now in a smaller city, but but I grew up in sheep farming country, in dairy farming country, and I long for the earth. And for... we live surrounded by farmland at this point, and periodically, throughout the year, all the farmers will will fertilize their fields. And to me that it is the most beautiful smell. The most soul enriching, life-giving smell, and I will put all the windows down in the car. And my children and my wife are all crying, "Daddy, please... Honey, put the windows up, it smells like poo." And I'm like, that is the smell of life! You people you need to know. And but but I did, but I think so much of what I internalized was this really dualistic, really non-embodied faith. And, and I didn't know what to do with it for a long time. I could sense that things were wonky in what I'd been handed and I, I knew that I was sort of coming apart on the inside. And I think for for me, I had got to this point where I'm like, if Jesus is a human that's got to mean something. Like for God to become flesh has got to say something about the value of flesh. The goodness of flesh. I mean, Kenneth Tanner said to me here on the show, "You can't blast the goodness out of something God makes good. Don't made good in the first place." So I was like, Oh, they will there. There it is.
Julie Canlis 14:41
Okay, so here's a really weird connection to what you're saying. So you're talking about the Presbyterian roots, you're talking about Toronto Blessing. So I went from this experience and went into Calvin. Like not only Scotland, the church, you know, the the Presbyt... the mother of all Presbyterianism, heavily influenced by by Calvin. But it was in reading Calvin, that I finally found a good theology for my embodiment. And I know that may sound strange to you, but I think I was trying to figure out why is this Holy Spirit, you know, listening to the Spirit and being moved by the Spirit, so unembodied and why are people coming apart? Because we are using the Holy Spirit to take us out of our bodies, rather than to put us into our bodies more and more. And I just loved how Calvin began... Calvin, at least, I'm sure I could have gotten it through many theologians, he just happened to be the place I was camped out for a while. And when I began to understand the role of the Spirit in uniting me to Christ, and uniting me to Christ's body, and the role of the Spirit in Jesus having a truly human body. Like, without the Spirit, Jesus's body would have been disconnected, you know, in a sense, and so and that same Spirit is trying to put me into Christ, who is embodied. So like you, there was this profound, disembodied faith, and the more disembodied, the more spiritual it felt. And I think that the slow gradual mercy of God was to, like, stop all that, trying to hear the Spirit in this disembodied field and the Lord's like, Okay, I'm just gonna quiet that voice for a while. So she could begin to find God in her body again, and she could begin to find God in her garden, and she could begin to find God in her children. This is one of one of my favorite moments where the penny really dropped, was when I was... I had graduated from Regent. I was in my fourth year PhD, and feeling incredibly disembodied. Because I'm, I'm working so much on a computer and reading and writing, and have just had my third child and I'm just feeling so, I'm feeling like a dualist. And, and I just knew once again, being a good dualist, I knew that the answer was in a spiritual discipline that I wasn't doing. And it just so happened that Matt and I had flown home, brought all the kids and we were visiting Eugene, we went to Montana. And we were visiting him and Jan, I have my newborn Iona with me. And I just said, Eugene, I just—again, I'm sure I've asked him this 100 times—give me a discipline give me something to do, because I just, I feel the Word is dry, I feel I'm dry, I'm just bare bones, help me out here. And then he said, "Well, what are you doing? What's the most regular thing you do." I said, well, right now I have a daughter with reflux. So she needs to be fed about every 90 minutes. And, and that's all I do. That's my whole life, I was just feeding, feeding, feeding, feeding. And he said, "Julie, that is your spiritual discipline, wake up." He said, "Just enjoy it. You're part of this mystery of creation. And, and you're missing it, because you feel like you should be reading your Bible or you feel like you should be doing something else." So again, it takes forever for these things... for us to become embodied once again. But that was probably my most helpful moment when he told me that breastfeeding was my spiritual worship and, and if that's all I could do, there's nothing I could be, there's nothing else the Lord would rather me be doing to be drawing me close to him. And so it's the slow migration back into our bodies, that is part of our spiritual formation. And that's why in many ways children save us from ourselves, I think, and they help put us back into our bodies. I know I'm going in giant circles all around. And I'm not doing this very systematically, but but the Spirit is the one who puts us in our bodies, once again, he, he puts us in Christ's body, he puts us in our bodies. And I once heard a lecture about the Spirit in Isaiah as the suffering servant, the one who's doing these, you know, having these words of prophecy, and he's bringing the nations to their knees, and then the other repeated theme of the Spirit, in Isaiah is the Spirit who's embedded in creation. And, and for some reason, that was a big turning point for me to realize, oh, there's a whole part of the Spirit that is so a part of the world that I miss him, because I'm looking for the prophetic Spirit who's gonna say this word and who's going to bring the nations to their knees and, and yet the same Spirit is at work in creation, to bring us to Jesus. And I think that's where I've been kind of camping out for the last decade or two. And trying to draw closer to that in my own practical life.
Jonathan Puddle 19:59
Mmmhmmmm. I've been, I've been reading in the last year, I read, I've been reading a couple of books on indigenous identity and Native American spirituality. Especially in re... I don't know, moving away from the evil colonized approaches to indigenous spirituality and allowing the Christ-life to be found in more organic, natural ways, with indigenous people groups and so much of non-Empire cultures, value land... ...value trees, value rocks. And I've been looking at this for tree outside my front door, because I read a poem by Morgan Harper Nichols. And she said, you know, that tree just stands there. And that's all it ever does. And it is glorifying God and doing exactly what it's meant to be doing. And I'm also a firstborn Type A kind of performative person, but I'm performative relationally. And so I must always be helping and encouraging. And I've, with COVID and then everything I feel cut off and unable to connect with people relationally and unable to help and unable to encourage. And I'm sitting here on my couch looking at this tree. And thinking is the Spirit holding you together, tree? I really need the Spirit to be holding me together. But I think you just said something really profound to me, like that you miss the Spirit for the what's what's the word that ubiq... like the everywhereness of the Spirit like where like, like the frog slowly in the hot water rather than... we are numb to the presence of the everywhere Spirit?
Julie Canlis 20:42
Yup. Yes.
Jonathan Puddle 22:03
Especially perhaps if we've been conditioned to see the Spirit, I guess, perhaps, especially if we've been considered conditioned to witness the Spirit in the tongues of fire and being slain in the Spirit and all these, in the holy laughter and all these things. And then conversely, if we've been told the Spirit doesn't do that anymore,
Julie Canlis 22:22
Yes. "Now what?"
Jonathan Puddle 22:24
This looping back to Calvin. All of my Calvinist friends are cessationist or mostly cessationist. And so all the lens I've had for Calvin is essentially a disembodied cerebral system of theology.
Julie Canlis 22:42
I'll tell you what, for me, like made me go, "I need to pursue Calvin." I was trying to graduate from Regent without having read Calvin. And my supervisor said, I'm sorry, I refuse to graduate you until you read Calvin. And I was resisting, resisting. And, and so finally I said, Okay, I'll do it. What do you want me to read? And he wanted me to incorporate this into my final project. And so he said, just read book three, on Calvin and the Holy Spirit. So I was like, okay, and by about page five, I feel like my whole my, my previous four years of theological education had just gone a deep shift. And I just, was like how did I miss this? Like, how have I not really had teaching on the Spirit? And what Calvin does is he, all the important parts of the Spirit are how the Spirit draws us into the triune life, and how the Spirit draws us into the sacraments. So the two most important things are embodiedness, Jesus' embodiedness, and also into Jesus' relation with the Father. And as I read Calvin, he has lots of roles for the Spirit, but by far the most important one is that the Spirit is the one who puts us into Christ's relation with the Father. And I was, I was blown away. So adoption is our most important thing for Calvin, not as a legal standing not as, you know, part of this kind of system of how we get justified and sanctified know, for him, it was this miracle of the fact that we get in on this relationship. And then I began to do some research into Calvin's background and he was practically orphaned at a very early age. His father was very pushy, domineering, manipulative man, his mother, who was kind of the, the only part of his life that represented faith to him died when he was five. And so he just has this early life of loss and very little relational connection to any maternal or paternal figure. And so and then he's, you know, caught up in this resistance movement in France, and he's immediately exiled, he's now not even in France anymore. He'll be caught and hung, drawn and quartered, so he spends his whole life in exile and so God as Father becomes this very powerful, not just metaphor, Calvin says, "This isn't a metaphor" like this is actually real. And, and the Spirit is the is at the center of our whole experience of God as Father. In fact, Calvin says, "Nobody knows he's saved until he knows God as his father." And I just, he's trying to move us to this profoundly experiential, emotional experience of God the Father, which always surprised me, given all of where Calvinism often takes us. And the people we know, currently, who are Calvinists who often are not representative of this profoundly integrated and emotional aspect of our faith. So that's just a little sidebar, but that's a little bit of Calvin and the spirit, Calvin is they call him the Theologian of the Holy Spirit after Gregory from the fourth century. And I was just like, "I got to see it, you know, I don't think I'm going to believe it." And I think he's quite powerful on the spirit.
Jonathan Puddle 26:05
That... Okay, yes, you have done the deed, I need to go and read the first source material for myself. That is amazing. I love that. I love that. And this is something too that many people don't understand about the Toronto Blessing. Folks who came in and saw kind of the weird Holy Spirit stuff in the early mid 90s. The lasting... the the theological imprint of the movement is all about the Father's love. And so all the books that have emerged... well, not all the books, but the best books that have emerged from the movement about "What is this actually?", what has been the point, what is the Spirit been doing in the midst of all the other weird stuff—and it's drawing us to know God as a loving father. And so that's a really interesting connection that you bring that up.
Julie Canlis 26:58
As I look, I mean, just recently, I was thinking the exact same thing. So I was like, okay, Lord, that was just such a weird thing that I did, you know, when I was 23. And I'm thankful for it, because you taught me something through a negative experience. But the more I look back on it, I remember this guy preaching for seven minutes on God's fatherhood before he started laughing, and couldn't stop laughing for 20 minutes. But then the whole meeting was over, then it was time for healings. But that, to me is a profound mark of the Spirit. And it's, and when that's happening, I can trust the other things that are happening that are maybe more unusual as well, because I think that is the core of what the Spirit is trying to, to do so so that has given me... I don't look back on that experience as being bad, or that experiences being so theologically off because of that message of the fatherhood of God.
Jonathan Puddle 27:51
That is, that's really cool to hear that. That's interesting. Because because I've had to do all of my own theological deconstruction as well, in regards to this movement and decide what do I keep and what do I not keep them. And I'm pastoring, in a church that was planted out of Toronto, but that is autonomous, and so we get to kind of choose, and we like God's presence, and we like, God. And we don't really love North American triumphalism. And that gets, you know, sometimes us at odds with people. So you've you've done in A Theology of the Ordinary, I mean, the title somewhat obvious, you've done a lot of the theological work around this ordinary holiness. And I was really moved by and struck by the way you map out Jesus' life. Each part of his humanity is part of it, because I'm going to actually read you, read a quote of yours, if you don't mind. Because because I again, I was kind of in this like, yeah, Jesus comes accomplishes the atonement. Check. And woosh, like, we don't need Jesus here anymore. You, you know, he's basically done. So you wrote, "The son's mission is not only the cross, but involves all of human life as it is lived. His being human was part of our redemption. Each stage of his normal human life was crucial to the atonement." And I have to be very, very honest, you map... you mapped out like his childhood, his baptism, each of these events. And then it ends with a section like ask yourself, "What was he accomplishing with this?" And nine out of 10 times that I read a Christian book that asks a question like that, it's largely rhetorical, and I'm like, blah, blah, blah. And every single time, I was like, I have no idea. I do not know what the answer to this question is. And then you said something beautiful. I wonder if you'd walk us through just a little bit of, of whatever aspects of that are on your mind right now?
Julie Canlis 29:53
Yeah, I would love to. Yeah, I just think Jesus' bodily experiences were for us. And they continue to be points of contact with us. We just we so often relegate his gift to us as being spiritual, rather than the gifting of his whole body and his whole embodied experience to us, in this incredible form of bread—that we get to take on a weekly basis to remind us of our bodies, of his body, it's just all so deeply connected. I think the more you spend time in Jesus's earthly life, the more you're going to be led to a sacramental church, because they just they, they just go hand in hand, I just, I'm always so moved that he didn't leave us a book, he left us a meal, and was like, if there's one thing I gave you, this is it, because he's giving us his lived experience. He's identifying, not just the moment on the cross, but his whole body with this loaf and, and our loaf... our lives are so wrapped up in not just eating bread, but I think bread also represents for us culture making, the way that we do ordinary life, which is to take what's been given to us and work it into something different and new, and offer it back to God, offer it to our kids to eat, offer it to clients, or, you know, however you want to do it, I just think that even the metaphor of making bread is a good metaphor for our life. And then Jesus says, By the way, I am the bread and and you get my life to to nurture your life, which is this ongoing process. But if I'm going to walk through that incarnation, that's Irenaeus' recapitulation, early, the early church fathers, all were agreed that it was the whole, the whole person of Jesus is the atonement, not just his work with the atonement, but his whole person is the atonement and his whole person began by coming to us as a baby. And I think it's been Father John [Behr], that has really, he has opened up the birth narrative for me more than I've ever understood. That even in birth, he's choosing, he's choosing to be human. That's a choice. We don't get, we don't get to choose. And he's choosing it so that we now get this element of choice in, inserted into our lived lives. That's been very powerful for me.
Jonathan Puddle 32:28
When Father John Behr explai... said that, like "None of you chose to be born, right?"
Julie Canlis 32:32
Yeah.
Jonathan Puddle 32:32
Like that, Was it? Yeah, that's a pivotal... and I've been telling people that ever since.
Julie Canlis 32:38
Yeah. Oh...
Jonathan Puddle 32:39
Powerful.
Julie Canlis 32:40
Yeah. Very powerful. So even agency basically is given to us, in a powerful way through Christ's, through Christ's taking on our humanity. I would, what I wanted to do was have people understand that Jesus' ministry didn't start at age 30, his ministry began, and it was actually Calvin, who opened me up to this because Calvin was such a good reader of the early fathers. Calvin said that at the beginning of his writings, he said, none of those first 30 years matter, he put it in one of the kids' catechisms. By the end of his life, he said, it is in these 30 years that our salvation, you know, begins and is to be found. So that's when I started saying, kind of imaginatively, what does it mean that my salvation is wrapped up in Jesus' whole experience of 30 years? What was he experiencing in his body in those 30 years, that means not just that he has weathered every temptation I've had, but also that that his body, his soma, still carries some of that imprint of being human. And not just some of that I mean, powerfully, all of our experiences of being human and, and in that he is working, sanctifying, reclaiming, reshaping, making those places once again, fertile places for the Holy Spirit. And I, this is a quote from Irenaeus, he said, "He was re..." I think he says something like, "He was re-seeding... Jesus—by being human—was re-seeding the Spirit into all these stages of our life." And then he said, "And Jesus was re-accustoming the Spirit," who hadn't been in someone's life this intensely... he was re-accustoming... the Spirit needed also to be re-accustomed to what it was like to be in a human. I thought that... I just love that sense that Jesus is both giving the Spirit a place to move around again and figure out, "Oh, yeah, how do I do this being in humans again?" And so so the whole life of Jesus is this... is part of our salvation, because this is where it's being worked out. And when we get united with Christ, we don't just get this forgiveness event. We get this life that has been stretched and expanded and I just think of someone like breathing in deeply in their lungs, like Jesus has breathed-in the Spirit for us in all of these places, so that we can, so that we can walk with him in, in all stages of our life, for the glory of the Father. And so and so it just becomes really important that he had to weather puberty. And it becomes really important that he had to learn how to walk. Not that he's walking for me, that something I don't have to learn now, but it's that that aspect of learning and growing and maturing, is now sanctified. And we don't have to jump to age 30 and get on with our life. All of these parts are part of a new holy place for us to be with God.
Jonathan Puddle 35:45
Yes. Yes, Wow. We'll take a very quick pause, so I can thank my patrons. I want to give a shout-out to everybody who supports the show, whether monthly or annually, or just with one off gifts. Keeps me on the air, it keeps me encouraged, and I love having you all as part of this community where we get to discuss these topics in greater depth. Big love to Winter and Simi, who are my latest patrons, thank you for joining! Friends, if you would like to support the show and gain access to the B-Sides of these podcasts, as well as the wider community where we discuss and learn and grow together, head over to patreon.com/JonathanPuddle; you can sign up for as little as $3 a month, or $30 a year. Thanks a lot. Back to the show. I remember, I remember as a kid reading a biography of Sadhu Sundar Singh. And he was so sad that he didn't die age 33 as did his Lord, and that he had really tried to, you know, we'd wanted to do as much in three years as Jesus had, kind of thing. And I remember something about that lodged, because when I turned 33, I was kind of like, "Well, alright, I mean, I guess, yeah, rolling up our sleeves." And now I'm older than 33.
Julie Canlis 37:04
Yeah.
Jonathan Puddle 37:05
Like, okay, but, but yeah, there's this... it continues and in all these aspects. You you at one point, you use the language and maybe you are quoting someone else, but you use the language of bending humanity in all these different ways back.
Julie Canlis 37:23
Yeah.
Jonathan Puddle 37:24
And I just found that that was really beautiful too. Like, okay, well, humans get born. And humans do this. And humans do that. And ultimately, humans die. So we're doing that too.
Julie Canlis 37:37
Yes, yes!
Jonathan Puddle 37:38
And now we're introducing something new for humans, they will get to participate in resurrection, depending on how you want to slice and dice that. You wrote also this, I copied this out this morning. "With the coming of the Son, this ex.. this ordinary existence is taken on, infiltrated, recreated and redeemed. The Son inhabited all parts of human existence, to transform them, and become the one from whom our ordinary lives can now be lived. This is an extra-ordinary, extraordinary miracle and extra-ordinary benediction upon our ordinary lives." Very good poetry as well.
Julie Canlis 37:47
Yeah. Thank you. Yes, that I mean, that bending language is TF Torrance. And so he talks always about how Christ is bending us back to communion in union with the Father. And that, and now that this one in whom the perfect filial life has been lived, is now at the right hand of the Father. And this one who is at the right hand of the Father is embodied, then suddenly, all of us, as we are in Christ, we are in this embodied one at the right hand of the Father in communion with Him. And I know that's both eschatological but it's also a reality now. It's the door is wide open through his side, you know, through the wounds, and that's our door in. And so a lot of my thinking about this now is what... how do we make discipleship less about things we do and more about living in Christ? And getting in, getting in through the side into this one who's at the right hand of the Father and how much as... I'm on staff here at my husband's church that he pastors here in Wenatchee, we're always asking, "What are we doing that is keeping people from living in this communion with the Father because we're making them too busy?" You know, that's, that's what we don't want. We want discipleship to be this deepening growing sense of, of what it means to be in Christ. And the good news is to be in Christ is to be in a body and it's to be profoundly ordinary, which is why the whole early church was centered on ordinary sacraments, ordinary things we do: go to church, be with its people, care for the poor. Those were the markers and they weren't over spiritualized, they were, they were pretty day-in and day-out things that they were involved in.
Jonathan Puddle 40:13
It was the very busyness of church that triggered my theological deconstruction.
Julie Canlis 40:19
Hmm.
Jonathan Puddle 40:20
Because I was being destroyed by... this program and that program and being in a small group and leading a small group, like the whole machinery, is what triggered me, going, "Hold on, something is not working, because this has become toxic to at least one human being." Then, the other thread you just mentioned was when we came... and my wife, and I, surprisingly, ended up back in church after not being in much church for 10 years. And we ended up becoming kids' pastors. That was our first thing, is "How do we not just teach moral codes, and not just get them busy memorizing things and reciting Moses and his rules?" I mean, that's the bread and butter of most children's programs, the ark, which happens to be a horrible story. And so on. And how can we actually teach children to live... to enter the life of Christ? And and I'm not sure that I still would if someone was to say, how are you doing that? I don't know. I'm still not sure that I know. But. But it seems that as we meditate on Christ, and as we just chew over these things that we do slide in that direction. Do you have you have some practical thoughts, you know, for those of us that are in... I mean, any of us on our journeys, but those of us who are in pastoral discipleship kinds of roles?
Julie Canlis 41:48
I really, I mean, I don't know if this is advice, but I, like you, I was like, "How do we do this differently? How do we not give people boxes to tick?" Because if you're type A, that you can do that for a long time. And then you burn out. Or if you're not type A you always feel like you're on the fringes, and why should you even try, and the... and the type A-ers look down on you when they're probably looking over a saint. So I would say my journey, a huge U-turn for me happened when I started teaching Godly play to kids. And I don't know if you're familiar with Godly play. It's like a Montessori approach to teaching Bible Study... Bible stories. I saw it in this little church down in southern England. And I was like, "What is this?" They had clothes pins, with the little round heads. And they had a sandbox, which was not a sandbox, they told me it was the desert. And, and they, they did these stories, in the most quiet, pared down, just the most elemental aspects of the story. It's like mythology where you just remove all the layers, and it's just the people on the journey. And the story is being told to these four year olds in this quiet voice, and the kids are wrapped, you know, they are just, they can't believe it. There's no eye contact made between the storyteller and the, and the the kids; the storyteller just looks at the pieces, they're moving in the desert. And the kids look wherever the storyteller is looking. So everybody's focused on the same place. The story can take up to eight or nine minutes. And, and what... I knew this was working, because the kids were quiet and focused the whole time, little kids. And then at the end, the storyteller, sits back, gets off their haunches, sits back on their bum, finally makes eye contact with the kids and says, "I wonder what was your favorite part of the story?" And so moving directly into the emotional engagement with the story, and the kids start saying, "I loved it. I loved it when Abraham got lost." You know, it's because I was lost last week. And then they tell the story about being lost in Safeway. And then the next kid, you know, tells their favorite part of the story. "I loved it when he saw the stars. And God can close to him and told him that this he would have as many children as the stars." And then another kid jumps in and says, "I am a star. I'm a star. I'm one of his stars." I mean, the kids are getting it on such deep levels. And then and then you close by saying, "I wonder where you are in the story?" And the kids always know. They have this deep, powerful connection with the story. There's no right answers, because that's not... we all know, that's not the point of the Bible stories. The point of the Bible stories is to have an encounter with God. And you know, and sometimes from week to week, we are different characters in the story and we move around in the story. And then. And so it was in teaching little kids these super simplified—scripts almost—of these traditional biblical stories that both Matt and I started rethinking how preaching should be, how adult Bible studies should be, how to check your knowledge at the door, and how to help adults enter the stories like these kids were able to enter into the stories. Our whole church does this now. For half of COVID, we had people meeting in backyards and doing Bible study this way. It's basically children's Bible studies for adults, and the amazing thing is from age four to 80, everybody's answering the questions and everybody's on the same playing field. And that began to deconstruct Bible studies for us. What, what are we actually after in the Bible study? Our goal is transformation, so we need to somehow make these encounters with the Word. Oh, after I started teaching that then Matt had the privilege of starting to teach Bible study to the grave diggers in our parish in Scotland. And one was dyslexic, one was illiterate, and the third one was a Christian and hauling his two friends to Bible study. And, and that also, Matt realized, "Oh, I can't, I'm not going to give them a Bible, because that would make these two guys feel terrible." So he said, "Okay, we're gonna do Bible study, but everyone has to close their Bibles. And you just have to hear." And Matt moves through verse by verse slowly, unpacking the Bible stories and making them engage, at each level, predicting what's going to come and then discussing what, in what's happening, what are they feeling, what are they seeing? And so I think this is a long way of answering your question, but this is where the Holy Spirit helps us become united with Christ in new ways. And for many of us who grew up with the Bible, it's, it's difficult to engage the Bible, we need to engage... we need, we need to be washed and healed and cleansed of our neurotic ways of reading the Bible, we need to be given the Bible back again, as a story of this incredible narrative of the way God has been chasing us, and chasing people like us for years. And so when we can put ourselves in those stories, and wondering, "What is God gonna say to me next?" That puts us in such a different place with Scripture. So that's my answer that I don't know if that's an answer. But it's... it actually works for kids and adults, because we're all the same. We're the same human being at four and at 80, and God works with us the same way. And so those are, those are ways that we are moving to recovering Bible reading for people in our congregation, either for people who have... are completely done with reading the Bible, or with people who maybe are reading in a way that's hurting themselves. So.
Jonathan Puddle 47:55
That is exquisite. I, I, I'm all over that. I am super pumped to. Okay, Lord, you must you must rid us of this COVID plague. I just want to start experimenting with these things! Because we can't even get together in a room or outside right now. But that is beautiful. Julie, thank you. That is very cool.
Julie Canlis 48:19
Yeah.
Jonathan Puddle 48:19
And I have seen those moments in their eyes, you know, with the kids, especially where something clicks, or something drops. Or, or recently, one of my best friends whose kids we teach. He, they were they were going through a story or his son was reading his Bible on his own. And he'd come upon one of the particular you know, sort of texts of terror, harder stories. And he said, "Dad, this doesn't sound like God." And his father is a PhD student and has and has a rich relationship with God has the chops to be able to equip his son in that. But he, but his dad came and told me, he said, "Isn't that cool? Isn't that wonderful? That my son, on, on encountering a violent bloodthirsty story blamed of on God, his gut reaction was, 'Hold on.'" So that's really cool.
Julie Canlis 49:15
Yeah.
Jonathan Puddle 49:17
Don't tell all of the prior generations of children's pastors that raised me because there'll be like, "You're done!" That's cool when the Spirit testifies in the life of the child.
Julie Canlis 49:29
Amen.
Jonathan Puddle 49:30
Yeah. Thank you for that. I'm going to ruminate on that. As I'm continuing to ruminate on your book, I probably need to read it at least once a year. And I already have plans to include it in sort of our, our discipleship. I'm going to use the word catechism very, very lightly.
Julie Canlis 49:46
Yeah. No, it's a good word and we can rehabilitate it and do do wonderful things with it. So we all need to be catechized. I mean, we all need help and and I think it's just the spirit in which it's done. And are we looking for our salvation to come from knowing the right answers, or are we looking for our salvation to come from Christ?
Jonathan Puddle 50:10
Yes. When Father John Behr, accused us all of being Gnostics, during the Gospel of John course, again, I was like, I've never connected the dots on that. But absolutely, that's the secret of my faith, the secret knowledge that I have possessed.
Julie Canlis 50:27
Yes. And don't you love how it takes an outsider to just be like, "Wait, you guys are all crazy, you know? How could you think this?" I, those are some of my highlights when he was able to just kind of lob, lob that gentle grenade into the room and just remind us, bring us back to the text, bring us back to Christ's body. Again, And again. And again.
Jonathan Puddle 50:48
One of the things also that you shared in the course that really spoke to me that I wanted to thank you for was again back to John Calvin, and we were discussing destination and predestination. And you'd explain that for for folks being persecuted to the point of death by the Catholic establishment, and coming to Geneva, and Calvin's kind of promise to them of like, "No, you're okay, like you're chosen," was such a life-giving assurance to them. But when they returned to places of dominant cultural power, with that assurance, it turned into something different. And I thought that was just a very fascinating. I mean, how many, how many doctrines have experienced that turning into something different?
Julie Canlis 51:43
Yes, yes!
Jonathan Puddle 51:44
Surely the list is endless.
Julie Canlis 51:46
Well, it just reminds me that it's who do we, I think you can tell so much about a theology from who you are using your theology to... shame. I should say, are you are you're using your theology to shame the weak? The ones that you should actually be caring for and protecting? Or are you using your theology, to shame those in power who are not using their power? Well, like you look at Jesus, he definitely confronted and I have, I've had many people who've, you know, use the example of Jesus' being in the temple and holy anger. I'm like, oh no, like, we don't get to use that holy anger on the weak, we don't get to use that holy anger on, on those who are marginalized in our society who we disagree with, we, that holy anger is reserved for us. That's who he uses it against. So connecting that to predestination, we can get these systems that are so powerful and so compelling, and almost addictive, these mental frameworks for the gospel. And it begins to put us in charge and us in the place of power and us as the elect. Rather than the only reason we're here is not because we've done anything, we're just here because we've been called to let those people over there—who God loves—know that he loves them. That's the, that's the only election we have is to go tell them that God loves them. That's, that's the difference. You won't find that in Calvin. But that's, that's my, that's where I think Calvin would head eventually.
Jonathan Puddle 53:25
I love that. That's a great distinction. Julie, would you, Julie, would you pray for us?
Julie Canlis 53:29
I would love to. This has been a blessing, thank you for the dialogue and discussion. And let me just offer all of our hearts and our journeys to the Lord. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, thank you that you invite us through the wounds in your enfleshed side, to be a part of you and your life. Thank you that it is only through our wounds and our suffering, that we can be healed. And that redemption will always have the last word. Thank you that you invite us into our ordinary lives, because that is where you want to be found. In ordinary objects, and an ordinary people because that's where you have always thrown in your lot. Thank you for creating this wonderful life that we live, this beautiful planet, the people that we rub shoulders with. We thank you for the grace of the existence we have and may we have eyes to see how you have gone ahead of us and you are already in everything that we touch and do. And may we become more like you in the splendor of your beauty and your holiness. We pray this in Jesus name, amen.
Jonathan Puddle 55:01
Amen. Thank you, Julie. Friends, I really, really, really recommend that you go and get a copy of her book A Theology of the Ordinary. It is linked in the show notes. Also her deeper work, her PhD dissertation was turned into Calvin's Ladder: A Spiritual Theology of Ascent and Ascension, is available if you're interested in digging deeper into Calvin's teaching and how Julie sees it is in this, in this light that, admittedly, is very, very different for the way Calvin's been presented to me. So I'm excited to, to gain more perspective on that—probably a needed perspective, let's be honest. As well, I said that I would talk about the Revelation course. So the Open Table Conference are a group of wonderful men and women who put on theological training and conferences, events. And coming up in September is a really remarkable course. It'll be something like 26 weeks, one week for every chapter of the book of Revelation with six world renowned scholars and theologians and teachers, all in conversation together. And then a number of guests as well and Julie will be one of the guests along with Brian Zahnd and Chris Green. The regular teachers are Father John Behr, Brad Jersak, Kenneth Tanner, William Paul Young, Cherith Nordling, John MacMurray, folks who have been incredibly helpful in my journey. And so I would really recommend you consider signing up for that Revelation course in September. It's only 100 bucks, really quite incredible value. And the Gospel of John course is available now to purchase. The course wrapped up in March, but it's available to purchase and gain access to and it's one of the most remarkable courses training materials I have ever done. Highly recommend that. So you'll find all that stuff linked in the show notes as well as the transcription of this episode. Friends, there'll be a B-Side on this very shortly with my friend Chris Long, we'll unpack this, especially the bombshell Julie dropped on me that she turned up at the Toronto Blessing. So that is going to be a lot of fun. I can't wait to unpack that with Chris. We will be recording that very soon and will be up just about by the time you listen to this. So, grace and peace, my friends. Thank you for being here. Much love.