Is Your Faith Falling Apart—or Growing Deeper? With Ian Morgan Cron
Episode Notes
What happens when the faith that once held you no longer feels like it can carry the questions you’re asking now?
You may still love God. You don’t want to leave your faith behind. But the beliefs, practices, or ways of relating to God that once sustained you begin to feel too small for the life you’re living.
In this week’s conversation, Dr. Alison is joined by bestselling author, psychotherapist, and spiritual director Ian Morgan Cron to explore the tender space between silencing your questions and burning everything down.
Through Ian’s brand-new novel Chasing Francis, they discuss how a crisis of faith can become an invitation to spiritual growth, deeper intimacy with God, and a faith that is more fully your own.
You’ll explore:
- Why a crisis of faith can become an opportunity for deeper spiritual growth
- The difference between healthy questioning and becoming trapped in cynicism
- What spiritual individuation looks like and why it matters
- Why the faith that sustained an earlier version of you may need room to grow
- How to return to the foundation that God is love and you are loved
- Why resisting a difficult spiritual season can create even more suffering
- How beauty, imagination, story, and nature can restore perspective
- What St. Francis can teach us about simplicity, compassion, and an embodied faith
Your questions do not necessarily mean that you are losing your faith.
They may be an invitation to examine what you inherited, hold on to what is true, and allow God to build something deeper.
As Ian reminds us, sometimes the work is not forcing yourself back into a previous expression of faith. It is asking:
What is the invitation here?
More Resources:
You can now preorder Dr. Alison’s newest book, The Secure Soul, and immediately receive the first 3 chapters as well as early access to the companion guide!
Connect further with @dralisoncook on Instagram
Curious what Family Role may have shaped you? Take the Family Role Quiz to learn how you may be showing up in your relationships with others.
📖 Find a full transcript and list of resources from this episode here
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TRANSCRIPT
I have seen healthy expressions of deconstruction, and I have seen unhealthy.
We may not want either, but we're going to get them. Some of the best things that ever happened to
me were crises of faith. I mean, I've had 20 relationships with Jesus in my life. If I still had a
young life theology, I'd be in trouble. When these moments come to our lives, we...
these seasons. The resistance is what causes more suffering than just going through it.
If I try to overcome this and shame myself back into a previous expression of faith,
I'm actually maybe frustrating your purpose for this.
Hey everyone, and welcome back to this week's Deep Dive episode of The Best of You. I'm so thrilled
you're here with me today for this conversation. This is a great conversation. I loved where we
went with it. I loved having my friend Ian on the podcast. He's been on the podcast before and he
always brings such great wisdom. He's such a unique blend as a therapist, as a spiritual director,
as someone who's lived a lot of life to speak into a tender topic.
The topic we're talking about today is what happens when the faith that has been familiar to you,
the faith that has held you suddenly doesn't feel like it's sustaining you in the same way.
Maybe it begins to feel too small or God starts to feel far away or you're starting to ask
questions about things you once took for granted and you don't want to lose your faith.
You love God, but you're trying to figure out how to adjust spiritually and find a different way to
relate to God, a way to honor the questions without letting go. This is a tender place for many of
us. And culturally, I don't think we've done a very good job of creating spaces to honor these
seasons of faith. Sometimes it can feel like questioning your faith means you have to leave it.
There could be pressure to kind of pull you out of your faith. So from that vantage point, you
don't want to ask the questions because you don't want someone to pull you out of your faith, but
you also don't want to. bury the questions because they're there, they're real, and you know
somehow God can handle the questions, but you're not sure where to go with them. And so I think
today's conversation is just such a... place for us to land with some of the hard questions,
with some of the feelings, because there's just a lot of wisdom our guest brings today.
My guest today is Ian Morgan Crone. Ian is a bestselling author. He's a psychotherapist.
He's an Enneagram teacher, and he's the host of the Popular Typology podcast. He's also the author
of several bestselling books, including The Road, Back to You, The Story of You, The Fix.
He came on the podcast, I think it was a couple of years ago. to talk about the fix. It's a great
episode. And today we're going to discuss a brand new novel he has coming out.
He actually wrote it a while back. It's being released this month. It's called Chasing Francis.
We'll get into some of the themes today, but Chasing Francis tells the story of a man named Chase.
He's a successful pastor whose faith begins to unravel after a tragedy in his church.
And it sends him on a forced sabbatical where he takes a pilgrimage over to Italy, where an
encounter with the life and spirituality of St. Francis of Assisi begins to open him into a more
embodied faith, one that's shaped by beauty, by mystery, by simplicity, by compassion,
and by love for the created world. And so what could have been a crisis of faith actually becomes a
deepening, a beautiful process as he leans into it and allows God to work on him through this.
season. What I appreciated about this story and what I so appreciate about everything Ian does is
that it offers us a third way, right? Somewhere between never asking questions,
never changing the way we relate to God and leaving faith altogether, which again is sometimes the
only two options I see offered to many of us, especially if you're in the online world. And so much
of life is lived in that middle place of wrestling with God. And this story of Chase,
I think, honors the reality of our journey that we don't have to silence the questions,
but we also don't have to burn everything. down. Instead, it asks how the faith we inherited can be
examined, can be deepened, and can be made more fully our own.
In our conversation, Ann and I talk candidly about what it means to have a crisis of faith.
We talk about healthy and unhealthy ways of approaching that, about the process of healthy
spiritual individuation and why old ways of understanding God sometimes don't last or need updating
and how returning to the foundation of God's love can help us rebuild something truer,
deeper, more embodied, and even more authentic. talk about St. Francis himself,
the spiritual power of his story and of looking to past figures and who maybe lived out their faith
in different contexts and in completely different settings and how that can ignite our own
imaginations and spark something inside of us that maybe we couldn't find ourselves in other ways.
And we talk about why spending time in nature outside of our own minds, outside of some of our
doubts and questions can also help to restore. perspective in some surprising ways.
It's just such a great conversation. I love Ian. He's so real. We have such a great back and forth,
kind of talking candidly about some of these themes in our own lives. You can pick up Chasing
Francis anywhere books are sold. It's a great read. And I'm so thrilled to bring you my
conversation with Ian Morgan Cron.
I'm really... excited about this conversation and what this book,
Chasing Francis, stirs up. So thank you for being here. Thanks for writing it. You bet.
I mean, I'm delighted. For two reasons. One is I love St. Francis and have for a very long time.
And so I really am excited to get into kind of what... you reveal to us through this character in
the book about the way of Francis. But what I really loved is that you're painting a picture of a
way that we can have a crisis of faith or even questions about faith.
And that doesn't, sometimes I feel like in our modern era, in our kind of TikTok era,
there are two options. We can sort of question faith and leave it and get angry and burn it down,
or we can never question anything and we just stay in this very narrow circle.
And I don't think a lot of us want either of those options, but we don't often see conversations
happening where there's a third way. And I think that's what you're doing with this book.
This term, deconstruction, which has overlap with that idea of crisis.
You know, I have seen healthy expressions of deconstruction and I have seen unhealthy,
you know, expressions of it. And first of all,
we may not want either, but we're going to get them. I mean, you know, crisis of faith.
Some of the best things that ever happened to me were crises of faith. So I'm not. I mean,
if we go back to the old trope about the word crisis, the etymology of it, meaning opportunity in
its original derivation, right? So it's really an opportunity. A crisis of faith is an opportunity.
of faith. And so it doesn't have to be painted as a negative.
You know, it can be really quite beautiful and a necessary wound to move into a deeper place of
intimacy with God. So I love that framing. In my experience,
of having some questions about faith in a time. I was in my doctoral program,
this is 25 years ago, before we were online, before there were sort of these ideas about this,
again, this kind of buzzword that I have such fraught feelings about deconstruction for good
reason. Just to your point, I have friends who have seen their,
some of my listeners have seen friends and family members in the name of deconstruction
just burn down anything, right? And that's just heartbreaking.
And to your point, I know other people who have really looked at it from more of what,
again, 25 years ago, before it was a thing, it was a philosophical idea that just simply meant
questioning assumptions. That's all it really was about. It was like, you know, looking at what are
some of the assumptions that I have? And I remember for me going through a season where I never
lost sight of God. I never lost faith in Jesus. I never stopped loving the scriptures.
I related to God and how I understood Jesus' role in my life and how I understood how the
scriptures speak to me changed. And it was disorienting. And at times it felt like a wilderness
area. At times it felt like scary. And I'm kind of glad that that happened offline and before we
were having all these conversations about it because I knew I wasn't losing anything. But I did
recognize, to your point, an invitation to a different kind of intimacy that felt disorienting.
And so I guess with that frame in mind, What is your story behind the story of Chasing Francis that
led you to think about these ideas that you write about so beautifully in the book?
Yeah. Well, I mean, at the time that I wrote it, I was moving through a season of positive
interrogation around My faith.
Right. And what I mean by that is I was beginning to question many of the scripts and assumptions I
was handed as a younger person and beginning to say, does that belong to me or someone else?
And I think I was recovering or reclaiming a faith of my own. And I think that's very healthy.
I mean, that's just sort of spiritual individuation. is what that is. Oh, that's good. And I just
sort of feel like that's the journey of the main character of the book, Chase. He's going through,
he doesn't lose complete faith in God. I mean, he wouldn't have gone on this darn pilgrimage to
Assisi, Italy if he had given up all hope. But it's as if the model of faith that he had early in
the book just ran out of gas. And I just think that's normal. I mean,
listen, I've been married 20 times to the same woman. I mean, we have renegotiated our marriage.
We have been married, I always say, 20 times. We've had to renew the contract at several important
moments. I feel that way with God. I mean, you know, God is this infinite pool.
And so, you know, it only makes sense that we I mean,
I've had 20 relationships with Jesus in my life. You know what I mean? Like, if I still had a young
life theology, I'd be in trouble. Like, you know, it was good at one point.
But, you know, as I grew older and more life circumstances came in, I had to make room,
a bigger room for who God is. I see.
So, yeah, I get what you're saying. Deconstruction in the in contemporary parlance has a negative
kind of aspect and it can go sideways. Yes. And I don't I I've had many conversations with people
in the midst of what they called deconstruction and I've challenged them. You know,
I said, listen, if you if you had if you have if you're disillusioned, it's because you had
illusions and you need to own that first. You started with illusions. Then secondly,
I'll say, and at what point will you reconstruct it? Yes. And what efforts are you putting into
that? Because otherwise they fall into this pool of cynicism and kind of like kind of a season of,
you know, yeah, cynicism and kind of not a great emotional,
psychological space. And I want to name, I just wanted to name that up front before we dive in,
because again, for the listener, I think Chasing Francis is giving us that third way that it's okay
to question. It's okay to look at things. It's okay to even doubt. It's okay to, I love what you're
saying, individuate from. Whether it's your parents, your family of origin, a youth group where
there's been painful messages or messages that don't just hold anymore. And we need this third
category that isn't, you know, I feel that tug sometimes. And again,
I feel it mostly online. I don't feel it in my real life. I feel like in my real life, people are
having honest conversations that don't fit neatly into these kind of extremes of don't question
anything or question everything and get cynical, right? It's what you're saying. And I think
marriage is a great example. Again, we don't see that with marriage either. You know, it's like,
it's great or leave. It's like, oh my gosh, marriage is a lot of the middle. You know, it's a lot
of the, right, to your point, the renegotiating, relearning each other, coming back.
And so I just kind of want to... frame our conversation, leaning into that,
I don't even want to call it the messy middle, but the work of kind of examining,
looking at closely, seeing what's hard, but also rebuilding, recreating, renegotiating. I really
love that, how that's what I see that you're doing here. You're hitting the hard questions head on,
but letting that be the start of a journey versus just a leaving of something.
You know, I think there's a model not original to me, but I like it because it's been true to my
experience. You know, you in the spiritual life, you're given or you develop on your own a thesis.
Right. And that you organize your spiritual life around that thesis,
if you will. So it's your beginning journey. Then you may go through a period of a lot of
questioning and a lot of. You know, soul searching. And then and that's called antithesis.
So you're you're you're kind of throwing out a little bit, not all of it, but maybe a portion of
what you had before. Yeah. And then the next stage that people don't hit is synthesis.
So thesis to antithesis to synthesis.
And I think that's the journey Chase is on in Chasing Francis. Right. He had a model. He.
loses that model, right? There's some skepticism. and hurt and pain involved.
And then by the end of the book, he finds this beautiful synthesis where I think he holds onto the
distinctives, the important distinctives of that earlier faith. But now his influence,
his spirituality has been opened up to this whole new domain around St.
Francis and other things. And now he's... So his faith has grown as a result of this,
what might feel like a painful pruning of the faith he once had.
And so I just, I've been through that any number of times in my life spiritually, and I think it's
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You talk about with Chase in the book, and this really mirrors a lot of my own experience.
When I was talking about 25 years ago, I would say my thesis was, and again,
I wouldn't say this was theologically my thesis, but the way that I was applying my faith was to
mostly focus on the outer behaviors and the thought life.
You know, there were numerous reasons for that. And Chase is, he's successful on the outside. He's
a pastor, but his inner world is unraveling. And I related to that,
right? My outer world looked fantastic, like gold star, Christian, you know,
high achieving, you know, but I had no idea how to reach the inner life.
And I saw that in Chase. That was the beginning for him. And I'm curious if that...
That dichotomy you think is – do you see that often in the people you talk with and the people
where there's sort of a distinguishing between the outer, what we're kind of thinking makes work?
If I can just get this together on my outer life, get this relationship right, get this job
perfect, do this better versus the inner. Do you see that a lot, Ian? Yes. I particularly see it
when we talk in those terms of – know, the first half of life and second half of life.
Yeah. Um, that's one place I see it a lot, you know, like between one and 40, man, you're like,
you're creating an ego, right? And then between 40 and 80, you're deacon,
you're taking that ego apart.
Which is the healthy, I think you started to say deconstruct, which is that healthy, non,
trying to do that, where you're just re-examining it going, I don't know that all that was
healthy. Right. You're dismantling is maybe even a better word for the ego. And so you're just
like, if the first half of life is about addition. Uh, you know, you're adding, you know,
I'm getting married. I'm going to have my first child. I'm going to get my license. I'm going to,
you know, get my, you know, have my, get my first promotion and I'm going to make my, you know,
some people might say I got my first million dollars. Some people might, you know, have kids, my
kids, my pickup fence. Yeah. All the things. And then in the second half of life is subtraction,
right? It's about, it's about saying, oh, it was a necessary.
part of my journey in that first half to be about the work of adding. But in the second half,
as I grow closer to Jesus, it's really about subtracting. It's realizing that none of those things
are going to give me the ultimate sense of satisfaction. I'm going to have to literally,
and you know, I won't go down the trail of Pinocchio, but he's my spiritual hero because that's
precisely what he does, right? Like in the first half of little Pinocchio's life, he wants to be a
real boy. Yeah. Right. We all come into the world wanting to be real boys and girls. Yeah. And then
we go on little misadventures. Yeah. Acquiring, doing all the stuff.
Right. And then at a point, as in the story of Pinocchio, somebody is going to have to die here if
they want to become a real boy. And that part of us that has to die is the ego. It's the irony.
It's the irony. And then, as in the story of Pinocchio. you will be resurrected as a real boy or
girl. Yes, that's the path. Yeah. That's the, right. It feels like a death, but it's actually the
path to greater life and the life you've wanted. You know, so we go through life and we have,
you know, that's why when someone's in a journey of a dark night of the soul or whatever we call
it, a deconstruction or whatever it may be, for the earnest seeker, it's okay,
I tell them. It's going to be okay.
If you can't see God, it may not be because the light is not with you.
It may be that the light is so bright it's blinding. God may be so close to you right now that you
can't see. And so just ride with it, you know, and it'll be okay.
And I think, you know, in Chasing Francis, you know, it was both a message to Chase's journey and
it was also a message to the church at large, right? How do we create communities in which those
kinds of journeys can be held? Yes. And as a natural part of the growth span of growth stages of
spiritual life. Exactly. Just like I think about, if you think about... development we wouldn't
want to remove i mean as a parent you might want to remove the teenage years but they're necessary
we need that kind of some of the kicking and screaming you know to become the person and it's no
different spiritually um and let's i want to talk about i love the pinocchio metaphor that's
brilliant i want to talk a little bit about saint francis because in the book For the listener who
hasn't read it, it's just a beautiful novel. And we're touching on through story.
I love how you use story, which I think is such a powerful way to bring to life some of these
themes. But he goes on a pilgrimage.
And it has to do with Chasing Francis, the title, Learning About St. Francis.
What was your first meaningful encounter with St. Francis? And what did you see in Francis that
sparked something in you that made you want to? make him such a pivotal figure in this book?
I first came to faith as a little boy in the Catholic Church. I went to Catholic schools.
We were deeply steeped in Irish Catholicism as a boy. I always tell,
whenever I meet another Irish Catholic, I'm like, did you have a Mother Mary nightlight? I did. And
invariably they did, or it was Joseph or whatever. And I owe a great debt of gratitude to that.
expression of our faith, right? In high school, got involved in Young Life. I was introduced to
Jesus another time and began a journey in a more evangelical expression of the faith.
Now, of course, evangelicalism in the 1980s was a lot different than it is now. It was a whole
different. I mean, we were to us. It was standing around singing. Hello, darkness, my old friend
and like holding hands and crying. But, you know, it was very sweet. And those people saved my
life. They saved my life at a very critical time.
And, you know, I think my introduction to Francis then was,
you know, obviously in the Catholic Church as a little boy. Right. And that was one of the things I
loved about Catholicism. You know, we always had statues and we always had windows and they just
reminded you of all these people's stories. Yes. Now.
Around the time that I wrote it, I was on
my way to a trip in, of all places, Bermuda.
And as I was going out the door, I saw a copy of G.K. Chesterton's St.
Francis of Assisi on my side table because a friend had lent it to me. A little tiny book,
right? And I brought it with me and I thought, I got there, I read it four times in one week.
Because I was floored at this remarkable historical figure who looms so large over the Christian
tradition. And I was so impressed. He represented to me the Christian I wished I could become in so
many ways. His joy, his simplicity, his love for the poor,
his... his love of the natural world. I mean, he's the patron saint of ecology.
You know, his, I mean, it was as if he was more important now than he was 800 years ago.
And I was like, you know, my Protestant friends who have no exposure to some of these things and
who often describe the kind of Christian they want to become and don't know that they're describing
St. Francis. I want to tell them about this guy because They just think he's a birdbath.
You know what I mean? Like they just think he's like a garden gnome. And I'm like, no,
no, no, no, no, no, no. He's a map for our future. Yeah, didn't he? I mean,
historically, that is one thing I love about our Catholic brothers and sisters. My mom is a devout
Catholic, so I have a huge respect for that. well, I guess it's kind of the trunk of our faith and
we're the branch of the faith, but is that historical context,
right? You get into touch with some of these real life figures, but didn't he leave wealth?
Couldn't he have inherited a bunch of his father's wealth and he turned away from it? Am I thinking
of the right saint? And he went to live with the poor. Yes, absolutely. So Francis was the son of a
very wealthy cloth merchant at a time when... paper currency was just first being introduced and
where there was rapacious greed and unhealthy capitalism like breaking out,
you know. And Francis turned away in a very dramatic fashion from his,
you know, materialist life and embraced a life of poverty,
which is not to say all of us have to do that. Yeah. But there's a powerful message in it about us
as contemporary Christians and our relationship to materialism,
to money, to complexifying our lives with too much stuff.
And so, you know, the book poses challenges, some that I hope will cause dis-ease for people,
right? In the same way that... did for me when I first began to really research Frances.
Well, to that thing we were talking about, where the outer, kind of the ego, even the subtle ways,
you know, a lot of myself and the women I work with, where there's some of the outer is kind of
social, you know, trying to be liked, you know, that sort of pleasing part of me, I'll speak for
myself, right? Like, even that isn't, well, it's maybe not, you know, accruing wealth, but it is
sort of still fixated on something outside of me, making me finally feel whole, as opposed to...
Yeah. Yeah. It's the nature. I think it's just human nature that we look for external solutions to
internal problems. Yes. Eventually, the external solution becomes a bigger problem than the one it
was trying to solve. So, you know, if you pursue a life of I want to be accepted,
I want to be loved, I want to, you know, I want to be one of the cool kids. I want to have money. I
want, you know, these are eventually those will become bigger problems than the problem it's trying
to solve. Yeah. Right. And so. You know, and that's just therapy.
I mean, therapy is basically looking at how people are trying to solve a problem. And in the
solving of the problem, they're creating more problems. So, you know, at least in part.
Right. And I just find so what's so interesting to me when I,
you know, writing Chasing Francis. My goal was to introduce people to St. Francis and Chase was
simply going to be the vehicle through which that happened. And here's, but that's not what has
happened. I have so many emails. People, they're not interested as interested in Francis as they
are in Chase. Interesting. Sure. Like everybody wants to know. People say to me all the time,
oh my gosh, Chase's story is my story. Yeah. Yeah. So Francis became almost like a sidebar add on.
And but they wanted to know about Chase. And I was so surprised when that happened. Yeah.
And yet that's the I mean, that's just the unintended consequences of publishing a book.
Right. Like it connects it in a level you didn't think it would. Well, and I think. the the
pilgrimage aspect of the book that it's sort of there's an allegory component to it we you know we
think about pilgrim's progress or or um i think sometimes it gets us and i want to ask you about
this it gets us into our own imaginations and so we're encountering something in a different way
right as opposed to being taught it didactically it's like you can almost you can feel it more in
in your body was that were you aware that you were trying to do that while writing this book while
kind of trying to yeah Well, it's funny.
The way this book came about was I ended up in a lunch with an acquisition editor from a publishing
house. And she had like 30 minutes to talk to me, right?
And so while I'm pitching a book about St. Francis, I just blurted out,
you know what? I could make it a novel. It ought to be a novel. And then I left the meeting because
she was all stoked. I left the meeting going, what did I say? Oh my gosh, I've never written a
novel. Were you mad? And then I thought, and this line is in the book,
oh no, no. First of all, St. Francis is the most written about saint in history.
More books have been written about him than any other saint in history. So I'm like, yeah, why
would you write a nonfiction, just didactic? book and just add it to the pile of books about him
when you could write a novel that would engage people at so many levels. And there's a line in the
book where I say, when the front door of the intellect is closed,
the back door of the imagination is open. love that. So when you're telling a story,
you're carrying so much freight in.
You're sneaking past everybody's filters, right? You're just sneaking past all their objections.
And they're kind of romanced or wooed into seeing what you're saying and the possibilities that it
might hold for their lives. Yeah. Yeah, it's powerful. I love that.
That's what I think. I think it was C.S. Lewis who talked about the baptized imagination.
Yes. And he came up with that term through reading George MacDonald. Right. And this idea that and
that that was a big part of this is you're putting us in that imagination. So we're kind of outside
of ourselves, but we also see ourselves in it. And I love that.
I love that you. different than your other books i mean is this i think this is your first your
only novel right yeah it's my only novel and uh though i have a really good idea for a new one but
um we'll see um but uh yeah and the the cool thing about it is you know i've written five books and
you know people know the enneagram stuff and they know the fix and stuff but they don't even know
this book's out there and so harper collins was like hey,
you know, this book seems more timely now than it was when it came out. Why don't we re-release it
as essentially a new book and get behind it like it's a new book? Because there's a ton of people
in your world now that don't even know you wrote this book. And I'm so thrilled.
I went back and read it for the first time. six months ago i'm like hey this is pretty good i love
it yeah i love
that they saw that because even even on the podcast and and my listeners it's good for you to hear
this when i ever whenever i do episodes on dark night of the soul um spiritual drowning
trying to make sense of God. They're always some of my most topped, listened to episodes. And I
appreciate, that's why I wanted to name up top. Like I appreciate that trust because I want this to
be a place. And I see that in your book where those are great things to name. These are
invitations. These are not things to shy away from. And you can name them here. And I'm going to
take you with God's help as part of this process. And you're doing this in the book.
We're going to go deeper into faith when we hold those questions. And I think that's...
what we see happening with Chase in the book. Those questions don't break him. They take him deeper
in through this encounter with Francis. But he's going to have to accept it first, that this is how
it is. So talk a little bit about that journey for him. Don't give away the story,
but tell us a little bit about what he has to encounter. Well, let me just—I mean, I don't have to
give—no spoilers here, right? But this is the story of an evangelical megachurch pastor who—
due to his time of life and a tragic incident in his church,
has a crisis of faith that leads him to say some stuff in a sermon that ends up getting him on a
forced sabbatical. And off he goes with his uncle, who happens to be a Franciscan friar,
to Assisi to kind of put his faith and his life back together again. And of course,
there's all kinds of... intrigue and all these other stuff that goes with it. But, you know,
I think when these moments come to our lives, as it as it did in the life of Chase,
that we resist these seasons. Yes.
And the resistance is what causes more suffering than the than just going through it. If you just
say, hey, God, this is where I'm at right now.
And. Frankly, if I try to overcome this and shame myself back into a previous expression of faith,
I'm actually maybe frustrating your purpose for this.
And so what would happen, God, if I just said this is disorienting,
dislocating, uncomfortable and yet necessary? And,
you know, it's interesting. You know the term we have, puerile, which means childish,
right? The word puer means childish, right?
It's like, it's the archetype. It's where we get Peter Pan from. I don't want to grow up,
right? He's a puer. And, you know, we always have to be asking ourselves,
you know, when our husband or wife asks for it, a divorce out of the blue,
or one of our kids becomes an addict, or something happens that disorients and dislocates us,
we always, I think, should stop and ask ourselves, okay, I need to accept all that's coming up in
the middle of this and simultaneously be always asking, what's the invitation here?
What's the invitation? Because in God's economy, nothing's wasted.
Yeah. This is, you know, it's like it just nothing's wasted. Yes. And so God is going to bring
something out of this that could not be brought out in you in any other way.
Yeah. And I think that's so hopeful. Yeah. I love that. I love that.
I have a refrain. that i say over and over in the secure soul and i i've started saying it i am
loved even here i am loved even here yes even at this where i am loved even here it's not i'll be
loved on the other side of this i'm loved even here and i agree with you it's so hopeful it's not
trying to minimize the pain or spiritualize it it's honoring the hard but and also i love that i
love that yeah You know, we went, as you know, years ago, we went through a season with one of our
children who was an addict, right? And man, oh man, talk about Dark Night of the Soul.
I mean, years, years of a couple of rehabs, a couple of, you know,
just wondering if he was going to live or make it through.
And now, thank goodness. Four years sober and doing fabulously. That's great.
He's more beautiful now than he ever was before. It's just so exciting.
But I remember when this began, right at the very beginning, a phrase came to me,
and I use it all the time now, when I really realized this is what was happening. The phrase was,
and now this. And now this. And it wasn't,
and now this, like. Dang it. It was, ah, open-handed. Okay. And now this,
what, what will this, what will this, what will, you know, as another friend of mine loves to say,
he says, I can't wait to see what God does with this mess. You know, it's like that kind of
hopefulness in the middle is really beautiful. That childlike, you're right. There's that, there is
that. I love how you, how you bring that around. What would you say,
Ian, to someone listening? other than to read the novel, because they'll find so much in it,
to someone who feels that disillusioned or that maybe even afraid to admit,
you know, that... faith feels thin or what would you want that person to hear?
I think you just said it, but I'd love to just kind of have you speak directly to the listener.
Yeah. Well, so many things. One would be sometimes going back to the beginning and to the
fundamental basics of things. Because oftentimes it's not the fundamentals that are bothering us.
It's peripheral issues, right?
So I was on a hike recently, and a person shared with me,
a guy shared with me about his journey. He was at a very, very conservative Reformed church and
just had a terrible experience there of betrayal, which made him question the whole Reformed
theology of it. You know, everything. Everything was now up for grabs.
Well, you know, listen, we were walking many miles together. And I said, well,
can we go back to just the basic that you are loved?
Let's just go back to that. You know what I mean? Let's just start with God is love and you are
loved. And now we can start to rebuild, right? Like, just take it back.
Get it down. Get the house back down to the studs. Right. And then we can rebuild. But but let's
get it back down to the studs. Like hang on to that.
And don't make sure that you don't inadvertently or unconsciously throw that out.
Right. As part of this journey of, you know, a new.
Yes. A new place for you. And it also it's normal.
Like, don't shame yourself because you're going through a difficult season. It's just normal.
I mean, look at the lives of great saints and mystics and contemplatives of our traditions. They
all went through this. They just all did. You know,
I mean, even Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane had a couple of questions.
My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? I mean, you know, it's like, why would any of us, like,
go, this is bad. I'm not supposed to have these seasons. And it's like, no, that's actually a bad
script someone else handed you. Like, actually, this is just part of the journey. Yeah,
I love that. I love that. Get down to the studs, get down to the basics. And from that base,
yeah, you know, I love what you're saying. You still have to tackle the questions, but you have to
start from that secure base. Yeah, exactly. That gets right back to that secure base of love,
that secure attachment. I love that. To close on today,
what is one small Franciscan experiment or action or practice you might invite me and or my
listeners to try this week? Oh, my gosh. So many I could pick from.
Well. Let's just pick an easy one because I'm in Colorado right now. And this morning I went on a
four mile hike up the mountains.
We need to spend more time in nature. Now, Francis is the patron saint of ecology.
I recognize that in the evangelical world, this is a kind of fraught topic,
but it shouldn't be. I mean, this is our father's house. Yes.
You know, when you spend time in the natural world,
what begins to happen, well, okay, you ready to go here? Yeah. All right, all right.
So most of us spend so much time with spotlight attention. And,
you know, attention in the spiritual life is a very big topic. Simone Weil and others write
beautifully about it. So our attention is very narrow. So imagine a stage.
You got a spotlight and it just picks out a character. Right. And and then it isolates.
Right. And it but there's there's no context. All you're doing is seeing one thing. But if you flip
on the lights, suddenly you see the whole stage and you see that person or problem in context.
So good. Yeah. Right. And and so I'm always. In spiritual direction with people,
I'm always like, okay, you have very spotlighty attention.
Your attention is riveted on this kid, riveted on this job,
riveted on this, right? I said, turn the lights on. See things in context.
And that is the contemplative mind. Yeah. Right. And so when you're walking in nature,
this is just actually proven. This is science, right? Yes. You begin to have a sense of the
interconnectedness of all things. Yes. Yeah. And you move from spotlight attention to what's called
lantern attention. I love that. So the attention becomes diffuse instead of overly focused.
And you go, oh, it's much bigger than I thought. It's more beautiful than I ever imagined.
I've been so riveted on my little life.
So today I was standing on a ledge overlooking the continental divide, and I'm like,
oh, right. I'm part of a really big story here. And all of a sudden?
Perspective. Perspective. And so I could say so much more about why it's important to spend time.
in uh in in nature in the created order and for so many people increasingly technology it's it's
become a lost spiritual discipline so ian i i this cover this book i grew up at the base of a
mountain up in wyoming and i and now we live at the base of the mountain again and i had i had it
as a kid and so it's kind of a key character in this in this book there's a little bit of an
allegory component to this book but I never heard that described just like that, but I will notice
as an adult, I used to drive toward the mountain as a kid when I was just angsty energy, and it
would just calm me. I never really understood that, but that's what I did. Now as an adult, it's
exactly what you're saying. It's like whatever's going on in my mind, whatever I'm fixated on, that
mountain literally, it's just my shoal. And I've noticed it so palpably.
I'm like, it's the most calming. effect just driving towards something bigger than me and it really
it's like that looming and i think about the psalms my eyes turn to the hills you know and it is
it's that kind of almost that you know it's just it's god it you know it kind of stands in as oh
this this i'm not alone in this there's something it's i'm i'm there's something bigger than me you
know it's kind of that attachment presence and i haven't heard it explained how you just explained
that but it's very real and very kind of nervous system literally like my yes i can just release
and it's looking at something bigger than me and it's just everything into context and it's so
interesting to hear you describe that physiologically and and um that it's very real so i love that
practice and if you don't live near a mountain or you don't you know you can't get to that
perspective I think there's studies that show even just going to a park, being in grass,
literally getting to a park bench, getting to where there's trees, just getting somewhere where
there's some sense of your context, to use that word. My wife, who's a sweet Enneagram 9,
and they love the outdoors, man.
has this little practice that makes me tear up every time she does it. There's one trail we use a
lot, or go on a lot, and there are two trees on that trail. And one represented my son's sobriety
to my wife, because when he was really struggling, there was just something about the solidity and
the rootedness of this tree that spoke to her.
Sorry, I'm getting a little choked up. That's beautiful. She would just go over and with both
hands, lean, hold the tree and touch it and say a prayer for my son.
In our last home, we nearly had a big window made into stained glass of that tree.
But where else can you encounter God like that?
You know, where everything is a metaphor. The mountains are a metaphor.
The trees are a metaphor. The birds are, everything is brimming. Not that everything is God,
pantheism, but panentheism is okay with me, right? Which is God is not everything,
but God is in and through everything and shines forth through everything.
And so this is so Franciscan, it's crazy, right? Like this is how Francis, you know,
saw the world. It's the Psalms that declares the glory of God.
It's just beautiful. And you're just a treasure.
There's just a wisdom that you speak that always hits.
And I'm just so grateful for your time today. But I'm also really grateful that you took the risk
on telling this story.
just, you know, kind of taking us again. It's like sometimes, the other thing I was thinking of
when I was reading Jason Francis is sometimes looking back to the, you know,
looking to something, the ancient is the way to the future. I love that kind of paradox.
Yes. Well, on a good closing note, there's a line in the book. It says,
the road to the future often runs through the past.
And that's, in many ways, a summary of all of Chasing Francis, that oftentimes we think that the
future is new and innovative when, in fact, oftentimes it's ancient and well-trodden.
So I hope people enjoy it. It's beautiful. Thank you so much for we'll link to the book in the show
notes. And it's a great time this summer as before we kind of head into the craziness of fall to
just anchor yourself, right? Anchor yourself in this story. And it's an easy read in that sense
that it's a story, you know, and I think I think we're hungry for that, too. I know I was when I
started. I was like, oh, I'm so ready to read because usually I get more like self-help, you know,
good stuff. But it's like, oh, it's just nice to sink into a story. So glad. We're grateful.
Thanks, Ian. Thank you for joining me for this week's episode of The Best of You. It would mean so
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