50 - Source to You
B-RAD with Brad Toews
It is the dynamic interplay between spirit and matter that provides the flow of energy in my own life, and I believe, this is the spiritual movement of the whole universe.
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49 - Imagine That
B-RAD with Brad Toews
Literalism helps us explain the world. Know the world. Name the world. But it bumps up against its limits when it meets a more powerful tool of language - metaphor. What does this look like in the context of the Christian faith?
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48 - Unknowing God
B-RAD with Brad Toews
Our claims to knowledge (what we know, how we know, the extent of what we know) changes over time. At least it does if we're growing and evolving.
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47 - Past Lives
B-RAD with Brad Toews
We all have past lives, a collection of moments, strung together that make us who we are.
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46 - Something to Say
B-RAD with Brad Toews
I'm learning how to communicate better, both on this podcast and in my personal and professional life. I'm learning I have Something to Say, and how to say it.
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45 - Back-to-School for Adults
B-RAD with Brad Toews
Something about the shift in season, summer turning to fall and kids back in school, inspires an air of possibility for new habits and making change in your life.
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44 - Follow You
B-RAD with Brad Toews
I have a strong tendency and bias to depend on outside information and inputs, constantly seeking more knowledge to inform my choices.
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43 - When Marriage is a Let-down
B-RAD with Brad Toews
An interview my wife Dawna about her perspective on expectations, disappointments, and the let-down’s of life, in the context of marriage and our closest relationships.
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42 - Find your Frequency
B-RAD with Brad Toews
As if integrative medicine, transcendent spiritual experiences, and quantum physics weren't interesting enough in exploring energy and frequency, let's add harmonics theory to the mix.
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41 - Make Some Noise Drew Brown
B-RAD with Brad Toews
In this interview Drew and I sit down in his kitchen to talk about music and being a musician. We talk about how writing, playing, performing and producing honest music tells the story of our lives and gives expression to a re-imagined faith.
info_outlineI love language. I’m a reader, a writer, a person who loves ideas.
I recently watched Tolkien and loved this line from the movie.
Language isn’t just the naming of things, it’s the lifeblood of a culture, a people.
You can catch that clip for yourself here.
Language is definitely my own lifeblood. (That, and music.)
Language helps us explain the world. Know the world. Name the world. And we’re often trying to improve the language we use to describe the truth, to explain exactly what happened.
We want language to be specific, precise. Literal.
I’m grateful for this specificity of language. Our ability to name, sort, and label our experiences and interactions with the world.
Without this, our lives would be a soupy mess.
But literalism has limits where it bumps up against another tool of language, something even more powerful at explaining reality – metaphor.
Metaphor engages our imagination, it opens possibilities, it invokes play.
Carl Jung said,
The great joy of play is that for a time we are utterly spontaneous. In a state of pure being, no thought is unthinkable, no image is unimaginable. Every good idea and all creative works are the offspring of imagination. (emphasis mine)
Metaphor is the language of our imagination. And it speaks the truth in ways not possible with literal language.
Join me in this episode as we explore the limits of literalism, consider the power of imagination and metaphor, and play with these ideas in the context of the Christian tradition.
More at Brad Toews.