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_outlineLabels aren't bad, they're necessary for making our way through the external world. Imagine navigating city streets or an airport terminal with no labels. Labels are obviously good.
Labels are also a necessary part of our internal framework and personal structure.
They help us identify where we're from (Toronto, Canada) and who we are (man, husband, dad, friend). But we all know from experience that labelling isn't all good and isn't always helpful.
A label reaches the end of its usefulness in our lives when it reinforces, or binds us to something that no longer rings true in our lives.
What do you do with that label?
I come from the Jesus tradition and I am deeply grateful for the formation of myself within that environment and faith. I am who I am because of where I've came from.
And although I've called myself a Christian for years, I don't know if that label makes sense for me anymore, at least not in the way I used to understand "Christian".
Maybe I can just be "human".
To be human is to be both divine and dirt.
One of the most compelling things to me about the Christian faith is the idea of incarnation, which is another way of saying Spirit embodying matter. It's the subtext of the whole biblical story and is made plain in the person of Jesus Christ. The divine becoming human, becoming dirt. The dirt becoming divine.
We are divine, Spirit wanting to incarnate in us. We are dirt, matter wanting to be God.
I can't think of any label more accurate than that.
Join me in this podcast where I challenge the idea that all labels are bad (they aren't!), where I question whether Christian is a label I want to claim anymore for my identity, and where I propose that to be divine and to be dirt is what it means to be human.
In-depth shownotes, links, and other resources at Brad Toews.