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_outlineWhen I was ten years old, I fell in love with the movie "The Princess Bride. After seeing it in the theatre, I must have watched it almost a dozen times in the years that followed.
If you also enjoyed that movie the wedding scene may be etched in your memory as it is in mine.
You’ll have to listen to the podcast for my rendition of the priest officiating the ceremony. Or you can watch the clip in the shownotes.
Mawwiage… mawwiage is wot bwings us togeder tooday…
So classic.
While this farce of a wedding is taking place, Princess Buttercup’s true love, Westley, is storming the gates of the chapel to rescue her from the dark, evil Prince.
Like all great story telling devices, movies have some really memorable wedding scenes. This is one of them. Another is from the much more recent movie "Crazy Rich Asians"".
During the wedding scene in that movie the musicians perform the iconic love song “Can’t Help Falling in Love”, originally recorded by Elvis Presley in 1961. Sung by many performers over the years since, it’s a song deeply embedded in our popular culture.
This scene in "Crazy Rich Asians" is a spectacle to be sure but the artistic message of the water flowing up the aisle to the lyrics of “like a river flows surely to a sea” speaks to more than just ingenious set design and theatrics.
That flowing water, a symbol for human love journeying from one heart to another, is a visual cue for a deeper truth about Divine love, and the true nature of reality.
Is there something we can learn about Divine love, which is to say God, from "Crazy Rich Asians""? Or from the lyrics of an Elvis Presley song?
And is it possible that Elvis was a kind of theologian?
Join me for this episode where we talk about great movie wedding scenes, expand our ideas about the nature of Divine love with an Elvis song, and critique the notion that God withholds love until we “believe”, acknowledge, or even recognize God’s existence.
Show notes, videos, links and other resources at http://bradtoews.com/podcast/elvis-the-theologian/