you've unfrozen too yes i think the last thing you said was hilariously oh you don't don't have much control over anything oh well and

It's important to always remember that there is risk in both directions.

So whenever a person says, oh, this is so risky.

Well, you've been talking to everybody for three and a half years, Neil.

you know what I mean, Norma, about this thing, it seems like if you don't take some sort of step, something within you is going to die and you're gonna be the person at the party who's telling us again about this thing that doesn't leave you.

So seems like that's way riskier.

So the illusion, or you take the person who says, I have a safe, known, regular paycheck, corporate job.

Sorry.

... to hear you say that.

Like my dad, at the end of his life, uh, lost his mind, dementia, and I would go visit him, and he would turn to my wife and say, "Who's this?" He would ask my mom who I w- am.

And I remember then he was in a home the last couple years of his life in, uh, for people with dementia, and I knew that, we all knew that we were going to be at the end here.

We didn't know how long.

But I would go visit him, and he became very childlike, and he would see me, like, coming towards his room.

Um, he'd be in the hallway sometimes when I went to visit him, and he would, like, come towards me really fast and hug me like an eight-year-old.

Um, there was something childlike and innocent.

... that makes something of greater depth and complexity that's worth, worth you getting on a plane from one coast to the other and going to do this?

[laughs]

And how much of the great teachers at some point, like in Zen you have one-handed clapping, you have the koan, you have, uh...

I mean, like you think about the Kabbalah tradition or you think about Rumi and the Sufi tradition, at some point you move into language that bends and twists and distorts.

Um, uh, y- always paradox, two things being true at the same time.

Um, uh, and, and that wisdom in many ways is, is the ab- is when you grow in your ability to hold two what appear to be opposing truths at the same time.

So when you, when you were, I guess, thrown to the wolves it seemed, um, you know, by certain evangelical pastors after you wrote that book, like did you expect that? Did, how did that affect you? I mean, I feel like you're in such a good place now, but I, I don't know, like when that happened, was that hard? What was that like?

Well, I remember when I was in my 20s I got a job as a pastor.

And so when you're like new and starting out, whatever it is that, you're a chef or you sell insurance, what do, what do chefs talk about? What do people sell? Like you wanna, you want colleagues or comrades or something.

They just-

Well, you know, I just met a guy who cleans houses for a living, and we're just chatting 'cause we have, like, a mutual friend.

And I s- said, "Wow, so you clean.

Tell me more about that." And he says, "People allow me into their homes to bring order and cleanliness." And I was like, "Wow, you take this really seriously." He's like, "Oh, the fact that people would allow me into their most intimate spaces so that I could help a family bring order, and beauty, and, and cleanliness to their home so that they could have this kind of place to come home to." This is somebody [laughs] who's figured it out.

... to do specifically what?

I want more people to have a sense that they are loved, that the grace of God is real and it's for them, and that when Jesus talked about eternal life, a certain kind of life that, that you can have in a relationship with God now, that people would taste that, and in response to that gift say, "Well, what can I do?" And find their calling, find the thing that gets them up in the morning, find the work, the task, the art that leaves them saying, "Man, I could do this forever." That's what I love.

I love to see that moment.

I love to see that moment.