@ Sea With Justin Mcroberts

I talk a lot about seasons, seasons of life, seasons of ministry seasons of work. I love the concept. I love the idea. I love the notion that for long stretches of time, somewhat indeterminate stretches of time, certain things are true certain things work. I like that there isn't a stringent timeline; when we talk about seasons, we can be in a really long season, or we can be in a really short season. One of the reasons we talk about seasons when they come up is because of transition. Not that we don't enjoy the seasons we're in. But normally, when we have a conversation about seasons of life, it's because we're moving from one season to another or we're sensing the end of a season and the beginning of a new one. And I used to think that the energy, the internal energy I needed to actually move me from one season to the next, was about competence and satisfaction that I was satisfied with the work I had done in the previous season. And, or I was confident about what was going to happen in the next season. And

Sarah Billups is a Seattle-based writer who has been speaking at and about the communal practice of religion for a number of years now. Most recently, she's collected a number of those thoughts in a book called orphaned believers. It's a wonderful book actually deeply insightful. And I was thrilled to have her on the podcast to talk not only about that book, but about the history she's had with religion with Christianity specifically, and the things that led to the assembly of those thoughts that make up that book. I enjoyed the conversation. I think you will as well.Check it out. Links for Sara BillupsWebsite - https://www.sarabillups.comInstagram - https://www.instagram.com/sara.billups/Links For Justin:JustinMcRoberts.comSupport this podcastNEW Single - Let GoNEW Music - Sliver of HopeNEW Music - The Dood and The BirdNEW Book - Sacred Strides (Pre-order)Amazon Barnes and Noble It Is What You Make itHearts and Minds Amazon Barnes and Noble 

Welcome to the At Sea Podcast I'm your host, Justin McRoberts. I don't speak to a lot of other coaches, I talk to a few, but it's not a regular part of my conversation I actually fell into in some ways, the coaching job, just discovered myself doing it after a number of years. And so when I get to actually sit down and talk with someone else, working in that same space, it can be really refreshing. I found my conversation with Alan Briggs to be deeply informative, really refreshing, and incredibly enjoyable. I like his approach to human development to leadership. I also like how he integrates and understands the divine underpinnings in each human life. I think you'll enjoy this conversation. I know that I did.Check it out. Links for Alan BriggsStay Forth - https://www.stayforth.comLinks For Justin:JustinMcRoberts.comSupport this podcastNEW Single - Let GoNEW Music - Sliver of HopeNEW Music - The Dood and The BirdNEW Book - Sacred Strides (Pre-order)Amazon Barnes and Noble It Is What You Make itHearts and Mind

Welcome to the At Sea Podcast. I'm your host, Justin McRoberts. When I first read Kevin Sweeney's initial book The Making of a Mystic, I found a bit of a kindred spirit that's somewhat unlikely person in the pastorate as well as a relatively unlikely person when one thing because of terms like mystical or contemplative. You might remember that conversation on this very podcast about that initial book from last season. His most recent book is called The Joy of Letting Go. And it actually met me exactly where I needed to be met when I picked it up as well. His language is a wonderful bridge between the everyday experience of life and the desired sacred posture with which I want to live that everyday life. I enjoy this conversation. I think you will as well.Check it out. Links for Kevin SweeneyThe Joy Of Letting Go - https://a.co/d/0IQKE0DLinks For Justin:JustinMcRoberts.comSupport this podcastNEW Single - Let GoNEW Music - Sliver of HopeNEW Music - The Dood and The BirdNEW Book - Sacred Strides (Pre-order)Amazo

Welcome to the At Sea podcast. I'm your host, Justin McRoberts. I met Jess Ray a number of years ago at a conference where she was helping to lead songs and realize there was some of her music that I had heard before. Maybe you had that experience where you're paying attention to someone or something, you hear something and you realize, like, oh my gosh, this is already in my system. I'm already a fan of this. Well, having already been a fan of her music, just by nature of the songs themselves, then watching her engage with people. In the art of song-leading, I was locked in as a lifetime fan. I really like what Jess Ray does musically. I also really liked the way she goes about doing it. When I return to this theme over and over that art is anything we create that forges a connection between people. I think about people like Jess Ray, who really is actually about that connection, who pays attention to the connection, who senses that connection in herself. You'll hear that in the conversation. And I think you

Welcome to the At Sea Podcast. I'm your host, Justin McRoberts. What does it mean to lead well? Heck, what does it even mean to lead period? And specifically, what does it mean to lead and lead well, in a religious context, when we talk about ministry, we talk about Church we talk about religious culture in general. Nowadays, the question of what good healthy leadership looks like might be the most important conversation on the table when it comes to the "Future of the American church and American religion." It's a conversation that Angie Ward has been in for a long time, and had some poignant thoughts, not only in her books but in podcasts and interviews like this one, I really enjoyed the clarity and the confidence and the humility with which Angie Ward approaches conversations about what it looks like to not just lead but to lead well. I enjoyed this conversation. I think you will also.Check it out. Links for Angie WardWebsite - www.angieward.netLinks For Justin:JustinMcRoberts.comSupport this podcastNEW S

If you are around or in conversations about mental health for much time at all, you probably hear the word trauma used relatively often. And if you are in or around conversations at the intersection of mental health and religious life, you'll probably hear the phrase church trauma, or religious trauma used, at least as regularly. Those conversations can be really tricky, can be really difficult, and also can be really necessary. Some of the most helpful voices in those conversations, at least that I've come across, aren't even necessarily folks trained as therapists or even working as pastors. Some of the most helpful folks in conversations about church trauma are those who have experienced it, have done the work in their own hearts, minds, and communities, and then are speaking back into some of those spaces, not even just correctively. But both correctively and compassionately, a lot of what I've enjoyed and benefited from with regards to Janai Auman's work is that posture that she's remarkably articulate,

Welcome to the At Sea podcast. I'm your host, Justin McRoberts. Molly Lacroix is my guest on this episode. And as a marriage and family therapist, she engages in the kind of art I find inspiring, incredibly rare, and necessary. She takes what would otherwise be, perhaps even frustratingly, wildly difficult concepts, things out of the reach of the average person's daily knowledge, and then boils those down and communicates those in such a way that folks like me can get handles on those ideas, but does so in a way that doesn't, I don't know, demean me, or, just as importantly, doesn't do so in a way that diminishes the depth, richness, and complexity of the traditions and the systems she's referencing. Working at the intersection of spirituality and interpersonal relationships. As a family therapist, she's trained explicitly in internal family systems, which is a model of understanding human interaction, our engagement with the world, our relationships, and the systems we function in. I find it deeply freeing,

Welcome to the At Sea podcast. I'm your host, Justin McRoberts. One of the points of conversation we are returning to over and over during this series we're doing at the intersection of mental health and spiritual practice has to do with the benefit or the problem of familiarity with mental health issues, mental health terminology, and with diagnostic tools. There's a world of conversation now in public about what it means to be depressed, to have depression, to live with ADHD, and to have anxiety. Does the familiarity with and the public dialogue about these things actually benefit us? That was one of the reasons I was looking forward to talking to Dr. John Delony because so much of what he does, doesn't just happen in books. He's written a few books but actually happens in a public and public dialogue with people who bring him their life issues. And he brings to them a knowledge of brain chemistry and our knowledge of mental health patterns and practices in an attempt to not just meet the caller when they c

Hello, and welcome to the At Sea podcast. I'm your host, Justin McRoberts. This episode of the podcast takes us deeper into the ongoing conversation here at the At Sea podcast. At the intersection of psychotherapeutics and spiritual practice, this time with author, pastor, speaker leader, and coach Nicole Unice. I think you'll pick up in the conversation that we haven't had a truckload of conversations. We've been trying to have this conversation for quite a while. I definitely find in Nicole Unice a kindred spirit not only because of our affinity for young life and kids but even in the odd gravity we both feel towards the word pastor and a love for the institutional church. She lives in Richmond, Virginia, although she speaks all over the country. And her most recent book, the one we'll talk about in the conversation, is called, The Miracle Moment: How Tough Conversations Can Actually Transform Your Most Important Relationships. I really enjoy how she enters into the relational dynamics at a granular level a

Early on in my vocational career, I was on staff with a ministry organization. I was hoping to plant a church, making some music. I was around a lot of people, and a partner of mine, a friend, someone I knew who I was working with, described my overall posture as that of an ambulance chaser. They intended to point out that I tended to lean into difficult situations. That I wasn't causing drama. But as he put it, "If there's a bleeding wound somewhere, you want to go patch it up." Their hope and intention wasn't to insult me or disparage my character, so much as it was to point out this tendency in me to, maybe, overextend myself, that while it's a good thing that I want to help, while it's a good thing, that I actually do care. Both of those things are true, they were true, they're true now. I really do care. And I really do want to help, just because I care. And just because I want to help doesn't mean it's my business. Probably more important than that was this, they were pointing out that I was wearing mys

I met Stephen Roach a number of years ago at an event he curates called the Breath and the Clay. It's a conference, an Arts and Faith Conference in North Carolina. And I'd heard about the Breath in the Clay through artists who had participated in the conferences, as presenters. And then some folks who had attended the thing. And, and all of them had something similar to say about it, that it was not just different, but different in this particular way, that they left with a sense of belonging in the world of the arts, that less, less than leaving just equipped as an artist to make their art, or less than just feeling inspired. More than that, they left feeling they had a place in the world of the arts. And that's such a vital aspect, I would suggest great art, of great culture, and of life. Not just feeling equipped, internally, but feeling a sense of belonging in place in my world, and in my particular culture. We've become friends since then we chit chat off and on. And I've been looking forward to this int

Welcome to the At Sea podcast. I'm your host, Justin McRoberts. The emphasis I've placed so far this season on the practice of poetry actually positions us to have some conversations well to continue some conversations that I care a whole lot about. Really specifically beginning with this episode of Focus, concentrated focus on the intersection and overlap between psychotherapy and religious practice. As someone who's benefited both from therapy and spiritual direction, this intersection is a place I experienced a great deal of life while also coming to a great deal of very complex and really interesting questions about what it means to be me, what it means to be human, what it means to have relationship what it means to be a person of faith.One of my favorite people working in that intersection at that intersection is KJ Ramsay. KJ works at that intersection as a therapist and an author who talks profoundly about issues of faith. And it just so happens, has recently produced a volume of poems and prayers, wh

Among the many gifts I got early in high school was an F I got on a paper from an English class, a paper that the teacher said was too poetic. What he didn't mean by that is that I had written great poetry in the wrong place. What he meant really, in large part, is that it was really poorly written poetry. A lot was going on for me at the moment. One was I really wasn't actually prepared to write the paper he suggested I write. I didn't actually do the assignment the way it was assigned. So there was that I was a bad student. Secondly, a lot of my literary influences weren't literary in the academic sense. They were. They were poems. They were Lyrics by Morrissey or Robert Smith of the cure any number of folks in the new wave kind of genre of music, and I was deeply influenced by their words because I felt their words. And the topic of the paper. I don't remember specifically, but I wanted to feel it when I wrote about it. It had to do with what you wanted to be when you grew up. And for me, at the time, I wa

I don't remember the exact details surrounding my introduction to Gregory or his work. I do remember that upon my first reading, I was captured. In fact, one of my favorite live performance moments ever was sitting with my friend David dark, who's also been a guest on this podcast several times, at a reading of Gregory Orr's at Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, Mass., and having one of those shared when I grew up, I would like to be like that moments. I could say quite a bit about his work in order to set this up. Instead, I would like to get you directly to the interview he reads from a most recent volume of his towards the tail end. And I'm so glad that he did. I think you will be too. Enjoy this. Links for Gregory OrrWebsite - http://gregoryorr.netLatest Book - Selected Books of the Beloved

On most Sundays, I get the privilege of gathering in my house with a group of preteens and reading through bits of the scripture and talking about them. And then praying together, it's a thing we call the good news Club, which borrows from a tradition we've gleaned from. One of my favorite parts of these gatherings is that we don't just read from one translation of the Bible. We actually crack open three or four different translations and interpretations of the Bible and read the same story, the same text, and the same bid, including the Jesus storybook Bible and the message we read from the NIV. We have an NRSV. We have like a bunch of different texts and translations. And it's been a kick to pay attention to the ways these sometimes first-time Bible readers will notice the difference between word usages, that in this version of Mark, this person uses this word. And over here, they use this word. It's the same story, the same moment, different words.The practice is less about developing a taste for or a part

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, and sorry, I could not travel them both and be one traveler, long I stood and looked down one as far as I could, to where it bent in the undergrowth, you might recognize that as the opening stanza to the Robert Frost poem, The Road Not Taken. It's the poem that ends, Two roads diverged in the wood, and I took the one less traveled by, and it has made all the difference. It's probably even more familiar. I remember being exposed to that poem. It was probably the first poem as a whole poem that I was actually taught or read really fully exposed to. I think I was a freshman in high school. And as I was exposed to and read and saw this poem, really for the first time, two things happened in me that I recall. One was a kind of, I guess, embarrassed response poetry, poems. They were written by and for hyper, emotive, weird people. And that if you were into poems and you liked poetry, then you must be a hyper-emotive and weird person. I was on the football team. I ran track. I wa

Welcome to the At Sea Podcast. I'm your host, Justin McRoberts. I'm recording this on December 21, 2022. It is the winter solstice, the day where I live that features the least amount of light. The night is longest. And I'll be honest with you, I'm not feeling great. I don't know if I quite have the flu yet, but I might. Because my daughter does. And I found that out a few hours ago. It's been really since Sunday. She wasn't feeling well on Sunday. She was feeling not so great on Monday, so she didn't go to school, then she didn't go to school on Tuesday, and then today, Wednesday. She certainly did not go to school. She has been very sick. Last night, when she went to bed, it was mostly just cold symptoms. That was sniffles, and it was a little bit of a headache. And then she mentioned that one of her ears wasn't feeling great. Oh, I thought. And not too long ago, her being in bed by herself. She woke up and started vomiting. Her brother came downstairs to let us know that she had, in his words, puked everyw

It's possible, if not likely, that if you are remotely pop culture aware and spend any time on social media platforms, you'll see news about or posts about the death, the passing of dancer, DJ, choreographer named tWitch.I was struck by the moment I heard about his passing. A fan of his, I've liked his work, I've liked him on TV. I've liked his posture online otherwise. I was saddened by the fact that h e's only 40 years old. And I felt the thing that I read that Jen Hatmaker wrote in her public post.She said this line that struck me and sort of set this thought in motion, she said he was suffering, and we didn't even know pain has never been easier to hide. Some of what you might have seen, which is what I have seen, is folks confessing or saying out loud, like, you know, he seems so happy. It's so shocking. And it's always shocking. When depression or anxiety, when mental health issues surface. A lot of the time, it's a surprise; we're shocked. We're even to some degree scandalized. We didn't know that that

I'm recording this introduction a few days after Thanksgiving. And if you're listening to this when the episode comes out, it'll be roughly a week, maybe a week and a day or so after the Thanksgiving holiday, which is to say this is the holiday season. And between Thanksgiving and maybe some things that happen in between. And the Christmas holiday is a season during which we sit down at a table with neighbors, with friends, with family, with people who share different ideas hold different ideas about how the world works. Usually, what we mean by that is they hold different religious or different political perspectives. And the rule the cultural rule has become you don't talk about politics. You don't talk about religion. At the dinner table, and specifically during the holidays, I see story after story or anecdote after anecdote on most of my social media platforms about nightmare scenarios or nightmare fears, things happening during the holidays, around politics, and religion among family members and neighbo