David Brisbin Podcast

Dave Brisbin | 7.8.18 Think of all the debates and fights between Christians. Among Christians. Between Christians and non-Christians. What are they all about? Truth? Ethics, morality, law, doctrine, church practice or style, social issues? For Christians, if it’s Scripture that informs us of truth, then every fight—whatever it’s about— is ultimately about Scripture. What we believe about Scripture dictates both what we think we know of truth and how we think we need to go about defending it. But the Bible is primarily a spiritual book conveying spiritual truths and building an awareness of unseen significance in life. Yet we focus and fight over the physical accuracy of issues like creation, church practice, numbers, dates, and of course miracles and miraculous healings. Jesus presented his healing miracles as proof of the authenticity of his ministry, “the blind receive sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, and the poor have the gospel preached to them…” W

Dave Brisbin | 7.1.18 When did Christianity actually begin? It would be easy to say at Jesus’ birth, baptism, ministry, Easter. But was Christianity as we know it present during Jesus’ life? Even Easter was a “silent” event. It happened while Jesus’ followers were sleeping or at least staring at the ceiling that night. Afterwards, they didn’t recognize him when they first saw him, and it took some time for them to come to terms with their new reality. One scholar maintains that Christianity began the moment Jesus’ first followers recognized the full impact of his resurrection—fully realized what it meant that he was alive. That was certainly the moment or series of moments after which they moved out in a new boldness and began revolutionizing the Roman world. But before that revolution could take place, each faithful follower, in the period between Easter and Pentecost, had an experience nothing short of an interior revolution—a radical overthrowing of his or her previous concept of reality. It was an interi

Dave Brisbin | 6.24.18 In times of difficult life transitions, when the uncertainty factor is blowing the top off the thermometer, questions of how to proceed become really urgent. But coupling these transitions and the seemingly risky decisions that come along for the ride with a perceived loss of connection with God, spirit, relational connection, can be paralyzing. When the pain is great, it seems to us that the solution must be great as well. We look for sensational—big, top-down fixes or breakthroughs. We think we need to hear God’s voice in a way we haven’t before, pray for clarity, find a big missing piece somewhere out there to alleviate the insecurity. There is a theory in criminology called “broken windows” that believes taking care of even the smallest signs of criminal activity or social disorder—fixing broken windows—creates an environment where even serious crime is less likely to happen. And where it’s been implemented, it seems to work. In other words, if you want to create big changes, you s

Dave Brisbin | 6.17.18 On Father’s Day: Though the ancient Hebrews who wrote our scripture always referred to God in the masculine as Ab/Father, there is much in scripture that also refers to a feminine nature as well. Hebrews understood that God encompassed both ab and em, father and mother—both are embedded in their language, sacred writings, and world view. But here in the modern West, looking at scripture more literally as we do, God as father eclipses God as mother and presents us with the unbalanced view of God primarily as king, judge, executioner, administrator—all the functions of ab at the expense of the mercy, compassion, intimacy, humility, and vulnerability of God as em/mother. But Jesus comes to our rescue with an ingenious solution: “Abba.” This word for father carried the intimacy, familiarity, and belovedness of a child for her daddy and by using it, Jesus was conveying that he had seen his father’s face and news was good about the nature of our relationship with him. When did he see his fa

Dave Brisbin | 6.10.18 My wife tells me she keeps seeing the number 11:11 everywhere. I start seeing 11:11 as well. She does some research and finds that seeing repeating numbers is a “thing,” a phenomenon sometimes called “angel numbers,” with an intricate system of meaning based on numerological values. But since any actual meaning can’t be verified or falsified, it’s all easy to dismiss, even mock as mere coincidence or selective perception—as it probably is, factually. But seeing the numbers has become a touch point for me and my wife, a running connection between us, a reminder of a greater unseen world, a source of playful attention and smiles, a call to prayer and a return to center. Seeing, being aware of these numbers has become full of meaning for me and my wife—it’s become a middle way, a third way through the details of life. A business coach has me read a book giving permission to be completely obsessed with business success, which appears to stand in complete contradiction to the contemplative

Dave Brisbin | 6.3.18 Dialogue from movie: “You’ll never believe what just happened!” “If it’s bad news, I generally do believe it…” Unfortunately true. Why is it that we generally do believe the bad news over the good? If you think on it, we’re shaped much more by the hurts and traumas we’ve experienced in life than by the joys and pleasures. Pain demands strategies for survival that we build from earliest childhood—strategies that become perceptions, attitudes, behavior, and beliefs that are sturdy and persist indefinitely after the painful circumstances are gone. How do we pull our personal pendulums back to a centered position? In Romans, Paul speaks of presenting ourselves as living sacrifices and renewing our minds to prove God’s will. What does that mean? How does it help? To put that into practical terms is to line it up with Jesus at Matthew 6, when he tells us not to worry about the future but to seek Kingdom first, right now. Putting it all together is to realize that all life is always today and t

Dave Brisbin | 5.27.18 I’ve watched a friend over the nearly ten years I’ve known her, fight her way back from the depths of traumatic loss to new life only to find out that she has cancer. When we last connect, she’s just coming out of eight hours of chemo. Eight hours for one treatment. I had no idea it could take so long. You’d think after all the years down and the all years climbing back up to new job, house, friends, and fiancé, there’d be some sort of plateau for a while at least, but the crest for her was just the beginning of the next trough, and the oscillation continues. One week out of Pentecost, it’s important to realize that it was ever thus. We want to believe that when we attain a peak experience like the filling of the Spirit at Pentecost, things will stay peaked from that point on. But that’s not the picture scripture is painting. Looking at Peter after Pentecost, Paul after Damascus, David after Goliath, Elijah after Carmel, peaks that should have remained only form the crest that defines t

Dave Brisbin | 5.20.18 On the day of our 11th Anniversary as a ministry, we listen to an excerpt of the last audio recording our co-founder, Bob “Bubba” Beauchamp delivered in 2015. When Bubba died in January, 2018, we excerpted a short clip of what was the essence of how he and we at theeffect approach our spirituality: experientially over intellectually and relationally over religiously. Jumping off from Bubba’s anecdotal delivery, we take a look at the components of a personal spiritual “program” and how critical it is to make our spiritual practice personal. Our churches and religious traditions give us an external structure, if we choose to shelter within it, but until and unless we begin building an interior structure within the larger structure, we will have nothing that is really our own and portable—able to be taken with us where ever life leads. The model of Jesus’ life gives us the shape of this structure, and Bubba confirms it with his: the community, accountability, structure, discipline, and ser

Dave Brisbin | 5.13.18 On Mothers’ Day, we’re recalling a question posed last year: I know that God loves me, but how do I know that he likes me? It’s a brilliant question if you think about it, but at first blush, why would it even come up? If we know God loves us, isn’t that enough? No, not really… We’re commanded to love one another, even to love our enemies. But liking implies affection, genuine delight and pleasure, desire to be with, a playful attention that is beyond any commandment. We can choose who we love, but no one can choose who they like—any more than we can choose whether we like broccoli or bacon (I know, everyone likes bacon). We have so focused on God as Father and love as duty and justice, that we have lost the connection with God as Mother and love as compassion and affection. The notion of God as mother pushes all the wrong buttons in our culture, even sounds blasphemous to some, but can our scriptures, placed back in their original Hebrew context come to our rescue? When we look at the

Dave Brisbin | 5.6.18 You’ve heard of heat seeking missiles…truth is, we humans are all pleasure seeking missiles. We seek pleasure and to avoid pain. Necessary trait for survival of the species. It guides us spiritually too, as long as we honestly consider in what we ultimately take pleasure. You could say that the spiritual journey is really an ongoing refining of our pleasure centers. Chinese proverb—to suffer yourself when all under heaven suffer, to enjoy only when all under heaven enjoy—implies an ultimate refining of our notion of pleasure that Jesus seems to affirm as he leads us to further and further expansion of our sense of relationship and connection. To love the enemy equally with our friends and neighbors and then to see even our attachment to family as a barrier to the fullness of unity are among the most difficult teachings of Jesus. A view of the perfect lover as a mirror that faithfully reflects the beloved without agenda or distortion, a mirror that is empty of self until the beloved steps

Dave Brisbin | 4.29.18 From the account of Pentecost in Acts 2, it can seem that the Spirit descending on Jesus’ followers like tongues of fire on each was an event that happened at a particular place and time as they passively waited. But the truth is, there’s nothing passive about the spiritual life. We need to resist the temptation to think of Pentecost or baptism of the spirit or the born again experience as the moment when Spirit is unleashed, no longer withheld. Spirit is always unleashed, permanently permeating everything all the time—never withheld. Pentecost is a conscious choice to return to unity with Spirit as we become aware of its presence in a fundamentally new way. It can be a gradual process, a process of becoming more and more aware until we realize at some point we have a very different relationship with Presence. What is this process? How does it work? Jesus’ Way to Father can be looked at as a return to the Garden of Eden, a return to the kind of connection with which each of started as c

Dave Brisbin | 4.22.18 If we’re serious about getting to Pentecost, experiencing the full awareness of spiritual presence, there’s a basic truth about the journey with which we have to come to grips…that the way to Pentecost begins at Calvary. Jesus said that it was to his closest followers’ advantage that he go away, so the Helper could come. Moses, after 40 years of faithfully leading his people, is not allowed to enter the promised land, but dies within sight of it. What is being communicated? Moses himself and Jesus himself had become physical impediments to their followers’ ability to take the next step in their spiritual journeys. As long as they clung to their leader as provider and deliverer, they would not find the direct connection with unseen Spirit that is Pentecost. Calvary is the moment all Jesus’ followers’ hopes and expectations, the entire world they’d been building is killed right before their eyes. It is the moment of Jesus’ greatest display of vulnerability, which forces the choice of his

Dave Brisbin | 4.15.18 Between Easter and Pentecost, or more specifically, between Pesach/Passover and Shavu’ot, stretches a period of fifty days called in Hebrew sefirat ha-omer—the Counting of the Omer. Jews were told to make a grain offering on the second day of Pesach, then count each day for seven Sabbaths, add one day, and make another grain offering. Starting as celebrations of the barley and wheat harvests, Pesach and Shavu’ot respectively grew into celebrations of the physical liberation of the people from Egypt and their spiritual liberation from slave mentality at the giving of the Law. Hebrews made a distinction between the physical liberation first and the spiritual liberation that naturally followed a people living in intimate relationship with God. The counting of the omer is their structure for an interior preparation for spiritual deliverance. Jesus makes the same distinction to Nicodemus—that he must be born again in spirit before he can see God’s kingdom. And though Nicodemus cannot unders

Dave Brisbin | 4.8.18 Moving past the Resurrection and anticipating the spiritual filling of Pentecost fifty days later, is there a model for the shape our days if we’re living a spiritually aware lifestyle? What does that look like? Jesus teaches and demonstrates all through the Gospels of course, but the nation of Israel itself shows most clearly the ideal of what day to day conscious connection to God looks like. Leaving Egypt, Moses establishes a law that takes Israel out of the death and next world obsession of Egypt and places all the emphasis on immersion in this world, herenow. And perhaps more to the point, the promised land the Hebrews eventually occupy in Canaan had no major river or natural water source that would support irrigation and agriculture as Egypt had. Israel had to rely on its annual rains, the Yoreh and Malkosh, the early and latter rains that fell in fall and spring and without which there was no sustenance. You can harness the flow of a river, but not the rains. To be completely depe

Dave Brisbin | 4.1.18 There is one detail in the post resurrection accounts of Jesus appearing to his closest friends and followers that is common to all of them, and yet this detail hasn’t gotten much airplay or consideration in terms of what it may mean to us who are still trying to follow Jesus so long after that first resurrection Sunday. None of the friends and followers to whom Jesus appeared after his crucifixion recognized him at first. This seems utterly impossible, if you think about it. How could they not recognize him? Mary, as close as she was to Jesus, loving him as she did, doesn’t recognize him standing right in front of her by the tomb until he calls her name. The Emmaus travelers walk the entire trip and get halfway through supper before they realize who he is. Peter and the fisherman don’t recognize him on the shore until they pull in an impossible catch of fish. Did he look physically different? Some sort of cloaking miracle? The Gospels are only as important as they are relevant to our li

Dave Brisbin | 3.25.18 On Palm Sunday, what is the importance of the details of Jesus’ big entrance into Jerusalem that kicked off what turned out to be his last week before crucifixion? Do we focus on historical facts that occurred nearly 2,000 years ago or on spiritual truths as immediate as our next breath? Standing behind all the historical details are rich symbolic truths that point us in an inescapable direction: that Jesus was not coming as a conquering national hero, but a humble, spiritual servant of anyone and everyone in his path. But of the four main groups of people watching him ride by on the colt of a donkey, none saw who he really was. Each group saw what they wanted to see, colored by their needs and ambitions: a warrior messiah set to overturn the Roman occupation, threat to power and tax bases, the chance to rise to relevance and power... Shortly before all this, Jesus asks his closest friends: “Who do you say that I am?” That is still the central question today for anyone who sets off to f

During our grand opening celebration for our new San Clemente location, we took time to have several effect members talk about their personal journeys leading them to theeffect and beyond. The stories are classic tales of spiritual transition and community. Also, the family of one of our founders who recently passed was on hand to present a portrait of him for our facility.

Dave Brisbin | 3.18.18 The central question for any who calls themselves Christian or a follower of Jesus has to be the one Jesus asks his followers--and by extension all of us--in Mark 8, “Who do you say that I am?” The question has as many answers as there are followers most likely, but how do we come to the best answer that we can muster as a group? Leonard Sweet comes to our rescue with the term EPIC, which for him is an acronym standing for Experiential, Participatory, Image-based, and Communal. He has said that this is the way the youngest generations among us process information as opposed the older generations of the Modern world who are Propositional, Representational, Word-based, and Individualistic. The differences are profound in terms of worldview and attitude toward life, but the immense relevance really hits home, when we realize that the ancient peoples who wrote our scriptures were EPIC too. Our interpretation of ancient, EPIC scripture has been arrived at through anti-EPIC glasses and has be

Dave Brisbin | 3.11.18 On the fourth Sunday of Lent, trying to re-imagine Lent as time of sensory deprivation in order to clear away all that distracts and obscures God’s face, if we’ve begun practicing moment by moment awareness, if we’ve begun to confront our limiting beliefs and obsessive behavior patterns and become willing to overturn those interior tables, what truth starts to become apparent? Jesus gives us a big clue traditionally read on Maundy Thursday of Holy Week. During the Last Supper, he strips off his mantle and tunic, wraps a towel around himself and kneels in front of each of his friends to wash feet. It’s hard for us as modern Westerners to comprehend the full scope of this outrageous action, or to understand Peter’s violent reaction. But Jesus is showing us something absolutely profound, something we have to be prepared to see, as Peter and the rest of the room as yet were not. By showing as radically and graphically as possible that he was an unassuming, humble, servant leader, Jesus--as

Dave Brisbin | 3.4.18 On the third Sunday of Lent, continuing to look at how taking Lent seriously as a time of clearing away all that distracts and obscures the truth of our lives…after we commit to the process of increasing awareness moment by moment, what’s next? As we become more aware of our emotions and emotional triggers, thought and behavioral patterns, as we begin to see ourselves as with a third eye moving and choosing and relating based on whatever has become our worldview to date—what are we going to do with that information? If our thought and behavior patterns are healthy, creating healthy relationships, then nothing of course. If it’s not broke, don’t fix it. But if not, then just as Jesus did in the Jerusalem temple, are we willing to overturn the tables of our own ingrained beliefs in order to rearrange a life that has become unable to produce the fruit of its design? Make it once again resemble its original promise? That is the lesson of cleansing of the temple and cursing of the fig tree, a