Indigo - The Color of Grief

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[00:00:20] Visit forthepeople.com or call Morgan and Morgan today. We hope you find something to love about all of them. Augmented, Volume One, a short story anthology of great science fiction stories available now on Amazon. ["The Star-Spangled Banner"] It's time for another round of snarky face with your host, Stuart Deloney. This is a space where we irreverently wrestle

[00:01:41] through life, culture, and spirituality,

[00:01:44] all with our heads in the clouds,

[00:01:45] our tongues in our cheeks, the podcast. We're here. We're there. We're practically everywhere. Just look for snarky that everybody wants to be engaging in grief. Yes, grief and tholidays because it's that time of the year when the world seems split

[00:04:20] between Instagram worthy moments of joy and the grace and wisdom of a man who's turned his own loss into a journey of understanding and empathy. We'll be delving deep into his book, but not before we take our usual detour through the land of Christian crazy.

[00:05:41] We're the only thing heavier than the fruitcake is the irony.

[00:05:45] So we'll have some of those. But before that, this is a bit of a different twist in The Christian Crazy. We mentioned him in the last episode, Mike Johnson talked about Mike

[00:07:00] Johnson's covenant eyes and his weird porn pact with his son. If you can spot this hubris, right? That whole kind of main character identity scenario the Moses. I didn't think I could do it. I didn't think I would be chosen, but OK, I'll take it. I'm the new Moses. But see, here's my issue with the whole thing. Like you can take the Moses mantle, if you will.

[00:09:42] But let's go ahead and say contextually, if you're going to do this,

[00:09:44] which I don't recommend doing, but, you know, Mike's already gone ahead and done this.

[00:10:44] But you refused to let him go, so I will kill your firstborn son. Here's the twist, verse 24.

[00:10:47] At a lodging place on the way, the Lord met Moses and was about to kill him.

[00:10:52] But Zipporah, Moses' wife, took a flint knife and cut off her son's forescanned and touched Moses' feet with it.

[00:11:01] Surely you are the bridegroom of blood to me, she said, to the Lord left him alone.

[00:12:03] Why would anyone not want to tithe?

[00:12:07] Have you figured out by now God doesn't need your money?

[00:12:10] He's doing very well.

[00:12:16] But the reason he insists on it is so that he has the opportunity to enter into our affairs

[00:12:21] and then turn around and bless us

[00:12:23] and spend it all back on us.

[00:12:25] Oh, is that how it goes?

[00:12:26] Is that how it, reap it. Yes. That's who we are. Well, and George, hey, we named it, claimed it, blabbed it, grabbed it, and we have it. We do have it. We're the one with the airplane. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Airplane, za, za.

[00:13:40] Oh, I get it.

[00:13:41] I get it to see what that cocky bastard is saying.

[00:13:45] Airplane, za, please no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, yes, but it's that classic, classic exit move of, hey y'all, let's just get the band up here. It's time to worship. Because that's what worship is really about. It's just meant to be a transition to get you away from an argument that you're already losing. It's a good thing we learned that.

[00:16:21] Learn something new every day.

[00:16:24] Well, it's that time.

[00:16:26] We're going to be talking about grief and loss today. Jonathan is a writer, podcaster, and artist, and his new book, Indigo, the Colored Grief, is what we're going to be talking about. So welcome, Jonathan. Welcome today. Thanks, man. I'm been thinking, you know what, would really work nicely with this is to do some kind of crowd funder because one thing I just never have liked about traditional publishing launches is you never get to connect with your readers. I mean, Amazon and Apple, they all know who has purchased this, but the author doesn't.

[00:19:02] And so, and I know you know that as a, you know, I've taken a few measures. I've called a few friends and I've said, hey, can you just be ready on Tuesday morning, October 17th to, you know, just maybe give up front.

[00:20:20] Don't like, don't play games with me.

[00:20:22] Just make it happen.

[00:20:23] So I think, you know, I've got a little bit of a covered

[00:20:26] and then we'll get talk more specifically about your experiences with grief, which I know a lot of your experiences with grief will also be a part of everything that we're talking about. Sure. But for me, just to go ahead and tell you and my listeners here, this book, it felt like a very experiential read

[00:21:42] as I was going through it, kind of like you were in

[00:21:44] someone's mind as they were try to process this myself to give me give myself a space to work through some of these things. at those things and just the pacing of it, the cadence of it. And I'm hoping that those things will help people treat their own loss with gentleness and patience and grace, which is what I've been trying to do with me. And because I'm by nature, not a very patient, gentle, gracious person, but I've had to learn.

[00:24:22] And I shouldn't say I've just had to.

[00:24:24] I mean, I've been invited to learn.

[00:24:26] And I've been thankful to learn that I came to mind when you said that was, you know, I'm a father, obviously I had, we had two other boys at home when she died. And of course my partner. And so, you know, I felt a certain sense of responsibility to process it as much as I could plus at the time I was a pastor. So I was trying to, I was trying to create meaning for our young, you know,

[00:25:41] small church who obviously all knew her really well.

[00:26:41] This feels very intimate. And, and I don't know if that was necessarily your hope or your aim, but, but the rawness

[00:26:46] that it had there, like there was times where I'm like, I could remember moments where I

[00:26:51] was going through situations and it would just, your writings would just bring me right back

[00:26:55] there and not, not, not in a way that was like so crushing, but in a way of just being

[00:27:00] able to be like, Oh, like the fact, we have to dominate this thing that we can't be vulnerable, that we can't risk, etc, etc. Well, when something like this happens, I mean, what else is it? It's like completely vulnerable. There's just no hiding from that. So yeah, especially with theology, but theology gets real when we have to live it. Yeah. Yeah. It's probably only actually real when we live it. So completely, I think all of us are, you know, I often say we're meaning making creatures. It's really what we do.

[00:29:40] Our prefrontal cortex is constantly, you know, telling us stories and

[00:30:43] Like the memetic energy was so strong in our family. Of course, I was gonna grow up and become a pastor.

[00:30:45] And, you know, that was my entire identity.

[00:30:50] And so you would have thought,

[00:30:53] I would have liked to have said that by the age of 44,

[00:30:57] when my daughter died,

[00:30:58] that I had formulated all my thoughts about theology.

[00:31:02] Well, actually in some ways I know that is part of just the whole human condition. And it's something that you have mentioned earlier in your own life about not, we're not very patient with ourselves. And we don't like things that are painful,

[00:32:21] things that expose us.

[00:33:26] what we've lost, maybe until we read something like Indigo or see a film or listen to a song. So I think that's really important to remember that all of us are

[00:33:31] experiencing that. And then so what does it mean to... Geez, I do think just the

[00:33:39] patient's part, the self-respect part, the entering into the tension I, I, I, I truly like I laughed, even though this is not a laughing part of your book, but you mentioned this you. There was a chapter where it's essentially bad answers. So I, to deep problems that you've probably, you've heard from clergy and other people like that. And I wasn't laughing out of your loss. I was laughing because I, it reminded me exactly like a situation where, when I was even younger, I remember Pastor giving me the most.

[00:36:07] with people you see that all the time, anyhow. It's tough for humans, again, conditioned by our American West colonial, you know, power dominated, capital O omnipotent theological

[00:36:15] dominated to live in those spaces very long. So, yeah, people say dumb things. And I try

[00:36:24] to point out in the book, and I've't have to defend God and there's, you know, this loss is absurd. So probably the best thing to do is just to be in solidarity with people. And I've learned that too, sometimes just being there.

[00:37:40] Yeah. It's the best thing. Speak through that because it again, I feel like it's somewhat in the slowing of down Of things and other that but the importance of of those memories Yeah Really what else do we have we have these simple little things that we all go through every day and You know sometimes we're tempted to think there are these big moments

[00:39:02] But the big moments are just a series of smaller moments that lead up to it and

[00:40:06] I did that pretty well as a dad and I'm really grateful that I really, really loved being a dad and

[00:40:11] I loved all the different phases. It all cracked me up like when the kid we had three kids They're all three totally different, which is amazing in and of itself

[00:40:14] And you know you'd figure out one phase and by the time you figure it out

[00:40:18] My wife and I would just be amazed. Oh, they're on to the next phase and we got to figure out and I loved

[00:40:23] every single stage

[00:40:26] so I external, you know that every once in a while doesn't intervention and comes in but who actually is incarnated in us and in all matter in all creatures so that That actually then Makes it makes sense than what you're talking about the holy everyday ordinary stuff. Yeah

[00:41:41] 24-7 that's actually what is going on and so I think you're totally right and it

[00:42:45] days, anniversaries. It's a commitment to each day full of grace by the hour. Grieving is redirection of power to give one's impatience a hug to be

[00:42:50] powerful in powerless waiting. Grieving is redefinition of attachment to let go

[00:42:56] of letting go to see oneself attached to the absence that does not let go.

[00:43:02] Remember, random hug our girl gave a on the show today. Much thanks to Dr. Jonathan Foster.

[00:44:20] You should check out his book,

[00:44:21] Indigo, The Color of Grief.

[00:44:23] It's on Amazon.

[00:44:24] And before I send you off,

[00:44:25] just a reminder to share the show,

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