18 - The Sum when Some Givesome

My wife and I have been working with the dōTERRA essential oil company for the last seven years.

When first introduced to essential oils, it was another tool in our toolkit for a healthy, holistic lifestyle.

Essential oils changed our health, became our livelihood, and have become a means for us to positively affect the lives of other people. I am incredibly proud of the life-changing impact of dōTERRA, the quality of dōTERRA's products and their mission to source only the most pure, potent, and effective oils on earth.

It's a privilege to partner with them.

Working with dōTERRA has taught me that source matters.

My spiritual journey has taught me the same lesson.

When it comes to essential oils there is a cycle, a relational loop, in how we source the oils, in what those oils do for us, and how they affect our bodily well-being.

And when it comes to Spirit there is also cycle in how we respond to Spirit, and how Spirit influences our being in the world.

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.

Join me in this episode as I reflect on dōTERRA's mission to source pure, potent, and effective oils; and consider the Divine lessons we can learn from our very human practice of harvesting and using the earth's plants in sustaining and life-giving ways.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

• dōTERRA's Source to You.
• Chocosoltraders

Related B-RAD podcast. I am Human

Music by Be Still the Earth.

More at Brad Toews.

I love language. I’m a reader, a writer, a person who loves ideas.

I recently watched Tolkien and loved this line from the movie.

Language isn’t just the naming of things, it’s the lifeblood of a culture, a people.

You can catch that clip for yourself here.

Language is definitely my own lifeblood. (That, and music.)

Language helps us explain the world. Know the world. Name the world. And we’re often trying to improve the language we use to describe the truth, to explain exactly what happened.

We want language to be specific, precise. Literal.

I’m grateful for this specificity of language. Our ability to name, sort, and label our experiences and interactions with the world.

Without this, our lives would be a soupy mess.

But literalism has limits where it bumps up against another tool of language, something even more powerful at explaining reality – metaphor.

Metaphor engages our imagination, it opens possibilities, it invokes play.

Carl Jung said,

The great joy of play is that for a time we are utterly spontaneous. In a state of pure being, no thought is unthinkable, no image is unimaginable. Every good idea and all creative works are the offspring of imagination. (emphasis mine)

Metaphor is the language of our imagination. And it speaks the truth in ways not possible with literal language.

Join me in this episode as we explore the limits of literalism, consider the power of imagination and metaphor, and play with these ideas in the context of the Christian tradition.

More at Brad Toews.

Like many people who grew up in a religious context I was taught the purpose of our faith, the meaning of life in fact, was to know God.

Not only was this the goal but it was actually achievable by getting saved, reading the bible, having a personal relationship with Jesus, going to church, praying, participating in Christian community and basically following the path laid out by church traditions and authorities.

Pursuing this mission - to know God - would set you on the right path.

In the Christian classic "Knowing God", influential evangelical scholar and teacher, J. I. Packer, says it this way.

"Once you become aware that the main business that you are here for is to know God most of life's problems will fall into place of their own accord."

Wow. That's a confident claim overall, but maybe the most bold and perhaps presumptuous part of that idea is the assumption we can actually know God.

Can we know God? Really? Is that even possible?

I don't know.

But what I do know is that our claims to knowledge (how we know, what we know, the extent of what we know) changes over time. At least it does if we're growing and evolving.

What happens when what you experience doesn't fit into the box of what you know? Maybe it's an experience of God, or Ultimate Reality, or Love or some other deep truth.

What if that experience takes you outside of your current frame of knowing? What if life, usually great love or great suffering, rocks you to the core and what you thought you knew, about God, others, the world, or yourself, you no longer know.

What happens in the unknowing?

Join me in this episode as we talk about the well-trodden path of order, disorder and reorder (and its many synonyms), read the words of an old monk who calls us "to never stop loving no matter what comes your way", and challenge ourselves to experience God as The Great Mystery to endlessly know and un-know, discover and re-discover.

Shownotes at Brad Toews.

I recently had the opportunity to take a trip back to where I grew up in central Alberta.

My immediate family members no longer live there and so the last time I was back was thirteen years ago for my grandmother’s funeral.

Like most forty-somethings I’ve changed a lot since childhood. I’ve changed a lot in the last thirteen years.

Sometimes we look back on our past selves and our past lives with a certain arrogance. I can’t believe I used to be so immature! Or we look back with regret. I can’t believe I made that choice!

I’ve experienced my share of both but on this trip what I felt most of all was a deep sense of gratitude for the place and the people I’ve come from.

Grateful for my past lives.

People can hear the term “past lives” and infer all kinds of meanings, including reincarnation, something I’m open to but don’t have any personal experience of in my own life.

Regardless of what you think about reincarnation (in this episode I play with that word a little, exploring other possible meanings), we all have past lives, a collection of moments, strung together that make us who we are.

Join me for this episode where we deal with, accept, and include our past in our present; honour and acknowledge where we've come from; and bring all our past lives with us as we move forward in our becoming.

More at Brad Toews. 

There is a price to pay for speaking the truth. There is a bigger price to pay for living a lie. - Cornell West

Sometimes I'm not sure what I was thinking about when I started this podcast. Podcasts about hosted by talkers, right?

I'm a quiet, more reserved person by nature. I love to read and write, but generally speaking, I don't have a lot to say.

But 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.

Join me in this episode where I talk about a bodily experience in aligning my heart with my voice, and how we can lean into good music to find the courage to both speak our truth and know the truth of our identity.

Shownotes and good music videos at Brad Toews. 

As the father to three kids, September is marked with back-to-school energy.

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.

In this back-to-school episode I’m diving into 3 metaphors that can help us approach and instigate changes in our lives.

1. Take it to the curb

Maybe you don’t usually see your household waste as a metaphor for life changes. It could be a bit of a stretch but I think garbage, recycling, and compost can teach us something about how to deal with the mental clutter, unhealthy attitudes, unfinished projects, stagnating habits, and even broken dreams of our lives.

2. What are you bringing in the front door?

In our homes there is an impact for every item that comes through the door, from furniture to dog food. It’s the same for our individual selves, both physically and spiritually. Nutrition, breathing, and rest; emotional and spiritual influences in our lives, all of it affects how we experience life.

Making changes in what we “bring into our lives” in these areas can help kickstart better habits and practices.

3. Pay full tuition

Go all-in on your personal development. Don’t cheapen the process or results by looking for the discount.

I’m not necessarily talking about financial cost. I’m talking about your commitment to growth. Don’t look for shortcuts or cheap opportunities. To get full value, you have to pay full value.

Join me in this episode as we find our fall groove and get back-to-school in our personal growth and development.

Related B-RAD Episode:

Dying Before you Die

Full shownotes at Brad Toews. 

I’m a learner. I LOVE learning. I’m constantly reading, writing, listening, digesting and assimilating things I’m interested in learning. To be engaged with ideas this way is a big part of what makes me feel alive.

I have a strong tendency and bias to depend on outside information and inputs, constantly seeking more knowledge to inform my choices.

Often this is beneficial. Research can help us make better purchases, for example. Whether that’s the food we eat, the clothes we wear, or the car we buy.

But I lean very heavily on external input for almost all my information gathering, even for decisions that benefit more from inner knowing.

So, on my wife’s recommendation, I took a break from inputs. I went on a short retreat to a friend’s farm where I disconnected, put-down, and left behind the books, podcasts, and online articles by the experts.

I wanted to give myself the opportunity to be with just myself for a period of time, without outside influences, to find my own wisdom.

I was only three days. But it was hard. And also very good.

I did allow myself to journal and I asked myself a string of questions at the beginning and end of this retreat.

Join me in this episode as I explore these questions and propose a way that we can live in the pages of our own book, and consider our inner knowing as worthy of following.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

• Strengths Finder

All music in this episode by Brad Toews.

Related B-RAD Episodes:

• People on Pedestals – why we follow certain people or esteem them
• Obviously – the importance of journaling & reflection

Have you ever been disappointed by your spouse, partner, child, parent, or friend?

Perhaps nothing stings as much as the disappointments we face in our long-term romantic relationships, especially marriage. Unfortunately our popular culture sets us up for these disappointments and let-downs with happily ever after and other insanity like Tom Cruise’s classic line, “you complete me”, from the movie Jerry McGuire.

As if.

I’ve dealt with my share of disappointment in my eighteen year marriage. Both giving and receiving. And more than that, I’ve been completely undone and stripped bare, learning how to re-imagine a marriage after deep crisis. It hasn’t been all unicorns and rainbows, that’s for sure.

In this episode I 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.

Four years ago we stepped back from the brink of divorce and have learned to recognize unhealthy ingrained patterns of behaviour and habits, to let go of false beliefs about ourselves and each other, and to realize that frustrations and disappointments are the opportunity for healing and true growth into who we are meant to be as individuals.

More than that, we are learning how to show up for each other in our marriage without expectations of the other. And learning that letting go of how we think our spouse should be allows them to be who they really are. It frees them to move towards us in safety and honesty. That’s real intimacy. Better than a fairytale.

My wife Dawna is a wise woman and she shares some strategies for helping people move through and learn from the let-downs of life; ideas for how to let go of our expectations of other people (our partners and children especially), how to connect with and release our emotions in a healthy way, and how to cultivate true gratitude.

Where to find Dawna & resources mentioned in this episode:

• Instagram
• Facebook
• Rawmama
• Switchfoot’s Beautiful Letdown

Full shownotes at Brad Toews

This spring I attended a meditation retreat hosted and taught by Dr. Joe Dispenza.

A fan of his work, it was amazing to experience, in person, the principles of his teaching and research. One of the thing Dispenza teaches is a modern take on chakras, the ancient Indian understanding of energy in the body.

My introduction to chakras was through yoga but more recently I’ve been learning about these ideas from Dispenza, specifically in his book Becoming Supernatural, and also at the meditation retreat I attended.

I’m no expert, but the seven energy centres in our body are fascinating to discuss and explore. And so I start this episode with a summary of each energy centre or chakra.

As if integrative medicine, transcendent spiritual experiences, and quantum physics weren’t interesting enough I add another angle to this conversation, the idea of harmonics theory in music.

I’m not a doctor. I’m not a scientist. I’m not a guru. But I am a musician. And the theory of harmonics adds a layer of depth and a complementary lens through which to understand energy, both scientifically and spiritually.

Maybe those two categories – science and spirituality – often seen in opposition to each other, are just two sides of the same coin called “being human”.

Join me in this episode as I sit down with my upright piano to teach the seven chakras and an introduction to harmonics theory (and consider how these two things might be related); and ask you to evaluate the frequency of your own life and what it’s teaching you.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

• Blessing of the Energy Centers meditation by Joe Dispenza
• Assaff Wiesman Harmonics Series in Music TED Talk
• Becoming Supernatural: Home Common People are Doing the Uncommon

Music in this episode by Brad Toews.

Shownotes, links and other resources at Brad Toews. 

Drew Brown is an award-winning singer-songwriter, music producer and a friend of mine from way back. We have a shared history of being involved in contemporary Christian music, or CCM for short.

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 shared experiences. Including the experience of a disillusioned and deconstructed Christian faith.

What do we do when we no longer experience God the way we once did? Or when God is silent? When faith becomes riddled by questions and doubts, when we find ourselves in the wilderness?

We keep telling our story, we keep making music, that’s what.

And we start to notice that love isn’t confined to one book of scriptures, one story, one man, one experience. It’s everywhere, if we have eyes to see and ears to hear. And we realize that music, especially our Christian music, won’t have all the answers if it’s going to be an honest telling of that story.

It’s ok to live in the tension, and the best music will hold space for this tension.

In this interview we also talk about investing in community and being a good neighbour, even if we’re hard-core introverts.

What does it look like to be a good neighbour in your context? How can we make a difference in the world right where we live? Drew explores these questions with me, sharing stories from his own community.

Join me for this interview with Drew Brown where we talk about the power of music to express the deepest human experiences of great love and great suffering (those portals of the Divine), the potential for new life that springs from the shaking of our faith foundations, and how we can create spaces for connection and community with music and neighbourhood-relationships.

Drew’s Music:

• Hymns for the Architect

Liturgical songs and prayers for the church and songs for people that need a song while in their “night season”. Songs of hope while doubting hope, of faith while seeking faith, of love while rediscovering love, and prayers for mercy that acknowledges mercy as undeserved.

• Drew Brown Music
• Drew Brown on Spotify

Other musicians and resources mentioned in this episode:

• Andrew Peterson
• Audrey Assad
• Parish Collective

All the music in this episode by Drew Brown.

See more at Brad Toews.