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[00:44 –> 00:51] (Music)
[00:51 –> 00:57] Hey. Father Mark, Mary.
[00:57 –> 01:15] And we are the Poco a Poco podcast. We’re three fourths of it. Minus Father Angeles, who’s going on an adventure?
[01:15 –> 01:23] Without going into details, you think this, you think his adventure is going to lead to something?
[01:23 –> 01:32] In whose mind?
[01:32 –> 01:57] Does he have anybody else going with him?
[01:58 –> 02:03] I have a couple. I have a question for you. If Father Innocent.
[02:04 –> 02:21] Okay. I have a lot at stake on this. Have you ever heard of the term Savannah banana? Never. Okay. So, Father Anderson, welcome to.
[02:21 –> 02:29] Welcome to the game show. How innocent is Father Innocent or how?
[02:29 –> 02:46] Yeah, yeah, yeah, don’t say anything, but, we got to have some. Hey, we got to happen. That’s what I’m saying. We got to have a new game show that has to do with you being a hermit. What would it.
[02:46 –> 03:00] Correct, but I don’t. I don’t totally love the title. How innocent and innocent, because it. But that’s not exactly all we’re doing. But it’s more of like, okay.
[03:00 –> 03:23] So. So, Father Innocent, thank you for coming to this game. You did not sign up for, nor technically consent to, but are being put on the spot. That’s that’s what I was saying. This. That’s exactly what I was going. This is this is how types of abuse happen. It’s someone putting being put on the spot without freedom free and really important religious life.
[03:23 –> 03:48] And it’s really important for Jesus. Okay, I’m going to give you four. I’m going to give you four sentences. And you have to decide which one of these you have to pick. Which one of these is the what a Savannah banana is okay. The first one is it’s a play on banana split or it’s a type of split banana split.
[03:48 –> 04:04] It’s a term in bowling for when the four, seven, eight, and ten pin are left. That is specifically called a savannah banana, as four strikes in a row is called a.
[04:05 –> 04:32] That’s three. There we go. Okay. Number two, it is a popular treat at the Georgia State Fair. And I think this is quite clever because or specifically a corndog because it has a banana has the peel and the banana inside the corndog has the breading and then the hotdog inside. So that is a popular treat at the Georgia State Fair or a type of bowling split, or it is something like, the Harlem Globetrotters for baseball.
[04:32 –> 05:04] It has viral dances, backflip catches, and the banana, I believe, connected to the use of lots of yellow. And then last is a savannah banana is a hybrid cat breed. Great. Created by crossing a wild African serval with a domestic housecat. No no no no no, this was not just so you know, this is all. This is all written by human beings.
[05:04 –> 05:27] This is by me. This is 100% my brainchild. Yeah, that’s why we’re doing it. All right, so it’s a play on Banana split having to do with bowling. Popular treated Georgia State Fair, namely corn dog. It’s like Harlem Globetrotters for baseball with the use of lots of yellow. It’s a hybrid cat breed created by crossing a wild African serval with the domestic cat.
[05:27 –> 05:54] Which one of these following and saying is a savannah banana?
[05:55 –> 06:24] Congratulations, father. Innocent. You guessed you guessed correctly. I thought you could know about it because I guarantee your your, nephews know about it.
[06:24 –> 06:40] Yeah.
[06:40 –> 07:01] Okay, E.B. okay. One time. That’s fair. But a, the banana split thing or the bowling one totally made up Georgia State Fair. I felt good about that. The corn dog banana. That’s why I emphasize that. And then there’s something called a Savannah cat, which is the thing that I explain there. But, Savannah, I guess Savannah bananas is the better way to call it.
[07:01 –> 07:21] It’s just like this baseball thing that’s everywhere, selling out stadiums, very popular with kids. About the age of your nephews. Less popular with people our age who don’t have kids.
[07:22 –> 07:32] Like, yeah, tiny, tiny little clips. Like, I saw how they do the extra innings over time thing.
[07:32 –> 07:39] Yeah.
[07:39 –> 07:49] I guess, yeah. I mean, it’s popular for a reason. Thank you for playing for the innocent. You you.
[07:49 –> 07:54] On our fraternal trip, we did bust out. We did get some wiffle ball going.
[07:54 –> 08:44] Three of us. I did win. Yeah, yeah, yeah, but it was, it was. It was fairly close. We weren’t playing. We were playing like a with a wolf ball that has all the holes in it. Not like, proper wiffle ball. None of the guys even heard of that. And our strike zone was like a bench, which made things interesting.
[08:45 –> 08:57] You’re playing every week.
[08:57 –> 09:01] Oh, we might need to run this back.
[09:01 –> 09:13] Yeah, I think. What’s the career score? It’s like, 18 to 1. Maybe.
[09:13 –> 09:37] Well, not really. I think we’re publicly talking trash. So a couple things. We’re going to get into the episode again if you want to check out The father or the CFR kind of video series that we’re doing for the 100 800th anniversary, did you believe Saint Francis would say that? Those are on, YouTube, and you’ll be hearing from a lot of friars you’ve never heard from before, which is cool.
[09:37 –> 09:57] Our boy, Father Felix up at the, also at the Hermitage. His video has been the most popular by a lot so far. Us, I guess it’s probably by now it’s over 100,000 views, which is cool. Yeah. And then anyway, that’s it. We’re still trying to make sure we get the Father Benedict video taken down. Hopefully it’s down by this time.
[09:57 –> 10:19] Video’s cool. So what we’re doing here is, been traveling a little bit and, going across a number of things. And so anyway, we’re just kind of we’re, we’re going to be responding to some things out there in the atmosphere and, hopefully trying to bring Saint Francis into a little bit just to kind of keep the theme of the year here.
[10:19 –> 10:43] So guys, here’s the, here’s what it came across is there was a, and again, I don’t like to name names when doing something like that, so I’m not going to do that even if it’s a public person generally. But there’s a, there’s a, there’s a football coach, who has he’s like a Super Bowl winning football coach, and he’s given a speech to, it seems like a college current college locker room.
[10:44 –> 11:04] And the whole speech says, hey, we won the Super Bowl, and I wanted to win, keep one in the Super Bowl. So I went around and asked all of these people of greatness, how do they remain great? And so I asked, you know, other other guys who had multiple championships and I asked, you know, business owners who have like CEOs of major companies who kept their company growing.
[11:04 –> 11:24] And I asked all of these sort of people, how is it like that? You don’t only achieve greatness, but you like maintain greatness, success at the highest level. And he said, they all got back to me. And what they all say is you have to have the mindset that it’s never enough, it’s never enough, and so it’s never good enough.
[11:24 –> 11:44] You’ve never sort of you never done what you needed to do. There’s always more like no matter how great you are, like it’s never enough, no matter how how many championships you’ve won, it’s never enough. No matter how much money you’ve made, it’s never enough. Like that’s the mentality for in his mind. Like according in this speech, that’s the mentality for ongoing growth.
[11:45 –> 12:12] And you know, I struggle, I, I certainly struggle with that as a helpful mindset to bring into life. You know, and, and so I kind of want to unpack that because I think that, a couple of things, like, I think it’s interesting because we do believe, you know, as friars in a life of ongoing renewal, in a sense, we’re saying, like, our work is never complete.
[12:12 –> 12:39] We want to be signed up for a journey of ongoing sort of growth and deepening conversion, which certainly has a certain set of mindset that’s like, we haven’t quite made it, but I think, I think that’s different than this sort of worldly. It’s never enough mindset. And I think if you if you take that mindset into life, new initiatives, new things, constantly, never feeling satisfied.
[12:39 –> 13:05] I think you’re setting yourself up for for burnout. I think you’re, you’re kind of creating a mindset that may not allow for peace, may not allow for contentment, may not allow for joy, because it’s always you, always like it’s never enough. You always have to keep doing more. But also we do believe in, you know, a God who, like, continues to call us deeper and to give more and more of himself.
[13:05 –> 18:24] So, I think it’s good to make some distinction, but like, do you guys have any initial thoughts just on that? Like, that’s that sort of it’s never enough mindset? And how it’s a little bit in the culture and can affect maybe, mischaracterize like our view of God and what he’s asking of us.
[18:24 –> 18:46] And maybe like, I think, I want to I’m just going to go through maybe some examples of like this gone wrong, like as, like a worldview. I think, you know, I think a classic one is like, say, like a kid, you know, Whatever. Say, like, you know, we’ll just use, like, a baseball player. Say, let’s say a baseball player plays like a 12 year old, plays in a weekend series.
[18:46 –> 19:13] He he hits, whatever. If he hits 400, he, you know, has a bunch of home runs. He pitches a little bit, strikes out, you know, 14 guys gets a win. But he also at one point he’s playing shortstop. And he you know he has an error and he’s driving back in the car. And his dad’s talking to him just about like the air.
[19:13 –> 19:27] And how now we got to get you know when we get home we’re going to get out. We’re going to practice their grounders because, like, that’s a mistake. That can’t happen like that kind of that’s see, like that kind of mentality. It’s like I think it’s like it’s never enough mentality. Like we we expect like like we’re never going to stop working.
[19:27 –> 19:45] We’re looking at we’re going for perfection. And you’ve done something really good, but we’re not. We’re just going to sort of focus on the fact that, like, you did something bad and that we’re going to attack and we’re going to be driven, and you see this, I think in some of the some of the greatest athletes had this.
[19:45 –> 20:13] And I think you see them sort of having wild success in their sport, but also like a lot of difficulties in their personal lives, and they don’t seem mentally like they’re not seemingly happy. Right. So I don’t know if they develop like an interiority of like, peace, or I think, like you might see, like for our listener, you might see like, you know, a person who’s, who’s sick.
[20:13 –> 20:27] And so, like, praying is hard or doing, you know, some of the ministry they used to do is hard, and it’s like I used to be able to do this, but now, because I’m sick, I can can’t do it.
[20:27 –> 20:47] And sometimes I just think, like, I give you really healing to be like, hey, you trust in the Lord right now, like with your sickness and praying as you can. Like, yeah, that’s like a pleasing offering to the Lord. Like that is enough. Or certainly I think there’s a lot of families or parents where it’s like, okay, we’re, you know, we’re raising our kids and we’re doing this, and Catholic school is expensive.
[20:47 –> 21:14] But, you know, like when we were 20, we used to be doing international missionary work, and we’re not doing that. And we used to be doing and like, there’s just some I think there’s a place where it’s like there’s a mindset of God always like pushing and always striving. And it’s like, are we open to the idea that actually like, what we’re doing, like, can be a pleasing offering to the Lord and actually, like, he’s not asking you to do more.
[21:14 –> 21:31] He’s asking you to be faithful, what you’ve been given. Because like, in a certain sense, like what you’ve already been given is, is enough of an offering. So those are some of the like kind of what I’m like focusing on are trying to get at.
[21:31 –> 21:59] Does that kind of make sense? Everybody.
[21:59 –> 29:08] So like what do you guys got as far as like the healthy approach to kind of the ongoing invitation to Jesus or Saint Francis or anything like that?
[29:08 –> 29:12] Yeah. Thank you. In like,
[29:12 –> 29:43] Right. And so I think we are kind of we’re trying to make some distinctions and parcels, some parcel or some, some things. Right. Like we have the what is it, the shimmer from, from Deuteronomy. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, strength. Right. We have we have Jesus, you know, pointing out the widow puts in her two mites and like, she, she she puts in, just like, if you will, the two coins into the temple offering.
[29:43 –> 30:04] And and Jesus honors this, because she gave everything she had. Right. So there’s like a way in which this offering of the this poor widow, is explicitly enough. But also there’s a, like a totality to it. She’s given everything right. And so and so like the love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your strength, etc..
[30:05 –> 30:20] Yeah. We like there is a, there is a call to a totality. But I would also say there’s like part of what we can get at. It’s like, you know, all your strength is all your strength, and it’s not all of your ideal strength or it’s not all the strength of everybody else, or it’s not all the strength in the world.
[30:20 –> 30:41] Like, with this, there also is, I believe, a space for understanding, like limitations. Like I can only do so much. But if you’ve done what you can do, it’s like you’ve, you’ve, you’ve you’ve made a, like, a pleasing offering to the Lord. And so that’s where I think we can kind of get confused. It’s like, okay, I’m not I’m doing what I can, but I’m not doing everything.
[30:41 –> 31:03] And I feel like I should do everything. And so I beat myself up because I’m not doing everything, and I’m not willing to recognize that doing what I can is actually like can be enough to the Lord. And, and I think I want to kind of respond to it from this place of, of poverty. And I think father, introduced it.
[31:03 –> 31:21] Well, it’s like certainly part of the prayer in the interior life of Saint Francis is this understanding of like, God is my everything, and he does it. And like, in one sense, like, you know, I can’t save myself. I can’t seem to find myself like there’s, like, there’s very little I can do. Like, I need Jesus for everything.
[31:21 –> 31:30] Right? And what this makes me think of is two things is, first of all,
[31:30 –> 31:57] They’re like, this is maybe the way I’ll go about it when it’s like, okay, hey, you know what? This people, people are out there and they don’t want to get older, you know, it’s like, okay, actually, that can be a good desire, but that’s not something that you’re going to achieve through, you know, plastic surgery and Botox and, the most expensive skin care, skin care routine, like you’re always going to lose, like there’s this natural attrition that’s going to happen to you.
[31:57 –> 32:18] But actually, like in heaven, we believe in the resurrection of the body and that there is a way in which, like this can be satisfied in the Lord. And I come to this with like, hey, you know what? Yeah, there’s there’s a, there’s some sort of human desire, for the infinite and for almost like an ongoing growth or an ongoing deepening and all sort of stuff and like, hey, you know what?
[32:18 –> 32:48] Like, we can’t do this by ourselves. You’re not called to do this by yourself. But I’m actually like, this is something God can do and wants to do. And I and I believe this is part of the experience of having is this ongoing, deepening knowing of of who who he is. Right. So there is a way in which there’s something good about a desire to never be satisfied, but also there’s a way in which, like that is satisfied in by God and in God.
[32:48 –> 33:07] And the last thing is like I think with poverty has the poverty. Saint Francis has like a radical vulnerability and even like a, what we can call like a, like a, like a spiritual, like nakedness. I’m coming in like poor and vulnerable. I’m not coming in with my own sort of money bag. I’m not coming in with my own armor.
[33:07 –> 33:27] I’m not coming in with my own game plan. I’m not coming in with my own tools. I’m coming in like, super poor. And the reality is that that, like the, the mindset of it’s never enough, I do believe for some people can be like a defense mechanism because it’s like, I don’t want to give up. I don’t want to to settle.
[33:27 –> 33:55] I don’t want to become mediocre or lukewarm. So I’m going to have this mindset of it’s never enough. And if I have this mindset, I affirm myself in my intensity. I affirm myself that I’m I haven’t sold out. I haven’t sort of given in, I haven’t become Luke Warren because I believe it’s never enough. I’m always going to keep like grinding and striving, and like, but there’s also there can be a fear like if I, if I, if I believe I’ve done enough, like, how do I know I’m not going to kind of give up?
[33:55 –> 34:17] How do I know? Again, I’m not going to sort of flatline and plateau. And so I do think that is something that we’re also I think it just figures who God is, our role in it. And I do believe there’s a lot of it can have the characteristic in the nature of a defense mechanism. If it’s like I’m going to the way I’m going to share myself, that I’m never going to give up is by telling myself it’s never enough.
[34:17 –> 34:33] And that’s something I think that, if you will like radical total poverty, also like surrenders. So some of my thoughts about how like Saint Francis and all that like, relates to this.
[34:33 –> 34:52] Anything else? Guys?
[34:52 –> 40:48] Without going into like, specific details, have you guys experienced that? Like where you’ve been, where you felt like something was never enough or you felt like somebody was treating you like it’s never enough?
[40:48 –> 41:07] But I think, like, what’s important, I like this. The, If you will, there’s a desire in Saint Francis, like, okay, for more and more and more like, if that’s ultimately a work of grace, that’s not something that’s self achieved and that’s not something,
[41:07 –> 41:32] And it’s almost, it’s almost like the difference between the way in which, I think like the Lord brings our sin before us versus like, the accuser where it’s like it’s it’s like, hey, like, you know, I think like there’s something similar but different, right. Where I think with with Jesus, it’s like, there’s a, there’s a certain invitation and a kindness to it.
[41:32 –> 41:39] There’s this, like, I always have more to give.
[41:39 –> 42:05] But at the same. Like, you know, like even. And I think, like the enough language, like, in some ways, like, it’s in church law, it’s like, hey, you know, like, they invite priests to celebrate one Mass a day. And for pastoral, like, necessity, you can celebrate two Mass of the day. You can buy meat, or on, you know, Christmas and All Souls, you can celebrate three Masses.
[42:05 –> 42:20] But the idea is like, hey, you know what? Like, if you celebrate, like, you don’t have to go about all day with this. Like insecurity that like, okay, you need to keep celebrating more and more Masses. There’s a way in which, hey, the one Mass you did. Yeah. That’s sufficient. Like that’s enough.
[42:20 –> 42:37] Just to put that. But I just think, like, I don’t know, like you. Maybe you go, you guys have. I just think that maybe. And maybe it’s just like, you know, like we’ve had the experiences, I think where it’s like, oh, okay, you’re going to do this. Can you also do this? Can you also do this? Can you also do this?
[42:37 –> 43:16] Can you also do this? And like at some point you just want to be like, hey, like is. Like when, when do we when have when have we given you enough kind of thing? And that that can be sort of I think that can be hurtful. And I just don’t think that’s the way the Lord operates. But we are made for the infinite, so that’s the real thing.
[43:16 –> 43:32] Right. Yeah. It’s not like shame driven. It’s not discouragement driven. It’s just different. Well yeah. But I think yeah I don’t know I think a lot of people out there.
[43:32 –> 46:14] It would be helpful for them to bring what they’re doing to the Lord, to recognize that they’re doing what they can and to hear the Lord say, like, yeah, this is a complete this is enough. Essentially, I think there can actually be a lot of healing in that for a lot of people.
[46:14 –> 46:27] That’s great. Where where was this?
[46:27 –> 46:39] Yeah.
[46:39 –> 47:39] Amen. Yeah. When you tell this story, wherever you tell it, you are, you got to start. You got to practice tearing up a little bit. Yeah. There you go. There you go, there you go. Just catch your. Yeah. Just. Oh, man. Cool. Thank you. Thank you. Guys, can you this for the innocent?
[47:39 –> 47:43] Amen.
[47:43 –> 48:03] All right. Thank you guys. Anything for anybody?
[48:03 –> 48:10] Is there your niece and nephew?
[48:10 –> 48:30] I’d like to shout out Dominique. Jarrod, Dominique. You know, you’re you’re killing it. You’re the best of the of the siblings because the ghettos and witness. And, so I just want to thank you.
[48:31 –> 48:43] For your offering. Anyway, for the innocent. All right. Thanks, Katie. You’re doing great, too. All right, see, the.
[48:43 –> 48:47] (Music)