November 13, 2024 • 49 mins
What if the key to a deeper relationship with God lies in the way we remember? In this episode, spiritual director and author Casey Tygrett joins us to explore how memory shapes our identity and faith journey. Together, we discuss how embracing spiritual practices that center on intimacy, rather than punishment, can help us unlearn harmful narratives about God. Casey shares insights on remembering as a path to healing, especially in addressing generational trauma that influences our beliefs. We also delve into the role of lament in processing painful memories and the wisdom we gain from them. Finally, we reflect on the Lord’s Supper as a symbol of unity and love, and why pastors must prioritize wellness for the health of their ministry.
Casey Tygrett (D.Min.) is a pastor and spiritual director who has lived in the spiritual formation conversation for the last two decades. He is the author of Becoming Curious: A Spiritual Practice of Asking Questions, The Practice of Remembering: Uncovering the Place of Memories in Our Spiritual Life and The Gift of Restlessness: A Spirituality for Unsettled Seasons. He is passionate about the soul health of leaders and the recovery of the transformational way of Jesus that is spiritual formation. He, his wife Holley, and daughter Bailey live in Chicago, IL. www.caseytygrett.com @caseytygrett
Episodes Referenced:
Casey Tygrett: https:/https://futurechristian.podbean.com/e/casey/
Kinsie Tate: https://futurechristian.podbean.com/e/restore-clergy/
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Future Christian Team:
Loren Richmond Jr. – Host & Executive Producer
Martha Tatarnic – Co-Host
Paul Romig–Leavitt – Associate Producer
Dennis Sanders – Producer
Alexander Lang - Production Assistant
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
>> Loren (00:07):
Welcome to the Future Christian Podcast, your source
for insights and ideas on how to lead your church in the
21st century. At the Future Christian
Podcast, we talk to pastors, authors,
and other faith leaders for helpful advice and practical
wisdom to help you and your community of faith
walk boldly into the future. Whether
(00:27):
you're a pastor, church leader, or a passionate member
of your faith community, this podcast is
designed to challenge, inspire, and equip you
with the tools you need for impactful ministry.
And now for a little bit about the guest for this episode.
>> Martha Tatarnic (00:43):
Welcome to the Future Christian Podcast. Today,
Loren Richmond Jr. Welcomes Casey Tigret to
the program. Casey is a pastor and
spiritual director who has lived in the spiritual
formation conversation for the last two
decades. He is the author of
Becoming Curious, a Spiritual Practice of Asking
Questions, the Practice of Remembering,
(01:06):
Uncovering the Place of Memories in our spiritual
Life, and the Gift of
Restlessness, A, uh, Spirituality for
Unsettled Seasons. He is passionate
about the soul health of leaders and the
recovery of the transformational way of Jesus
that is spiritual formation. He,
his wife Holly and daughter Bailey live in
(01:27):
Chicago. A reminder, before we
start today's conversation, please take a moment to
subscribe to the podcast, leave a review and share
Future Christian with a friend. Connect
with Loren, Martha, and Future Christian on
Instagram. Shoot us an email at, uh,
laurensonatemediapro
ah.com
(01:48):
with comments, questions, or ideas for
future episodes. We appreciate your
voice and how we faithfully discern the future
of the church.
>> Loren (02:07):
All right, welcome to the Future Christian Podcast. I
am Loren Richmond Jr and I'm pleased to be welcoming
today. Casey Tigret, thanks so
much for being here. And I, uh, think I got your name right.
Right, Tigret. Okay,
well, I really, really am looking
forward to having this conversation with you about your
(02:29):
book. But before we get into that, you've been on the show before,
but share just a little bit about yourself, where you come
from, where you're at today.
>> Casey Tygrett (02:37):
Sure, sure. So I live in the
southwest suburbs of Chicago and have been
here for, oh, uh, gosh,
quite a while now, since 2009. So whatever that
math is. Almost 15 years.
And I' throughout my life I've been a pastor
and taught, um, in seminaries, spiritual
(02:57):
director, worked in a variety of different
places. And so my, my life right now
is, is there's a lot of things going on, a lot of
hats being worn, a lot of family transitions going
on. But I'm, uh, I'm actually doing some graduate work
now in clinical mental health counseling. So there's
a new chapter of my uh, life and
(03:17):
work that's about to open up, which is really exciting. But it's
also. Being 46 and going back to graduate
school is hard than I thought it was going to be.
Uh, I am not as spry as I,
as I used to be. But I uh, really have
always loved and
been invigorated by the discussion around
spiritual formation, spiritual
(03:39):
transformation, how people change, how, how they
become like Christ but more so, how they not more
so but in line with that, how they learn who they really
are, questions of identity. And
uh, story, story matters a
lot, A lot. And so that's always
been something I've been really passionate about.
>> Loren (04:00):
Well, I can't wait to see what comes from that.
That's such an important
topic. Share if you would just
briefly kind uh, of about your story
of faith. What that looked like in the past, what that looks like today.
>> Casey Tygrett (04:15):
Yeah, Ah, I grew up in a faith
in a family that went to church. Uh, uh, actually
our, our whole family, my grandparents, aunts,
uncles. In the town where I grew up, we all went to the same church.
We occupied the first six pews on the right
hand side. Wow. And that faith as
a kid was for the large part really
(04:35):
just what we did as a family tradition. You know, I didn't have
much investment in it. My parents were volunteer youth leaders.
So ministry was something that was always at the
periphery of my understanding about church.
Like oh, you couldn't, you can be a volunteer person and you can
actually do something like this. And, and uh, I
just, my, my favorite story about that is I remember as a little
kid when my parents were youth leaders walking
(04:58):
downstairs and just there was a person asleep on our
couch and bags of their stuff in the living
room and it was someone from our group who'd gotten kicked out of
their house and had come to stay with us. So
we uh, left that church and actually went to a different
church. Uh, my most significant
faith experiences as a young person were in the Church of
(05:18):
the Nazarene. And so I became a
follower of Jesus there. I learned a lot of
theology that uh, has been good and then a lot
that I've had to unlearn over the years.
Uh, through college. I uh, went to college with this
desire to go into a full time ministry.
Uh, not originally my original desire was to be a pharmacist
(05:38):
because I want to make a lot of money. But I was really bad at
math and science so those two things not
don't work out so well together. So ended up
going into pastoral ministry. And was
a senior pastor of some of a few
churches, a student ministry, youth pastor for a
while. And the better part, since
2009, I've really been working and focusing on
(06:01):
spiritual formation in the local church. So a lot of
what has happened to me is I
feel like my transformation has
mapped onto the work that I've been doing with other
people. And I think that's what happens to everyone. I
don't. I don't think I'm an exception here. I, uh, think none
of us are ever leading from this perch
(06:21):
or teaching or writing or speaking or
spiritual directing. If that's a verb. From this
perch, it is always like parallel tracks.
Uh, the train tracks are running side by side, and we're always
with. And even if it were not,
that's where I would want to be. I m. Would rather be
walking with people in
transparency and vulnerability as much as possible. And that's been a
(06:44):
big part of my faith story is, um, you
know, going through some significantly difficult times.
When I was in college, my parents divorced. And
that was, uh, after 19 years of marriage. So that was
a huge. A huge moment where
everything that I. A lot of things that I felt were really stable and
grounded went away. And,
um, that has ripples, you
(07:07):
know, how you view relationships, how you view
your, uh, relationship to your parents. And now in my late
40s, I have a very different relationship to them. And all that's
tied in. So you asked me about faith. All that's tied
in, uh, all of that is part of
the journey of faith. The life with
God, the life with Jesus, learning to be like
Jesus in the midst of these different
(07:29):
circumstances. So that's been something I've. I've really.
I've tried my best to focus on,
um, through all the things that have happened in the course of
my life.
>> Loren (07:39):
Yeah, thanks for sharing that.
What has been. Obviously you kind of mentioned
in your faith
journey, learning and unlearning some
things. I'm curious what has been a
spiritual practice that
maybe you've learned? And I don't want to say unlearned,
but does that make sense?
>> Casey Tygrett (08:02):
Yeah. Yeah. Well, uh,
the tradition, the Church of the Nazarene, has a
really strong connection to the holiness tradition.
I could go into the history. We're not going to nerd out on that right now.
>> Loren (08:15):
I wish we had time.
>> Casey Tygrett (08:16):
One of the gifts of it is this
focus on kind of an inward experience of
God. And I have always, uh,
you know, if you look at Myers Briggs, I am an
ENFP. Enneagram. I'm an
Enneagram 4. So a lot of my natural
wiring is inward looking
and so I was naturally disposed to pick up on
(08:38):
that. But you know, a lot of the
focus of Christian practice in my growing up, my
especially my formative faith years, was on doing
personal devotions. And
the. I had a. And I don't know if I
made this up or if I caught it, but the
idea that if I didn't do that, bad things were going to
(08:58):
happen. Yeah, it was this sort of exchange. Like if
I did my devotions one morning and things went great, it was like, oh, we'll see
what happened there. And then if you didn't and things went horribly, it
was like, oh, see what happened, happened there. And it carried with it
this narrative, this image of God as kind of the
punitive ticky tack
kind of hall monitor kind of God. And
(09:19):
so the last few years, well, you know, part
of the change there as unlearning has been
understanding that the relationship with God is a
given.
It's the practice of intimacy.
It's celebrating. Those daily times are
not earning. They are just an outpouring
(09:40):
of what is already true. It's not making something more
true. It's increasing my connection,
it's deepening my relationship. So when I
get up early in the morning and I spend those
times, I do it because of what
is already true. Which also means that, um,
if I roll over and I'm not feeling it and I'm not
(10:00):
feeling great, and I'm wondering if even Jesus would want
to see me at that hour of the morning, I might just
go back to sleep with the safety of knowing
that, um, this is not going to make or break
today. Um, this is not going to drive me outside
of fellowship with the, uh, one in whom
I am, who. One in whom I have my
(10:20):
identity and my purpose.
And that's a given. So that's, that's been a big
change, uh, aside from just some of the more
hellfire and brimstone kind of theology and things like that.
But that's been a big change for me and the freedom that comes from
that is significant.
>> Loren (10:36):
Yeah, yeah, I really appreciate that.
I really appreciate that. I want to leave plenty of
time just because I have a heart cut off here for
discussion about your book, the Practice of
Remembering, uncovering the place of memories
in our spiritual life. This is a book that I read
and really found resonant in my
(10:57):
own life. So I wanted to just
hear more about kind of what brought the book
about, what inspired it and how, uh.
>> Casey Tygrett (11:05):
It came to Be, Yeah,
uh, I love books because
as a reader, but also now as a writer, being able to
see how a book comes to be. And
it's really a collation of a person's life.
And so the book, the Practice of Remembering
in the previous edition, that was called, as I recall,
(11:27):
that book came from, uh, had
existed, has existed for quite some time. Like the original idea
of it has been around for a long time. And I had written
something, had promoted and
shipped it and shown it to some publishers, and nothing really came of
it. And, uh, so
I always thought the idea had some merit, but
(11:48):
just the form of the book at the time
before wasn't. Wasn't, uh, making any
traction. And then, uh,
after Covid,
um, actually, right before
COVID we started to think about,
um, some new things.
Uh, there were some new things for me that had come up,
(12:12):
and
I started thinking about the stories of people.
And so 2017, I think I'd
written this idea out early in 2014,
15, something like that, 2016,
I started thinking about some of the people that I had been meeting
with as a spiritual director. And one of the things
(12:33):
I noticed is that every
conversation we had eventually went back to something that
happened in the past.
And, uh, whether it was a question about faith or relationships or whatever
it was. We began to talk about stories from the
past. And then,
like I said, parallel tracks. I started looking at my own life
(12:53):
and then realized. I started to realize
how much of my life with God is
tied to, conditioned by, shaped by,
influenced by experiences that I had had in the
past. And that we're
still, you know, some of them 10, 15, 20 years later,
still having a significant influence, changing the way I behave, the
(13:13):
way I see things. And that led me to start
looking at. Because I've always loved the
intersections between disciplines that aren't always put
together. So, uh, I love the idea of
how does neuroscience really connect
with, uh, faith? And there are other people who are doing
that really, really well now. Um, but what
I wanted to see was our brain
(13:35):
is such a huge part of our formation. Yeah,
we don't have life with God without our brains.
And so God designed our brains to function in a certain way.
And specifically how our brains archive,
retrieve, process memories. And
if that's the case, then obviously that has to have some sort
of impact on our
formation, who we become.
>> Loren (14:00):
Cutting you off, I was just to say, let's dive into that more,
because I think that's one of the key aspects, at least as
I read the book. The power of memories to
shape Our lives and give us a story. Uh, I
thought the really interesting thing I think you had in
the book about passing along trauma
in stories.
>> Casey Tygrett (14:19):
Yeah, yeah, I'm,
uh. I am. First, let's just say this up front.
I'm an armchair neuroscientist at
best. But the way that I understand the
research is our brains. How our
brains archive things is that they take
experiences so through our senses
and they create a memory around
(14:41):
them. So our brains are
built to where something comes in through our senses.
It's then shifted to another part that it becomes a memory, which
is like a scene from a movie. And then that
memory eventually becomes a story. So not only is it
archived, but if it's retrieved enough, then it becomes a story
about the world. So the illustration I make a lot is
this. If you get bit by a dog and you have that
(15:04):
experience of the pain and the sound and the
adrenaline and all of that, that
memory sticks with you. It gets archived,
and it's easily retrieved because it's a really powerful
memory. And then what happens is,
uh, it goes from being a memory to being a story, which is
it becomes a way. We see the world. So we see all
dogs as enemies. And then that story
(15:27):
then creates a script that changes how we act. And
so we see a dog and we avoid them.
So when you talk about trauma, and
especially trauma that's passed on, trauma can
be passed on from our
parents who have this
memory that they carry that creates
a story for them that then leads them to
(15:49):
use a script or some other researchers
have discovered that those traumas can actually be
passed on in DNA memory.
So actually, our genetic memory can carry that through from
one generation to the next. So whether it's passed on
through demonstration or, you know, parenting or however
that works, or whether it's actually in the
(16:10):
proteins and the fibers of our actual
body and brain and chemical makeup,
uh, those are two ways that they can be passed forward. And of course,
once you say that, you say, if that's the case,
and God is actually an active part of our everyday
life, then how does
that reality, especially when it comes to trauma,
(16:30):
how does that reality interact with the God who is with us
and who is guiding us to become something that we're
not.
>> Loren (16:38):
Yeah. I found this so intriguing, this
part about trauma,
especially in those negative stories being
passed down, whether through demonstration, like you say, or
DNA. I mean, I think it makes so much sense. I tend to
study family systems a lot. So generational
process is certainly, uh, an aspect of
family systems. And I think it really Makes so much sense when we think about
(17:01):
especially persons of color, uh,
especially in the United States, African American persons who
have that generational
trauma transmission.
And I think about it like in my own life,
my own family story kind of being aware the
importance of uh, just listening to. I'll probably mention it this
morning or I'll probably mention multiple times in this
(17:23):
interview. I just listening to a uh, podcast with
Steve Kuss and he's talking about being aware of your
family story for all these purposes.
So without getting too deep into
the science because we could spend a lot of time
there, I do want to talk about like what is then
the spiritual practice of remembering because we
(17:45):
can talk about, we can talk about science, we can talk
about brain chemistry and neurology,
DNA and demonstration.
But I find in these conversations there's really,
there tends to be this almost like des,
I can't say the word desacralizing,
where it becomes about
(18:07):
atoms and particles rather than like there's no room for
God. Does that make sense?
>> Casey Tygrett (18:11):
It does, it does make sense. Absolutely.
And uh, the way I would say that is the way I would comment
on that is we
practice with the brain that
we have. And
so if we really are people who are shaped by the
stories that we have
(18:31):
experienced, then anytime we enter into
an encounter with God. When
I walked into uh, in
2012, my family, we went to
Paris, France and this was before
the um,
Notre Dame Cathedral had burned. And so we
(18:51):
went to an evening service
and there is this children's choir
singing in all in French. I
had no idea what they were saying, but it was just beautiful.
And so I'm sitting there just in, taking in all of this,
the sights, the smells, the sounds.
And I didn't know what they were saying, but there was this, it was one
(19:12):
of those moments and I think people listening have had these too, where you
don't know what's going on. You just know that you're like
staring through the scrim between heaven and earth.
>> Loren (19:21):
Yeah.
>> Casey Tygrett (19:22):
Like you're experiencing something divine.
>> Loren (19:24):
Mhm.
>> Casey Tygrett (19:25):
So I'm sitting here telling you the story
and I can, I feel that.
>> Loren (19:31):
Mhm.
>> Casey Tygrett (19:31):
Like I feel that sense of being in that, in
that cathedral that now is totally renovated
and not understanding any of the words, but just sensing
that God was near. And that's a memory
that created a story for me that
God can be in these places that we don't
understand. However,
if somebody else who had a background, let's say
(19:54):
they had an experience of abuse
within a formal, like maybe a
Roman Catholic setting, mhm. And they walked
into that same cathedral. Their
experience of God is going to be very different.
>> Loren (20:07):
Yeah.
>> Casey Tygrett (20:08):
So they bring whatever brain, whatever story into that
same place. So where God fits
is encountering.
And part of it is us. You know, if the book
can. Everybody's got big dreams for a
book, but if this book can accomplish
anything, I, uh, think
(20:28):
I would be more than content to see
people just take seriously the fact that their
memories really do matter
in their life with God. I mean, their memories matter
generally, but when it comes to a life with God
and any spiritual practices we have,
those memories really do matter. And they shape us. We're
(20:48):
memory made people. And
that's true reading scripture.
So when I read the scriptures and I see,
especially in the Old Testament, God beginning a discourse
going, I'm the Lord your God, who brought you out of
Egypt. That's a memory
statement. That's God asking them
(21:09):
to recall, to retrieve this story,
this experience. Some of them, and some of them, it's been
passed down, so they weren't there for it, but their parents passed it
down. And it's a vibrant thing. And so all of their
practices then are geared around
redemption, freedom,
liberation. All of our spiritual
practices are based around what is that story that we carry
(21:31):
with us. When I had this
memory, however it came of God as
the one who was very nitpicky about me keeping my morning
devotions. I carried that into them.
>> Loren (21:42):
Yeah.
>> Casey Tygrett (21:43):
And so when we start talking about spiritual practices that help
us process memories, we actually start with the
idea that we approach every spiritual practice with a
memory already in mind.
And then if we can meet God there with the
honesty and some, um.
Sometimes this takes therapy, sometimes it takes spiritual
direction. M. Sometimes it's uh,
(22:05):
just a really open, frank conversation. Sometimes
maybe it's reading this book that helps to bring
out to us, you know, a
key memory. And I find that when people read the book and when I
talk with them about it, it usually doesn't take long before
like a really key moment from
their life pops into their head. And so I like to
(22:26):
ask them as a practice to just
like narrate that, write it out like you
were going to cast, like you were going to film it, like a movie
scene, give it as much depth and as much
detail. What are the sounds, what are the sights or the smells
of that particular moment? And then at the end I asked
them, where was God in the middle of
that?
>> Loren (22:48):
Let's talk into that because I want to get
into that. Because I think you write in the book
that to make the past irrelevant is actually
dangerous because it eliminates the past
is to eliminate stories and scripts that shape us
into the moment when we engage with God.
All memories are flush with the presence of God. So I want
(23:08):
to lean into this for a moment because I'm thinking,
as I've done my own kind of processing of
the past, I think of some painful memories,
uh, that have had negative
impacts or what. Right. Like
they've written a story right in my life that become
scripts. And like, for me, it's real
hard to be like, where's God? Right
(23:31):
in that moment. Uh, so you
write later, just a few pages later that
redemption and reintegration is better than
forgetting. Memories must be redeemed. And to
be redeemed they have to be embraced just as they are just
where they are without gloss or ceremony. Or else
they become demons emboldened to pull back
(23:52):
on the reins of our lives at will. So
even, even beyond myself, we know, like you
mentioned, there are people who have experienced
deep hurt and abuse in
church or other spaces.
And it
feels really, it uh, feels a lot to
say, hey, go back into that memory and
(24:15):
reintegrate and redeem that memory rather than
just throw it out. So talk through that if you would.
>> Casey Tygrett (24:21):
Yeah, yeah.
The first thing I'll say about that is there
are some scenarios. This is where I think the
compassion of God shows up in
neuroscience. There are some memories
where we have in our brains, ah, like a trauma
trapdoor m where there are
some things that are so extremely painful that our brains
(24:43):
just delete them.
>> Loren (24:45):
Wow. Okay.
>> Casey Tygrett (24:46):
And they fall into. And this is where some work that people do
with subconscious comes uh, to play because
it doesn't go away. I mean you had that experience.
All the normal processes happened.
But your brain knows you can't function living with
this thing at the forefront. So it just sort of trapdoors
it anything. Then the book
(25:06):
that I would suggest people to do, I would always suggest
that they do it. They don't do it alone.
>> Loren (25:11):
Mhm.
>> Casey Tygrett (25:12):
This is not a book to take and go away and then go fix
your memories kind of thing by yourself. Like, there's probably
a need for some therapy. There's need for spiritual
direction or at least a really
compassionate, wise counselor who will
be with you. So that's, that's the caveat I would give to.
This is
reengaging those memories needs to be done
(25:34):
slowly. It uh, needs to be done with a
bit of self grace. Um,
and there has to be a lot of permission
to do what David does in the psalms which is just
gripe. What's happening
is. And this is kind of a bigger picture.
What's happening is we have a Christian culture,
(25:55):
and this is not putting the blame on the victims, but it's just pointing out
an absence that I think is actually harming
victims of really difficult past memories.
We have a Christian culture that has.
Doesn't learn, hasn't taught, and hasn't
been invited to explore the idea of lament.
>> Loren (26:13):
Yeah, yeah.
>> Casey Tygrett (26:14):
Um, there was some research done on, like, the major
worship songs for a few, you know, five years,
and there were like two and minor keys, you know, so.
So we're not good on teaching. We love to celebrate. There's nothing
wrong with celebrating. We've got to do that. We're called to do that.
But to teach people how to lament,
well, has got more impact than just, hey,
(26:35):
here's. Here's how you do lent. Well, you
know, it's more. This is how you
process. This is how you have a life with God
in which you can complain and
you can express anger,
frustration. I think part of the reason
we don't want to revisit those memories and
see if God was there is because we have no
(26:57):
idea what we would say. If I encountered God
in a painful moment, what in the world would I say?
Because we're afraid of getting the job response. Who do you think
you are? Yeah. Ah, but that's one story.
The rest of the time here you have these notable
figures from the scriptures and from Christian history who
are constantly going, questioning God's motives. And
(27:18):
where were you when this pain was happening, when this ache was
happening? So I think the ability to lament is a
big part of that. Taking it slowly,
not being alone. And then also
the part there about if we forget these things,
if we try to dismiss them, and, you know,
sometimes it's minimizing. Well, it wasn't really that bad, or
(27:38):
it's not as bad as other people or things like what we do
then is we actually give it way more power
because then what it gets to do is write stories and scripts
for us from sort of the
unexplored, dark
underbelly of our life. And the
deeper it gets, the stronger it gets
(27:59):
bringing it out into the light, even as much as that
hurts. And I say all this
as somebody who's done it, but also as, uh, somebody who's walked with
other people and done it. It takes a long time,
depending on the trauma of the moment, depending on how
painful that moment was. But what I have noticed is
the people who Bring it to the light, find their
(28:19):
way to live with it and learn from it
a whole lot faster than people
who don't really ever want to touch that traumatic
place. And so understanding how our memories work
help us to do that, because then we can look at. We can look
at things in reverse. We can look at habits
we have.
>> Loren (28:38):
Yes.
>> Casey Tygrett (28:39):
And say, where in the world does that come from? I had
a. Had an issue, if it's okay to do this. I had an issue
a few years ago where I, uh, would leave the
house and I. I would
get probably half block from my house and I would go, did
I close the garage door? Now
that's normal, you know?
>> Loren (28:58):
Yeah. Right.
>> Casey Tygrett (28:58):
So then I'd go back around the block and see that it was closed and I was fine.
And then I noticed as it went on, I would go back around
the block, see that it was closed, and then, um, about
the same place as I did before go,
did I close the garage door? And I think it was when
I did a full circle four times,
I was like, I think this is, this is something more.
(29:19):
So with the help of a counselor, I was able to go back and see that
there was some trauma that happened in my childhood, like when I
was 6, that had led me to
this. There's a long
conversation in between. Six years old, you know, me driving around the
block. But we start with those scripts. We can work our way
back and find our way with. And I believe
(29:40):
God through his spirit leads us.
God wants us to experience healing and freedom.
And so if this is how our brains work and this is
how, at least close. If this is somewhat how our
brains work and this is how we get freedom from this
thing, then I think God is way more on our side
in exploring this than we might imagine.
>> Loren (30:02):
Yeah, yeah. I'm just thinking,
like, thinking about some of my own habits. Like, I've been
trying to be curious with myself. Like when I grab my
phone and just automatically go
to social media, I'm like, why am I doing this
type thing you write
about, uh, speaking goodness
over your memories and that being
(30:24):
trying to find the quote here, one of the most difficult
things. I'm trying to find the
full quote here. To see our
memories as good as not to deny their darkness, but
to see where and how Jesus
brings to light. So I want to hear more about speaking
goodness over those
(30:45):
memories.
>> Casey Tygrett (30:46):
Yeah,
yeah. It requires us to broaden our
thinking about what is good.
Um, I think about the
Romans passage that God brings
all things to the good, works all things to the good of those
who love him and are called according to his
purpose. And that's, you
(31:08):
know, that's engraved on, it's scrolled on people's
walls and things like that.
But like, the real teeth of that passage
is that all things
is a big category.
>> Loren (31:21):
Yeah.
>> Casey Tygrett (31:23):
And so if I have moments, memories in my
past where I failed and like failed someone
I love, which I have
and have seen tears,
have seen hurt that I've caused,
relationships that I've damaged that are still
not back to or will never be back to the way that
they used to be. How do I speak goodness
(31:45):
over that? Um, the goodness comes
in the education
and the wisdom. There's so much of memory is
just wisdom.
It's knowing when we come around to the same place
again. What was it about that
moment that caused me to act the way that I
did that caused the fracture in this relationship? God
(32:07):
teach me about my response here.
I remember a situation with my daughter that I talk about in the
book. And I
learned that it was from me living
at the margins of my energy.
>> Loren (32:22):
Mhm.
>> Casey Tygrett (32:23):
Being over committed, saying yes to too many things in
too big of a hurry, way too focused on things that didn't
matter. And so I still, uh.
She's forgotten about the whole thing, which is hilarious. You know, I've talked to her about it
and she's like, I don't know what you're talking about. That. But I
still, when that comes to mind, I'll be just random Tuesday
thinking about this moment when my daughter was like five.
(32:44):
And it's like, it cuts like it just
happened. But what I can
do now is dull the blade a bit by
saying, okay, but you know, you know why that happened.
So what? Let's just make sure we don't go there
again. And I just think, I think that's the guidance of the
spirit. Let's make sure become the
(33:04):
kind of person who senses that about you.
Who knows when that's coming, who knows when you need to rest,
when you need to say no. So speaking
goodness has a lot to do with. What do you define as good?
I define wisdom, especially the painful kind, as
a good thing. But, uh, it's not
a sprint. That's
(33:25):
playing the long game with goodness.
>> Loren (33:30):
Yeah. I want to make
sure we cover something else because I found it
so profound and beautiful. You
have a section in the book where you talk
about the Lord's supper
and Judas,
talking about memory. I want to try to find a quote
(33:50):
here. Um, page
159. When Jesus breaks the bread, he invites us to acknowledge
that both the beautiful and the broken memories
belong. When Jesus breaks the bread and lets the light
shine on the faces of those who are first to follow and
the first to abandon, we are invited into a greater drama
where our acts of brokenness or our experience
(34:11):
of being broken by others are
brought into sacred space.
So I'm ordained in a tradition,
and I think we kind of run in
quasi the same traditional space, like going
way back, the Stone Campbell tradition, where the
Lord's Supper is very
meaningful. And in
(34:32):
our Protestant tradition, there's
no sacramentalness,
so to speak, to the tradition. But I
think what I really resonated with your quote and your
exploration of that is there almost is a
sacredness in that. So
talk more about, uh, that process.
Yeah.
>> Speaker D (34:54):
Hm.
>> Casey Tygrett (34:59):
This is rooted in me having,
uh, my inclinations
towards communion. The Lord's Supper, Eucharist,
however you want to refer to it. From a
young age, just that has always been a very
powerful symbol.
And it's always. I have a memory of it
(35:20):
being even young, being particularly
moving. And I think, you
know, as I look at Stony, you mentioned Stone Campbell
tradition, restoration movement, tradition,
other traditions. There might
not be anything that Christians
practice that has a more
unifying power than
(35:41):
that. The words you say,
how you go do it. We're my, uh, church now. We have
the pre wrapped cups, things that are just almost
impossible to open and all that.
>> Loren (35:52):
At least quietly, right?
>> Casey Tygrett (35:53):
Yeah. At least now we give people time to do it. Like, hey, it's
the beginning of service. Start trying to unwrap that thing.
Um, but in all of that, it's.
It comes down to these very basic elements.
And I couple that with. I've always had a love for Henry
Nouwen and the way Henri Nouwen
brings the concepts of the
(36:13):
Eucharist, the idea of being taken,
blessed, broken and given
as identity markers for humanity.
So we are, you know, Jesus takes the bread, all of us
are taken. We're taken out of a world that wants
to see death and destruction, and we're brought into
life. We're blessed. We're called good. We're not
(36:34):
just tolerated, but we're blessed. And then we're
broken by just natural circumstances. But
the imagery there is that unless the bread is
broken, there's not enough to go around.
Each of the disciples gets a piece because the bread has been
broken. And then it's only
because of brokenness, because of all those pieces that we
(36:56):
can be given to the world for the sake of compassionate
ministry and things like that. And so when I think about
that idea, idea of the
men sitting around that table
being the first to follow and the first to
abandon. There's a unity
there, like, because we can remember moments when we
(37:17):
followed, we can remember moments when we abandoned.
And all of that gets channeled into this moment
where the most
exquisite point of love becomes our
focus. And that memory begins to
override all the other ones.
The sacrificial love of Christ is this
(37:37):
unifying power. And it brings all of our
memories and stories and scripts and junk, and
it just brings it to that one particular moment. And it
helps us learn who we are. It helps us remember what we're a
part of. But ultimately it tells us
that love will win,
Babylon will fall, and love will win.
(37:57):
And that is what happens for every broken,
maligned, traumatized
person, uh, in creation.
And so that imagery is just so powerful for me.
And the taste.
Neuroscientists tell us that taste and smell. Smell is
an automatic long term memory
which fascinates me. Like, you don't get to,
(38:19):
like, you don't forget smells
ever. Good, bad and otherwise.
But like the smell of bread and wine, the taste of
it, it just archives itself. And we can go
back to that moment over and over and over again to remember
who we are, to remember that love wins, to remember that we're a part
of something bigger than ourselves.
>> Loren (38:40):
Yeah, yeah. I'm thinking of, uh, smells good
and bad. I want to shift
this. I, uh, want to shift this
particular. As this is a podcast
that really tries to focus on equipping pastors
and church leaders. I'm thinking again to
the episode I listened to this morning with Steve Kuss, and he was
(39:00):
mentioning how it's so easy to
get triggered back into our eight year old self.
And I'm thinking of another guest
I've had on Kinsie, uh, Tate, who's a
therapist who works with pastors. And she's talked
about how easy it is to find ourselves
kind of triggered to where that
congregant is really reminding us of
(39:23):
our dad, who yelled at us again and again with a kid,
as a kid.
What advice do you have? What recommendations? I, um, mean beyond just
the real practical, like do the work, see a
counselor, uh, for a pastor,
church leader who is dealing with some painful
memories and someone is really
reminding them of a tough
(39:45):
figure from their past.
>> Casey Tygrett (39:48):
Well, you did hit the biggest part of it. The
biggest part of it is just the acknowledgement,
um, the acknowledgement and the
embrace. And this comes
from go see Kenzie Tate or do the work that
you need to do. See a spiritual director who. You need another person in
your life who just reminds you, who knows these
(40:08):
stories that are true about you. And it just reminds you that your responses,
that's where they're coming from.
Um, and that takes
time. That takes will.
And I think for
pastors to believe
deep in their bones that
(40:29):
their wellness is as much
a part of the success of their ministry as the next
conference they go to, as their secondary degree, as their time of
preparation, we're getting better at
that. I think, overall, the church is getting
better at that. Understanding that soul health and
soul flourishing is actually what matters
most. That if a pastor's soul
(40:51):
is in trouble, then the people they lead are in trouble as
well in the long run.
So I think taking that seriously is part of it.
I also think having a prayer or
affirmation where we just return to what our
identity really is, because at the core
of that question is about who are you?
(41:12):
Um, if you're a person who
your dad yelled at you all the time
as a kid, that fosters in
you the belief that you are always wrong.
And so you create this identity for yourself through the
memories, the stories and the scripts that I'm a person who's never right.
And so, um, trusting your own opinion, trusting
(41:33):
your inner authority, trusting what God is doing in you is
almost impossible. So just having
someone or having a reflection that you carry
with you that reminds you of who you are
as an alternative identity to the one you've been
given. So I think a lot about James
Brian Smith has, uh, this
(41:56):
wonderful meditation that he does where he talks,
and he's modified it from Dallas Willard,
which all of us in spiritual formation, and we're doing that all the
time. Um, and it goes something
like this. He says he just
reminds himself, I am one in whom Christ dwells and
delights. I live in the
unshakable kingdom of God. And
(42:18):
if the kingdom is never in trouble, then neither am
I. And, I mean, that's
not a whole lot to remember. Although I had to work hard to
remember that this morning.
That's what getting older does to you, like, right?
But something like that that you can access
when you feel like you're just
(42:38):
spinning and congregant.
A, um, one of the churches I served in.
I grew up really as a people pleaser.
That was a huge part of my personality growing up. And
I had my first congregation. There was a man who would show
up every Monday morning at the same
time. Um, he would come and sit down in my office
(42:58):
and tell Me everything that I had done wrong in the past
week. And so, as a people
pleaser, my goal was to try and figure out
how do I make this guy happy?
And thankfully, through my wife's having
that other person, that objective viewpoint. But also
just after sitting with God in that for a
while, I realized, this isn't Casey. This
(43:20):
has nothing to do with you.
>> Loren (43:22):
Yeah.
>> Casey Tygrett (43:23):
You know, slide you out, put a different person in here.
Yeah. This guy would be doing the exact same thing. This isn't
about you. This is about a person who's really
struggling with change
because the story that they love is going
away. The church and
the world that they live in is changing. And so just being
(43:44):
able in those moments to go, okay, just remember, you're one of
whom Christ dwells and delights. You live in the unshakable kingdom. If the
kingdom's never in trouble, then neither are you. And that helps
us move from step to step. That's not a fix,
but it's a sustaining piece. It helps us get
to the next session. And
if people haven't done any work with this, if pastors haven't done any work
(44:04):
with this before, um, it will get harder
before it gets easier. Because you have
been you for a very long time and
an unexamined you. It's sort of like
cleaning out an old forgotten garage. Like,
you got to start with the small stuff, and then you can get
to the couches and the desks that are in the back that are
(44:24):
decaying and moldy and all of that stuff.
>> Loren (44:28):
Yeah, that's so helpful. Even those two points.
I'm reminded something, too.
Something I've learned from, uh, a gentleman named Jack Chitama
who does a lot in family systems theory is just the importance of
being compassionately curious with yourself.
M. So I'll find myself. Sometimes I'm just
pissed off, and I'm like, I've. I've been able to get
(44:49):
into a space of a little bit where I can be like, lauren, why are you
so upset? And I don't know if it. It doesn't,
like, necessarily, like, bring down my
frustration, but rather than just going into,
like, where I'm more angry or,
like, I'm just beating up myself for being upset, I can
just be like, okay, what's going on
here? And again, that's all hard, right?
(45:12):
That takes. Takes a lot. But I think
these things is, like, realizing it probably doesn't have anything
to do with you, and then having some kind of, like. Because,
like, I've been in those meetings too, right? Like, they take a lot
out of you. So can have just some little like
recharger and I think
you can. This probably goes into the brain science, but I'm thinking
some other authors I've read like having those words
(45:35):
even though you're not necessarily like I wouldn't necessarily be
believing those words in the moment when I'm saying them,
um, after I've just getting beat up by a congregant.
Like it, correct me if I'm wrong here, but it kind of triggers like some kind
of muscle memory right. Where you're like, after
you say your body's kind of like. Oh, I guess, I guess that is
true. Right.
>> Casey Tygrett (45:53):
Yeah. And the less
rested you are mentally, physically,
emotionally, the less
likely your brain is going to be to
choose the harder response.
>> Loren (46:08):
Right.
>> Casey Tygrett (46:09):
You will slide back to the default response, the one that
you know best. So for me, in times of
stress I go to people pleasing.
>> Loren (46:17):
Mhm.
>> Casey Tygrett (46:17):
Because that's the one that's easiest. Because my brain is
like dude, we got like three. It's like your hard drive
barking at you like you can't save any more pictures. You got 4m more
percent. When we're unrested and we are,
you know, in those seasons of hurry, you only
have about 4% hard drive space. And when it, when it comes
to that, your body is so smart and so good
(46:38):
at surviving, it will choose the easier
response. So that's why
also being rested. I, you know, I think
one very simple thing is for people
who are in this spot, when uh,
was the last time you got like seven or eight
hours of sleep?
>> Loren (46:55):
Yeah.
>> Casey Tygrett (46:57):
It is much harder to critique your
memories, remember your identity, deal
with people who are forcing you back into old stories
if you're barely there.
And so a little bit of rest, literal
physical rest could go a very long way.
>> Loren (47:14):
Well, let's take a break and we'll come back with some closing
questions.
All right, we're back. Well, the book is the practice of
remembering, uncovering places of memories in our
spiritual life. Highly recommend it.
Um, I mentioned this at the top. We're kind of at a hard
or I have to at least have a hard cut off. So rather than
(47:35):
getting into somewhat serious, somewhat silly
questions about being pope for day and such, I kind
of made this time, uh, all, all main
content, so share if you would just how people
can connect with you. Uh, I want to know like
Casey, do you have like an audio book? Because like I feel like
you reading this book could just bring down
(47:55):
some tension in folks lives just by
itself.
>> Casey Tygrett (47:58):
Yeah, there is an audiobook version of the practice
for Memory, which is, which is wonderful.
So, um, feel free to. You can find
that on Amazon or wherever you get your books. And I
did. I was able to read it, which
doesn't always happen, but. And that was a unique
experience. But, uh, you can find that where you get your
(48:19):
books. If you're looking to connect with me, uh, I'm
on social media less and less these days. But
uh, at kctigarette, my full first and last name
or uh, my website, Casey, uh,
tigret.com, there's some information there. You can connect with
me that way, but those are the best ways
to go.
>> Loren (48:37):
Yeah. Well, thank you so much for the conversation
and uh, look forward to continuing and follow your work always. Uh,
leave folks with a word of peace. So may God's peace be with
you.
>> Casey Tygrett (48:46):
Thank you. Appreciate the time.
>> Loren (48:55):
Thanks for joining us on the Future Christian podcast.
The Future Christian Podcast is produced by Resonate
Media. We love to hear from our listeners with
questions, comments and ideas for future
episodes. Visit our website@uh,
future-christian.com and find the connect with us
form at the bottom of the page to get in touch with Martha
or Loren. But before you go, do us a
(49:18):
favor. Subscribe to the pod to leave a review.
It really helps us get this out to more people.
Thanks and go in peace.
>> Speaker D (49:26):
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>> Martha Tatarnic (01:35:44):
Welcome M to the Future Christian Podcast. Today,
Loren Richmond Jr. Welcomes Casey Tigret to the
program. Casey is a pastor and
spiritual director who has lived in the Spiritual
Formation conversation for the last two
decades. He is the author of
Becoming Curious, a Spiritual Practice of Asking
Questions, the Practice of Remembering,
(01:36:06):
Uncovering the Place of Memories in Our Spiritual
Life, and the Gift of
Restlessness, A Spirituality for
Unsettled Seasons. He is passionate
about the soul health of leaders and the
recovery of the transformational way of Jesus
that is spiritual formation. He,
his wife Holly and daughter Bailey live in
(01:36:28):
Chicago. A reminder before we
start today's conversation, please take a moment to
subscribe to the podcast, leave a review and share
Future Christian with a friend. Connect
with Loren, Martha and Future Christian on
Instagram. Shoot us an email
@uh
laurensonatemediaprouh.com with comments,
(01:36:49):
questions or ideas for future
episodes. We appreciate your voice
in how we faithfully discern the future of the
church.
Welcome to the Future Christian Podcast, your source
for insights and ideas on how to lead your church in the
21st century. At the Future Christian
Podcast, we talk to pastors, authors,
and other faith leaders for helpful advice and practical
wisdom to help you and your community of faith
walk boldly into the future. Whether
(00:27):
you're a pastor, church leader, or a passionate member
of your faith community, this podcast is
designed to challenge, inspire, and equip you
with the tools you need for impactful ministry.
And now for a little bit about the guest for this episode.
>> Martha Tatarnic (00:43):
Welcome to the Future Christian Podcast. Today,
Loren Richmond Jr. Welcomes Casey Tigret to
the program. Casey is a pastor and
spiritual director who has lived in the spiritual
formation conversation for the last two
decades. He is the author of
Becoming Curious, a Spiritual Practice of Asking
Questions, the Practice of Remembering,
(01:06):
Uncovering the Place of Memories in our spiritual
Life, and the Gift of
Restlessness, A, uh, Spirituality for
Unsettled Seasons. He is passionate
about the soul health of leaders and the
recovery of the transformational way of Jesus
that is spiritual formation. He,
his wife Holly and daughter Bailey live in
(01:27):
Chicago. A reminder, before we
start today's conversation, please take a moment to
subscribe to the podcast, leave a review and share
Future Christian with a friend. Connect
with Loren, Martha, and Future Christian on
Instagram. Shoot us an email at, uh,
laurensonatemediapro
ah.com
(01:48):
with comments, questions, or ideas for
future episodes. We appreciate your
voice and how we faithfully discern the future
of the church.
>> Loren (02:07):
All right, welcome to the Future Christian Podcast. I
am Loren Richmond Jr and I'm pleased to be welcoming
today. Casey Tigret, thanks so
much for being here. And I, uh, think I got your name right.
Right, Tigret. Okay,
well, I really, really am looking
forward to having this conversation with you about your
(02:29):
book. But before we get into that, you've been on the show before,
but share just a little bit about yourself, where you come
from, where you're at today.
>> Casey Tygrett (02:37):
Sure, sure. So I live in the
southwest suburbs of Chicago and have been
here for, oh, uh, gosh,
quite a while now, since 2009. So whatever that
math is. Almost 15 years.
And I' throughout my life I've been a pastor
and taught, um, in seminaries, spiritual
(02:57):
director, worked in a variety of different
places. And so my, my life right now
is, is there's a lot of things going on, a lot of
hats being worn, a lot of family transitions going
on. But I'm, uh, I'm actually doing some graduate work
now in clinical mental health counseling. So there's
a new chapter of my uh, life and
(03:17):
work that's about to open up, which is really exciting. But it's
also. Being 46 and going back to graduate
school is hard than I thought it was going to be.
Uh, I am not as spry as I,
as I used to be. But I uh, really have
always loved and
been invigorated by the discussion around
spiritual formation, spiritual
(03:39):
transformation, how people change, how, how they
become like Christ but more so, how they not more
so but in line with that, how they learn who they really
are, questions of identity. And
uh, story, story matters a
lot, A lot. And so that's always
been something I've been really passionate about.
>> Loren (04:00):
Well, I can't wait to see what comes from that.
That's such an important
topic. Share if you would just
briefly kind uh, of about your story
of faith. What that looked like in the past, what that looks like today.
>> Casey Tygrett (04:15):
Yeah, Ah, I grew up in a faith
in a family that went to church. Uh, uh, actually
our, our whole family, my grandparents, aunts,
uncles. In the town where I grew up, we all went to the same church.
We occupied the first six pews on the right
hand side. Wow. And that faith as
a kid was for the large part really
(04:35):
just what we did as a family tradition. You know, I didn't have
much investment in it. My parents were volunteer youth leaders.
So ministry was something that was always at the
periphery of my understanding about church.
Like oh, you couldn't, you can be a volunteer person and you can
actually do something like this. And, and uh, I
just, my, my favorite story about that is I remember as a little
kid when my parents were youth leaders walking
(04:58):
downstairs and just there was a person asleep on our
couch and bags of their stuff in the living
room and it was someone from our group who'd gotten kicked out of
their house and had come to stay with us. So
we uh, left that church and actually went to a different
church. Uh, my most significant
faith experiences as a young person were in the Church of
(05:18):
the Nazarene. And so I became a
follower of Jesus there. I learned a lot of
theology that uh, has been good and then a lot
that I've had to unlearn over the years.
Uh, through college. I uh, went to college with this
desire to go into a full time ministry.
Uh, not originally my original desire was to be a pharmacist
(05:38):
because I want to make a lot of money. But I was really bad at
math and science so those two things not
don't work out so well together. So ended up
going into pastoral ministry. And was
a senior pastor of some of a few
churches, a student ministry, youth pastor for a
while. And the better part, since
2009, I've really been working and focusing on
(06:01):
spiritual formation in the local church. So a lot of
what has happened to me is I
feel like my transformation has
mapped onto the work that I've been doing with other
people. And I think that's what happens to everyone. I
don't. I don't think I'm an exception here. I, uh, think none
of us are ever leading from this perch
(06:21):
or teaching or writing or speaking or
spiritual directing. If that's a verb. From this
perch, it is always like parallel tracks.
Uh, the train tracks are running side by side, and we're always
with. And even if it were not,
that's where I would want to be. I m. Would rather be
walking with people in
transparency and vulnerability as much as possible. And that's been a
(06:44):
big part of my faith story is, um, you
know, going through some significantly difficult times.
When I was in college, my parents divorced. And
that was, uh, after 19 years of marriage. So that was
a huge. A huge moment where
everything that I. A lot of things that I felt were really stable and
grounded went away. And,
um, that has ripples, you
(07:07):
know, how you view relationships, how you view
your, uh, relationship to your parents. And now in my late
40s, I have a very different relationship to them. And all that's
tied in. So you asked me about faith. All that's tied
in, uh, all of that is part of
the journey of faith. The life with
God, the life with Jesus, learning to be like
Jesus in the midst of these different
(07:29):
circumstances. So that's been something I've. I've really.
I've tried my best to focus on,
um, through all the things that have happened in the course of
my life.
>> Loren (07:39):
Yeah, thanks for sharing that.
What has been. Obviously you kind of mentioned
in your faith
journey, learning and unlearning some
things. I'm curious what has been a
spiritual practice that
maybe you've learned? And I don't want to say unlearned,
but does that make sense?
>> Casey Tygrett (08:02):
Yeah. Yeah. Well, uh,
the tradition, the Church of the Nazarene, has a
really strong connection to the holiness tradition.
I could go into the history. We're not going to nerd out on that right now.
>> Loren (08:15):
I wish we had time.
>> Casey Tygrett (08:16):
One of the gifts of it is this
focus on kind of an inward experience of
God. And I have always, uh,
you know, if you look at Myers Briggs, I am an
ENFP. Enneagram. I'm an
Enneagram 4. So a lot of my natural
wiring is inward looking
and so I was naturally disposed to pick up on
(08:38):
that. But you know, a lot of the
focus of Christian practice in my growing up, my
especially my formative faith years, was on doing
personal devotions. And
the. I had a. And I don't know if I
made this up or if I caught it, but the
idea that if I didn't do that, bad things were going to
(08:58):
happen. Yeah, it was this sort of exchange. Like if
I did my devotions one morning and things went great, it was like, oh, we'll see
what happened there. And then if you didn't and things went horribly, it
was like, oh, see what happened, happened there. And it carried with it
this narrative, this image of God as kind of the
punitive ticky tack
kind of hall monitor kind of God. And
(09:19):
so the last few years, well, you know, part
of the change there as unlearning has been
understanding that the relationship with God is a
given.
It's the practice of intimacy.
It's celebrating. Those daily times are
not earning. They are just an outpouring
(09:40):
of what is already true. It's not making something more
true. It's increasing my connection,
it's deepening my relationship. So when I
get up early in the morning and I spend those
times, I do it because of what
is already true. Which also means that, um,
if I roll over and I'm not feeling it and I'm not
(10:00):
feeling great, and I'm wondering if even Jesus would want
to see me at that hour of the morning, I might just
go back to sleep with the safety of knowing
that, um, this is not going to make or break
today. Um, this is not going to drive me outside
of fellowship with the, uh, one in whom
I am, who. One in whom I have my
(10:20):
identity and my purpose.
And that's a given. So that's, that's been a big
change, uh, aside from just some of the more
hellfire and brimstone kind of theology and things like that.
But that's been a big change for me and the freedom that comes from
that is significant.
>> Loren (10:36):
Yeah, yeah, I really appreciate that.
I really appreciate that. I want to leave plenty of
time just because I have a heart cut off here for
discussion about your book, the Practice of
Remembering, uncovering the place of memories
in our spiritual life. This is a book that I read
and really found resonant in my
(10:57):
own life. So I wanted to just
hear more about kind of what brought the book
about, what inspired it and how, uh.
>> Casey Tygrett (11:05):
It came to Be, Yeah,
uh, I love books because
as a reader, but also now as a writer, being able to
see how a book comes to be. And
it's really a collation of a person's life.
And so the book, the Practice of Remembering
in the previous edition, that was called, as I recall,
(11:27):
that book came from, uh, had
existed, has existed for quite some time. Like the original idea
of it has been around for a long time. And I had written
something, had promoted and
shipped it and shown it to some publishers, and nothing really came of
it. And, uh, so
I always thought the idea had some merit, but
(11:48):
just the form of the book at the time
before wasn't. Wasn't, uh, making any
traction. And then, uh,
after Covid,
um, actually, right before
COVID we started to think about,
um, some new things.
Uh, there were some new things for me that had come up,
(12:12):
and
I started thinking about the stories of people.
And so 2017, I think I'd
written this idea out early in 2014,
15, something like that, 2016,
I started thinking about some of the people that I had been meeting
with as a spiritual director. And one of the things
(12:33):
I noticed is that every
conversation we had eventually went back to something that
happened in the past.
And, uh, whether it was a question about faith or relationships or whatever
it was. We began to talk about stories from the
past. And then,
like I said, parallel tracks. I started looking at my own life
(12:53):
and then realized. I started to realize
how much of my life with God is
tied to, conditioned by, shaped by,
influenced by experiences that I had had in the
past. And that we're
still, you know, some of them 10, 15, 20 years later,
still having a significant influence, changing the way I behave, the
(13:13):
way I see things. And that led me to start
looking at. Because I've always loved the
intersections between disciplines that aren't always put
together. So, uh, I love the idea of
how does neuroscience really connect
with, uh, faith? And there are other people who are doing
that really, really well now. Um, but what
I wanted to see was our brain
(13:35):
is such a huge part of our formation. Yeah,
we don't have life with God without our brains.
And so God designed our brains to function in a certain way.
And specifically how our brains archive,
retrieve, process memories. And
if that's the case, then obviously that has to have some sort
of impact on our
formation, who we become.
>> Loren (14:00):
Cutting you off, I was just to say, let's dive into that more,
because I think that's one of the key aspects, at least as
I read the book. The power of memories to
shape Our lives and give us a story. Uh, I
thought the really interesting thing I think you had in
the book about passing along trauma
in stories.
>> Casey Tygrett (14:19):
Yeah, yeah, I'm,
uh. I am. First, let's just say this up front.
I'm an armchair neuroscientist at
best. But the way that I understand the
research is our brains. How our
brains archive things is that they take
experiences so through our senses
and they create a memory around
(14:41):
them. So our brains are
built to where something comes in through our senses.
It's then shifted to another part that it becomes a memory, which
is like a scene from a movie. And then that
memory eventually becomes a story. So not only is it
archived, but if it's retrieved enough, then it becomes a story
about the world. So the illustration I make a lot is
this. If you get bit by a dog and you have that
(15:04):
experience of the pain and the sound and the
adrenaline and all of that, that
memory sticks with you. It gets archived,
and it's easily retrieved because it's a really powerful
memory. And then what happens is,
uh, it goes from being a memory to being a story, which is
it becomes a way. We see the world. So we see all
dogs as enemies. And then that story
(15:27):
then creates a script that changes how we act. And
so we see a dog and we avoid them.
So when you talk about trauma, and
especially trauma that's passed on, trauma can
be passed on from our
parents who have this
memory that they carry that creates
a story for them that then leads them to
(15:49):
use a script or some other researchers
have discovered that those traumas can actually be
passed on in DNA memory.
So actually, our genetic memory can carry that through from
one generation to the next. So whether it's passed on
through demonstration or, you know, parenting or however
that works, or whether it's actually in the
(16:10):
proteins and the fibers of our actual
body and brain and chemical makeup,
uh, those are two ways that they can be passed forward. And of course,
once you say that, you say, if that's the case,
and God is actually an active part of our everyday
life, then how does
that reality, especially when it comes to trauma,
(16:30):
how does that reality interact with the God who is with us
and who is guiding us to become something that we're
not.
>> Loren (16:38):
Yeah. I found this so intriguing, this
part about trauma,
especially in those negative stories being
passed down, whether through demonstration, like you say, or
DNA. I mean, I think it makes so much sense. I tend to
study family systems a lot. So generational
process is certainly, uh, an aspect of
family systems. And I think it really Makes so much sense when we think about
(17:01):
especially persons of color, uh,
especially in the United States, African American persons who
have that generational
trauma transmission.
And I think about it like in my own life,
my own family story kind of being aware the
importance of uh, just listening to. I'll probably mention it this
morning or I'll probably mention multiple times in this
(17:23):
interview. I just listening to a uh, podcast with
Steve Kuss and he's talking about being aware of your
family story for all these purposes.
So without getting too deep into
the science because we could spend a lot of time
there, I do want to talk about like what is then
the spiritual practice of remembering because we
(17:45):
can talk about, we can talk about science, we can talk
about brain chemistry and neurology,
DNA and demonstration.
But I find in these conversations there's really,
there tends to be this almost like des,
I can't say the word desacralizing,
where it becomes about
(18:07):
atoms and particles rather than like there's no room for
God. Does that make sense?
>> Casey Tygrett (18:11):
It does, it does make sense. Absolutely.
And uh, the way I would say that is the way I would comment
on that is we
practice with the brain that
we have. And
so if we really are people who are shaped by the
stories that we have
(18:31):
experienced, then anytime we enter into
an encounter with God. When
I walked into uh, in
2012, my family, we went to
Paris, France and this was before
the um,
Notre Dame Cathedral had burned. And so we
(18:51):
went to an evening service
and there is this children's choir
singing in all in French. I
had no idea what they were saying, but it was just beautiful.
And so I'm sitting there just in, taking in all of this,
the sights, the smells, the sounds.
And I didn't know what they were saying, but there was this, it was one
(19:12):
of those moments and I think people listening have had these too, where you
don't know what's going on. You just know that you're like
staring through the scrim between heaven and earth.
>> Loren (19:21):
Yeah.
>> Casey Tygrett (19:22):
Like you're experiencing something divine.
>> Loren (19:24):
Mhm.
>> Casey Tygrett (19:25):
So I'm sitting here telling you the story
and I can, I feel that.
>> Loren (19:31):
Mhm.
>> Casey Tygrett (19:31):
Like I feel that sense of being in that, in
that cathedral that now is totally renovated
and not understanding any of the words, but just sensing
that God was near. And that's a memory
that created a story for me that
God can be in these places that we don't
understand. However,
if somebody else who had a background, let's say
(19:54):
they had an experience of abuse
within a formal, like maybe a
Roman Catholic setting, mhm. And they walked
into that same cathedral. Their
experience of God is going to be very different.
>> Loren (20:07):
Yeah.
>> Casey Tygrett (20:08):
So they bring whatever brain, whatever story into that
same place. So where God fits
is encountering.
And part of it is us. You know, if the book
can. Everybody's got big dreams for a
book, but if this book can accomplish
anything, I, uh, think
(20:28):
I would be more than content to see
people just take seriously the fact that their
memories really do matter
in their life with God. I mean, their memories matter
generally, but when it comes to a life with God
and any spiritual practices we have,
those memories really do matter. And they shape us. We're
(20:48):
memory made people. And
that's true reading scripture.
So when I read the scriptures and I see,
especially in the Old Testament, God beginning a discourse
going, I'm the Lord your God, who brought you out of
Egypt. That's a memory
statement. That's God asking them
(21:09):
to recall, to retrieve this story,
this experience. Some of them, and some of them, it's been
passed down, so they weren't there for it, but their parents passed it
down. And it's a vibrant thing. And so all of their
practices then are geared around
redemption, freedom,
liberation. All of our spiritual
practices are based around what is that story that we carry
(21:31):
with us. When I had this
memory, however it came of God as
the one who was very nitpicky about me keeping my morning
devotions. I carried that into them.
>> Loren (21:42):
Yeah.
>> Casey Tygrett (21:43):
And so when we start talking about spiritual practices that help
us process memories, we actually start with the
idea that we approach every spiritual practice with a
memory already in mind.
And then if we can meet God there with the
honesty and some, um.
Sometimes this takes therapy, sometimes it takes spiritual
direction. M. Sometimes it's uh,
(22:05):
just a really open, frank conversation. Sometimes
maybe it's reading this book that helps to bring
out to us, you know, a
key memory. And I find that when people read the book and when I
talk with them about it, it usually doesn't take long before
like a really key moment from
their life pops into their head. And so I like to
(22:26):
ask them as a practice to just
like narrate that, write it out like you
were going to cast, like you were going to film it, like a movie
scene, give it as much depth and as much
detail. What are the sounds, what are the sights or the smells
of that particular moment? And then at the end I asked
them, where was God in the middle of
that?
>> Loren (22:48):
Let's talk into that because I want to get
into that. Because I think you write in the book
that to make the past irrelevant is actually
dangerous because it eliminates the past
is to eliminate stories and scripts that shape us
into the moment when we engage with God.
All memories are flush with the presence of God. So I want
(23:08):
to lean into this for a moment because I'm thinking,
as I've done my own kind of processing of
the past, I think of some painful memories,
uh, that have had negative
impacts or what. Right. Like
they've written a story right in my life that become
scripts. And like, for me, it's real
hard to be like, where's God? Right
(23:31):
in that moment. Uh, so you
write later, just a few pages later that
redemption and reintegration is better than
forgetting. Memories must be redeemed. And to
be redeemed they have to be embraced just as they are just
where they are without gloss or ceremony. Or else
they become demons emboldened to pull back
(23:52):
on the reins of our lives at will. So
even, even beyond myself, we know, like you
mentioned, there are people who have experienced
deep hurt and abuse in
church or other spaces.
And it
feels really, it uh, feels a lot to
say, hey, go back into that memory and
(24:15):
reintegrate and redeem that memory rather than
just throw it out. So talk through that if you would.
>> Casey Tygrett (24:21):
Yeah, yeah.
The first thing I'll say about that is there
are some scenarios. This is where I think the
compassion of God shows up in
neuroscience. There are some memories
where we have in our brains, ah, like a trauma
trapdoor m where there are
some things that are so extremely painful that our brains
(24:43):
just delete them.
>> Loren (24:45):
Wow. Okay.
>> Casey Tygrett (24:46):
And they fall into. And this is where some work that people do
with subconscious comes uh, to play because
it doesn't go away. I mean you had that experience.
All the normal processes happened.
But your brain knows you can't function living with
this thing at the forefront. So it just sort of trapdoors
it anything. Then the book
(25:06):
that I would suggest people to do, I would always suggest
that they do it. They don't do it alone.
>> Loren (25:11):
Mhm.
>> Casey Tygrett (25:12):
This is not a book to take and go away and then go fix
your memories kind of thing by yourself. Like, there's probably
a need for some therapy. There's need for spiritual
direction or at least a really
compassionate, wise counselor who will
be with you. So that's, that's the caveat I would give to.
This is
reengaging those memories needs to be done
(25:34):
slowly. It uh, needs to be done with a
bit of self grace. Um,
and there has to be a lot of permission
to do what David does in the psalms which is just
gripe. What's happening
is. And this is kind of a bigger picture.
What's happening is we have a Christian culture,
(25:55):
and this is not putting the blame on the victims, but it's just pointing out
an absence that I think is actually harming
victims of really difficult past memories.
We have a Christian culture that has.
Doesn't learn, hasn't taught, and hasn't
been invited to explore the idea of lament.
>> Loren (26:13):
Yeah, yeah.
>> Casey Tygrett (26:14):
Um, there was some research done on, like, the major
worship songs for a few, you know, five years,
and there were like two and minor keys, you know, so.
So we're not good on teaching. We love to celebrate. There's nothing
wrong with celebrating. We've got to do that. We're called to do that.
But to teach people how to lament,
well, has got more impact than just, hey,
(26:35):
here's. Here's how you do lent. Well, you
know, it's more. This is how you
process. This is how you have a life with God
in which you can complain and
you can express anger,
frustration. I think part of the reason
we don't want to revisit those memories and
see if God was there is because we have no
(26:57):
idea what we would say. If I encountered God
in a painful moment, what in the world would I say?
Because we're afraid of getting the job response. Who do you think
you are? Yeah. Ah, but that's one story.
The rest of the time here you have these notable
figures from the scriptures and from Christian history who
are constantly going, questioning God's motives. And
(27:18):
where were you when this pain was happening, when this ache was
happening? So I think the ability to lament is a
big part of that. Taking it slowly,
not being alone. And then also
the part there about if we forget these things,
if we try to dismiss them, and, you know,
sometimes it's minimizing. Well, it wasn't really that bad, or
(27:38):
it's not as bad as other people or things like what we do
then is we actually give it way more power
because then what it gets to do is write stories and scripts
for us from sort of the
unexplored, dark
underbelly of our life. And the
deeper it gets, the stronger it gets
(27:59):
bringing it out into the light, even as much as that
hurts. And I say all this
as somebody who's done it, but also as, uh, somebody who's walked with
other people and done it. It takes a long time,
depending on the trauma of the moment, depending on how
painful that moment was. But what I have noticed is
the people who Bring it to the light, find their
(28:19):
way to live with it and learn from it
a whole lot faster than people
who don't really ever want to touch that traumatic
place. And so understanding how our memories work
help us to do that, because then we can look at. We can look
at things in reverse. We can look at habits
we have.
>> Loren (28:38):
Yes.
>> Casey Tygrett (28:39):
And say, where in the world does that come from? I had
a. Had an issue, if it's okay to do this. I had an issue
a few years ago where I, uh, would leave the
house and I. I would
get probably half block from my house and I would go, did
I close the garage door? Now
that's normal, you know?
>> Loren (28:58):
Yeah. Right.
>> Casey Tygrett (28:58):
So then I'd go back around the block and see that it was closed and I was fine.
And then I noticed as it went on, I would go back around
the block, see that it was closed, and then, um, about
the same place as I did before go,
did I close the garage door? And I think it was when
I did a full circle four times,
I was like, I think this is, this is something more.
(29:19):
So with the help of a counselor, I was able to go back and see that
there was some trauma that happened in my childhood, like when I
was 6, that had led me to
this. There's a long
conversation in between. Six years old, you know, me driving around the
block. But we start with those scripts. We can work our way
back and find our way with. And I believe
(29:40):
God through his spirit leads us.
God wants us to experience healing and freedom.
And so if this is how our brains work and this is
how, at least close. If this is somewhat how our
brains work and this is how we get freedom from this
thing, then I think God is way more on our side
in exploring this than we might imagine.
>> Loren (30:02):
Yeah, yeah. I'm just thinking,
like, thinking about some of my own habits. Like, I've been
trying to be curious with myself. Like when I grab my
phone and just automatically go
to social media, I'm like, why am I doing this
type thing you write
about, uh, speaking goodness
over your memories and that being
(30:24):
trying to find the quote here, one of the most difficult
things. I'm trying to find the
full quote here. To see our
memories as good as not to deny their darkness, but
to see where and how Jesus
brings to light. So I want to hear more about speaking
goodness over those
(30:45):
memories.
>> Casey Tygrett (30:46):
Yeah,
yeah. It requires us to broaden our
thinking about what is good.
Um, I think about the
Romans passage that God brings
all things to the good, works all things to the good of those
who love him and are called according to his
purpose. And that's, you
(31:08):
know, that's engraved on, it's scrolled on people's
walls and things like that.
But like, the real teeth of that passage
is that all things
is a big category.
>> Loren (31:21):
Yeah.
>> Casey Tygrett (31:23):
And so if I have moments, memories in my
past where I failed and like failed someone
I love, which I have
and have seen tears,
have seen hurt that I've caused,
relationships that I've damaged that are still
not back to or will never be back to the way that
they used to be. How do I speak goodness
(31:45):
over that? Um, the goodness comes
in the education
and the wisdom. There's so much of memory is
just wisdom.
It's knowing when we come around to the same place
again. What was it about that
moment that caused me to act the way that I
did that caused the fracture in this relationship? God
(32:07):
teach me about my response here.
I remember a situation with my daughter that I talk about in the
book. And I
learned that it was from me living
at the margins of my energy.
>> Loren (32:22):
Mhm.
>> Casey Tygrett (32:23):
Being over committed, saying yes to too many things in
too big of a hurry, way too focused on things that didn't
matter. And so I still, uh.
She's forgotten about the whole thing, which is hilarious. You know, I've talked to her about it
and she's like, I don't know what you're talking about. That. But I
still, when that comes to mind, I'll be just random Tuesday
thinking about this moment when my daughter was like five.
(32:44):
And it's like, it cuts like it just
happened. But what I can
do now is dull the blade a bit by
saying, okay, but you know, you know why that happened.
So what? Let's just make sure we don't go there
again. And I just think, I think that's the guidance of the
spirit. Let's make sure become the
(33:04):
kind of person who senses that about you.
Who knows when that's coming, who knows when you need to rest,
when you need to say no. So speaking
goodness has a lot to do with. What do you define as good?
I define wisdom, especially the painful kind, as
a good thing. But, uh, it's not
a sprint. That's
(33:25):
playing the long game with goodness.
>> Loren (33:30):
Yeah. I want to make
sure we cover something else because I found it
so profound and beautiful. You
have a section in the book where you talk
about the Lord's supper
and Judas,
talking about memory. I want to try to find a quote
(33:50):
here. Um, page
159. When Jesus breaks the bread, he invites us to acknowledge
that both the beautiful and the broken memories
belong. When Jesus breaks the bread and lets the light
shine on the faces of those who are first to follow and
the first to abandon, we are invited into a greater drama
where our acts of brokenness or our experience
(34:11):
of being broken by others are
brought into sacred space.
So I'm ordained in a tradition,
and I think we kind of run in
quasi the same traditional space, like going
way back, the Stone Campbell tradition, where the
Lord's Supper is very
meaningful. And in
(34:32):
our Protestant tradition, there's
no sacramentalness,
so to speak, to the tradition. But I
think what I really resonated with your quote and your
exploration of that is there almost is a
sacredness in that. So
talk more about, uh, that process.
Yeah.
>> Speaker D (34:54):
Hm.
>> Casey Tygrett (34:59):
This is rooted in me having,
uh, my inclinations
towards communion. The Lord's Supper, Eucharist,
however you want to refer to it. From a
young age, just that has always been a very
powerful symbol.
And it's always. I have a memory of it
(35:20):
being even young, being particularly
moving. And I think, you
know, as I look at Stony, you mentioned Stone Campbell
tradition, restoration movement, tradition,
other traditions. There might
not be anything that Christians
practice that has a more
unifying power than
(35:41):
that. The words you say,
how you go do it. We're my, uh, church now. We have
the pre wrapped cups, things that are just almost
impossible to open and all that.
>> Loren (35:52):
At least quietly, right?
>> Casey Tygrett (35:53):
Yeah. At least now we give people time to do it. Like, hey, it's
the beginning of service. Start trying to unwrap that thing.
Um, but in all of that, it's.
It comes down to these very basic elements.
And I couple that with. I've always had a love for Henry
Nouwen and the way Henri Nouwen
brings the concepts of the
(36:13):
Eucharist, the idea of being taken,
blessed, broken and given
as identity markers for humanity.
So we are, you know, Jesus takes the bread, all of us
are taken. We're taken out of a world that wants
to see death and destruction, and we're brought into
life. We're blessed. We're called good. We're not
(36:34):
just tolerated, but we're blessed. And then we're
broken by just natural circumstances. But
the imagery there is that unless the bread is
broken, there's not enough to go around.
Each of the disciples gets a piece because the bread has been
broken. And then it's only
because of brokenness, because of all those pieces that we
(36:56):
can be given to the world for the sake of compassionate
ministry and things like that. And so when I think about
that idea, idea of the
men sitting around that table
being the first to follow and the first to
abandon. There's a unity
there, like, because we can remember moments when we
(37:17):
followed, we can remember moments when we abandoned.
And all of that gets channeled into this moment
where the most
exquisite point of love becomes our
focus. And that memory begins to
override all the other ones.
The sacrificial love of Christ is this
(37:37):
unifying power. And it brings all of our
memories and stories and scripts and junk, and
it just brings it to that one particular moment. And it
helps us learn who we are. It helps us remember what we're a
part of. But ultimately it tells us
that love will win,
Babylon will fall, and love will win.
(37:57):
And that is what happens for every broken,
maligned, traumatized
person, uh, in creation.
And so that imagery is just so powerful for me.
And the taste.
Neuroscientists tell us that taste and smell. Smell is
an automatic long term memory
which fascinates me. Like, you don't get to,
(38:19):
like, you don't forget smells
ever. Good, bad and otherwise.
But like the smell of bread and wine, the taste of
it, it just archives itself. And we can go
back to that moment over and over and over again to remember
who we are, to remember that love wins, to remember that we're a part
of something bigger than ourselves.
>> Loren (38:40):
Yeah, yeah. I'm thinking of, uh, smells good
and bad. I want to shift
this. I, uh, want to shift this
particular. As this is a podcast
that really tries to focus on equipping pastors
and church leaders. I'm thinking again to
the episode I listened to this morning with Steve Kuss, and he was
(39:00):
mentioning how it's so easy to
get triggered back into our eight year old self.
And I'm thinking of another guest
I've had on Kinsie, uh, Tate, who's a
therapist who works with pastors. And she's talked
about how easy it is to find ourselves
kind of triggered to where that
congregant is really reminding us of
(39:23):
our dad, who yelled at us again and again with a kid,
as a kid.
What advice do you have? What recommendations? I, um, mean beyond just
the real practical, like do the work, see a
counselor, uh, for a pastor,
church leader who is dealing with some painful
memories and someone is really
reminding them of a tough
(39:45):
figure from their past.
>> Casey Tygrett (39:48):
Well, you did hit the biggest part of it. The
biggest part of it is just the acknowledgement,
um, the acknowledgement and the
embrace. And this comes
from go see Kenzie Tate or do the work that
you need to do. See a spiritual director who. You need another person in
your life who just reminds you, who knows these
(40:08):
stories that are true about you. And it just reminds you that your responses,
that's where they're coming from.
Um, and that takes
time. That takes will.
And I think for
pastors to believe
deep in their bones that
(40:29):
their wellness is as much
a part of the success of their ministry as the next
conference they go to, as their secondary degree, as their time of
preparation, we're getting better at
that. I think, overall, the church is getting
better at that. Understanding that soul health and
soul flourishing is actually what matters
most. That if a pastor's soul
(40:51):
is in trouble, then the people they lead are in trouble as
well in the long run.
So I think taking that seriously is part of it.
I also think having a prayer or
affirmation where we just return to what our
identity really is, because at the core
of that question is about who are you?
(41:12):
Um, if you're a person who
your dad yelled at you all the time
as a kid, that fosters in
you the belief that you are always wrong.
And so you create this identity for yourself through the
memories, the stories and the scripts that I'm a person who's never right.
And so, um, trusting your own opinion, trusting
(41:33):
your inner authority, trusting what God is doing in you is
almost impossible. So just having
someone or having a reflection that you carry
with you that reminds you of who you are
as an alternative identity to the one you've been
given. So I think a lot about James
Brian Smith has, uh, this
(41:56):
wonderful meditation that he does where he talks,
and he's modified it from Dallas Willard,
which all of us in spiritual formation, and we're doing that all the
time. Um, and it goes something
like this. He says he just
reminds himself, I am one in whom Christ dwells and
delights. I live in the
unshakable kingdom of God. And
(42:18):
if the kingdom is never in trouble, then neither am
I. And, I mean, that's
not a whole lot to remember. Although I had to work hard to
remember that this morning.
That's what getting older does to you, like, right?
But something like that that you can access
when you feel like you're just
(42:38):
spinning and congregant.
A, um, one of the churches I served in.
I grew up really as a people pleaser.
That was a huge part of my personality growing up. And
I had my first congregation. There was a man who would show
up every Monday morning at the same
time. Um, he would come and sit down in my office
(42:58):
and tell Me everything that I had done wrong in the past
week. And so, as a people
pleaser, my goal was to try and figure out
how do I make this guy happy?
And thankfully, through my wife's having
that other person, that objective viewpoint. But also
just after sitting with God in that for a
while, I realized, this isn't Casey. This
(43:20):
has nothing to do with you.
>> Loren (43:22):
Yeah.
>> Casey Tygrett (43:23):
You know, slide you out, put a different person in here.
Yeah. This guy would be doing the exact same thing. This isn't
about you. This is about a person who's really
struggling with change
because the story that they love is going
away. The church and
the world that they live in is changing. And so just being
(43:44):
able in those moments to go, okay, just remember, you're one of
whom Christ dwells and delights. You live in the unshakable kingdom. If the
kingdom's never in trouble, then neither are you. And that helps
us move from step to step. That's not a fix,
but it's a sustaining piece. It helps us get
to the next session. And
if people haven't done any work with this, if pastors haven't done any work
(44:04):
with this before, um, it will get harder
before it gets easier. Because you have
been you for a very long time and
an unexamined you. It's sort of like
cleaning out an old forgotten garage. Like,
you got to start with the small stuff, and then you can get
to the couches and the desks that are in the back that are
(44:24):
decaying and moldy and all of that stuff.
>> Loren (44:28):
Yeah, that's so helpful. Even those two points.
I'm reminded something, too.
Something I've learned from, uh, a gentleman named Jack Chitama
who does a lot in family systems theory is just the importance of
being compassionately curious with yourself.
M. So I'll find myself. Sometimes I'm just
pissed off, and I'm like, I've. I've been able to get
(44:49):
into a space of a little bit where I can be like, lauren, why are you
so upset? And I don't know if it. It doesn't,
like, necessarily, like, bring down my
frustration, but rather than just going into,
like, where I'm more angry or,
like, I'm just beating up myself for being upset, I can
just be like, okay, what's going on
here? And again, that's all hard, right?
(45:12):
That takes. Takes a lot. But I think
these things is, like, realizing it probably doesn't have anything
to do with you, and then having some kind of, like. Because,
like, I've been in those meetings too, right? Like, they take a lot
out of you. So can have just some little like
recharger and I think
you can. This probably goes into the brain science, but I'm thinking
some other authors I've read like having those words
(45:35):
even though you're not necessarily like I wouldn't necessarily be
believing those words in the moment when I'm saying them,
um, after I've just getting beat up by a congregant.
Like it, correct me if I'm wrong here, but it kind of triggers like some kind
of muscle memory right. Where you're like, after
you say your body's kind of like. Oh, I guess, I guess that is
true. Right.
>> Casey Tygrett (45:53):
Yeah. And the less
rested you are mentally, physically,
emotionally, the less
likely your brain is going to be to
choose the harder response.
>> Loren (46:08):
Right.
>> Casey Tygrett (46:09):
You will slide back to the default response, the one that
you know best. So for me, in times of
stress I go to people pleasing.
>> Loren (46:17):
Mhm.
>> Casey Tygrett (46:17):
Because that's the one that's easiest. Because my brain is
like dude, we got like three. It's like your hard drive
barking at you like you can't save any more pictures. You got 4m more
percent. When we're unrested and we are,
you know, in those seasons of hurry, you only
have about 4% hard drive space. And when it, when it comes
to that, your body is so smart and so good
(46:38):
at surviving, it will choose the easier
response. So that's why
also being rested. I, you know, I think
one very simple thing is for people
who are in this spot, when uh,
was the last time you got like seven or eight
hours of sleep?
>> Loren (46:55):
Yeah.
>> Casey Tygrett (46:57):
It is much harder to critique your
memories, remember your identity, deal
with people who are forcing you back into old stories
if you're barely there.
And so a little bit of rest, literal
physical rest could go a very long way.
>> Loren (47:14):
Well, let's take a break and we'll come back with some closing
questions.
All right, we're back. Well, the book is the practice of
remembering, uncovering places of memories in our
spiritual life. Highly recommend it.
Um, I mentioned this at the top. We're kind of at a hard
or I have to at least have a hard cut off. So rather than
(47:35):
getting into somewhat serious, somewhat silly
questions about being pope for day and such, I kind
of made this time, uh, all, all main
content, so share if you would just how people
can connect with you. Uh, I want to know like
Casey, do you have like an audio book? Because like I feel like
you reading this book could just bring down
(47:55):
some tension in folks lives just by
itself.
>> Casey Tygrett (47:58):
Yeah, there is an audiobook version of the practice
for Memory, which is, which is wonderful.
So, um, feel free to. You can find
that on Amazon or wherever you get your books. And I
did. I was able to read it, which
doesn't always happen, but. And that was a unique
experience. But, uh, you can find that where you get your
(48:19):
books. If you're looking to connect with me, uh, I'm
on social media less and less these days. But
uh, at kctigarette, my full first and last name
or uh, my website, Casey, uh,
tigret.com, there's some information there. You can connect with
me that way, but those are the best ways
to go.
>> Loren (48:37):
Yeah. Well, thank you so much for the conversation
and uh, look forward to continuing and follow your work always. Uh,
leave folks with a word of peace. So may God's peace be with
you.
>> Casey Tygrett (48:46):
Thank you. Appreciate the time.
>> Loren (48:55):
Thanks for joining us on the Future Christian podcast.
The Future Christian Podcast is produced by Resonate
Media. We love to hear from our listeners with
questions, comments and ideas for future
episodes. Visit our website@uh,
future-christian.com and find the connect with us
form at the bottom of the page to get in touch with Martha
or Loren. But before you go, do us a
(49:18):
favor. Subscribe to the pod to leave a review.
It really helps us get this out to more people.
Thanks and go in peace.
>> Speaker D (49:26):
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>> Martha Tatarnic (01:35:44):
Welcome M to the Future Christian Podcast. Today,
Loren Richmond Jr. Welcomes Casey Tigret to the
program. Casey is a pastor and
spiritual director who has lived in the Spiritual
Formation conversation for the last two
decades. He is the author of
Becoming Curious, a Spiritual Practice of Asking
Questions, the Practice of Remembering,
(01:36:06):
Uncovering the Place of Memories in Our Spiritual
Life, and the Gift of
Restlessness, A Spirituality for
Unsettled Seasons. He is passionate
about the soul health of leaders and the
recovery of the transformational way of Jesus
that is spiritual formation. He,
his wife Holly and daughter Bailey live in
(01:36:28):
Chicago. A reminder before we
start today's conversation, please take a moment to
subscribe to the podcast, leave a review and share
Future Christian with a friend. Connect
with Loren, Martha and Future Christian on
Instagram. Shoot us an email
@uh
laurensonatemediaprouh.com with comments,
(01:36:49):
questions or ideas for future
episodes. We appreciate your voice
in how we faithfully discern the future of the
church.
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