Archive for the ‘Podcast’ Category
S+C | Healing with God Part II
Posted by: Shirley Paulson in Podcast on April 2nd, 2009
Episode #20 is a conversation about healing from a faith perspective.
Shirley Paulson, a Christian Science practitioner, and Barbara Zeman, a Roman Catholic, find common ground in the quest for healing. The complexity of healing arises out of the limitations of human language, but the beauty of healing is evident in the closer relationship with God.
While we might be enthusiastic about the spiritual adventure of seeking healing through prayer, we also recognize that the struggle that precipitates the healing often includes the battle with the very thing that resists the healing. Stubbornness is an example. Despite our shortcomings, though, we agree that God or Christ is able to move our thoughts where we need to be in order to welcome the healing adjustment.
People need personal healings, and the whole family of humanity needs healing of injustice, oppression, and economic disruption. We’d love to welcome your thoughts on healing of any kind. Tell us how you’ve experienced healing, or how you heal others. Please scroll down to the “comments” here on the Spirituality and Christianity.com website. Tell us your thoughts or experiences. Thanks!
Some related links:
- Christian Science healing
- Catholic healing prayers
- Beliefnet healing prayer archive
- Healing prayer: online resource for Christian prayer
- Christian Science Sentinel (print version)
S+C | Healing with God, Part I
Posted by: Shirley Paulson in Podcast on March 15th, 2009
Episode #19 is a conversation with Barbara Zeman, a Roman Catholic, and Shirley Paulson, a Christian Science practitioner, on the subject of our healing practices.
We know it’s a topic close to the hearts of many spiritually minded people, as was evident in a recent cover story with TIME magazine, called, “How Faith Can Heal.” Barbara did a healing service with her colleagues at the hospital, and I keep a full time office devoted to healing through prayer.
Even though our traditions and practices are different, we find a common thread in our understanding of the way healing happens. God’s will is harmony, peace, wholeness, and blessing, so our prayers for healing are for the purpose of finding alignment with God. It appears that the sincere desire to be close to God inspires us to find healing for our own broken hearts, broken peace, or even broken bodies; and this is the same inspiration that impels us to extend that same kind of healing for others.
Please join the conversation and tell us your healing experiences. Click on the comments button at the end of the show notes, here on the website, “spirituality and Christianity.com.” thank you!
References from the podcast:
- Healing in the History of Christianity, Amanda Porterfield, p. 158
- Saint Blaise
- Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, Mary Baker Eddy, pp.326-442
S+C | Living with God on a daily basis
Posted by: Shirley Paulson in Podcast on March 1st, 2009
Episode #18 is a conversation with Bob Wellington, a long time friend and spiritual thinker. Bob has experienced a variety of religious practices, searched for his own path, and exemplifies a kind of postmodern approach to religion and spirituality. We’re discussing a very contemporary problem: how to be responsible with mounting pressures from economic stress.
Sometimes people who live with a deep-seated spiritual connection with God are challenged to show how that spirituality can be relevant in the midst of lost jobs or lost hope. The theme of our conversation centers on responsibility, because so many people find it tough to take care of themselves during economic downturn, let alone care for dependents and 
others. Bob and I think that a very spiritually understanding of God, or love for God brings genuine hope and peace. It’s not naive, because finding the connection with God’s grace and government opens our eyes to the presence of goodness.
Please join the conversation and tell us your stories. Click on the comments button at the end of the show notes here on teh website, spiritualityandchristianity.com. Thank you!
S+C | Intimately close to God
Posted by: Shirley Paulson in Podcast on February 7th, 2009
Episode #17 is a conversation with John Bunce, a spiritually motivated Roman Catholic, who has experienced what he calls intimacy with God.
That kind of close encounter with God can seem both scary and profoundly satisfying, and it certainly never leaves us where it found us. 
We discussed two basic ways of finding that kind of intimacy with God. One is through love, and the other is from listening, which is of course a form of listening. We both recognize the way some people tend to balk at this type of spiritual experience, so we talk about why we don’t believe these objections are necessary. John’s experience with the writings of St. Theresa of Avila and of Thomas Merton, and my experience with the writings of Mary Baker Eddy give us rich background for the mutual exploration of our subject.
Our stories cover John’s 4-day experience at the monastery at Gethsemane, in Kentucky and one of my aha! moments that lead to physical healing. These types of experience may be relatively brief, but they are fundamentally transforming, Interestingly, we both found that our private, intimate experience with God always ends up enlarging our heart for humanity. Rather than indulging selfishness with privileges from God, we concur that intimacy with God is the foundation for more commitment to comforting and helping others.
Here are links to some of the subjects and events we talked about.
S+C | Jesus and miracles
Posted by: Shirley Paulson in Podcast on January 24th, 2009
Episode #16 is Part II of our discussion about Jesus and his ministry. Barbara Zeman and I picked up where we left off last time, exploring the meaning of the extraordinary things Jesus did. Healing diseases, restoring dead people to life, walking on water, and even … the fig tree.
We searched for an understanding of the term “miracle” that doesn’t dismiss the heavenly good within the rest of us who experience the same earth that Jesus did. In my Christian Science practice, we tend to avoid the use of the term “miracle” in reference to Jesus’ works, because it tends to dilute our expectancy of divine power in our own lives. Barbara notes that children had access to the goodness and power Jesus brought about — perhaps especially so because they were children. They are not jaded, and they may anticipate the divine power as natural phenomena.
It became clear to us that the best way to understand those miracles is not through human analysis of a physical event, but rather through the realization of the same divine power within each of us, in all human history. We still have questions about the fig tree.
Listen in, and let us know if you have some ideas to offer. Be sure to leave your comments here at the end of the show notes on Spirituality and Christianity.com.
Here are some links related to our discussion:
S&C | Historical Jesus
Posted by: Shirley Paulson in Podcast on January 8th, 2009
Episode #15 is a discussion about the way Jesus relates to us in our human experience. Barbara Zeman is back for this conversation. She was ordained in November, and she’s alive with joy. We discovered in our last conversation that there’s a lot more we want to talk about. So we’ll share our explorations with our podcast listeners.
The biggest question we were discussing this time is how to deal with Jesus who was a human being, but a human being that did and said things that other human beings didn’t say and do. Of course we’re curious about his human family and every day life, but we keep searching for the way his human life relates to ours today. It continues to energize us, and yet everything Jesus did resulted in overturning the status quo.
It’s his message about the kingdom of God that got us going in this conversation. There’s a huge power play in that it Jesus’ message was threatening and yet promising. It seemed to throw the powers of the state together with the powers of the church, until that power-sharing exploded. The “king” part of the kingdom is problematic.
But whether we call it “king”dom or realm, there’s clearly something about the presence of God that changes lives. It transcends history, and it transcends our human bodies too.
Tell us what you think about the historical Jesus. What difference does it make that there was a human being named Jesus of Nazareth who lived over 2,000 years ago? Be sure to leave your comments here at the end of the show notes on Spirituality and Christianity.
Here are some links related to our discussion:
S+C | Getting at the heart of Christmas
Posted by: Shirley Paulson in Podcast on December 19th, 2008
Episode 13.5 is a conversation with Swedenborgian Mark Pendleton on the subject of Christmas. He is the Associate Pastor at the Glenview (Illinois) New Church. It’s a Bible-based church using the writings of 18th century Emanuel Swedenborg.
Mark starts off our conversation by saying Christmas is about hope and also about realizing hope. I couldn’t think of a more relevant way to get into the subject, especially this year. I have relatives and close friends who are either laid off from work or whose houses are in foreclosure. So, if hope is more than a theological pipedream, it’s worth 
thinking about it.
Christmas, for Mark, is about the way the Lord came into the world making it possible for us humans to respond, giving us ideas so that we can be governed by in our responses to bad things that happen.
Those are kind of startling words. The presence of the baby Jesus was and still is like a signal that there’s another way of thinking about things around us. In my Christian Science approach to everyday human struggles, I also see that “God so loved the world, giving us His only begotten Son…” (John 3), and this is a reminder that we are loved — now. Being loved is a different feeling from the anxiety of loss.
So, how do these “ideas” and this “love” relate to the struggles? Mark says the way it works in his Swedenborgian approach is that the Lord gives us “spiritual principles,” which are an option for us to move to in with our minds and hearts. These principles, or “spiritual realities” are stronger and longer lasting than those natural events — like the job losses, for example. We both found that this spiritual sense of things is very real, despite the immediate problem at hand. It means that Jesus’ birth was a very tangible, understandable event in human history, and that his human presence made his examples and teaching practical to the rest of us humans and our very human troubles.
Platitudes about God’s goodness in the middle of needing enough to pay the rent or mortgage would sound condescending and patronizing if there wasn’t something very real and powerful in the Christmas story. Mark’s point about hope was that the Lord is always showing us how the things of the Spirit really do transcend the “natural” or earthly things.
My experience with Christmas — which is truly an every-day-of-the-year concept — is that no matter what’s going on, there is good to be found right here and now. Opening our hearts and minds to that reality not only makes us feel the love and joy of Christ, but makes us feel generous. It’s so much more fun giving than sorrowing over what we don’t have.
Mark puts it so well. He says, “The Christmas story interpreted spiritually can be thought of as the story of 
the birth of unselfish love in a human heart — or, the birth of a love of serving other people, of being of useful service, without thought of reward.” I can’t imagine a greater gift than the knowledge of being loved and wanting to love others.
Merry Christmas from both of us!
Here are a couple of links related to our thoughts on Christmas and on Mark’s church, The New Church:
1. ChristianScience.com: Christmas
S+C | Why be a Christian dissident?
Posted by: Shirley Paulson in Podcast on August 6th, 2008
Episode #13 is a conversation about the challenges of living the conscience that disagrees with the official policies of the Church you love so much.
Barbara is a Roman Catholic who has been faithful to the calling she has felt since she was a young child, to be in the priesthood. While she was young, she hoped the Church would change its policies regarding women in the priesthood, but that hasn’t happened.
I have been raised in a church (Christian Science) founded by a woman, so I have lived with the assumption of equality between men and women in the Church. And yet, I relate to Barbara’s struggle, because Mary Baker Eddy, the woman who founded my denomination, struggled with opposition to the Christian church authority on other topics that were established around the time of the first Church Councils in the fourth century.
Even though the mainstream Christian Church still opposes what Barbara and I find true in our Christian lives, we agree it’s necessary to hold our ground. We both see a need to inspire Christians to return to earlier Church practices that both liberate women and support spiritual healing. Our motives are to be closer to God and to serve others, and we have no interest in opposition for the sake of argument. Barbara is preparing to become a hospital chaplain; and I’m in the healing ministry using prayer and Bible study.
We’d love to welcome your thoughts on the subject. Have you experienced a heart-felt disagreement with the Church you love? If you have, how are you praying about it? How are you being guided to deal with it? Be sure to leave your comments here at the end of the show notes on Spirituality and Christianity.
Here are some links related to our discussion:
S+C | The joy of the Ten Commandments
Posted by: Shirley Paulson in Podcast on June 29th, 2008
Episode #12 is a conversation about the Ten Commandments with newly ordained Rabbi Gail Ginsburg and myself, Shirley Paulson.
Most of my conversations about the Ten Commandments have taken place among Christians. And in general I don’t hear a lot of love for them. Yes, we’re all pretty grateful to Moses for leading the Children of Israel out of bondage and for his courage in bringing the commandments of God to the people. But God’s deal — “Obey my commandments, and I’ll be your God for you” — doesn’t seem fair. It’s not realistic to think we could really obey them all the time. Who could avoid coveting, or bearing even a little “false witness,” or who can really keep the Sabbath day hold all day long?
I wanted to hear a Jewish perspective, because I wondered if my Christian orientation colored the meaning of these commandments differently from Jews. To my surprise, I found myself resonating with Gail’s delight in these commandments of God. I love them too, and I found it refreshing to consider the great blessings available to us by understanding and living these commandments. I would say I love them, because they make me think God has enabled us to live in obedience to them. They’re not threats, but supports to our human journeys.
No doubt, some of these commandments seem tough. I think the last one, the one that says we “shall not covet” is very demanding. But if this commandment is awakening us to see that we have no need to covet, because God is supplying all good for us, then this is a comfort rather than an impossible standard to achieve. Listen in, as Gail explains the beauty of the 4th commandment — keeping the Sabbath. We chew over the 1st, 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, and 10th commandments in particular.
Which commandment do you especially love? Tell us how the Commandments work in your life. Whether you’re Christian, Jew, Muslim, Buddhist, or even atheist, we’d be interested in your thoughts.
Check out these links to learn more:
S+C | What does the Bible really mean?
Posted by: Shirley Paulson in Podcast on June 14th, 2008
Episode #11 is a discussion about interpreting the Bible. What would this world be like if we all got the same meaning out of the Bible?
It’s strange that it means so many things to so many people, and yet it has held such a powerful hold on diverse people for some 2,000 years. Rather than arguing over who’s right or wrong about its meaning, John Spangler and I found a more useful approach to the Bible’s meaning by expanding our views of interpretation. John is a Lutheran teacher, serving as Executive Assistant to the President at
Lutheran Theological Seminary at Gettysburg, PA. My seminary degree is from Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary, and I am a Christian Science practitioner.
We enjoyed sharing just a few of our experiences with our efforts at interpreting the Bible. John brings out one of the most significant difficulties in our modern-day understanding of the Bible by pointing to the importance of our culture when we read any ancient text. Considering the wide gulf between the culture of the early Christians in the Middle East and the American culture of today, it’s hard to imagine how the words could convey anything of meaning. And yet, the enduring part of the Bible is that it does appear to transcend all the human boundaries of time, culture, language, and history.
John’s story of a woman’s life-size pictures of dead birds, and my attempts to express the meaning of a psalm through ripping paper are two examples of the wonderful adventure of Biblical interpretation through art.
Tell us your stories. We’d love to hear from you. Enter them into “comment” just below this posting on episode #11 of Spirituality and Christianity. Thanks!
From the podcast: