Welcome to Off the Page. I'm Stephen Copeland. It is the start of a new year, a time when
there is much talk about personal change and transition. But the truth is that change and
transition are fundamental parts of life, whether wanted or unwanted. As St. Francis
said as he neared his death, let us begin again, for until now we have done nothing.
In the Christian tradition we are being constantly invited into newness, into conversion,
into letting go, into allowing God to work in us and through us so that we can awaken
more and more to what Thomas Merton called our true self. Oftentimes there is no greater
teacher for the soul than transition itself or liminal spaces of life in which the only
route forward is to awaken more to who we already are as we wait, as we let go, as we
discern. Today's guest is Dr. Daniel P. Horan. Dan is a professor of philosophy, religious studies,
and theology and director of the Center for the Study of Spirituality at St. Mary's College in
Notre Dame, Indiana. He is also affiliated professor of spirituality at the Oblate School
of Theology in San Antonio, Texas. A columnist for the National Catholic Reporter, he is the
author or editor of more than 14 books. Three of those books were published by Franciscan media
and are available in our store. Those books are God is Not Fair and Other Reasons for Gratitude,
Dating God, and The Last Words of Jesus. As a public intellectual, Dan recently sent shockwaves
through the church with his announcement in his regular National Catholic Reporter column that
he was leaving religious life. The headline was, Always a Franciscan in Spirit, but No Longer a
Friar. The column was fittingly published on the Feast of the Transitus or Transitus, when Franciscans
celebrate the passing of St. Francis of Assisi from earthly life to eternal life. In this
conversation, we discussed the landscape of transition and how we can listen to God in
these liminal, sacred spaces of our lives. I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did. We
talk about change, transition, discernment, ambiguity, identity, and Merton's notion of the
true self. It is my pleasure to share with you this interview with Dan Horan. But first,
here's a message from our sponsor. Earning a Master of Theological Studies with the Franciscan
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Dan Horan, thank you for joining the Off the Page podcast.
Stephen, it's so good to be with you again. It's been a while.
It has. No, it's great to see your face. So I was wondering, you just made a pretty big
announcement through your column on NCR and there's a lot we could talk about today, but as a
starting point, could you begin by talking about this recent decision of yours to transition away
from religious life and what may have been the catalyst behind that decision for you?
Yeah, I'm happy to talk about it, especially within the context of the Franciscan family here,
Franciscan media and to our Franciscan-hearted listeners. I mean, I think the important thing,
and you named it, is there's a transition, a transition away from religious life but not
from Franciscan identity or from the Franciscan family more broadly conceived. In a nutshell,
this is a process that has been ongoing for some time. As all Christians are called in baptism,
we're meant to be in a spirit of ongoing conversion and discernment. The Second Vatican
Council calls all the baptized to be those who interpret the signs of the times in the light of
the gospel. That means that periodically we have to examine our lives. Francis of Assisi did
himself. He started off as a fairly comfortable, to use an anachronistic term, middle-classed,
fairly wealthy young man in the Umbrian town of Assisi and then had a number of life experiences
in his early 20s that led him to reevaluate. Then in the years that he was unwittingly founding the
Franciscan orders, he also had a number of transitions, a number of periods of discernment.
So I say all that because this is something that has been going on for some time. I entered the
first order of the Franciscans about 20 years ago. It has been a really blessed and productive and
life-giving and inspiring journey. But in the last number of years, I have found myself, I think,
like a lot of people, I can't remember if I mentioned this in the column or not, maybe I did,
but the period of those early months of the pandemic where all of us were locked down and
people were doing a lot of introspective evaluation, that was a time for me as well to think about,
where is the Spirit leading me, where is God calling me, to attend to the different aspects
of my own prayer life and emotional life in conversation, in prayer, in dialogue, in
professional counseling as well, kind of working through various things like we all do and trying
to get a sense of where is God calling me right now. And to be quite honest with you, Stephen,
it was really sort of surprising to me at various points because I thought, here I am, I've been a
friar for at that point almost two decades, heading that way. And it just didn't necessarily
occur to me in the immediate term that maybe God would be calling me to a different path. I think
they're parallel paths. I think they are paths that are not 180s or something like that. I want
to make that clear to folks. I know one person kind of ingest, but was talking with me, he said,
oh, are you renouncing the faith or something? I said, I'm not renouncing anything. I'm embracing
all of the Spirit and in surprising ways. And I mean, I go back again to Francis of Assisi,
who in his testament near the end of his life makes clear that he did not set out to do what
he's best known for. He said, and the Lord gave me brothers. I didn't ask for these guys. The Spirit
led. So I mean, that's where I find myself. I don't mean to throw my NCR editors under the bus,
but this has come up a couple of times where the title of the column isn't actually what the original
title was. They added one word or I guess two words, one with a preposition, where they said,
you know, always a Franciscan in spirit. The original title was always a Franciscan, but no
more. Because I want to make that clear. I am a Franciscan. That is my charismatic identity. That
is where my spirituality is grounded. It is what inspires my own life. The question is, and I think
in the Franciscan world, we have this real blessing of multiple parallel paths in one family. We have
secular Franciscans. We have third order regular. We have the poor Clare sisters. We have the three
branches of the first order. And so in many ways, I feel like God may be calling me here in this
moment to just shift gears, change lanes as it were within that same Franciscan community moving
forward. So that's really how this has come to pass. And then in conversation with my provincial
and with my brothers in leadership of the OFM province in the US, it made a lot of sense for
me to share this publicly and to share it personally with the brothers in fraternity in
the whole province. The same time that that NCR column went out publicly, a letter that I wrote,
a personal letter I wrote to the brothers also was sent out. Because on the one hand, practically
speaking, for better and maybe for worse at times, I'm a fairly well-known Catholic religious,
you know, and so as a public person, I couldn't just, you know, disappear for a while without a
lot of people getting concerned and raising questions. And, you know, nature abhors a vacuum,
so people would come up with all kinds of schemes and themes and theories. But to be very transparent
because I have felt blessed by the encouragement and support of the friars and of friends and a
family and of all sorts of folks. And to talk to the brothers too, you know, people leave religious
life for lots of reasons at different stages. And people enter religious life for lots of reasons
at different stages, younger, older, middle-aged, what have you. And I wanted to make sure that they
heard from me and that the public heard from me as well about this process and that it's all good,
it's all graced. But yeah, I know that for some people and maybe for some of our listeners,
it was a bit of a shock. So I also want to acknowledge that. Well, I mean, it's your journey
and that's the beauty of it. You know, I mean, I'm glad you're not leaving us Franciscans behind
because your work has had a huge impact on my own heart and my own mind. But even if you were,
I mean, that's your journey. And I mean, the spirit guides each of us in different ways.
I was curious. I mean, I think transition is such a, we all have transitions, right? We all have
crossroads. And you published your NCR column on the transitus. You know, when Francis is
leaving this life and moving on to the next, what did you learn in your own discernment? Or you
talked about a period of examination. What did you learn about yourself during that time?
I think one thing that I learned actually ties to that feast day that we celebrate in the Franciscan
family, which is, as I mentioned just a moment ago, I think certainly in the early months and
years of this discernment, and it goes back to the pandemic and even a bit before that, I think I was
really struggling to make sense of where I was hearing the spirit calling me and kind of a
resistance to that. I think in large part because I was operating with this assumption that was
really quite binary, that was kind of either or, that was this or that. And I think I personally
struggled with making sense of, well, how could it be that for so long I have felt God leading me on
this path as a friar minor, as a ministerial priest in the Catholic Church, and now this, you know,
we talked earlier about switching paths, but at that time it just seemed like it was an either
or, that it's like all or nothing. And I think the feast of the transitus, right, the spirituality
that undergirds that for Francis of Assisi is a kind of pulling the rug out from beneath these
assumptions that we have. And he does this most clearly with the kind of most radical either or,
life and death, you know? And so people think of death as the end, as an absolute, as the opposite
or as the negation of life. And yet he embraced his sister bodily death, right, this ultimate
either or in a spirit of transition, calling it a transitus, as a passage, as a transition, as a
development, indeed a change, right? Life is changed, it is no longer the same, it is different,
but it is not antithetical to what came before, it is not a negation of that or an elimination of it.
In some ways it might be a building upon it, right? If we think about God calling us into the
communion of saints, it's a deepening of relationship across time and space that we
don't always get to share in the same way in our earthly lives. And so coincidentally, I should say
this too, that it wasn't even my, like, oh you know what, October 3rd, this is when I want this
column to come out. Coincidentally, it was my regularly scheduled publication date. And so part
of the discernment, once it became clear to me, after many years and then months of reflection
and prayer and counseling and spiritual direction and consultation, you know, it was becoming clear
that this is where I was being led and this is where the transitus, you know, the transition
was going. I happened to, the question then became, well how are we going to convey this? You know,
how would I share this information? And it was at that point a few, you know, I would say a little
less than two months out, and seeing that, oh my gosh, I have a column that will be published on
this day anyway. And so I went to, you know, after that was clear that that was just like
theologically and spiritually just too good to be true, I talked with a number of folks, including
the publisher and executive editor at NCR and said, hey, I just want to let you know this is
what I'm thinking about. I also, if this isn't the right venue for that, you know, let me know. But
they were very, very supportive and really appreciated the kind of trust to use this,
what I would call like media real estate, right? As a columnist, I get this chunk of space in
both virtual space, but also on a print newspaper twice a month. And so I felt really honored that
they were so encouraging and supportive. And the folks who have reached out to me since that
publication have been just overwhelmingly the same. Like I've heard a couple naysayers, but
most people, I mean, I'm talking about hundreds and thousands of messages, not hundreds of thousands,
but hundreds and thousands, depending on the means of communication, have been really,
really encouraging, really supportive, really, you know, prayerfully engaged with what I've shared and
sharing their own experiences, which has been really a blessing as well.
Yeah. You talked about, um, maybe it was around COVID or a little before, you know, I mean,
but you talked about that feeling of the spirit kind of prompting or, and you're just kind of
this out of nowhere, like, Oh my gosh, like, what, what are you doing, God? You know, and I,
I think we've all felt that, um, in different ways. What would you suggest to people that
may be listening and feel that kind of feel a similar prompting of, Hey, you're being called
in a different direction that perhaps you didn't expect your life is maybe going to unfold in a way
that you did not foresee. Yeah. I think in my case, it was less of a, uh, like St. Paul, uh,
on the road to Damascus kind of like big immediate sort of conversion experience or like epiphany.
You didn't see the risen Christ.
Not in any visual way. That's for sure. Um, no, no, nor did I have, you know, Thomas Merton at
fourth and Walnut, that great epiphany. Um, it was much more subtle, um, maybe which is in keeping
with, uh, the Franciscan tradition and our great subtle Dr. John Donskotis, but you know, I,
the way I would describe the kind of early awareness of the spirit's movement in my life
in this way that, that I wasn't necessarily expecting was something analogous to the old
Testament story about the prophet in the cave, you know, who is told to wait there and God will
reach out. And then there's, you know, the thunder and the lightning and there's the fire and God was
not in those things, but then there was this quiet whisper in the silence and that's where God has
found. And I think one of the things I learned to answer your question is to attend to those things
in your heart, in your prayer, in your life that, that surprise you or that seem to be calling to
you, because I think sometimes it is actually very, very subtle. And without getting into all kinds
of great detail, I do hope at some point to have the space and time, um, to, to reflect on this,
probably in writing and in more detail, but you know, there were things happening in my life,
in my life, um, really good things in fact, but, but in that, in that experience of, of ministry,
of, of teaching, of writing, of working, of, of being in relationship with others in, in pastoral
ministry, there are these, I only in retrospect, can I see maybe the spirit's presence in ways that
at the time did seem kind of striking, didn't, or I overlooked, right? Like, oh, okay, this makes
much more sense after the fact. The other thing I would say is, is to trust God. Um, I've, I've a
really good friend who was my roommate in college who also entered religious life with me, um, at
the same time, 20 years ago, he discerned early in formation that, that this wasn't his life and, and
left the Franciscan community, subsequently was married, has four kids now, great guy, great family.
Um, but you know, as I was going through this discernment myself, especially in the kind of
later stages of, of, you know, maybe the, maybe God is actually leading me on this other path that
seems so different from what I had expected. He was able to share some of his own insights as well.
And, and one of the things that I think we both, even though very different circumstances, very
different periods of time in the order, one of the things that he helped me to see is that the
external kind of appearance or perception of somebody is sometimes very, very different than
their lived reality. And when that's the case, especially, um, if, if you're somebody in pastoral
ministry, somebody as, as a public religious, that sort of thing, especially if you're being
affirmed all the time by people in your ministry, which is of course a sign of God's good work,
you know, at present, it can be very confusing because it seems like you're getting mixed
messages. And, and one of the things that I found very helpful, um, that he talked about, that we
talked about for a while and, and that I've heard other people, I have another friend who's a member
of a different religious order who years ago on a different topic said something quite similar,
which is this, which is like, at times you might face opposition or confusion or external doubts
or disappointments and sadness from others. But if you standing before God, if you are,
you know, in prayer, if you're taking this seriously in reflection and can see as you
stand before Christ and before God, that, that this is right and you're at peace, then trust that,
trust God, you know, and that has been very, very affirming. That's been very encouraging
and liberating. And so your question about like, what, what, what advice to offer others or what to
relay that I might've learned, I think to take that literally, to take that seriously, that,
if you're going to look externally all the time for that affirmation, or is this what I should do
or something like that, you know, you're, you're probably not going to be resolved in the process,
to be quite honest. Yeah. As you're talking, the great Merton quote kind of came to my mind
to be a sane as to be myself. I love that line. And I mean that, I feel like that gets used in
a shallow way sometimes in a way that doesn't integrate the journey, doesn't integrate the
discernment, the tough questions, the periods of darkness. But to truly be oneself, it's bringing
all these things in. What does that quote mean to you having just journey through this and perhaps
what could that mean to others who face a transitus, a period of transition where things are
opening up even though it may not feel like that? Yeah, I do love that quote as well. And I think
you're exactly right. It can be kind of caricatured, right? And people, the worst way to interpret
that in my opinion is to say like, oh, I can just continue doing what I'm doing and who I am and
everything is fine. And Merton abstract opposite, right? Yes. And drawing inspiration actually from
Francis of Assisi's 19th admonition, Thomas Merton was saying, what it means to be myself is to be
my true self. And to borrow language from Francis, what that means is to be who I am in the eyes of
God. So what I am before God that I am and nothing less and nothing more. And I think actually a lot
of us spend a lot of time trying to be something other than we are. Merton talks about this in some
ways, it is tied to kind of the effects of original sin that we don't trust that we're lovable or
likable by God. We also live in a world that's affected by sin. And so we tear each other down,
we set up these expectations for one another that are unrealistic and oftentimes unfair,
sometimes even dehumanizing. And so that false self or false selves, maybe more accurately that
Merton talks about, I think is also something Francis and his followers recognize that who we
are before God is all that matters. But in order to get to that identity, in order to recognize it,
we have to pursue God. You can't know who we are before God by just living in our own world
or kind of consulting with what social media says we are or what have you. And so I think that's
really, really key is recognizing that who we are before God is what God is calling us to be.
And that if we are pursuing our true selves, and this is something Thomas Merton makes clear,
we can never really know our true selves fully, at least not in this world, but we can trust that God
does. And so how do we know we're on the right path? Are we right with God? Are we pursuing God,
following God, recognizing God, in dialogue with God, seeing God in the world around us and
trusting that? It sounds so simple. I mean, even as I'm hearing myself speak, I'm like,
oh, well, that sounds almost like a platitude, but living it is so much harder, isn't it?
We'd like the easier answers. We'd like the direct kind of comments. And that's not typically how God
operates. Yeah. Well, for me, it's been difficult to get beneath the layers that you talked about,
to go from exterior to interior, because, for example, just because there's this rupture of
emotion within me or this dream or, you know, whatever it may be, these magnetic kind of pulls
to certain areas or whatever it may be. It's like, okay, that feels very true. And sometimes it is.
However, where is this coming from? You know, is this, is this like an egoic thing? Is this,
does it come from a place of insecurity or does it come from that place you're talking about where
you're really trusting that you're, I love what you said, that you're likable and lovable in God's
eyes. That's a, and usually at least for me, and I'd be curious where you're at on this, but
for me, I can usually tell whether like where it's coming from on some level, depending on whether
it's coming from a place of like peace or desperation, especially creatively for me, like,
okay, like, am I really feeling convicted in this thing or is it a desperation of some sort just
because, you know, creativity is chaotic? You know what I'm saying? But getting to those deeper levels
of, oh, I am who I am and I'm likable and lovable in God's eyes. And now from this groundedness,
I can make a decision. Do you have any thoughts on that?
I do. And I really like what you're saying about, you know, maybe some of the signs along the way,
the kind of the signposts as it were. And one of them that I often think about for myself in my
own life, but also in the lives of my friends and colleagues and those I've accompanied in ministry
over the years is probably the starkest for me is this kind of what I call discerning the spirit and
the uphill battle, which is if you're finding obstacle after obstacle after obstacle, maybe the
spirit's trying to tell you something here, right? It doesn't mean that, you know, maybe that is
still what you need to do and you have these obstacles being placed in front of you, right?
And we live in a world where lots of different people and lots of different social locations
have unfair and unjust obstacles in their way from the outset. But I think in this kind of
discernment practice, there's also something to be said about things kind of lining up, maybe not
perfectly, maybe not smoothly all the time, but certainly in retrospect, you might be able to say,
ah, yeah, you know, this happened in my life in such a way that it positioned me for this, and then
this sort of thing happened as well. And then there is a kind of continuity there. And yeah,
creativity is very, as you put it, it's complex and dynamic and messy. But so is so is all aspects of
life, right? And so how do we attend to the spirit in that? Well, I also think the Holy Spirit is the
messiest of the Trinity, right? The Holy Spirit moves where she wills, blows where she wills,
renews the face of the earth in ways that are unexpected and surprising. And so, you know,
the spirit can move that way. But I also, I think if we're being honest with ourselves, then that's
a really key element we can recognize when we're starting to hit some friction, right? And maybe
that's the spirit's subtle way of saying, hey, Stephen, hey, Dan, hey, whomever, you know, maybe
reevaluate this, right? And that can be a creative project, a writing project that could be, you know,
a decision about a career change or life change. It could be about a relationship. I mean, I think
these sorts of things happen in ways all the time, but, you know, the question isn't, is God acting
in our lives? The question is, are we attuned to recognize when the spirit is there? Yeah. And I've
wondered too, you talk about the spirit blowing wherever the spirit wants to blow. And for me,
I have to get beneath some of the cultural layers too, because a lot of times I just view things
linearly. So I'm approaching life through, okay, point A is going to lead me to point B, point B
is going to lead me to point C. And I think that's a very American thing where, however,
yeah, I'll ask you a question here. How do you deal with the fact that the spirit does not always,
its winds are not always pushing in a linear direction? How do I personally deal with it?
It depends on the day. Sure. But I think I affirmed the statement. I think theologically,
that is true. There was a great article in the, gosh, I think it was the early 90s or maybe late
80s by the amazing theologian, Sister Elizabeth Johnson. And she talks about how the Holy Spirit,
basically the theological article was about chance. Like, what is the relationship between
divine providence and chance? Seen oftentimes as oppositional. Either God has an absolute plan,
and if that's true, then God's plan for some people is pretty, pretty crappy. Sorry to use
that language. And so theology, spirituality studies, practices in spiritual traditions have
made clear, I think, for a long time, that reduction to a quote, God's plan or a kind of
strong providentialism can be really problematic. God does not desire the suffering of others.
So when we see tragedy or violence happen, we can't say that it's God's plan. That's just,
that's absurd, right? Yet on the other hand, we do believe that God is not absent from the world.
And so not everything can be random chance. And one of the things Professor Johnson does is say,
well, the Holy Spirit accounts for this, right? The Holy Spirit is this dynamic presence of God
in the world. And so the way that the Spirit moves, the way that history unfolds is rarely
linear, insofar that it ever is recognizably linear. It's always post-factum, right? It's
always turning back over our shoulders to say, oh my gosh, you know, I grew up in this place of this
faith tradition. I studied this sort of thing in college. I found myself interested in this. I
wrote that. Next thing I know, I'm an editor at Franciscan Media and I'm Stephen Copeland, right?
So like, but you couldn't have anticipated that, right? You couldn't have plotted that out.
I think that's a lesson in humility for each of us, right? Like the danger on the one hand of
saying God has a plan is magnified, I think, on the other hand, by claiming that our plans are
God's plans. And we can get really frustrated when they don't come to fruition or don't play out the
way we want them to. And then we're not really even talking about divine providence. We're talking
about our own sort of acting as God. Like I should have things the way I want it to be.
But I think if we open ourselves up to the truth that the Spirit moves through the world,
you know, thinking again, Francis of Assisi said that the real minister general, the kind of the
greatest, superior, the kind of where the buck stops in the order of friars minor is the Holy
Spirit. And anybody, I'm sure we have a lot of professed and Franciscan-hearted people listening
to us, you know, you know the Franciscan tradition, and we are kind of a hot mess of a community, you
know, I always make a distinction between the Franciscans and the Jesuits, you know, Ignatius
was a soldier through and through, they kind of, he says jump, they don't even ask how high they
just start doing it. That's the vision, you know, the Franciscans, you know, the joke always goes
that it's like herding cats, you know, kind of all over the place, you know. But I think there's
something too about the dynamism of the Spirit at work. And when we say the Spirit is the minister
general of the order, do we believe that? You know, I wrote a number of short articles in my column
some years ago about the Holy Spirit and how I really do believe that most Christians are functional
Holy Spirit atheists. We forget about the Spirit. That's too uncomfortable to think about dynamism
of the uncertain, of what might be perceived as chance, right, as opposed to what you said,
right, that linear sort of divine plan. So I don't know, there's something very liberating
potentially about embracing that and recognizing God is present here too. Yes. Yeah. And it's,
frankly, it's, it can be uncomfortable to really believe that the Spirit is indwelling within,
like within myself, like to believe that, like, really, could I be that likable and lovable,
as you said, like there's, that's, that's an uncomfortable reality, because that changes
everything. It can lead to more peace and freedom as well. But that also means that I have to get
through the layers of, hey, stop judging yourself, like quit being so hard on yourself. Like,
do you like just looking through this lens of shame all the time? Do you, you know, like,
can you try to dare to see yourself the way God sees you? Like, those are uncomfortable things.
They really are. I mean, and, you know, just to call back to my own experience in the recent
announcement, I think, you know, one of the things I've heard from a lot of people all over the world
is, is a sense of gratitude that I did not expect. I thought I was just sharing,
you know, a kind of FYI for folks, right, and updating. Like a press release.
Like, you know, and I tried to take it, yeah, more than just, just the facts, right, and to make it
personal and sincere and transparent. And I think that itself, not that I did anything perfect with
that by any means, but the truth is that rarely happens in the Catholic Church in the public
square. And the people who leave religious life, whether women religious, male religious, whether,
or those who leave ordained ministry, or lay ministry, I think this term you used a minute ago,
shame, plays a big role in that. I had not really thought about that until after I had shared this
part of my story publicly about this decision to leave religious life, and that it was not
something to be taken lightly, and that I felt that it was actually something grounded in the
Spirit's call. And I've heard from a lot of people who said, you know, thank you for sharing that
publicly, because I think it starts to de-stigmatize something, right. And we see this in other areas
too. It doesn't just have to be religious life or ministry. I mean, think about the deep shame
certain people carry in religious contexts, meaning like the church, or in social contexts,
right, whether it's in workspaces or family units, whether that's when a relationship has run its
course, or maybe has ended in really uncomfortable or, or tensive ways, and somebody is divorced or
separated, or when we see, for instance, people struggling with their own sexual orientation or
gender identity, and that's not well received, or they're seen suspiciously in certain, you know,
areas. Like, I think oftentimes when somebody is experiencing a life transitus, as we're calling it,
there can be this temptation to kind of recede to the shadows, or to kind of disappear for a
while. And maybe that's what some people need to do, and that's perfectly okay. The thing I would
take issue with is, is that motivated by the need to maybe create space, to hear the Spirit, to renew
oneself, to be in prayer, what have you, or is it shame? And I fear sometimes that shame plays a
too, a much bigger role in everybody's lives than we often talk about. I mean, there is a certain
irony to that, right? Because, you know, shame, to avoid shame, people kind of then stop talking
about things, and so it's a vicious circle. But I think that's something, it's something worth,
we're thinking and talking and praying a lot more about. Yeah. Well, I've been reading your book,
God Is Not Fair, and your collection of essays about Christian living is published. What, you
were 30 years old when you published that? Around there, you're in your early 30s, I believe. Yeah.
Yeah. And you can make me do math, Stephen. I don't know if I can do that.
I'm not good at that either. Give me some words. Don't give me numbers. But I'm not great with
words. You are great. That's the shame again. Gosh, they're gonna say, yeah, I'm gonna call
them talking about this. I'm gonna call no shame on this one. Yeah. But when I opened the book,
I was like, wow, that's a harsh title. Like, God Is Not Fair. And then I got about halfway through
and the point you're making goes back to what we're talking about is that God Is Not Fair because
of the grace and love, the dynamism of these things that are always meeting us where we are.
Can you go a little bit deeper into that for me? I think it's a good segue here. Yeah. Yeah. Well,
thanks for that. I love that. I love that title. And it comes from one of the essays in the book.
And as you say, where it arises is actually a reading of a parable in the Gospel of Matthew.
And it's one that as I start to talk about it, many of our listeners will recognize it right away,
which is basically this landowner sends out a manager to hire people throughout the day to come
work on this vineyard, hires a group of folks at nine o'clock in the morning, another group at noon,
another group at three, another group at six kind of thing. And the day is over and they start paying
the day laborers in kind of reverse order. So they'll last to come get paid first and get a
whole day's wage. And then, you know, in the meantime, the rest of the people are looking on
and these people have been working since nine o'clock are like, this is awesome, man, if they've
worked three hours or two hours and they're getting a full day's wage, we're going to get
overtime, right? This is great. But everybody gets paid the same. And the people who had been
working all day or had been working the majority of the day are enraged, right? They're furious
about this. And, you know, I have to be honest, I don't know about you, Stephen, and I'm sure
our listeners, you know, many of you might be in the same boat as me. I can't help when I hear that,
but my initial gut instinct is to get like upset to kind of be frustrated by that, as Jesus's
hearers were, right? And he says, in the end, you know, he uses his voice through that of this
manager of this land manager says, Are you envious because I'm generous? You know, and I think that
is a line worth taking to prayer and reflection, like, we don't have any right to claim anything
beyond, you know, what the agreement was, that was what Jesus's parable was all about, right?
Those guys who worked at nine o'clock in the morning, they knew what they signed up for.
And the people who worked up later, you know, they took their time to get paid, you know,
they took their chances, but they knew, you know, they were gonna, yeah, they're gonna figure it out.
And if the person, you know, pays equally, and it doesn't fall beneath, like the minimum expectation
or contrast the agreement that they have, then what is the problem here, except for envy,
except for jealousy, except for a sense of self righteousness. And, you know, the truth is,
according to our worldly standards, Jesus was not being fair there, right? The manager wasn't being
fair. God was really unfair. And you could almost hear the stomping of the feet in like a preschool
like temper tantrum from those people working all day. That's not fair. Well, that's actually a good
thing, though, right? And that's the invitation here. I'm not saying this in any of my writing
or any of the preaching I've done over the years or any of the public lectures and workshops I've
lead. I'm not coming from a position of absolute knowledge of certitude of like having figured it
out. Because even though I know where the story is going, every time, I still get that little like,
punch in the gut that like, oh, man, if I was one of those nine o'clock guys, and in some context,
we are all kind of that way, right? Maybe it's not about finances and work. Maybe it's about caring
for a loved one, right? I watched a really great movie on an airplane recently called His Three
Daughters. I don't know if you've heard about this. I think it's on, I don't know what network or
what service it's on. But basically, it could have been a stage play. It's very, very, very simple,
about an hour and 40 minutes long. And it's about three adult women who are sisters, and they've all
come together because their father is in the last stages of life in hospice care. And they're in this
apartment kind of with each other, and they're working through their experiences and judgments
and views and the pain that they've carried and the prejudices they have of one another and so forth.
And one of the things that comes up is this kind of grappling with the one who, one of the sisters
had been caring for their father for a long time, lived with him in this apartment. The other two
had been living their lives in different ways and negotiating these things. I mean, it's, I mentioned
that only because I thought it was a really great reflection of what I think a lot of families go
through. And how do we evaluate, quote, what is fair? I think it's oftentimes, if we're honest,
really an excuse. It's a placeholder for, I don't get what I want. And at the end of the day,
that's not Christian, right? That's not a Gothic love. That's really a kind of self-centered
interest. And that's something I think that's really hard for us to work through at any stage
of life. And so that's where the subtitle comes in, you know, for this collection of reflections,
which is God is not fair and other reasons for gratitude. I mean, we should be grateful
that God is not fair because more often than not, we're the ones who are in need of a lot
of generosity and a lot of leeway and a lot of forgiveness from God. But how quick we are to
assume that we're not getting what is ours or what we're owed. Absolutely. Yeah. And I think this
can be connected back to transition as well, is that what does it look like to live in a
generous, loving universe, even at times when it doesn't feel like that?
Yeah. Yeah. I think that is a really great question, right? I mean, part of that is an
invitation to think, to think outside ourselves. You know, I'm thinking of the great fourth century
theologian, Augustine of hippo St. Augustine had this notion of sin. What it does is it kind of
bends us over. He has this great image of us being kind of bent over, almost navel gazing picture
that where you're like looking at yourself. And he said the weight of the effect of original sin
just kind of pushes us downward. And when that happens, you can't see reality as it is. You can
see maybe peripherally, you can see maybe upside down part of the distance or what have you,
but you're basically just focused on yourself. And I think what you're talking about here is exactly
that too many of us are just too focused on ourselves as individuals, as individual humans
in a cosmic family. There's that dimension of this too. In an age of climate catastrophe,
what does it mean to be a citizen of what Pope Francis calls our common home? I think we are
collectively as human beings kind of navel gazing and we're kind of infighting and we're disagreeing
and we're just trying to be selfish and to take what's ours and to be comfortable. And some of
that arises out of fear and some of it arises out of necessity. But a lot of it arises out of a kind
of ruthless selfishness, if I can be so blunt. And so starting to see the bigger picture. And
that's where in the Catholic tradition, we talk about the common good, whether that's our civil
society or whether that's how we are meant to be an inclusive community in the church or whether
that's how we're meant to be part of God's family of creation. But it requires us kind of
standing upright, as Augustine says, to see the world as it actually is. St. Bonaventure talks
about this too, that great 13th century Franciscan. And the way that we do that is by cooperating with
God's grace. And the way that Augustine talks about it is, here we go again, the Holy Spirit.
The Holy Spirit is the one who lifts us up. St. Bonaventure says we can help in that process by
being people of scripture too, right? Letting God's story become our story as well. And so I think
that's always great advice. How do we get outside of ourselves? It's grappling with Jesus' preaching.
I mean, for heaven's sake, if we don't have that punch to the stomach in the story of the people
who are hired throughout the day, then I don't think we're being honest with ourselves.
Right. Yeah. Yeah. Why is it so difficult to accept God's love, in your opinion?
Oh, man. I have like an hour left, right?
How many hours do we have? Yeah. Well, I often go back to something Pope Francis said in April of
2013. This was when he was newly elected Bishop of Rome and the actual kind of cathedral of the
Diocese of Rome is the Lateran Basilica. And so every new pope, they become pope the night of the
conclave and all this, but then there's a formal kind of installation as the Bishop of Rome, as the
pope, right? And that takes place at the Lateran Basilica and there is the cathedra, the chair of
the bishop there. And so him celebrating mass there, sitting in that chair, this is all part of it.
And Pope Francis in that particular liturgy gave a homily where I and others, I'm not original,
I'm thinking this way, have talked about this as kind of Pope Francis announcing his mission
statement. And here we can, you know, more than a decade now, look back and see that this is
kind of par for the course, which is all about mercy. And I think, you know, to your point,
why is it so hard to accept God's love? I think it's because fundamentally we don't believe that
we're worthy of it, that we need to do something. And part of that, if not most of that, I think,
is conditioned by our experience of such qualified love in our human relationships,
even those in our families where there might be the closest thing in healthy family relationships
to an unconditional love. If we're honest, even that becomes conditioned. We're never 100% sure
that something in our life or a fight that breaks out, a disagreement, a disagreement,
a perspective or politics or you name it, wouldn't be the thing, that straw that breaks the camel's
back of that relationship. There's always just that edge of the precipice. And so if we take
that experience of conditioned love, of qualified love in this life, you know, all we have to talk
about God and understand God is our human experiences and language. You know, we know
that God is incomprehensible, but yet God is knowable. We can talk about God, but we do so
analogously. We do so somewhat removed. And so I think when we're thinking this way, we have no
choice, no recourse, but to draw from our experience of human love. I think it's harder for people who
have felt an absence of that close to unconditional love. It doesn't mean that even those who have
can accept God's love completely. And what Pope Francis says in that homily, it has always stayed
with me, I'm going to paraphrase it here, is that he says, God doesn't actually want anything from
you. God is already there. All God wants you to do is turn to God. I've always visualized this as like,
you're facing one direction and God is like literally standing behind you. You don't have to
pay anything. You don't have to do anything, but turn toward God. Just turn around in the fear
that we're going to be rejected or overlooked or minimized or what have you that we carry with us
from our earthly relationships. I think inhibits too many people from just turning. That's all.
Pope Francis says, don't, literally that's it. God will take care of the rest. And how few of us are
able to turn around. I know I struggle with that. It goes back to the true self. It goes back to
Francis of Assisi's notion of who we are before God. That old saying, it's like a bumper sticker
saying, but it's so true, God doesn't make junk. God sometimes makes mosquitoes. I don't quite
understand that. I guess the bats have to eat something. But it's true. There's something,
one last thing I'll say, I'm getting kind of on a little bit of a sermon here, a little bit of a
homily, but- Preach brother, keep going. I'm going to cite an even more powerful preacher,
which is Sister Helen Prejean, the great activist against capital punishment and the death penalty,
real champion of human rights in dealing with the population that is probably the easiest to
dehumanize and to write off. And she says, and I know she's not the first, but I think of her all
the time, that when people ask her, how can you minister? How can you accompany these people who
have done the worst things, who are rapists and murderers and so forth? Sister Helen always says
that each of us, all of us are more than the worst things that we've done.
And I think that can be a really tough pill to swallow. And most of us are not going to
be on death row. Most of us are not going to have either made mistakes or done things intentionally
that are so egregious. But in little ways, I think, to your point, we can find ourselves
in situations where we are either written off by others or we write ourselves off.
And that gets in the way of accepting God's love.
Absolutely. Yeah, you brought up Bonaventure and with my studies at FST, I kind of got into his
metaphysics a little bit and that's what my capstone paper ended up being about. And
the practical implications of his metaphysics of this fountain that is ever flowing,
from the very beginning, it has never stopped flowing. This self-diffusiveness of the Trinity
continually giving of itself, not only into the universe, which you can draw kind of scientific
conclusions from there, but then also, do I really believe that fountains flowing into my life?
You know, when I'm stressed or tired or, you know, just feel like I'm getting whipped around
from thing to thing or, you know, exhausted from the particular transition or whatever it may be,
like, do I believe that fountain still flowing?
It's hard. It's hard to trust. Oh, it is. Yeah. Yeah. I'm a big fan of them. So glad to hear that
was your project. Yeah. Gets that from Pseudodinusius, this overflowing good, the Fonteboos.
Like, yeah. And I think that's also too, maybe it touches back to that parable in Matthew's gospel
about, you know, the hired laborers that we think in a zero sum game, you know, that God,
there is no end to God's love. There just isn't. In a way, I mean, let's be honest, there's an end
to our energy. There's an end to our patience. There's an end to our love at times. And so I
think, you know, do we trust that? Because the only model for that is God and God's self. And I think
in the Christian tradition, we believe God became human. And so Jesus becomes the incarnate model of
that. But where the rubber hits the road is, do I really believe that God became human? And so I
think in the Christian tradition, we believe God became human. But where the rubber hits the road
is, do I actually believe it? You know, and that goes back to my Holy Spirit atheism kind of
suspicion that goes to my, you know, the God is not fair and other reasons for gratitude. I mean,
are these reasons for gratitude? Can we see the goodness in this? Or is this us operating with
the wisdom of the world? And, you know, we want to get what's ours, and there's a limited quantity,
and I'm going to get as much as I can. It's the, it's the Pokemon approach to Christianity. You
know, that Jesus approach, the Pokemon approach. Yeah, I'm a good millennial like you. I remember,
I remember trading Pokemon cards in the bathroom at my Catholic grade school.
Well, I have one more question for you, Dan. And I mentioned God is not fair. That trilogy of books
through Franciscan media came out right at the beginning of Pope Francis's papacy. So it's been
over 10 years now since those books came out. And I was just wondering, could you reflect on this
last decade for you, your 30s? What did you learn about God during that time? Or perhaps what did
you learn about your true self during that time? Well, I think it, I think maybe that second part
is a good one. What did I learn about God? What I know about God, I could fit in a thimble in an
ocean of incomprehensibility. So not, not much. I mean, but I am a firm believer of, of, you know,
learning to know God, to relate to God, to experience God is quite different than knowing
about God. But that's, that's my theologian hat being triggered by, by an innocent and good
question. But about the true self, I think, you know, over this past decade, I would just say,
actually with my whole life journey up to now, you know, coincidentally, my birthday is at the
end of this week. So I should probably be a little more like reflective about, I never am,
I'm not a big birthday guy. Some people celebrate their birthdays like crazy, and I'm just not one
of them. But your question, I think, is a good one for me to carry with me throughout the week.
And I would say that, you know, we're never complete, you know, we're not done projects.
That God knows who we are in our truest sense, our truest self, to use Merton's phrase,
doesn't mean that we are static. And it doesn't mean that we are without free will and free choice,
right? This is the kind of paradox of Christianity. I'm thinking right now of, and this says a lot
from somebody who comes from the Franciscan tradition to give, you know, a great shout out
to the Jesuits. But that's a joke. That's a joke. I love the Jesuits. But I'm thinking of the late
German theologian, Karl Rahner, who, you know, talks in his theology about what he calls the
fundamental option, right? This is kind of a yes or no that we make to God's invitation to relationship
kind of in our totality. And he says, at the end of the day, you really can't do this until the very
end of your life. You know, you are going back to Tronsitus in the Franciscan sense, it is,
you're on the cusp of transitioning from this life to the next. And it's a real theology of hope,
right? That means that you may have been somebody who has lived a really terrible life and rejected
a lot of things that would be identified with the divine or God's call or the kingdom of God.
But there always is this opportunity, in a sense, to kind of to say yes to God. And some people can
say yes to God very easily because they've worked their whole lives in small ways and in big ways
to kind of prepare themselves for that. But one of the things he says is like, we are not complete
until that point. And so we're always in a process of becoming, you know, becoming more who we are,
becoming more who we are, or maybe to borrow that Mertonian language, maybe becoming less of who we
are in that spirit of the false self. But I do believe that God, I trust what Pope Francis says,
God's mercy is there. It's just a matter of us turning to God. It's just a matter of us accepting
that love, which to some people sounds, you know, probably like, you know, too theoretical or abstract
or too, you know, touchy feely or what have you. But I think is that not what Jesus's message was
all about? You know, it was made concrete and present by his outreach and his inclusion, his
invitation. But at the end of the day, that's what he's showing us, is a God who, it doesn't matter
if you're accused of adultery. It doesn't matter if you are accused and are convicted of a capital
crime and being executed in public. I mean, it happened to God. So what does that say to us about
how we move through the world? What does it say to us about how we understand ourselves? And I think
that combination of Ronner and Merton and Francis and Jesus's own message in the gospels
has invited me to continue to recognize that it's not a one and done, that we're always in a process
of becoming. I'm thinking of our mutual friend and a fellow Francis comedian author, you know,
Father Richard Rohr, who talks about the two halves of life, you know, in addition to other wisdom that
he offers us and thinking about this ongoing dynamic way of being in the world. So maybe
that's probably a good place to end, you know, because we're continuing to journey forward.
No, that's perfect, Dan. Yeah. Thanks for coming on the podcast and happy birthday, my friend.
Thanks, Stephen. It's such a joy to see you and always great to talk with you. I look forward to
the next time. Again, that was Dan Horan. His three books with Franciscan media,
God is Not Fair and Other Reasons for Gratitude, Dating God, and The Last Words of Jesus are all
available in the Franciscan media store. You can follow Dan on Facebook at facebook.com
or on Facebook at facebook.com.com. Thanks for joining us on Off the Page. Thank you as always
to you for tuning in and supporting this podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, please consider
leaving a review or sharing it with your friends or family. Here's music from Cyprian Concilio to
send us off. Peace and all good.