It’s Been There All Along with Josh Reeves

[00:00:01] [SPEAKER_00]: Welcome, this is Josh Reeves with Mile Hi Church in Lakewood, Colorado.

[00:00:06] [SPEAKER_00]: Thank you for tuning in to our podcast today for more information about our church.

[00:00:11] [SPEAKER_00]: Please visit our website, MileHiChurch.org.

[00:00:17] [SPEAKER_00]: For those of you who have kids, how many of you have that experience where they participated in an activity or sport or went through the same elementary school that you did?

[00:00:28] [SPEAKER_00]: Something that you participated in, how many of us?

[00:00:33] [SPEAKER_00]: For me with our son that was a little league baseball.

[00:00:37] [SPEAKER_00]: And so after 20, some years it was something else to sit on those bleachers and to be in that environment again.

[00:00:46] [SPEAKER_00]: And the first thing I noticed is that there were things I wanted to remember that I could not.

[00:00:54] [SPEAKER_00]: When I thought about my little league years, I realized that what I remember were my big wins and my big losses.

[00:01:05] [SPEAKER_00]: I remember hitting the single and to right field scoring the winning run and winning the game.

[00:01:11] [SPEAKER_00]: And I remember striking out to end the game.

[00:01:15] [SPEAKER_00]: I remember catching the last out on a line drive and I remember being one down, one run and trying to go into second base and get in throw.

[00:01:23] [SPEAKER_00]: And I remember being one out was a bad call.

[00:01:30] [SPEAKER_00]: But sitting there watching my son play what I wanted to remember was something different.

[00:01:39] [SPEAKER_00]: I wanted to remember the name of that kid that played next to me in the outfield, what was his name?

[00:01:46] [SPEAKER_00]: I wanted to remember the faces of my coaches and the words of encouragement they gave me.

[00:01:52] [SPEAKER_00]: I wanted to remember the feeling of smelling the grass and having that uniform touch my skin.

[00:02:02] [SPEAKER_00]: But I couldn't.

[00:02:03] [SPEAKER_00]: And I began to grow satir, I'm still watching the game by the way.

[00:02:08] [SPEAKER_00]: I grew satir because I realized I remember my life in the same way.

[00:02:13] [SPEAKER_00]: What I remember and what I emphasized is all my successes and all my failures.

[00:02:21] [SPEAKER_00]: And what I realized in that moment and still struggled to realize today is I don't care about those.

[00:02:30] [SPEAKER_00]: What I want to remember is the good time I had with friends.

[00:02:34] [SPEAKER_00]: I want to remember the content of conversations I had with my father.

[00:02:38] [SPEAKER_00]: I want to remember what it was like to read a book under soft, sun light.

[00:02:47] [SPEAKER_00]: And I couldn't remember.

[00:02:49] [SPEAKER_00]: I was struggling.

[00:02:52] [SPEAKER_00]: And I realized I don't want to remember my life based on successes and failures.

[00:02:58] [SPEAKER_00]: I want to remember my life based upon the quality of my relationships and the depth of my experiences.

[00:03:07] [SPEAKER_00]: How about you?

[00:03:08] [SPEAKER_00]: How about you?

[00:03:09] [SPEAKER_00]: I don't want to remember my life based upon the successes and the failures.

[00:03:15] [SPEAKER_00]: But on the quality of relationships and the depth of my experiences.

[00:03:23] [SPEAKER_00]: When we change our emphasis, we begin to realize that that which we've been searching for all of our lives may just have been there all along.

[00:03:37] [SPEAKER_00]: I have a theory and it involves you.

[00:03:40] [SPEAKER_00]: So listen up, see if it sounds true.

[00:03:45] [SPEAKER_00]: The theory is that your life is the greatest story ever told.

[00:03:53] [SPEAKER_00]: Your life is the greatest story ever told.

[00:03:58] [SPEAKER_00]: Charlie Kaufman, great screenwriter, alluded to the idea that there are seven billion people in this world, not one of them in extra.

[00:04:06] [SPEAKER_00]: Every single one, the lead in their own story.

[00:04:14] [SPEAKER_00]: And if this doesn't resonate, if this doesn't sound true, my challenge to you is that you're not reading it right.

[00:04:27] [SPEAKER_00]: The story of your life is more complex than Leo Tolstoy could muster.

[00:04:32] [SPEAKER_00]: There's more drama in it than Shakespeare.

[00:04:36] [SPEAKER_00]: There's more romance in your life than it has ever been on a novel with Bobbioh on the cover.

[00:04:48] [SPEAKER_00]: That's how valuable you are, that's how interesting your life is, all those depths of quality of relationships and depths of experience.

[00:04:59] [SPEAKER_00]: All that being said, our lives aren't really like novels, movies, TV shows,

[00:05:08] [SPEAKER_00]: TikToks, video games, all of these have a beginning, a middle and an end.

[00:05:16] [SPEAKER_00]: The truth is that when it comes to the life of your soul, life is not a straight line.

[00:05:23] [SPEAKER_00]: It's a spiral.

[00:05:25] [SPEAKER_00]: It's a spiral with the truth of who you are, the wholeness of you're being always dead heart in the center and our choices and our activities, either draws closer to that wholeness.

[00:05:37] [SPEAKER_00]: Our words are further away, but it's always calling us back there.

[00:05:45] [SPEAKER_00]: Our lives are not defined by history, but by moments of epiphany, moments of realization, moments of true connection that when they really connect in your living, your soul's life, they exist in eternity.

[00:06:06] [SPEAKER_00]: When I think about this concept, I can't help but think of the late-great-gilderadner.

[00:06:13] [SPEAKER_00]: One of the not ready for primetime players, the original cast of Saturday Night Live,

[00:06:20] [SPEAKER_00]: the embodiment of pure charisma, grace, tenacity and unconditioned joy.

[00:06:29] [SPEAKER_00]: And early in her life, she was diagnosed with cancer.

[00:06:33] [SPEAKER_00]: She beat it. It came back and it killed her.

[00:06:42] [SPEAKER_00]: And she had a counselor by the name of Joanna Bowel, who was deeply meaningful to her in her time, who taught her the deep and important concept of ambiguity, living in the midst of uncertainty and ambiguity.

[00:06:59] [SPEAKER_00]: And Radner, which share, I wanted a perfect ending.

[00:07:03] [SPEAKER_00]: Now I've learned the hard way that some poems don't rhyme and some stories don't have a clear beginning, middle and end.

[00:07:12] [SPEAKER_00]: Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what's going to happen next, delicious ambiguity.

[00:07:26] [SPEAKER_00]: Reminds me of the words of Shel Silverstein, who I'll talk a little bit more later.

[00:07:32] [SPEAKER_00]: He says there are no happy endings, endings are the saddest part.

[00:07:37] [SPEAKER_00]: So just give me a happy middle and a very happy start.

[00:07:45] [SPEAKER_00]: I have another theory involving you.

[00:07:50] [SPEAKER_00]: The story you tell yourself today, you will try to prove to yourself tomorrow.

[00:08:02] [SPEAKER_00]: Are you sure the story you're telling yourself is the true story?

[00:08:11] [SPEAKER_00]: Are you sure the story you're telling yourself is the true story?

[00:08:17] [SPEAKER_00]: Thought experiment. Imagine your whole life, you've kept two journals.

[00:08:23] [SPEAKER_00]: In one journal, you write things down as they actually happened.

[00:08:28] [SPEAKER_00]: In the other journal, you get to write down things as you wish they would have happened.

[00:08:34] [SPEAKER_00]: Oh boy, there are a few loves that got away that might have some larger parts in there.

[00:08:41] [SPEAKER_00]: I would've gotten that job, I didn't get, might be much more the man I always wanted to be.

[00:08:50] [SPEAKER_00]: Here's the thing to think about.

[00:08:53] [SPEAKER_00]: At what point in writing in this journal, the things that you would have liked to have happened,

[00:08:59] [SPEAKER_00]: do you start to look back at that journal filled with the way things did work out

[00:09:05] [SPEAKER_00]: and either want that more or start needing to integrate little pieces.

[00:09:12] [SPEAKER_00]: These big losses, these negative experiences that sometimes leave a hole in our heart.

[00:09:22] [SPEAKER_00]: I'm not saying they're positive, I'm not saying be grateful for them.

[00:09:26] [SPEAKER_00]: But did you need them in a sense to become who you are?

[00:09:34] [SPEAKER_00]: Carl, you alluded to the idea that I am not what happens to me,

[00:09:39] [SPEAKER_00]: I am who I choose to become.

[00:09:43] [SPEAKER_00]: Out as Huxley said, experience is not what happened to you.

[00:09:47] [SPEAKER_00]: It's what you do with what happened to you.

[00:09:55] [SPEAKER_00]: All of this goes to show that perhaps it's not our job to tell our story, but to live it.

[00:10:06] [SPEAKER_00]: To live our stories with a greater trust and willingness to listen to and live God's story in our lives.

[00:10:18] [SPEAKER_00]: What is the story of the divine in your life?

[00:10:24] [SPEAKER_00]: It's not a beginning, it's not a middle, it's not an end, it's not what I like to call a beginning.

[00:10:30] [SPEAKER_00]: Life is full of those.

[00:10:32] [SPEAKER_00]: It's about those moments of realization.

[00:10:36] [SPEAKER_00]: It's about those moments of connection.

[00:10:39] [SPEAKER_00]: It's about those moments of deep experience.

[00:10:43] [SPEAKER_00]: And with a little change of perspective, a little change of emphasis.

[00:10:48] [SPEAKER_00]: You can realize that the very meaning you've been looking for your whole life, it's been there all along.

[00:10:58] [SPEAKER_00]: It's been there all along to regain, to experience the life of our soul, two tools in which do you utilize?

[00:11:10] [SPEAKER_00]: I want to share with you today.

[00:11:13] [SPEAKER_00]: The first perspective, a little bit of perspective.

[00:11:18] [SPEAKER_00]: And the second is emphasis.

[00:11:23] [SPEAKER_00]: If we can work on these two things, we can unearth what we have forgotten.

[00:11:32] [SPEAKER_00]: Rick Polito, great author of books, lives in Boulder, Colorado.

[00:11:37] [SPEAKER_00]: He's most famous because he used to write TV guide ads for movies that were coming on.

[00:11:43] [SPEAKER_00]: His most famous is for the Wizard of Oz and it goes like this.

[00:11:47] [SPEAKER_00]: He's transported to a surreal landscape.

[00:11:50] [SPEAKER_00]: A young girl kills the first person she meets and then teams up with three strangers, two kill again.

[00:12:01] [SPEAKER_00]: Total aside, it's an Easter 2020.

[00:12:06] [SPEAKER_00]: My first opportunity to share with you the Easter message and my ministerial dreams come true because I walk out here and there is not a single congregant in the sanctuary.

[00:12:17] [SPEAKER_00]: The nightmare, that fear.

[00:12:19] [SPEAKER_00]: But there were thousands of people watching online.

[00:12:21] [SPEAKER_00]: It was a really powerful day and I shared this quote from Rick Polito and I get back to my computer and there's an email and guess who it's from Rick Polito.

[00:12:30] [SPEAKER_00]: Nobody ever gets me credit for that quote, thank you very much.

[00:12:33] [SPEAKER_00]: So thank you Rick.

[00:12:36] [SPEAKER_00]: Just for fun, I'd like to share a few of his others.

[00:12:38] [SPEAKER_00]: You have for a little pop quiz today that's see if you can guess the movie.

[00:12:42] [SPEAKER_00]: Talking Lion, but friends of Warthog and Avengers Father's death.

[00:12:46] [SPEAKER_00]: I'll very good.

[00:12:48] [SPEAKER_00]: Boy left a fend off robbers after parents abandoned him.

[00:12:53] [SPEAKER_00]: This one's harder.

[00:12:54] [SPEAKER_00]: Orphan boy hangs around with convicted mass murder while a rap plots his death.

[00:13:03] [SPEAKER_00]: And no way, no way, no way, me.

[00:13:05] [SPEAKER_00]: Harry Potter and the prisoner of Ask a band.

[00:13:10] [SPEAKER_00]: You want to keep going?

[00:13:12] [SPEAKER_00]: An eccentric nanny hired by a wealthy family subjects the children to a series of psychedelic experiences and cult-like character building exercise.

[00:13:20] [SPEAKER_00]: Just a spoonful of sugar?

[00:13:23] [SPEAKER_00]: Okay, last one.

[00:13:24] [SPEAKER_00]: A federal agent in Chicago hampers the work of an enterprising American job creator.

[00:13:32] [SPEAKER_00]: Got it. Untouchable, very good, very good.

[00:13:35] [SPEAKER_00]: You win the prize.

[00:13:38] [SPEAKER_00]: A little change in perspective.

[00:13:41] [SPEAKER_00]: Some of you know this, but I lost my dad.

[00:13:46] [SPEAKER_00]: I lost my dad last weekend.

[00:13:51] [SPEAKER_00]: I loved.

[00:13:56] [SPEAKER_00]: And it feels like a hand came out of the universe and just took away.

[00:14:03] [SPEAKER_00]: Breaking our hearts, but that's just one perspective.

[00:14:08] [SPEAKER_00]: Valid, true, just one perspective.

[00:14:14] [SPEAKER_00]: It's talking to my dad after you died.

[00:14:17] [SPEAKER_00]: I don't do that kind of thing, but I could hear him.

[00:14:19] [SPEAKER_00]: I could hear his voice.

[00:14:21] [SPEAKER_00]: Josh, move on with your life.

[00:14:25] [SPEAKER_00]: It's a dad.

[00:14:28] [SPEAKER_00]: I'll let you go.

[00:14:30] [SPEAKER_00]: But only if I can experience your presence everywhere.

[00:14:37] [SPEAKER_00]: The manner of my dad's death was a shock.

[00:14:41] [SPEAKER_00]: The fact of his dying?

[00:14:43] No.

[00:14:45] [SPEAKER_00]: That principle that we call death was with him his entire life.

[00:14:49] [SPEAKER_00]: He was only 73, but as he was growing older,

[00:14:51] [SPEAKER_00]: there was something that was always present in each conversation.

[00:14:56] [SPEAKER_00]: In the same way, now that he is dead, the fact of his life,

[00:15:02] [SPEAKER_00]: the very principle of life is very much true and present

[00:15:07] [SPEAKER_00]: and as real as anything.

[00:15:11] [SPEAKER_00]: I wrote my dad a letter.

[00:15:14] [SPEAKER_00]: Our relationship is an over-dad.

[00:15:16] [SPEAKER_00]: This is not the end of our relationship.

[00:15:18] [SPEAKER_00]: My commitment is to build a renewed relationship with you.

[00:15:26] [SPEAKER_00]: I want to understand who you are better.

[00:15:29] [SPEAKER_00]: I want to know more about your history.

[00:15:31] [SPEAKER_00]: I want to know what you really thought of John Lennon's solo career.

[00:15:36] [SPEAKER_00]: And can.

[00:15:39] [SPEAKER_00]: And so I'll listen and I'll grieve and I'll love perspective.

[00:15:47] [SPEAKER_00]: That's what this teaching offers us.

[00:15:49] [SPEAKER_00]: Perhaps more than anything else, the ability to see,

[00:15:54] [SPEAKER_00]: to live in multiple realities at the same time.

[00:16:03] [SPEAKER_00]: It's about perspective and it's about emphasis.

[00:16:13] [SPEAKER_00]: Maybe it's not true that your mom didn't love you.

[00:16:17] [SPEAKER_00]: Maybe it's true that she didn't have the tools to know how.

[00:16:23] [SPEAKER_00]: Maybe it's true that you and your loved one grew further and further apart.

[00:16:30] [SPEAKER_00]: But maybe the truth is you just didn't have the tools to grow closer and closer

[00:16:34] [SPEAKER_00]: together at the time.

[00:16:38] [SPEAKER_00]: Maybe it's true that you lost a great opportunity.

[00:16:42] [SPEAKER_00]: But maybe it's true that you needed that loss to find your way

[00:16:47] [SPEAKER_00]: and become who you are.

[00:16:51] [SPEAKER_00]: It's about perspective and it's about emphasis.

[00:16:57] [SPEAKER_00]: Anyone here ever feel incomplete?

[00:17:02] [SPEAKER_00]: You ever feel like something's missing in your life

[00:17:06] [SPEAKER_00]: that you've spent your whole life with a missing piece

[00:17:10] [SPEAKER_00]: trying to find what's going to make you whole.

[00:17:15] [SPEAKER_00]: The shell servicing the great children's author probably most famous for the giving tree.

[00:17:21] [SPEAKER_00]: He wrote a book called The Missing Peace.

[00:17:24] [SPEAKER_00]: Into about a little circle that loves to roll around and loves to sing a little song.

[00:17:34] [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, I'm looking for my missing piece.

[00:17:37] [SPEAKER_00]: Heidi, hoe, here I go, looking for my missing piece.

[00:17:42] [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, I'm looking for my missing piece.

[00:17:44] [SPEAKER_00]: Heidi, hoe, here I go, looking for my missing piece.

[00:17:50] [SPEAKER_00]: And he sings that song and rolls and rolls around

[00:17:54] [SPEAKER_00]: and finds the piece that almost fits and something else that almost fits in there until finally

[00:18:00] [SPEAKER_00]: the perfect triangle reveals itself.

[00:18:05] [SPEAKER_00]: And the little circle is made whole.

[00:18:07] [SPEAKER_00]: And it can roll so fast and it can do so many things, except for one thing.

[00:18:14] [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, my, I'll tip on the, my, my, my missing piece.

[00:18:18] [SPEAKER_00]: Heidi, hoe, who are we going to go up the burn and missing piece?

[00:18:26] [SPEAKER_00]: So what's the little circle have to do?

[00:18:28] [SPEAKER_00]: Has to ditch the triangle.

[00:18:32] [SPEAKER_00]: And it continues along.

[00:18:33] [SPEAKER_00]: Singing, oh, I'm looking for my missing piece.

[00:18:36] [SPEAKER_00]: Heidi, hoe, here I go, looking for my missing piece.

[00:18:42] [SPEAKER_00]: Our holes don't break us.

[00:18:45] [SPEAKER_00]: They bring us.

[00:18:48] [SPEAKER_00]: It's the empty places as painful as the means that created those broken places in us.

[00:18:57] [SPEAKER_00]: They're how we sing.

[00:18:59] [SPEAKER_00]: They're how we grow.

[00:19:01] [SPEAKER_00]: They're how we find our voice.

[00:19:03] [SPEAKER_00]: They're how we embody who we are.

[00:19:08] [SPEAKER_00]: But with a little bit of emphasis, you can realize nothing is missing.

[00:19:14] [SPEAKER_00]: It's been there all along.

[00:19:19] [SPEAKER_00]: Keep singing your song.

[00:19:23] [SPEAKER_00]: Joseph Campbell said something I liked.

[00:19:28] [SPEAKER_00]: A friend gave me a list of things that let you know you are old.

[00:19:35] [SPEAKER_00]: Some of them are silly.

[00:19:36] [SPEAKER_00]: Others are serious.

[00:19:38] [SPEAKER_00]: One is when you sink your teeth into a juicy steak and they stay there.

[00:19:45] [SPEAKER_00]: Another is when your back goes out more often than you do.

[00:19:49] [SPEAKER_00]: The real serious one is when you've gotten to the top of the ladder and find it's against

[00:19:56] [SPEAKER_00]: the wrong wall.

[00:19:59] [SPEAKER_00]: That's where so many people are.

[00:20:02] [SPEAKER_00]: It's dreadful.

[00:20:05] [SPEAKER_00]: And to descend the whole ladder and start up another,

[00:20:08] [SPEAKER_00]: hmm, forget the ladder and just wander.

[00:20:13] [SPEAKER_00]: Bump around.

[00:20:17] [SPEAKER_00]: Looking back at my life, I wouldn't change a thing.

[00:20:21] [SPEAKER_00]: A few years ago, I told you I would change every little thing.

[00:20:26] [SPEAKER_00]: But looking back at my life, I wouldn't change a thing but I sure as hell would

[00:20:33] [SPEAKER_00]: Empasize differently.

[00:20:37] [SPEAKER_00]: I would emphasize differently.

[00:20:40] [SPEAKER_00]: That's where my work is.

[00:20:42] [SPEAKER_00]: To move from measuring myself and remembering who I am based on successes and failures.

[00:20:47] [SPEAKER_00]: To measuring and knowing who I am based upon the quality of my relationships and the depth of my experiences.

[00:20:58] [SPEAKER_00]: I have to move from measuring myself by who I loved to realizing myself by emphasizing who loved me.

[00:21:09] [SPEAKER_00]: To move from measuring myself based on where I got to go to embody truly where I am.

[00:21:19] [SPEAKER_00]: Can I be right here?

[00:21:23] [SPEAKER_00]: A little change in emphasis can begin to change anything and everything.

[00:21:33] [SPEAKER_00]: Few weeks of watching my son play a little league baseball.

[00:21:43] [SPEAKER_00]: I remember, Nick, that's that kid's name that I played in the alphabet with,

[00:21:50] [SPEAKER_00]: I'll be able to with Nick.

[00:21:52] [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, that's the way my coach smiled.

[00:21:56] [SPEAKER_00]: I remember when he complimented me.

[00:22:00] [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, yes, the way that uniform felt on my skin, breathing the grass through my nose.

[00:22:09] [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, it's been there.

[00:22:11] [SPEAKER_00]: It's been there all moving into prayer today by any of our prayer practitioners to stand and join us.

[00:22:21] [SPEAKER_00]: These incredible people are there to help you remember that it's been there all along with a prayer after service on our stage or email us.

[00:22:35] [SPEAKER_00]: And just remembering those words from the Holy Bible,

[00:22:39] [SPEAKER_00]: know as you are known,

[00:22:44] [SPEAKER_00]: know as you are known by a holy presence, by divine power that holds you,

[00:22:53] [SPEAKER_00]: that knows who you are perhaps even better than you know yourself.

[00:22:59] [SPEAKER_00]: Then knew the whole of your words before you even began to speak that knitted you together and your mother's womb.

[00:23:11] [SPEAKER_00]: That knows each and every story of your heart,

[00:23:16] [SPEAKER_00]: like the hairs of your head.

[00:23:19] [SPEAKER_00]: This present so near, it speaks to us if we listen,

[00:23:27] [SPEAKER_00]: not in wild prophecies, but in sacred memory and sacred time.

[00:23:34] [SPEAKER_00]: It speaks to us not through the voice of history, but through the voice of the eternal.

[00:23:40] [SPEAKER_00]: That eternal place with a quality of our connections and the depth of our experiences,

[00:23:49] [SPEAKER_00]: those things which are truly real exist always at the level of our soul.

[00:23:56] [SPEAKER_00]: To live a life of soul is not to live a life of rose,

[00:24:01] [SPEAKER_00]: color glasses nor a night of a day, it's to live your true life.

[00:24:08] [SPEAKER_00]: It's to know what's really real, what really matters,

[00:24:13] [SPEAKER_00]: those qualities of being that bring us to tears and to laughter,

[00:24:18] [SPEAKER_00]: to song and to silence, to where we are right here and right now.

[00:24:27] [SPEAKER_00]: God may you tell me the story of my life and I promise you to live it.

[00:24:34] [SPEAKER_00]: Each and every day, knowing this life, it brings forth healing,

[00:24:40] [SPEAKER_00]: forgiveness, connection and an unconditioned joy that nothing can ever tear us under.

[00:24:50] [SPEAKER_00]: In body in this joy, we move into the altar of our heart and make offerings of choices,

[00:25:02] [SPEAKER_00]: actions, connections.

[00:25:06] [SPEAKER_00]: We make offerings at the altar of our heart for the beauty of life and its scenes,

[00:25:13] [SPEAKER_00]: and we sing with it, and we share this one life, living you, living me, let it be.

[00:25:24] [SPEAKER_00]: So it is.

[00:25:30] [SPEAKER_00]: Thanks for listening to the Mile High Church podcast.

[00:25:33] [SPEAKER_00]: This podcast is made possible by the generous contributions from listeners like you

[00:25:38] [SPEAKER_00]: to make a donation, please visit MilehighChurch.org.