Attaching to God: Neuroscience-informed Spiritual Formation

087: Geoff's Second Half of Life "Crisis" and why the new name

• Geoff and Cyd Holsclaw • Season 6 • Episode 87

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The inaugural episode of season six, and all about "Geoff's Second Half of Life 'Crisis' and why we renamed the podcast" (and note, 'crisis' is in scar quotes).

Welcome to Season 6, of what is now called the Attaching to God podcast.  We are going to be doing more episodes of just the two of us talking (Cyd and Geoff). But we will also have interviews with people, and hopefully a regular guest appearance (if we can get him to commit once a month).

In addition to this, we are adding a regular segment called "Baggage Claim" where one or both of us notice the baggage we are bringing into relationships (big things or small things) See minute "27" for this new segment. 

Join Attaching to God Learning Cohort: Quieting an Anxious and Avoidant Faith.

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Welcome to season six of what is now called the Attaching to God podcast. We're going to be doing some more episodes of just Sid and I, uh, talking to each other about different topics. Uh, we'll still be interviewing people and we're going to be, uh, hopefully we're going to be having a regular guest that will show up maybe monthly.

If we can somehow mystery guest who maybe if we can get them to commit. once a month. Oh, you just gave it away. It's a man. It is a man. It is a man. And um, we're also going to be doing some concluding like regular bits at the end, which is called baggage claim, which you'll find out about that at the very end.

But as per our regular introductions, we are Geoff and Cyd Holsclaw. This is the Attaching to God podcast, where we are seeking to integrate neuroscience, spirituality, and faith. And as always, it is brought to you by grassroots Christianity. Which is seeking to grow faith for everyday people.

All right. So here on the first episode of the new season, we can call this Geoff's second half. life crisis. Okay. But before we, and why we're doing a name change. Okay. Yes. Before we even get into anything else, I just want to tell anybody who's listening, uh, that this was a really funny moment right before because Sid saved the day.

Yeah. So when, whenever, so it's kind of funny because we have this pattern between the two of us that whenever I'm going to do something, including technology, I don't always, I kind of go intuitively. I don't always. pay attention to all the details. And so Jeff actually created a checklist for me once of all the things I needed to make sure I double checked before we started recording.

And you know what happened today? We sit down and I just asked casually beforehand, did you make sure that the microphones are the sound input and not just the laptop? And sure enough, sure enough, She saved the day. I, all the mike inputs were wrong. And it would've sounded horrible. We would've talked for a half an hour or something like that, and it would've just been like W Charlie Brown.

So all that to say he's trained me so well, yes, that I follow the checklist. Saved the day. And, uh, this new season also, if you're watching online, uh, on YouTube, uh, this is, I've decided to let my hair down, uh, in the midst of this season, which means I'm wearing a hat. 'cause as you know, I'm bald. Uh. Been shaving my head bald for almost two years or three years.

Um, but I And how many hats do you have? That's a different question. So I have quite a few hats, uh, and I wear hats all the time. But on video or in classes, I'm not wearing a hat, but I decided, you know what? It's gonna be me. So, uh, let's go through a brief history of this podcast. So when it got launched, uh, we, you and I had a podcast, uh, long time ago when our first, like five years ago.

Uh oh. I got balloons. the zoom balloons just went off again. Whatever I do, the peace sign, I think. Anyhow, sorry about that if you're watching online. So, um, several years ago when our book came out, does God really like me? We did a podcast called God with us, the God with us podcast, which we did down in the basement with horrible lighting and an awful backdrop.

And so that was our first first, uh, kind of podcast. And then about a year later, I launched a podcast just by myself where I was interviewing people. It was an excuse to get to know, uh, new and interesting people. And then it was kind of like all about my interest in neuroscience. Was that one called embodied faith right away?

Or no. So that one was called being with, it was kind of a playoff of the God with us podcast, where we need to learn to be with God. How do we be with God? others and how do we even learn to be with ourselves? And it was still kind of bringing in the neuroscience and spiritual formation. Uh, but then after a full year, I was also on the side and this is where grassroots Christianity, like that name comes from.

I was also doing these like theology courses, these online learning cohorts, um, where it was talking about five shifts of moving, shifting out of like fundamentalism without losing your faith. And one of the shifts was to shift from, uh, a disembodied mind into an embodied faith. Uh, and I was working on the material and I was teaching through it a couple of times and all of a sudden I was like, that's a much better name that encapsulates what this podcast is all about.

I think I remember embodied. Yeah. I probably stormed in. Yeah. What if we called the podcast, Embodied Faith, and you're like, that makes sense to me. So, so we did that, uh, and so it's been called that, uh, ever since we have some writings and another, uh, site that we share together for our cohorts that's called Embodied Faith.

Uh, and so that had, um, we've been doing that for several years in the last year we brought you on because we were stepping out, uh, in. Uh, faith from a full time ministry at a vineyard to now a much reduced, uh, part time work there, but then also doing a bunch of other stuff together, you and I, as well as your coaching business.

And so, uh, we brought you on, which is, I think all the listeners, uh, agree that that was a stroke of genius by me. Uh, so they've loved having you. So thank you for being on for a full year. This is like an anniversary, I guess, for you. I guess it is anything you want to say on your one year anniversary of being on the podcast.

Anything come to mind? I'm really excited about the future direction of the podcast. It was fun last year and I'm even more excited about this year. So I think it's, I think it's going to be a good season. All right. So that brings us to this moment right now, which is why are we renaming the podcast, The Attaching to God Podcast.

Now you, No, the results, but you actually don't know the pathway you as in Sid, uh, but also all of you listeners. So I was, so we're going to talk about that to kind of get a little surprised along with the listeners or confused. It could be either because I don't know how everybody knows. I do. I have no show notes for this.

Jeff did not prep me for anything that we're talking about today, so I'm hearing it all. That's right. All right, so I was talking with, um, my spiritual director and a coach, even though you're a spiritual director and a coach, but since you're my wife and partner in work, I figured that probably won't be good to get all that stuff, uh, what mangled together or mixed up.

Yeah, it just. Doesn't always work so well when you try to coach or use spiritual direction with the spouse. Yeah. It's good to have somebody outside the marriage. Yes. So we are heading toward empty nesting, empty nest. Our kids are launching out into the world. It's really great. Our oldest son is getting married in a month, two months.

He's also buying a house, blah, blah, blah. So these are all really great things, but it kind of got me into this place of like, well, what's my, like, what is, what, Is God calling me to my next project or the continuing project? And maybe there's nothing, it's just like, but maybe there is something there. And I had the sense that either, uh, I could continue focusing on the narrow, not in a bad way narrow, but like the narrow focus of embodied faith.

And the practical side of like spiritual formation and neuroscience, which I love to do. Um, but this is kind of the more recent work, uh, in the trajectory of my life. Uh, the, the broader work, which is a little older, which kind of goes under the umbrella of what is called, uh, grassroots Christianity, but also my teaching at Northern and Western and other places, um, is kind of the larger kind of just like, I'm a systematic theologian teaches theology and discipleship and church.

missions. And so they're kind of like the broader side of theology. And so I was trying to discern, like, do I pour myself exclusively into the kind of like the neuroscience, spiritual formation, or is that just, you know, or do I keep doing kind of the broader kind of systematic theology stuff or something like that?

Does that make sense? Yeah, it makes sense to me. So I was, I had a sense in which, like, I was trying to discern, like, well, which one is it? Is it all this or is it all the other one? So I was trying to discern that, um, and, uh, with the spiritual director, uh, or coach. They're kind of both the same thing. Um, in this instance, um, they're not always the same thing, but in this instance, you had both a spiritual director and a coach blending both together.

So he helped me see kind of a broader trajectory in which the most recent kind of neuroscience and spiritual formation stuff, was it actually a big departure? So that's the story. We want to tell it's nodding. Yes. Yeah. I'm, I'm nodding. Yes. And I just want to sort of add a little aside in that, you know, the reason that the empty nesting sort of spurred on this question of what is my next project, um, is because I think you were really intentional about really being present and available as we were raising these young men to launch into the world.

And so there were some things that you. Put on the back burner or put off to the side because you didn't want to be completely consumed by a project. And so I think in that sending off of like, we're launching our young men, there became this new openness to, Oh, now I can be a little bit more invested in what my life's work is all about.

So I just wanted to sort of like, add that, that for sure, it felt like a new sort of. launch point for you in a way too. That is exactly right. All right. So the first thing would be, I would, so all the way back machine for Jeff Holtzclaw, I was raised fundamentalist Christian in, uh, California, the Bay area, uh, central California, San Jose.

You know what, would it be helpful really quickly to just sort of say, like for some listeners who might not know what you mean when you say fundamentalist, do you have a really quick, uh, Sort of summary definition of what you mean when you say I was raised fundamentalist. Fundamentalist. I was raised.

Yeah. Well, so this episode is going to be kind of jargony for some, if you don't know all the church stuff, which is. Inescapable, but fundamentalist for me would be, uh, very high view of scripture and Aaron C, uh, take scripture seriously. World missions was definitely a passion as well as individual evangelism.

Uh, it was also married to like, uh, conservative politics, um, very, what is called dispensational or end of the world or rapture oriented, um, and kind Left behind kind of sense. Um, let's see what else would fundamentalism, um, very kind of militant in faith, uh, and their, the way they hold their beliefs, very individualistic, um, as far as understanding salvation, non sacramental, um, very personal, like me and Jesus kind of stuff.

Okay, thanks. I think that's helpful. So I was raised that way. Um, and it wasn't until I was probably like 17 where I would just, I learned that I had a brain, which was kind of a revolution. What? Yeah. It was like, oh, I like I like using my brain. I like thinking about things. And it was at that time that I discovered C.

S. Lewis and Francis Schaeffer. And they're kind of apologetic arguments for the faith and the God who is not silent. Um, and kind of a cosmological, like all the arguments for God's existence, uh, as well as C. S. Lewis's kind of understanding of, uh, beauty and, you know, his arguments for morality. So that was like my first kind of understanding where faith, um, could be.

Like intellectually defended rather than just like asserted kind of militantly, like the fundamentalisms, uh, that I was raised with. And then I went off to public university, a public school or a secular school as us, you know, fundamentals would want to make clear. I didn't go to a Christian school. I went to a secular school.

Was that a conscious decision or was that a financial decision? It was. A little bit of both. I think, uh, I had an early call to go into ministry. Um, and I felt like I didn't want to be sheltered and like my faith, uh, that prompted me to get to study philosophy, which is like the first part of the story.

Where, uh, because I felt like that would be a good background for theology for when I went to seminary for grad school, you know, I had my whole life mapped out, which is why I thought you were much older than you were when I first met you. That's a story for another time. That's right. So, so the main point for this first part is, is I was studying a postmodern philosophy, um, in college when I was, you know, 17, 18, 19 to 20.

And, um, I was pulling that into this kind of apologetic framework of Francis Schaeffer and C. S. Lewis and other people, um, in the sense that philosophy doesn't defeat faith or theology, but it can enrich it. It certainly does challenge it, but it doesn't defeat it, that there's ways to answer even really good and critical kind of understandings of philosophy.

Uh, and so, For me, like I took on especially like the postmodern critique of faith, um, which we can't get into all like, what is that critique, but, um, I, I kind of use it as a way to both defend faith, but it also helped me like leave my fundamentalism. Um, so I kind of used, uh, it kind of gave me a path for recovering an ancient faith.

as faith seeking understanding, not a faith that's just like all certainty. We have all the answers, but it's open to mystery, but doesn't just lead to, you know, a loss of faith or something like that. Uh, and so I'm usually, when it comes to philosophy, I'm usually a little too postmodern for my conservative friends.

And I usually defend orthodoxy a little too much for my more progressive friends, which is why your Facebook feed is so, so interesting. Yes. So that was a kind of the high level. If we think of like philosophy is kind of like those grandiose ideas. I was starting kind of like at the top level, uh, with theology and philosophy.

And then I went to seminary, uh, and then, which is, you know, lots of stories there. But then I also started getting more into like. political theory or politics, or how is the church itself, its own like social political institution? I was, and that was part of my coming out of fundamentalism is faith. Isn't just about individuals and their relationship to God.

It's our relationship to one another. And that actually, Our life together is the best witness to faith or rather is the best defense of the faith, or we could say the church is the best apologetic is what I kind of came to. So instead of the apologetics being this like realm of ideas, it's actually the lived life of the community.

That is the best apologetic. And I actually think that's why a lot of people are leaving the church right now. It's because that lived life of the church is not witnessing to the goodness of God, uh, which is, you know, another kind of. Set of conversation. And that was a pretty big shift for you from that sort of just me and Jesus all by myself, um, life that you were raised with into this sense of like, no, actually there is no life outside of this embodied witness of the community of God.

Right. And then that. Uh, spiritual formation or what we call discipleship isn't just a one on one thing. It's something that happens communally and socially. So we could think of a Sunday morning worship service as communal spiritual formation. And so that was something that, you know, I was getting, uh, brought into is that, you know, the things we do with our bodies.

On a Sunday morning in community with other people shapes and forms our faith and our life together. Um, and we're being all sorts of ways. We're being shaped and formed on Sunday mornings, even if we're not being intentional about how we're being shaped and formed. Right. And so even though the idea of like spiritual formation and kind of like.

That kind of discipline as we think of it now, isn't something that was on the top of my mind, this idea of some sort of formative work happening in the church community wasn't very much in mind. And so when I was getting my doctorate, I studied a lot of political philosophy, especially there's this interesting trend about 15 years ago where atheist.

political theorists who are kind of latching onto certain Christian views as like revolutionary kind of work. Can I quickly insert how you got your doctorate? Is that like a, like, do we not have time for that? No, that's, that's, that's a different story. Cause it's not quick. So it's God's, it's God's work.

Yeah. It was God's work that we, that, uh, that I got a doctorate. That helped me. So that kind of turned. So at the first one was like, um, philosophy doesn't defeat faith. There was also this kind of idea that political theory, uh, doesn't defeat faith too. So you can't just dismiss the church by, you know, saying, Oh, it's just one politics among many, uh, or one kind of political institution among many, it can just be reducible to anthropology or social issues or something like that.

Uh, and so I kind of started really getting a more robust and this is another, you know, deep talk topic, but the Anabaptist tradition of, uh, formation of pacifism of the community kind of working together. And it's especially it's understanding of power, um, became like really central for me. And, but that was the, again, the idea that like political theory doesn't defeat faith either.

It can enrich it and deepen it, but just engaging with politics doesn't just make faith peripheral or. Or superfluous, to use a fancy word. Okay. I do feel like it's important to at least mention that in that in between, between seminary and your doctorate, you worked at Starbucks for three years and you rode a bike through the snow to get there and back.

And you spent a lot of time with your kids. who were very small at that age. And I think that was a huge part of your formation as well, that it wasn't all happening in your head. It was also becoming a father. It was learning how to make yourself available to your, uh, stir crazy wife. And you were two little, little kids.

So you're saying I was being formed myself. Yeah, you were being formed in that whole process. And I just want to throw that in, especially for the people who are like, Oh, is he just going to talk about like heady stuff the entire time? Well, I would if you didn't interrupt. But I think this parallel process of like, you had all these ideas and you know, all these different things that you were reading that were shaping and forming you simultaneously Living a very ordinary life, serving customers coffee and dealing with, you know, people on a, like you were living real life in the middle of all of this in the real world.

Yeah. So I'm not just like a professor that's in the ivory tower who reads and writes books or something like that. Yeah. And I think that makes a big difference. And how you see the world and how you speak well and part of everything you just said is what led into kind of this third shift then, which is into like neuroscience and psychology because that was part of the path that was helping our marriage move forward.

How do we understand, uh, the skills for turning on our relational circuits and staying connected rather than slipping into protection and helping you attune to our kids when they would get attunement? Yeah. Implicit, explicit. You know, and this was. Uh, your journey quite a bit too. But I was, you know, since we're together in this life, uh, we're journeying that together and, and because I am such a researcher and, you know, primary source person, uh, after some of this trainings and things, uh, I was like, I want to, I want to learn more about this.

This is pretty interesting. So, you know, and that was, you know, 10 plus years ago and early kind of research led into our first book. Uh, but then I kind of kept going deeper into attachment theory and neuroscience, um, as well as just psychological theories. And then of course there's like trauma and abuse, church trauma, church abuse.

Uh, all that stuff is kind of like in, in, in the mix now. Um, and going, so, But there's also this trend, especially right now, where it's like the more psychology you learn or the more trauma informed you become, I see a lot of people who then is the less and less concerned or committed to faith you become, and the more and more.

sometimes militant against faith. It's faith that has been abusive. It's the church that has been traumatizing. Um, and I'm not saying that those realities aren't true for people. Yeah. Those things do happen. Right. Um, but it's not, it's not necessary that The more psychology you learn, uh, some people feel like the, well, the more psychology you learn, the more you demystify this thing called faith and find out that, you know, uh, it's not, it's not really, you know, it's just us and our own psychological needs, creating a religions as different coping mechanisms and defense mechanisms and, uh, different needs are being fulfilled through religious communities.

And on the one hand, like, well, that's kind of true, I guess. And that's not, but that doesn't mean. You can dismiss all the other realities. I mean, God knows how he made us. He knows what our desires and our relational needs are. And so I don't know, is it such a bad thing that living in a, in a community of faith when it's at its best actually does meet some of our basic human psychological needs.

I don't think it, it does. I think that's absolutely right. So for me, um, this kind of like third wave was kind of like, well, psychology can enrich faith. It doesn't defeat faith and theology. Uh, and it can't explain faith and theology away. Um, and so for me, like the path. right now is something like, well, Jesus life with Jesus is the true therapy or it is that which saves us, which is, you know, and, and salvation is like a salve.

It's, it's the thing that heals us. Like that's actually the root of the word, right? Salvation. And so we're both, you know, very, and this podcast is very committed to the idea that like, you know, God still saves and heals the wounds, um, that we have. Um, and so. So when I was talking with my coach slash spiritual director and we were kind of just outlining these like large movements, uh, and there was other kind of tragedies and difficulties in my life about like I had, uh, like a back injury when I was in my late teens and that kind of, um, you know, did certain work back injury.

Yeah. Very significant back injuries. So that did like significant work in my own life as far as emotional regulation and becoming aware. It was part of, me becoming embodied. Uh, even though my fundamentalist and family life didn't really teach me how to be an embodied person, this injury did. And so I was forced in this path to become aware of your body and what it needed and what you needed to do to take care of yourself.

Yeah. Um, well, before I had all these words and the shifts in the postmortem philosophy and theology and the practice and embodiment all before all that stuff, I had kind of lived into it. So it was all those things that kind of left me to, See that actually this apologetics thread, which is, you know, a defense of the faith or, um, kind of, uh, not a defense always sounds so defensive, but it kind of like a, a giving of reasons for the faith that led through philosophy and politics to psychology was actually, cause it was actually kind of together.

It was like one trajectory of that. I have a heart to make the faith kind of understandable on all sorts of Uh, all sorts of different levels and that that is something that's important to me. And so I, I saw, Oh, this is like works on multiple ways. So, well, okay. Go ahead. Simplify. Yeah. I think, you know, we've often talked about how you read the books that people are not normally going to read.

Because you love them, because they excite you, because you are interested, like, this is a man who in his leisure time is reading things that are not leisurely for most people. And so, just to, just to, Just to say that, like, the work that you do, I think, has always been really important. And it's that sense of, I'm going to read all these, I mean, look at the books we're surrounded, we're in Geoff's office, we're facing each other, but we're not actually next to each other.

But as we face each other, there's all these books that we're surrounded by. And they're books that I'm not going to choose to read in my spare time. But the way that you can distill them and integrate them and then present something different, I think has. Encourage so many people in their faith throughout the years and in the different various contexts that we've been in and the cohorts that we've done.

Um, and so I love that your, um, coach was able to point out, actually, this, this thing is very consistent with what the kind of work that you have always done. The flavor of that work is to integrate and make understandable. things that are really pretty complex to integrate. Oh, I like it. It's fun. So all that kind of adds up to, I started off with this initial like dichotomy, like, do I decide to just pursue embodied faith kind of more rigorously as like our partnership, you and I together, um, and kind of work on the spiritual formation stuff.

But part of me was like, ah, I like all that stuff. But there's that other side, the theology side. more cultural engagement stuff. I find really, you know, interesting and passionate as well as important. Uh, so after kind of looking at this kind of like big thread, large trajectory, I just felt like, what if I just continued to do both?

And, and the theme of, which is the theme of our next book, but the idea of attaching to God, um, I kind of came around to of like, well, actually is big enough to encompass all these concerns. Like practically, uh, on the spiritual formation neuroscience side, obviously the attaching attachment theory, uh, integrates those kinds of disciplines.

We've talked about that on this podcast, on my writings, things like that. Not as much as we could. We're going to talk more about it. But then also on the systematic theology side or just theology or, uh, scripture and how we read the Bible, uh, there's a lot there, you know, cause attaching to God is just another kind of another way of saying like God's love for us.

And how has God's love displayed throughout the Bible? How's God's love. Displayed to us through, uh, the cross and totement theory, how's God's love displayed through the church, ecclesiology. So it's all those classic kind of like topics in theology that could still be the relational nature of salvation and life with God.

And so it's, in a sense, it's not just this podcast that is Kind of getting a name change. It's kind of like Geoff's whole kind of like life work is going to be under this umbrella of attaching to God. So there we go. That's the whole, that's the whole scoop of it in 26 minutes. And why should listeners care?

Like, why does it matter to anybody that there's been this shift? How will it help them? Read your Facebook page. Oh, I don't know because just knowing the inner machinations of Jeff Holtzclaw is important. I don't machinations. Is it machinations? I don't know. I say words wrong. That's who I am. A man who wears hats.

Okay. So really, so yes. So that's why we're doing the name change. We will continue podcast that's focused on neuroscience informed spiritual formation, especially. Uh, focused on attachment theory, um, but all sorts of things we'll still continue to have guests. So in that sense, uh, things aren't going to change a lot, but we're going to do more episodes where it's just the two of us and Jeff won't talk the whole time about really heady stuff.

We'll have different kinds of conversations. So if you're listening to this episode and going, Oh my goodness. I didn't even understand half of what he was saying. Don't worry. It's not always going to be like that. We're going to talk about his cold plunge adventures. Maybe no. So, um, although we're about to talk about that, so another part of the change is we decided to have some regular, uh, and we're, and we'll take, uh, We'll take suggestions.

If anybody, well, I mean, we'll take suggestions. I don't know if we'll do that are within reason. So, but regular segments of things that are kind of like off the topic, but we always come to it. So Sid came up with this really good idea. Uh, can you briefly explain the idea? Yeah, well, it was just the idea that like, you know, we all have, people like to talk about their baggage, right?

The things that they end up carrying around and you bring with you even when you don't need it. Right. It's just always there. Especially in the relationships. And so I talked about this idea of like, check your baggage or like, Pick up, you know, like when you go on a trip, you have to check some baggage because it won't come with you onto the plane.

And so that idea of, I mean, it goes under the, you know what I mean? But it's like, so I had that idea of like, check your baggage, like willingly release it, like sort of talk about it. That's not what we're calling it though. No, because you changed it to even more clever, which was baggage claim. I don't think I did.

I think you did. Oh, well, whatever. So yes, baggage claims. So we're going to have. Us. We're going to have a regular segment called baggage claim where one of the two of us, or sometimes both of us, depending on the topic, are going to claim our baggage in the relationship. Uh, as we saw it pop up either in the previous week or month or, you know, maybe 10 minutes before we press and we will not share with each other ahead of time.

That's not true. What? Oh no, no. There's just this time. Okay. Just tell me today. So, uh, this time, so we're going to do, I'm going to do it this time. Okay. Baggage claim. It's going to be, um, I'm going to do two really short ones and then you can respond. You're going to laugh and these are kind of, yeah, yeah.

And these are kind of, you know, low hanging fruit. So then we can work up to the much more personal stuff. But the first one is, I'm going to claim the baggage of getting really passionate about random new things. Okay. So usually this is like books and research ideas, which are pretty innocuous. And they're usually in line with all the stuff about this podcast, emotions, resilience, what the heck is this thing called neuropsychology or neuropsychoanalysis, or I'll deep dive on Carl Jung for like a couple of weeks or something like that.

Uh, but more recently I did the really passionate thing about mud water. Yes. Yes. I did. So, and I started off the mud. I started off with the do it yourself version. This is like the coffee substitute with mushrooms and then like, um, chai ordering like a two pound bag of turmeric. Yeah. So I got like bags of turmeric, cinnamon, mushroom powder, chai tea powder, uh, and I don't know what else.

Right. And then I mixed it and I had this formula and I got it right for like a little bit, but then I made the big batch. Um, And I guess I screwed it all up and it tasted awful was no good. Uh, so then of course I got over the passionate thing that I was passionate about and we still have a lot of that.

That was like a year ago, but then someone else said, I think it was one of your clients or I don't know what you brought it up about the everyday dose mushroom latte thing. And I was like, I just ordered it impulsively of course. And now I've semi faded on that, but now you're hooked on it. You're drinking it like every day.

So, uh, so then what's the other big, um, passionate thing that, that I'm passionate about? The cold plunge. The cold plunge. You've talked relentlessly about the cold plunge for a long time. And then you went to Facebook marketplace and you bought yourself an old freezer and you got like a. Thing that regulates the temperature.

And then you had to reseal it and seal it. And you actually stuck, you actually stuck through a lot of hardship on that one. Yes. So I made up quickly. I made my do it yourself. It wasn't like the bad cold mud water that you chose not to try to fix. Like you kept problem solving the cold plunge and now it works, even though it won't shut.

So I used a pond liner to, uh, put inside the, uh, Freezer to keep the water in from leaking, but then the freezer, freezer, cold unit thing keeps it cold. Although it doesn't need to, cause it's still super cold right here. So that's, I'm just owning, I'm grabbing, I'm claiming the baggage of being passionate about random new things.

The other one is I'm going to claim and you as, uh, as directee. for spiritual directors. I'm a tough directee. I'm sure if any of you spiritual directors who are out there, you're like, Oh, I have, I have a couple of those. I hate talking about myself in general, which is a miracle that basically this entire episode was me talking about myself.

Yes, but it's about your intellectual. That is true. I know it's like, it's a very safe. It's like a cheat. It is. It's a cheat. So usually You know, I'm a tough directee because I give short answers. They're very precise and to the point, um, I do a lot of internal processing, which means I don't verbal process much, which I'm sure, uh, my spiritual directors like feel like, I don't know what they feel like, but so anyways, I'm going to own that too.

I'm a tough directee. Yeah, those are good baggages to own. And I, I think it's great that you have that awareness about both of those things. And I, yeah, I, I love that you can claim those. All right. So that is the Jeff Holtzclaw second half of life crisis and why we changed the name of the podcast. Call it a second half of life crisis just for this episode.

It's not, that's just, you know, it's just, it's, it's. It's a jargon. Yeah, you know, that's clickbait. I didn't really, I didn't really have a crisis, but I was doing a discernment time. You're doing a deep work. That's right. So that is what it is. So moving forward, we're going to be, uh, Sid and I are brainstorming topics.

Please, uh, wherever you see this, whether it's Facebook on the podcast, uh, where we write. Uh, or on YouTube or wherever, if you have ideas of things you would love to hear us talk about, please drop that in the comments, wherever you find it. Uh, and we'll be getting back to episodes just about one a week, uh, moving forward.

Yeah. Good stuff .