Ronnie McBrayer
Podcast of author, speaker, pastor, and spiritual teacher Ronnie McBrayer. This is his collection of talks, interviews, insights from the Enneagram, and conversations with friends on the ever-changing, ever-evolving nature of faith. It is especially for those who are “burned out on religion” - to quote Eugene Peterson’s marvelous paraphrase; for spiritual exiles; and those whose faith is in transition.
Episodes
7 days ago
7 days ago
In a new, ambitious Sunday morning series of talks, Ronnie dives headlong into the book of beginnings, the Book of Genesis. Each talk will have a movie theme, to engage the listener, this week's being "Back to the Future."
Ronnie says: "The book of Genesis was not composed and collected as a scientific explanation for the formation of the Universe... as literal, datable, fixated history...or as a combative, adversarial text to be placed in the hands of Christians, to wage ideological war with philosophers, archeologists, geologists, astronomers, modernists, post-modernists, or Darwinians. It was composed and collected in the form we have it today, as a theological anchor; a touchstone that future generations could return to, to remember their family history. It was composed and collected so that people would not forget their God. It is a book about the past. But it was written to ensure a bright and healthy future."
Thursday Jan 02, 2025
Forget The Former Things
Thursday Jan 02, 2025
Thursday Jan 02, 2025
"Yes, if I could tell of everything that will enter your life in the days, years, or even decades ahead, it just might kill you. But if you take a few moments to sit and think about everything you have already survived - you just might discover that you are tougher than you thought you were - more adaptive than you are giving yourself credit for - and have a wee but more faith than you thought you did. You just might remember that how you have gotten through hard and fearful times in the past, is by going through hard and fearful times. 'The wave crashes over us,' as James Hollis says, 'but that same wave recedes and leaves us standing.'”
Wednesday Dec 11, 2024
Hope Calling
Wednesday Dec 11, 2024
Wednesday Dec 11, 2024
Ronnie shares the story of Gary and Ronda Fleming, emphasizing the hope that comes with the Advent season: "Ronnie, your introduction of Emily Dickinson's poem, ‘Hope is the thing with feathers,’ resulted in a momentary emotion-filled mental trip from the Simple Faith sanctuary to a time in the summer of 2014, where we had a personal and very profound experience with hope as a thing with feathers..."
Friday Dec 06, 2024
Right Here, Right Now
Friday Dec 06, 2024
Friday Dec 06, 2024
"What is really important you? Put another way, if you knew your time was short, on what or to whom would you focus your evaporating minutes? To what task would you give yourself? How would your priorities change? The truth is, your time is short, so these questions apply.
"Your spirituality, faith, and overall wellbeing will grow stronger, deeper, livelier, and more vital as it becomes the more focused, more concentrated, and more simple. Don’t go for more of anything. Go for less. Paraphrasing the words of Meister Eckhart, 'The way of Jesus has much more to do with subtraction, than it does addition.' Where this art of simplification really works, and you don’t have to a mystic or uber-spiritual to experience this for yourself, is staying present in this one day that you have - today."
Tuesday Nov 19, 2024
Belief and Belligerence
Tuesday Nov 19, 2024
Tuesday Nov 19, 2024
"Yes, I am a follower of Jesus. Yes, sometimes I’m even a Christian - sometimes. That word becomes more and more problematic because of so much uncommon ground. Yes, there are a number of essential beliefs important to me and to which I hold - fewer though, as I get older. And yes, some of my beliefs are in conflict with the beliefs of others, and these conflicts are not easily dismissed - they are different - they might even be irreconcilably different. But my beliefs, as important as they may be to me, do not give me the right to be belligerent toward others who do not share my view of faith...After all, what good are our beliefs, if we use them to win arguments, but lose our credibility in the process? What good is Christian faith if it only inflates our egos? What good is it to claim the name of Jesus, but the claim only makes us mean, hard-hearted, and judgmental?"
Tuesday Nov 05, 2024
For the Healing of the World
Tuesday Nov 05, 2024
Tuesday Nov 05, 2024
Jesus wasn't the first Jewish rabbi to codify a "golden rule" or to emphasize the Great Commandment(s) to "Love God and love your neighbor." Jesus was - and is - however, the one to make the ethic of love normative for we who call ourselves Christian, for love is the only thing that can "tikkun olam." From the Hebrew: Love is the only thing that can "heal the world." Politics will not heal the world. Your voting card will not heal the world. The United States of America will not heal the world. There are rooted in power, and as followers of Jesus, our calling is not to seize the steering wheel - to get our own way. Our calling is to practice is joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control - orbiting around this nucleus of love for God and love for neighbor.
Monday Oct 28, 2024
"The Dying of the Light"
Monday Oct 28, 2024
Monday Oct 28, 2024
"'Do not go gentle in that good night.' That’s the line that I see dancing behind the blind Bartimaeus story, this man persistent enough to not be left in the dark. Dylan Thomas was the Welsh poet who authored the furious, defiant lines: "Do not go gentle into that good night…burn and rave at close of day. Rage, rage against the dying of the light.' How was Bartimaeus’ sight restored? By a power outside himself - you can count on that. Yet, at the same time, there was a faith-shaped persistence at work; a hope-filled determination; a refusal to go gentle into that good night.
"There’s no assurance that you will always get what you seek - if ever; no guarantee that the door will always open, that your prayer will be answered as you expect, or that your 'faith will always become sight' - to quote an appropriate New Testament turn of phrase. Life is far too unpredictable and exceedingly mysterious for any of that. And anyone trying to tell you different or sell you a warranty is just trying to, again to use an appropriate phrase, to rob you blind. But as people of faith - we have to have a little faith." (See Mark 10:46-52)
Wednesday Oct 23, 2024
Power and Glory
Wednesday Oct 23, 2024
Wednesday Oct 23, 2024
As it was in the days of Jesus, so it is today. This society is Machiavellian to its core - trunk, root, and branch. The end justifies the means.Do whatever it takes to reach your goal, no matter how dirty or how ugly or how corrupt. Politics - obviously so - from the most local election to the highest seat in the land. In our economics - so long as the shareholders make their money, do whatever it takes, hurt whoever has to be hurt. On your job - it’s cut throats and stabbed backs; tattle-telling and sabotage just to get ahead. How we treat this beautiful world: Rules can be bent - rules can be broken - progress, development: Those have become synonyms for greed and selfishness.
What did Jesus say? “But among you it will be different." That difference replaces supremacy with sacrifice; it replaces being at the top, with a willingness to go to the back of the line. It’s not obsessed with getting one’s way - but with helping someone else along the way. It’s different in that the ambition is to not to conquer others, but to be in service to others."
Wednesday Oct 16, 2024
Make It Count
Wednesday Oct 16, 2024
Wednesday Oct 16, 2024
"Teach us to number our days, wrote the Psalmist, "that we may gain a heart of wisdom.” Certainly, the writer is instructing us all to count our days; that is, be aware of how brief life is. Going further, the writer is making sure that we make those few days of life, really count. Sure, we would all like to have a little extra time, but the only way to have extra time is to realize how little time you actually have - and to make that time count.
Wednesday Oct 09, 2024
Why Me Lord: The Gospel According to Kris Kristofferson
Wednesday Oct 09, 2024
Wednesday Oct 09, 2024
With the recent passing of songwriter, actor, and icon Kris Kristofferson, Ronnie took some time to reflect upon his life - a life that can never be duplicated. From the talk: "To know and become who you really are - who God made you to be - to take up the life that only you can live, a life that can never be replicated: This is the beginning of the soul’s fulfillment. But it often requires a giving up - a letting go - of all you have been holding on to, be it as a privileged Rhodes Scholar or a middle class grunt stuck on the hamster wheel of someone else’s expectation. To have the courage to be yourself, and to take the risk to follow that path, that’s true freedom - that’s another word for nothing left to lose. And inevitability, this freedom will lead you to grace - 'undeserved privilege' - and gratitude for the life God has bless you with."