IIC 170: St. Bonaventure Anticipates Catholic Parts Work

[00:00:00] Dr. Peter: Saint Bonaventure. Saint Bonaventure, 13th century Franciscan theologian. He’s an academic, a bishop, a cardinal, doctor of the church. He has a big heart. He’s writing in the Middle Ages, 13th century, bringing in our emotions, all of our experience into our lives. He says, “When we pray, the voice of the heart must be heard more than the proceedings of the mouth.” I just love that, the voice of the heart. And then he also says in Journey to the Soul of God, he says, “Let us not believe that it is enough to read without unction, to speculate without devotion, to investigate without wonder, to observe without joy, to act without godly zeal, to know without love, to understand without humility, to strive without divine grace, or to reflect as a mirror without divinely inspired wisdom.”

[00:01:16] Dr. Peter: Listen to those words. Listen to what he’s telling us we need. We need unction. We need oomph, right? We need devotion. We need wonder. We need joy. We need zeal, godly zeal. We need love. We need humility. And we need divine grace. We need divinely inspired wisdom. We need not just our left brain, we need our right brain. And that’s one of the beautiful things about St. Bonaventure. What can he teach us though about our inner life, our parts, our multiplicity, our unity, our inner system? Well, he starts by saying, this is not just about knowing. Manager parts so often want to know, but it’s not just about knowing. He says, “To know much and taste nothing — of what use is that?” We need to taste, we need to experience, we need to engage relationally.

[00:02:16] Dr. Peter: But how can he help us to love ourselves in an ordered way so that we can better love God and love our neighbor? St. Bonaventure says, “No one can become blessed unless he ascends above his very self, not by an ascent with the body, but with the heart.” With the heart. And how do we connect with divine grace in all our being? He says, “Divine grace makes God man and man God.” That’s that theosis we’ve been talking about, divinization, deification. So he says, “Divine grace makes God man and man God, things temporal eternal, mortal immortal. It makes an enemy a friend, a servant a son, vile things glorious, cold hearts fiery, and hard things liquid.” This guy’s interesting.

[00:03:15] Dr. Peter: And how did St. Bonaventure anticipate not only Internal Family Systems, but also elements of attachment theory and interpersonal neurobiology, by seven or eight centuries? We’re going to get into that with our special guest, with our co-host, and I am so excited to be bringing it to you now. I am Dr. Peter Malinoski, also known as Dr. Peter. I am your host in this Interior Integration for Catholics podcast. It is so good to have you with us. Welcome to you with all your parts. I am a clinical psychologist, a trauma therapist, a podcaster, a writer, the co-founder and president of Souls and Hearts. But most of all, most of all, I am a beloved little son of God, a passionate Catholic who wants to help you to taste and see the height and depth and breadth and warmth and the light of the love of God, especially God your father, and also Mary your mother. These are your spiritual parents, your primary parents.

[00:04:25] Dr. Peter: This is not just about knowing. This is about tasting and seeing. I’m here to help you embrace your identity as a beloved little child of God and Mary with all your heart, with all your parts. And throughout all of 2025, we are bringing in the insights of Internal Family Systems, developed by Dr. Richard Schwartz and other parts and systems models too, and we are harmonizing them with the truths of the Catholic faith. Why? Why? Here’s why. It’s all about helping you live out the three great loves and the two great commandments: to love God, your neighbor and yourself. That’s what it’s all about. And I’m bringing you the best of the Catholic professionals in the field as my expert guests, as my co-hosts, to share with you their insights, their understanding and experience. And again, why? So that you can love wholeheartedly with all your parts. Oh boy. Here it’s coming. It’s a little bit of a dad joke. Dare I say, whole-partedly. Whole-partedly. A little dad play in words there. But to love God and share in his joy, with all your parts sharing in the bliss of a deep union with God forever and ever.

[00:05:41] Dr. Peter: This is episode 170 of the Interior Integration for Catholics podcast. It releases on July 21st, 2025, and it’s titled St. Bonaventure, your Heart and Your Parts Work. We’re getting into the fascinating thought and work of St. Bonaventure. He’s an amazing person. We just celebrated his feast day last Tuesday, on July 15th. And with me, I have back in the virtual studio, Dr. Christian Amalu as my co-host, Dr. Gerry Crete as our expert guest. And we have been teaming up lately on so many episodes, 166 on Scripture, 167 on the early Church Fathers, 168 on St. Augustine, 169 on St. Maximus, all in this great effort to ground our understanding of Internal Family Systems and parts work in a deep Catholic anthropology, a broad understanding of the nature of the human person, grounded in, again, this Catholic tradition, what we have been given through Divine Revelation.

[00:06:44] Dr. Peter: And so today in the studio we have Dr. Gerry Crete, a dear friend and colleague. We’ve been through a lot together. And Dr. Gerry has had an intense personal journey. He is no stranger to trauma himself. He’s the author of the book, Litanies of the Heart, published last year by Sophia Press, and so much of his wisdom and knowledge in that book, so much of his attunement to those of us who are hurting come from his own experience, his own recovery, and his own flourishing. He’s a licensed marriage and family therapist in Atlanta, Georgia, and he’s the founder and owner of Transfiguration Counseling and Coaching, which is now in many locations, seven states. It’s in Georgia, in North and South Carolina, in Florida, in Texas. It is in so many different places. You can check that out. We’re going to give you the link in the YouTube description below. He’s got 14 professionals on his team. And he co-founded with me Souls and Hearts in 2019.

[00:07:42] Dr. Peter: And as my co-host, Dr. Christian Amalu. I gotta tell you that Dr. Christian, I’ve been so impressed in how he gripped onto the challenge of integrating Internal Family Systems with a Catholic anthropology. I journeyed with him as the third reader on his doctoral dissertation. That doctoral dissertation, it’s available in the comment section of the YouTube presentation of this video. Go to that, episode 170, Interior Integration 4 Catholics. That dissertation has been downloaded more than a thousand times. There’s so much interest in how he’s bringing together Catholicism and Internal Family Systems. So Dr. Gerry, it is just so good to have you back with us. Thank you for being here.

[00:08:30] Dr. Gerry: I’m so glad to be here. This is fun. I love all these.

[00:08:36] Dr. Peter: .And Dr. Christian Amalu, it is just a pleasure to see you again and to be reunited, like we’re getting the band back together here to talk about St. Bonaventure. So good to have you.

[00:08:49] Dr. Christian: Well, thank you. That just tells me we need a band name ’cause honestly, just it’s so fun to be with the both of you. So thank you. So glad to be a part of this band.

[00:08:58] Dr. Peter: I have been looking forward to this concert for like, days, weeks now. ‘Cause I am just really getting into what we are discussing, the anthropological roots of this in our Catholic tradition. And you know, like I said, we’ve been through this with Scripture. We’ve been talking about the early church fathers, St. Augustine, St. Maximus, now St. Bonaventure. And I’m just wondering if we can kind of open up, Dr. Gerry, would you just give us just kind of a thumbnail sketch, maybe a little biography of who is this man, St. Bonaventure?

[00:09:40] Dr. Gerry: Yeah. Yeah, I’d love to. It’s so funny because I knew the name Bonaventure forever, it seems, and associated with the Franciscans. And yet if you had asked me, you know, five years ago or something, or 10 years ago, like, tell me about Bonaventure, I probably wouldn’t have been able to say very much. Just like there are universities named after him and this kind of thing. But he was Italian, so he was an Italian. He became a Franciscan. He lived in the 13th century. He taught at the University of Paris. So he was a scholar obviously. And it was right at the same time that Thomas Aquinas was also related to the University of Paris.

[00:10:24] Dr. Gerry: So we don’t have historical evidence that they met, but there’s a good chance they would have. And his writings and his works at the University of Paris were very academic, very orthodox, very, you know, whatever. They’re fine. But he then was made the Minister General of the Franciscan Order, I can’t remember which, like seventh or eighth, like it’s still early on in the Franciscan order in their history. So he was the head of the Franciscan order. He was also made a bishop and a cardinal. So he was a cardinal in the Catholic church, which is quite something. But his writings, once he became Minister General of the Franciscan Order, took a mystic turn. So a lot of his writings at that time were very deep, poetic, metaphysical, if you will.

[00:11:16] Dr. Gerry: Like it was quite a difference. So you see some of his most, I think, moving works, like the big one we’ll probably talk about today is called the Soul’s Journey to God. That one is very profound, very moved me greatly. I feel like it should be way more read. I feel like he was obviously inspired directly or indirectly by St. Maximus the Confessor in writing this. And that is probably the most relevant of his books when it comes to looking at parts and understanding the inner world. So there’s that.

[00:11:53] Dr. Gerry: But he also wrote The Tree of Life, which is a fascinating book about connecting this concept of this tree of life and to Jesus’ life. And he also wrote a history of St. Francis. He actually was able to like interview people that knew St. Francis, people that still had known St. Francis were still alive at that time. And that’s an interesting read to be perfectly honest. And actually I had to consult with a Seraphic hermit to help me understand that book a little bit. That was actually helpful.

[00:12:28] Dr. Christian: That sounds like quite the encounter.

[00:12:31] Dr. Gerry: When you meet a Seraphic hermit, you never forget it. I’m gonna leave that as mysterious. Anyhow. So, he had this interesting life. He was a philosopher, a theologian, and a mystic. So that’s just a little snapshot of St. Bonaventure. And he was declared a doctor of the church. And the title that he’s normally given is the Seraphic Doctor, which is the highest, the seraph is the highest order of angels.

[00:12:58] Dr. Peter: Right. Highest order of angels.

[00:13:00] Dr. Gerry: So when any Thomistic person comes to me and says that Thomas Aquinas, the angelic doctor, is better, I just say, well, Bonaventure is the Seraphic doctor. I hope I don’t start any fights with that comment.

[00:13:16] Dr. Christian: I mean, the fact that you go to the hierarchy is a little bit pushing it because technically angel itself is the lowest of the hierarchy. 

[00:13:29] Dr. Gerry: I wasn’t gonna say it.

[00:13:31] Dr. Christian: No, I said it.

[00:13:31] Dr. Gerry: I was leaving that implied.

[00:13:33] Dr. Peter: Thrones and dominions, right.

[00:13:35] Dr. Christian: I’m gonna get some pushback from some now. Oh, well.

[00:13:39] Dr. Gerry: I wasn’t gonna rub that in.

[00:13:42] Dr. Peter: But there’s a complementarity. There’s a complementarity about it because this is from the Catholic Encyclopedia. So that was written in the early 20th century, and it says, “Thomas Aquinas was the teacher of the schools, Bonaventure of practical life; Thomas enlightened the mind, Bonaventure inflamed the heart; Thomas extended the Kingdom of God by the love of theology, Bonaventure by the theology of love.”

[00:14:16] Dr. Gerry: Hmm. Oh my gosh. Can you send that to me? That is so wonderful.

[00:14:21] Dr. Peter: Yeah, absolutely. ” Even those who hold that Bonaventure does not reach the level of St. Thomas in the sphere of scholastic speculation concede that as a mystic he far surpasses the angelic doctor.” So you see there’s different strengths here, like there’s a complementarity. That’s the word that kept coming to mind as we were kind of talking about St. Thomas and we were talking about St. Bonaventure, this complementarity. And I do love that. Thomas extended the Kingdom of God by the love of theology, Bonaventure by the theology of love, right? And I would not expect the Catholic encyclopedia to wax so poetic on this, but I just thought that was just such a beautiful compare and contrast, and then the complementarity of it all.

[00:15:05] Dr. Gerry: No, I absolutely love it. I have fallen in love with Bonaventure, and I see him as a son of Maximus. I don’t know that we explicitly know what he had that belonged to Maximus. He would’ve probably had the whatever translations of the Ambiguaa that Eriugena had made. But nevertheless, he speaks Maximus’ language and he really seems to draw a bit more from the Cappadocian fathers, those Greek fathers, and St. John of Damascene as well, and other Greek fathers. And so, there’s just a richness and a tradition there. And in some ways, the Franciscan tradition itself, it echoes some Eastern tones, let’s just say, in a way that maybe the Dominicans don’t so much.

[00:15:53] Dr. Christian: Yeah, but that gets into that complementarity piece that Peter is talking about, because it’s not heart or head. It’s both. I can see that strength in that then, especially if they were teaching at the same time or they were contemporaries that they both were forming maybe the two different sides of the same coin, so to speak, giving us a more complete image. I like that idea of the complementarity of the heart and head there.

[00:16:21] Dr. Peter: And all of this is going on in the so-called Dark Ages, you know?

[00:16:26] Dr. Christian: The Dark Ages as dark as we usually think.

[00:16:30] Dr. Gerry: No, I think the 13th century was flourishing with spirituality. And Maximus would’ve been during the Dark Ages too, when he was bright beacon of light. So, it’s interesting, when you look at the sort of history of the understanding of knowledge and love and what does it mean to know God. And a lot of the early writers, certainly the desert fathers and the church fathers, tended to move in that sort of Platonic kind of movement to see the nous as intellect only. And to see that the final kind of ultimate thing was to know God. And they kinda left it there. And there were a few exceptions like St. Macarius, a very early writer who spoke of God’s love as the ultimate. And Maximus gets to this notion of God’s love as well. And then you see somebody like St. Bonaventure and some of the others, not just him, but some of the Victorians and some of the early Cistercians around this time, and St. Bernard of Clairvaux, of course, were also like picking up in a big way this concept of love. That the ultimate in knowing God was actually knowing God’s love. Experiencing God’s love was the ultimate in knowing God. And even in some of the writings you see of the spiritual senses, you know, some of the poetic writings is like that we see with two eyes when we see God. This idea of two eyes, one eye of knowledge and wisdom and one eye of love. And that they’re both active. So there’s this sort of a balance really there, which I think is beautiful.

[00:18:20] Dr. Peter: So let’s just kind of get into this. We’re in this deep dive, 2025, of thinking about Internal Family Systems, IFS, thinking about parts work, looking for what is there to kind of support or not support some of these more modern ideas around multiplicity systems thinking, the idea that we have parts. So I’m just curious about what you, ’cause you know Bonaventure so much more than I do. I actually have a lot of love for Bonaventure because back when I was more psychoanalytic and focused on the unconscious, you know, and as one of the heirs of Freud, if you will, I really loved Bonaventure because he didn’t focus just on the intellect and the will. He also included the memory. That’s sort of the tripartite way. And that was sort of the key to being able to open up like, what do I remember right now and what do I not remember right now? And sort of open the door to this idea that the unconscious could exist. Now, most people will say that you can find the unconscious in St. Thomas. It was a little more obvious to me in some of St. Bonaventure’s work that we have an unconscious. So I owe a debt of gratitude to him. You know, this is going back 15 years, but, you know Bonaventure so much more. I have not really gotten into thinking about Bonaventure and parts and systems thinking. So what have you got for us on this? I’m just curious what you would sort of point out.

[00:19:43] Dr. Gerry: Related to the unconscious? I mean.

[00:19:45] Dr. Peter: Well, more to parts and systems thinking. You know, obviously that brings in the unconscious to the degree that parts are available in conscious awareness or not, but more to just parts, systems thinking, multiplicity.

[00:19:55] Dr. Gerry: Yeah. Oh, oh yeah. No, he’s got a lot. So we know as Catholics, we know as Orthodox Catholics, that the Trinity is one, God is one, and we know that the Trinity is three divine persons, so there’s no contradiction ultimately. But those are two kind of concepts. Well, in the Western church, especially St. Augustine, there was an emphasis placed on the unity. And I’m not saying the others were discounted whatsoever. I’m just saying the overall emphasis was on the unity. The Eastern fathers, like the Cappadocian fathers, emphasized the plurality. They emphasized the three divine persons.

[00:20:39] Dr. Gerry: And we have this term, it’s an interesting term, St. Gregory of Nazianzus, who’s one of the three holy hierachs. He is like one of the greatest saints of all time in Christianity. He used the verb “pericorio.” And then later St. Maximus the Confessor uses the noun “perichoresis.” And in both of these are in reference to the Trinity. And later St. John of Damascene picks up this same term of “perichoresis.” And what does this term mean? It’s a Greek term that means inter-penetration, and it sees the Trinity as existing intimately related to each other. It emphasizes the relationality of the Trinity. It emphasizes how they’re kind of pouring themselves into each other. There’s a sense in which they’re mutually in here in one another. They draw life from one another. There’s this whole dynamism and that is emphasized more in the East. And then you see Bonaventure in the West, in the 13th century, use the Latin word. Of course he’s not using the Greek word, but he’s using the Latin word “circum incessio.” I don’t know if I’m saying that right. But it means that the three persons moved around one another in a communion of love. So he’s not focusing on the unity of the Trinity. He’s focusing on this sort of movement within the Trinity that is about a communion of love. And so he’s emphasizing the plurality that is within the Trinity and the relationality of the Trinity. And then he makes the connection to the humanity as in the image of God is reflecting that relationality. We’re not the same, we’re certainly not in essence, you know, we’re not some kind of three persons in one essence or something like that, exactly. But we reflect that relationality and that communion of love within us. And so I feel like Bonaventure, of all of these Western theologians and mystics, really grasps this inner plurality of the human person. So that’s beautiful.

[00:23:08] Dr. Christian: It is, it is. Just hearing that, that emphasis, because that goes along with that idea of love being this focus of Bonaventure, because relationship has to exist with love. That’s the whole point of love is that relationality. It also sounds like Bonaventure kind of went to that deeper kind of development of what Augustine talked about with the human person being made in the image of the Trinity specifically. Because we did talk about that in the episode on Augustine. It sounds like Bonaventure went to that next degree and really flushed it out.

[00:23:43] Dr. Gerry: Yeah. He sees the Father as the source of love, the Son as the emanation of love, and the Spirit as the act of the will in love. And so he sees these different kind of roles there within and that the Spirit is such an act of the divine will that it’s a gift of God’s love and that the spirit unites the Father and the Son in that. So it’s kind of profound, deep stuff about this interplay between the three persons of the Trinity, but it’s dynamic, the Trinity is dynamic. It’s expressive, it’s overflowing with goodness, and it’s overflowing with creativity. And in that outward moving expression that it naturally creates the world right in love. So the world, all of creation, is created in an act of love that flows from this love from the Trinity. And so creation itself is a dynamic expression of the love between the Father and the Son, and then willed in a sense, through the Spirit. And so creation will always have this inherent mark. Mark is such a weak word, inherent, like.

[00:25:05] Dr. Christian: Imprint?

[00:25:06] Dr. Gerry: Imprint is still weak, but yeah, maybe better, like of the Trinity, like in everything. And that’s where like Bonaventure being a Franciscan and thinking of Francis, like Francis just lived that. He literally lived in the Canticle of the Sun. Like he literally expressed this concept that creation is just an act of God’s love. And he just rejoiced in that, St. Francis did, like he just lived in that world of beauty and goodness and creativity and that was all given by God and his love. And so there’s just a beauty in that, right? It’s unbelievable beauty.

[00:25:46] Dr. Peter: Well, one of the quotes here that’s from St. Bonaventure is that, “Every creature is a divine word because it proclaims God.” So kind of reflecting that and reflecting, so now I’m thinking about sort of being made in the image and likeness of God, and now with this Bonaventuran understanding of God and the Trinity and the unity and the relationality and the community, like there’s gotta be more than just a single homogenous personality in us then. There’s gotta be a way we can love ourselves and relate with ourselves. And it’s like, wow, that’s really exciting.

[00:26:25] Dr. Gerry: I cannot wait to get to how Bonaventure uses the works of Thomas Galles, who takes from Dionysus. However, before I go there, because I don’t wanna lose the thread of what we were just saying, because you just started to say something about a song, I think, and Bonaventure describes creation. He describes it as the Art of the Father, in one metaphor. But he also describes it as, “A beautiful song that flows in the most excellent harmonies, which God sings in the vastness of the universe.” I know.

[00:27:06] Dr. Peter: I’m getting chills, man. I’m getting chills.

[00:27:08] Dr. Christian: This is speaking my language, ’cause this sounds like maybe what Tolkien got as an image for his own cosmogony, in the Silmarillion, because the world, existence, comes into being through the music of God.

[00:27:21] Dr. Gerry: Yeah, yeah. What the Word utters unfolds this canvas of creation, like this artwork that is manifesting the glory of the creator, of the artist. And our role is to participate in this manifest glory. Like our role is to express this glory. And that creation is this cosmic symphony, which emphasizes harmony and order. The universe has unity within multiplicity and it’s ordered and it all has a goal. The telos, right? The Greek word “telos.” So like it has a purpose and a goal. So the whole universe is moving toward a particular end in union with God. So to me, Bonaventure’s like gloriously beautiful. He takes what Maximus has been saying in my view, and Maximus can be a little heady and hard to always put together, and he just like refines it in a poetic way.

[00:28:29] Dr. Gerry: Oh, and then to understand also that, as humans, we are the crown of God’s created order. So we are given freedom. We are created as this mediator. Well, Christ is the mediator, in the incarnation, we talked about that before in a few of the other podcasts. But in the fact that He is both human and divine, then he is the ultimate mediator between created world and the spiritual world. But we participate in that with him. And so we are called to be with him in this project. And when we choose God, when we choose this project, we become like God. And the reason we become like God is because we become like him in love. When we’re in love with this order and this purpose and this harmony and this goal, this mission, this kingdom of God, this kingdom of love, we become like Him. We reflect him. And we reflect the Trinity in that way. And so we are therefore the crown of all creation. And we have this amazing mission. But we could also choose to ignore it. That’s where sin comes in, right? And the fall comes in, is that, in sin instead of getting on board with that project, instead of seeing that we instead chose to focus on our own self pleasure, on our own drives, and we’re in our own self, like in a selfish way, not talking about being in self. I’m talking about being self-driven where we don’t care about others and we don’t care about God and we just want what we want. We want accumulate wealth, and we just wanna accumulate our own good.

[00:30:10] Dr. Peter: In a sense, we’re cutting ourselves off from everything else then, right? We’re disconnecting from the broader, beautiful symphony. We’re kind of going our own way, playing our own song, if you will, trying to.

[00:30:26] Dr. Christian: And that resonates with me in what is talked about in the Vatican II document Gaudium et Spes, that “Man finds himself in a sincere gift of himself.” That’s the ultimate end, that we be a gift. And hearing this, it’s like, how much is us becoming that personal gift is that participation in the music, that participation in the symphony, to take our place in that grand order, and in that relationality, and if we cut ourselves off, it’s almost like retracting that gift. It’s like, no, I’m not going to be a gift to others. And it isolates you and makes you maybe cave in on your own little inner world, and ultimately that divides you from love.

[00:31:11] Dr. Gerry: Mm-hmm. So I think what Bonaventure gets at is that creation is a theophany or an epiphany. Like it’s an expression of God’s glory, right? And that every creature is, I think you were alluding to this earlier on at the beginning of the podcast, is a little Word. So it’s like Christ is the Word, but it’s a little Word and expresses some aspect of God’s self-expression. And so the world, therefore, is sacramental itself. And St. Francis embodies that in what we know of what he’s expressed, right? And especially Canticle of the Sun, like he expresses this sacramentality, brother Sun, you know, sister Moon, the whole gamut where he sees in all of nature the beauty of God’s glory. It’s a symbol of, sign of God’s presence. It’s full and rich with meaning. And Bonaventure obviously is a Franciscan and still close to the beginning of the foundation of the order. Captures all that beautifully.

[00:32:24] Dr. Peter: So, you know, when you’re talking about like the symphony, or the canvas, or how each of us is a little Word kind of reflecting the bigger Word. It’s all telling me systems, right? It’s all taken us right back to episodes 163 and 164 of like the systems. That sounds kind of like maybe a cold, clinical, kinda word. But if we think about it within the context of all of that relationality, all of that, having a place, belonging in creation, as part of creation. I mean, that’s just, it just opens up whole vistas. It’s very different than, oh, it’s just me and Jesus, I just have this personal relationship with Jesus and that’s it. It’s just so much broader than that.

[00:33:12] Dr. Christian: Well, yeah. And that goes back to what the Apostle John talks about. I think it’s in his first letter where he talks about you can’t choose to love God and not love your neighbor. There’s this innate necessity in being a part of the system, this order, this canvas that has been made. You have that connection to others and that’s meant to be fostered. And it’s not supplanting love of God. That’s how love of God becomes actualized is by your participation in that.

[00:33:43] Dr. Peter: And Joseph Pieper, Thomistic scholar, 20th century, was talking about how Freud deemed some people unlovable. And he said that was monstrous. Pieper says that’s monstrous. Because if you understand like who a person is, ontologically, in their essence, in this unfolding of creation, like how we are indeed fearfully and wonderfully made, and that that person is loved by God and that we may have to share in the love of God for that person because we might not be able to generate a natural love for that person, but that within this system, we can connect into that love so that what might feel unlovable can become lovable. But I am really curious, Gerry, can you take us to where you wanted to take us before? Because I’m sort of sitting on the edge of my seat for that. And I wanna also say that if you are listening to this, the vast majority of people that take in this podcast, we love you guys, we love you women, like the vast majority are audio only. But if you do have a chance to come and watch us on YouTube, you will get the expressions and the gestures of Dr. Gerry Crete which add just a whole another dimension to the story that he’s sharing with us. So I gotta say, what do you think, Christian? I mean, would it be worth coming over to just see the gestures that Dr. Gerry is offering us?

[00:35:20] Dr. Christian: I mean, it matters to me. Absolutely.

[00:35:23] Dr. Gerry: You know, you’re making me self-conscious about my arms.

[00:35:25] Dr. Peter: Oh no. Oh no.

[00:35:27] Dr. Christian: Well, if it helps, Gerry.

[00:35:27] Dr. Gerry: You know, I’m half French Canadian. So I can’t help that. Okay, before I go there, because I wanna keep everyone suspense about this.

[00:35:38] Dr. Peter: Oh my goodness. Oh my goodness.

[00:35:39] Dr. Gerry: I do wanna speak to something else you said before we lose track of it, which is about consciousness or unconsciousness or whatever. Bonaventure had a term called “contuition.” Contuition is the consciousness of God’s presence together with the object of creation itself. So it could be a tree or a flower or a bear or a goat, but it’s this consciousness of seeing God’s presence in these things. And he used the word contuition. I don’t know who else uses that term, but I did wanna say it’s a cool term. Okay. And then the segue to what you’re all excited about me talking about is gonna be this other term that we see in, I don’t know to what extent Bonaventure used the term, but people use it for him, which is called “exemplarism.” Exemplar, so I think the word exemplar, from exemplarism, is the idea that everything exists in a copy or replica based on a pattern or model. So it’s basically the idea of archetypes, way before Carl Jung, right? But they exist in the divine mind, and especially in the word of God, so in the second person of the Trinity, but I’m sure just God, right? And so this idea that there are patterns that are nested within patterns. This is a difficult concept to grasp, but I think it’s going to, when we talk about systems, it’ll start to make sense, right? Because, for example, St. Francis of Assisi was an exemplar of Christ. He lived out his life, I think most people would say, or most Catholics would say, he was the most Christlike of all the saints, literally even experienced the stigma, right? And literally lived in poverty and so on. And that he was the closest to Christ in so many ways. And so he was a perfect exemplar. And in some ways we are called to be, in our own ways, exemplars of Christ as well. So this idea that you can see patterns and forms in the world, reflecting other things, right? And so even like the trinity. It’s not that we see the Trinity in nature, like essentially, but we see exemplars of it. We see exemplars of various things in creation that reflect the heavens, that reflect this greater truth over and over and over again. So I kind of want to lay that out there because I think to understand what I’m about to say might be good to have some understanding of what an exemplar is.

[00:38:31] Dr. Gerry: Okay. So. Here’s the biggie. This is what you’ve all been waiting for apparently. Please don’t be that disappointed by the end of this, but, okay, so if we go back to Dionysus the Arapagite, Pseudo Dionysus the Arapagite, I think we mentioned him earlier on. And so, you know, Maximus took stuff from Dionysus and took stuff from Evagrius and kind of brought it together. Evagrius was more grounded in like vice and virtue and like asceticism, and Dionysus the Arapagite was a little more lofty and some of his works were about the divine names. He was big on also like how we can never really fully know God at all, even in his names. But on some level we can understand God using these names, even though they’re inadequate. But Dionysus also wrote the Celestial Hierarchies, which is a really great read if anybody wants to read it. And he describes all the angels and he describes the hierarchy of angels.

[00:39:36] Dr. Gerry: Alright. And so that’s just a fascinating read to understand that. And that’s where we do understand those levels we were talking about earlier. The angels are the lowest actually, and that all the way up. And you’ve got the Cherubim and others, and Principalities and Thrones and all the way up to the Seraphim. The Seraphim are the fiery angels, they’re the highest and they’re fiery because they’re just so inflamed with God’s love, and they’re the ones who are closest to God in the kingdom or whatnot. So they’re just like these fiery, powerful beings. Okay. So he describes all these different angels with different roles and different functions, and within the kingdom of God, if you will, within the heavens. Okay. Thomas Galles, who’s writing in like, again, early, I’d have to look it up for sure. Like, I think also early 13th century. So around this time, made the connection between the celestial hierarchy of Dionysus and our interior world. And St. Bonaventure picks it up, which gives it more credibility. Thomas Galles is a pretty cool dude, but Bonaventure is the Seraphic doctor, so he’s got the credibility. And so the idea that within us is a hierarchy that is an exemplar of the angelic hierarchy exists within us in our interior world. You see where I’m going? So there’s a sense in which within us is a very complex multiplicity of parts. And so with different roles and different functions, and now of course if within us is an exemplar of the celestial hierarchy, it means that all of our parts are angelic, if all of our parts are functioning fully the way they’re meant to. Which is not gonna be the case for almost any human being. Perhaps the first human being to actually have an inner world that reflected the hierarchy of angels would’ve been our Lady, well, Christ, but then our Lady.

[00:41:47] Dr. Peter: Well, do you think Adam and Eve would’ve before the fall?

[00:41:50] Dr. Gerry: Woo. Good question.

[00:41:52] Dr. Peter: Prelapsarian, you know.

[00:41:54] Dr. Gerry: Yeah, I don’t know. I mean, one might think so. Yeah.

[00:41:58] Dr. Peter: I mean, it’s not a question for today necessarily, but I just wanted to kinda throw that out there. ’cause I’m always curious about like, what it was like before the fall, right? But there was at least a potential for disorder to set in because it did, you know, like there was a fall. But yeah, I would agree with you definitely about our Lady, especially conceived immaculately before Christ took on his human nature.

[00:42:16] Dr. Gerry: Here’s the thing, like I think that the way that I tend to see it, which tends to be the Eastern Christian way to see it, would be that even though it’s not defined anywhere, like for sure, we don’t always know, but would be that Adam and Eve were immature. They were young. If you will. Not bad, just young. Obviously they were in God’s image, even his full likeness was still yet to come for them in maturity.

[00:42:48] Dr. Peter: Right. Because the Eastern tends to make a greater distinction between the image and the likeness.

[00:42:55] Dr. Gerry: And so they were meant to grow into full maturity, which means to grow into the full likeness. And so they weren’t quite there, and then things got disrupted with sin, right? They were grasping in choosing to eat the fruit that was forbidden. They were grasping for what they weren’t ready for.

[00:43:23] Dr. Christian: Yeah.

[00:43:24] Dr. Gerry: Right. But still, it was what God intended for them in the long run.

[00:43:27] Dr. Peter: Right.

[00:43:28] Dr. Gerry: But it threw the whole thing off. And so, I don’t know, I’d really have to think and sit with this idea, like what was the celestial hierarchy look like within them before the fall? I would imagine it would’ve been there in some level. Maybe it wouldn’t have been fully developed. I don’t know. And what that would mean if it wasn’t fully matured. You know, or whether it reflects some kind of fall, like the angels that fell, right, that maybe there was this sort of internal fall perhaps. I don’t wanna overdo it though. But, in any case, what Bonaventure does in picking up this concept though, is really speaks to that inner multiplicity within us. But it’s a very positive one, right? Because it’s like a real positive view of our inner world if it’s meant to reflect the celestial hierarchy.

[00:44:27] Dr. Christian: So profound. I absolutely love it. And throwing my hat in just a little bit with the idea of the celestial hierarchy before the fall. I would agree with that position of like, the likeness grows over time. The image being, being present at the beginning. But yes, that kind of almost immaturity, like, you’re not done yet. You have yet to fully become what you’re meant to be. But maybe that things were more intact, more integrated, more congruous and harmonious, and that sin kind of threw that off kilter. I would imagine in that if we were to map that celestial hierarchy onto that idea that maybe it might’ve been a maybe a more rudimentary order, but that things were operating in a mirror of what the celestial hierarchy was doing before the throne of God, and that that becomes off kilter from sin. That’s just kind of some of the first things popping into mind for me of how that could map on there. And that maybe that’s part of what Bonaventure is getting at is that ordering of the hierarchy as part of what we’re doing in the spiritual life is trying to get back to that.

[00:45:38] Dr. Gerry: Yeah, I like that he actually uses the term a mirror, that the soul is a mirror and creation reflects the power, wisdom, and goodness of the Trinity. And that is mirrored in the soul. So that’s pretty powerful. And you know, that takes me to Gregory of Nyssa talking about the mirror of the soul, which reflects God’s love as well, which I talk about in an early column in The Kingdom Within.

[00:46:08] Dr. Christian: And he must have had it, Bonaventure must have had access to these writers. And the fact that he actually brings up the microcosm that Maximus.

[00:46:17] Dr. Gerry: Can I read it?

[00:46:19] Dr. Peter: Yeah, read it. Yes, absolutely. Please do.

[00:46:22] Dr. Gerry: This is from, I think this is Cousins who’s a very well known translator, from the classics of Western spirituality, which is a sort of helpful book. 

[00:46:33] Dr. Peter: But which volume though? Like which of those works?

[00:46:37] Dr. Gerry: It’s Bonaventure, it includes the three works, the Soul’s Journey into God, the Tree of Life and the Life of St. Francis.

[00:46:45] Dr. Peter: Okay. And which one is this one from?

[00:46:46] Dr. Gerry: This is gonna be from the Soul’s Journey into God. Yeah. And so it’s chapter two, section two, it says, “It should be noted that this world, which is called the macrocosm, enters our soul, which is called the smaller world, through the doors of the five senses, as we perceive, enjoy, and judge sensible things.” And then I jump ahead a little bit to say, “Whatever is generated and produced by the operation of natural power is generated and produced from these elements by the power of the light, which unites contrary elements in composite things. Generated things are composite bodies made from the elements such as minerals, plants, animals, and the human body.” I’m gonna jump ahead again ’cause he gets very technical, but he says, “So man, who is called the smaller world, has five senses like the doors through which knowledge of all things which are in the sense world enters his soul. For through sight enter the sublime and luminous heavenly bodies and other colored objects, and through touch solid and terrestrial bodies, through the three intermediate senses intermediate objects, through taste liquid, through hearing sounds, and through smell vapors, which have something of human nature, something of air, and something fiery or hot as evidenced in the smoke from incense.” And what he does kind of get to is the parallel between those physical senses and the spiritual senses, right? And so there’s a mirroring of those things. So yes, we perceive all these things in a physical way, but then we do access them in our spiritual senses. What’s a good quote for that? There’s the one I was saying earlier, but people may not have heard it. He says, “We are disposed to reenter the mirror of our mind in which divine realities shine forth.” And so to me, you know, I’m jumping quickly because there’s just a lot here to read to make any sense of it. But we appreciate things in the physical world through our physical senses, and then we take in things with our spiritual senses in the spiritual world, and he makes the parallel between the two. He does go on to say in chapter three, and this is so profound. “The two previous stages, by leading us into God through his vestiges through which he shines forth in all creatures…” So that’s just the natural realm. “… have led us to this point of…” this is so key, “…of reentering into ourselves, that is, into our mind where the divine image shines forth. Here is that now in the third stage, we enter into our very selves, and, as it were, leaving the outer court, the exterior world, we should strive to see God through a mirror in the sanctuary, that is, in the forward area of the tabernacle.” He’s talking about our inner world, our inner tabernacle, our inner sanctuary. “Here, the light of truth, as from a candelabrum, glows upon the face of our mind in which the image of the most blessed Trinity shines in splendor. Enter into yourself then…” This is what Bonaventure says to you. “Enter into yourself then and see that your soul loves itself most fervently, that it could not love itself unless it knew itself, nor know itself unless it remembered itself, because our intellects grasp only what is present to our memory. From that, you can observe not with the bodily eye, but with the eye of reason, that your soul has a threefold power. Consider therefore the operations and relationships of three powers, and you will be able to see God through yourself as through an image, which is to see through a mirror in an obscure manner.”

[00:51:51] Dr. Christian: I am going to give the people a break from your facial expressions, so the attention doesn’t have to be on you. Wow.

[00:52:01] Dr. Gerry: Yeah, go ahead. Yeah. Isn’t that powerful? We find God within us is the first step. It’s not the only step because the first step is in the sensible world as St. Francis is able to do, but then at a deeper level, it’s within.

[00:52:22] Dr. Christian: That is, wow, so profound as you’re talking about the senses and then it elevates to the spiritual senses. I was wondering, as you were reading, I’m like, oh, because Peter mentioned earlier, the memory, the focus on the memory from Bonaventure. I’m like, oh, this has to integrate. And then you said it, the remembrance of like, oh yes. Wow.

[00:52:47] Dr. Gerry: Well, here’s a little something about memory, ’cause Peter did mention memory and he was absolutely right. Bonaventure talks about memory in a way that none of these medievals do, in my opinion. He says, this is still in the third chapter. “And so from the activities of the memory, we see that the soul itself is an image of God and a likeness so present to itself in having God so present that the soul actually grasps Him and potentially is capable of possessing Him and of being a partaker in Him.”

[00:53:24] Dr. Peter: Oh my goodness. So then we’re back into theosis, deification, divinization, partaking in the divine nature.

[00:53:31] Dr. Gerry: Yeah.

[00:53:31] Dr. Christian: It always comes back to that. It always comes back to that. What do we think sainthood is?

[00:53:36] Dr. Gerry: Honestly, the Soul’s Journey into God, most Catholics don’t even know about. It’s the most, it’s a profound, profound book. And it’s simple. It’s not actually that complex. Well, it is complex just in its simplicity.

[00:53:48] Dr. Christian: I hear this and I cannot help but wonder if history had gone a little bit differently and this rose to the level of prominence as so many other great classic Catholic works, like the Introduction to the Devout Life, or the Summa Theologiae or anything like that. Can you imagine people having more familiarity with this? What kind of impact that would have, especially on human formation?

[00:54:15] Dr. Gerry: Yeah. Well, it’s an integration, isn’t it? Like on some level you’re integrating the natural realm, seeing with the sensible, you know, perceptions and with the spiritual realm, seeing with the spiritual senses, and they’re integrated. They’re not in opposition to each other.

[00:54:36] Dr. Christian: They’re not, and at the same time, hearing this framework, I’m very much encouraged hearing this framework because, I mean, in my past life, my undergrad was in biology, and then also going into the psychological sciences, knowing how much our senses, especially paired with memory, like the amount of research that’s been done on the connection between memory and the olfactory sense. The fact that sense of smell is so powerful and so connected to, to emotion. This informs how we interact with the world and understand it. And it seems that Bonaventure’s structure right here, before we understood these things at a scientific level, it seems like he’s giving us a paradigm by which to understand this, the fact that the senses then inform how we interact with reality. But that this can be harmonized with the spiritual sense, it can be integrated and given back to God. I think that paves the way for an understanding of parts and how sin has maybe infected or compromised that system and fragmented.

[00:55:49] Dr. Gerry: Well, he would see sin as a fragmentation of that harmony of the human person with all other human persons and with all of creation and with God. And that has been fragmented. And if you look at our world, it doesn’t matter what political government is in charge, Democrat, Republican, whatever you want to say. Like our governments and our world governments have not done it much to reunite self, creation, and you know, God obviously, into a harmony. We’re always in conflict with each other. Always. Yeah, anyhow, there’s this little passage I just want to share ’cause we’re talking about memory and this is gonna be powerful, this little word. Okay. He says, this is still, I think chapter three. “See therefore how close the soul is to God and how in their operations…” Here’s a biggie. “…the memory leads to eternity, the understanding to truth, and the power of choice to the highest good.” And it’s funny because I was just listening to something by Dan Siegel and he talked about consciousness, and it is an access point to eternity. And I was going, wow, that’s a fascinating thing for him to say. You know, consciousness as being related to eternity. And here’s Bonaventure in the 13th century talking about memory being related to eternity.

[00:57:23] Dr. Christian: Hey, Gerry, you know how much Dan Siegel’s a fan of Christianity? You should email that to him.

[00:57:28] Dr. Peter: Yeah. But I mean, there’s a convergence here. There’s a convergence here of what’s real, what’s true, what actually exists. And if he can find that through interpersonal neurobiology, you know, and we talked about that and one of the episodes in the nineties, on this. It makes sense that we’re able to sort of see these lines come together. And so, wow. I mean, we even have, I can’t even remember where this is in Scripture, but it’s, he’s like a man that looked in a mirror and then went away and forgot what he looked like. This idea of forgetting who we are, what the reflection of God is, or maybe never having known it at all in the first place. But I think sometimes there’s so much. I talk about how our manager parts are so often like Curious George, because they just forget. They just forget, you know, like especially if those neural pathways, getting back to our embodied beings, are not well established, kind of the new ones that are, are leading us toward this greater telos of being and of relationality and of love. Like, yeah, that we can forget. We can lose the memory.

[00:58:49] Dr. Gerry: Mm-hmm. Well, I have another passage then that relates to that perfectly. It’s in chapter four, and Bonaventure said, in this amazing book of Soul’s Journey into God. And he says, “Since we can contemplate the first principle…” So he’s talking about ultimately God, right? “… not only by passing through ourselves, but also in ourselves, and since the latter contemplation is superior to the former, this mode of consideration occupies a fourth stage of contemplation.” Okay. This is the key. “It seems amazing when it has been shown that God is so close to our souls that so few should be aware of the first principle within themselves.” All right, so we’re not aware right of God within ourselves. “Yet the reason is close at hand. For the human mind, distracted by cares…” We’re busy, we’re distracted by cares.

[00:59:56] Dr. Peter: Firefighters going on. 

[00:59:57] Dr. Gerry: “…does not enter into itself through memory.”

[01:00:04] Dr. Peter: Ah, we forgot what we look like.

[01:00:10] Dr. Gerry: Exactly what you were just saying. Yeah, 13th century, baby. Already written. He knows what it’s all about.

[01:00:25] Dr. Christian: This reminds me of something I said earlier on in one of the previous episodes. This is not new. This is ancient. This is ancient. And it kind of goes to that. I mean, if human beings, when we can forget what we ourselves look like, we’ve forgotten so much of this part of our story. This is our inheritance. And one of the reasons why I love working with the two of you is that we’re rediscovering what we should have known all along.

[01:00:58] Dr. Gerry: It is a richness. It really is. None of us were taught.

[01:01:03] Dr. Christian: No, and we’re trying to bring this back into consciousness, essentially, but this is the ancient inheritance of our faith.

[01:01:15] Dr. Peter: Well, he says, in his book, Holiness of Life, Saint Bonaventure says, “If you do not know your own dignity and condition, you cannot value anything at its proper worth.” Boom. Like, if you do not know your own dignity and condition, you cannot value anything at its proper worth.

[01:01:39] Dr. Christian: Well, and that goes back to the greatest commandment, the love of God, neighbor, self. But if you can’t love yourself well, can you actually love your neighbor or God properly? And I believe Peter, you were the one that made the connection. I don’t remember who it was you were quoting, but Thomas Aquinas even says as much.

[01:01:58] Dr. Peter: Oh yeah. This is a big core of Anthony Flood’s understanding of self-love and self-governance in his books. It’s just amazing how he brings that out, right? So, again, there’s this synergy coming together, this complementarity, right? But he’s saying, you know, like, if you don’t know your own dignity and condition, you cannot value anything at its proper worth, which would include God. That would include God. Like we have to know ourselves. This isn’t just some luxury, this isn’t some, you know, sort of self pampering, navel gazing exercise, because we happen to be narcissistically self-absorbed. This is like essential for us to be able to value things, to value God, to love in return. So, when I hear people say, I don’t have time to do my inner work, I have so many other responsibilities, I have so many other things that I’m responsible for, I think to myself, oh my goodness, do you know who you are? Do you know who you are?

[01:02:58] Dr. Gerry: But I’m guilty of that just as anybody.

[01:03:01] Dr. Christian: Every single one of us. Who’s the sinner here?

[01:03:04] Dr. Peter: And we should have all known better, especially us. But still, one of the things I love about being able to work with Souls and Hearts and, and to have the position that I’m in is that I do have time for this. Like, we can not just talk about this and make podcast episodes, but we have time to actually enter into our own being. If this whole endeavor of Souls and Hearts is gonna be fruitful, it’s because we are living it. It’s not just because we’re, you know, trading ideas and, you know, kind of bouncing these concepts and abstractions around, but we have to actually really be embodying this. And I think that’s some of the graces that God has given us for this, in this podcast, in this broader organization.

[01:03:49] Dr. Gerry: So I want to reaffirm this whole notion, which I know, Peter, you’ve been working for years now to try to like, you know, make happen, is this sort of understanding of the role of emotion, not just emotionality, but love ultimately.

[01:04:07] Dr. Peter: The affective aspects.

[01:04:09] Dr. Gerry: So, a way to hear this, this is also from chapter four. It’s Bonaventure himself, words himself, he says, ” Having recovered these senses…” And he’s talking about the spiritual senses. The spiritual senses is our way of accessing God spiritually, right? We need to exercise those. “…when it sees its spouse…” Obviously Christ. “… and hears, smells, tastes, and embraces him, the soul can sing like the Bride…” The Canticle of Canticles, Song of Songs. “…which was composed for the exercise of contemplation in the fourth stage. No one grasps this except him who receives.” That’s from Revelations. Then, here’s the key. ” Since it is more a matter of affective experience than rational consideration…” He says it, the Seraphic doctor. “…for in this stage, when the inner senses are restored to see the highest beauty, to hear the highest harmony, to smell the highest fragrance, to taste the highest sweetness, to apprehend the highest delight, the soul is prepared for spiritual ecstasy through devotion, admiration, and exaltation.”

[01:05:52] Dr. Peter: So it almost sounds like you’re, that Saint Bonaventure here is characterizing heaven as more than shelves full of left brains.

[01:06:01] Dr. Gerry: Yes. He is.

[01:06:03] Dr. Christian: Ladies and gents, just gotta say, the YouTube is now even more officially worth it, just for Peter’s reactions, okay?

[01:06:11] Dr. Gerry: Well, I know, because he’s been trying to prove this and I literally found a doctor of the Church, the Seraphic doctor, making his point.

[01:06:21] Dr. Peter: I am gonna have to buy this. I’m gonna have to buy this volume.

[01:06:25] Dr. Gerry: Here it is.

[01:06:26] Dr. Peter: Just like the Soul’s Journey to God.

[01:06:30] Dr. Gerry: Well, it’s interesting ’cause it gets translated. There’s one translation I’ve seen of the Mind’s Journey to God.

[01:06:37] Dr. Christian: Mm-hmm. And I have that copy. There’s a free PDF online.

[01:06:39] Dr. Gerry: Yeah, so there’s different translations. I’m gonna go with this version. I think this is Ewert Cousins. And I think he’s good.

[01:06:52] Dr. Peter: And we’ll get a link to it up in the description, YouTube description, so you can find it.

[01:06:56] Dr. Gerry: Yeah. I mean, the classes of Western Spirituality is a great series, right? They’ve got tons of stuff translated. And this one’s been useful to me. 

[01:07:07] Dr. Peter: Well, and so much of our affectivity is held by parts who are exiled. I just wanna put that out there. Like, so much of our, and when I say affectivity, it’s sort of a rough synonym for emotionality or our emotions, right? You know, we are not supposed to become Vulcans to get to heaven, right? We’re not supposed to become, you know, sort of passionless. We’re supposed to have these passions present and even intense, but ordered. Like so that, I used to say this to some clients who had a lot of emotional intensity, right on the surface. I’d say like, some people have a carriage with two horses, you have a carriage with 12 horses. It’s not a problem of killing horses. It’s a problem of getting ’em harnessed and bridled. And when that happens, you’ll go like mad. Like the power of those horses is amazing. Kind of riffing off of St. Teresa of Avila kind of talking about her passions being like wild horses, right? None of this, we don’t need an emotion-ectomy, where we’re cutting these things off. You know, we don’t need to be suppressing, silencing, censoring. What’s so beautiful about these modern approaches to parts work, Internal Family Systems, other approaches, is that it gives us a language and a template to be able to actually do the integrative work at a natural level.

[01:08:48] Dr. Gerry: It’s funny ’cause I was just listening to a course I had, I’ve been taking for years. It sounds funny to take a course for years, but like, when you download a course and you’re just listening to it every couple months or every six months through a year. And then you listen to a bit more. But it’s one on neuro.

[01:09:09] Dr. Peter: Interpersonal neurobiology.

[01:09:11] Dr. Gerry: Thank you.

[01:09:11] Dr. Peter: Dan Siegel stuff.

[01:09:12] Dr. Gerry: And it’s so interesting and he was talking about his interaction with Buddhism. And now, he’s an attachment theorist, like, so he’s big on attachment theory on some level, or attachment science, however he sees it. And he was engaging with a Buddhist who, or Jon Kabat-Zinn was also in mindfulness and others. And he was talking about attachment. And the Buddhists were saying, well, that’s nice, but our whole goal is to not have attachment. And I thought that was an interesting exchange, right? And so here’s an attachment theorist encountering a Buddhist, but in a sense, to be fair to Buddhism, their idea of attachment is more about clinging and grasping. In our tradition, you know, we have with St. Ignatius of Loyola and St. Francis DeSales, and they talk about holy indifference. And holy indifference is about detachment, but it isn’t a lack of love. In fact, the detachment allows you to love in a greater way. I don’t know that Buddhism does that or not in its detachment. In our tradition, in holy indifference, when you detach from your own need to own or your own agenda, if you will, in IFS.

[01:10:48] Dr. Peter: That’s the word comes to mind for me is that, yeah, this attachment sounds like agenda-driven.

[01:10:53] Dr. Gerry: You can love, you are free to love. And I think that our understanding, our Catholic understanding of that freedom to love and that self-sacrifice and the meaning and purpose of sacrifice, number one in the cross, is what distinguishes us and gives us meaning in the work, in our whole focus and why I love Christianity. But you know what I mean? Like, but that was an interesting exchange to see someone like, you know, Dan Siegel engaging Buddhists around attachment, right? And what a great discussion. And that prompted me to think, ah, what is our Catholic understanding of attachment? What is our Catholic understanding of detachment? And what does detachment lead to? It leads to love.

[01:11:44] Dr. Peter: Well, and I’m thinking of our Lord weeping over the death of Lazarus. Like, and not because he was attached, you know, in an unhealthy, disordered way to Lazarus, but because Lazarus was his friend. He loved him deeply and was able to bring all of that emotion and all that intensity, you know, into his own consciousness and his own being. And that’s not a problem. That’s actually like becoming more fully human.

[01:12:19] Dr. Gerry: I think in Buddhism, now I could have it wrong. And there’s lots of types of Buddhism and blah, blah, blah. It’s complex. But I think that even the father-child or mother-child relationship would be something that you have to detach from. And I think within Christianity we would say that that gets transfigured into something beautiful where you just sort of want the good and there’s a deep intimacy and deep union. There’s a deep relationality. I mean, the Trinity expresses the deepest of relationality between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. So it’s about more intimacy, not less.

[01:13:02] Dr. Christian: Yeah. That would check. I’ve studied a little bit of a Buddhism and yeah, you’re right. There are also variations, so you’re probably gonna get a few different variations. But, within it, the primary tenet is that desire itself is the problem, the desire. I think the image that usually is given is that desire creates a prison. And if you want to be free, then it’s to be free of desire, because that’s gonna keep you attached, that’s gonna keep you attached, that’s gonna imprison you to whatever thing that you desire. So it’s about the extinguishment of desire and that that creates freedom within you.

[01:13:44] Dr. Christian: And that is very much in contrast to our Christian tradition, because if we are innately relational and then to be in relation with others, then desire, when it’s rightly ordered, is not the enemy, but it propels us to a deeper connection. It actually makes you more yourself, but in that very much that, because it is attached in the sense of that relationality, but detached in the sense of not possessive, not ownership, not being trapped in imprison. Because that’s one thing I would say the Buddhists do get right, is that attachment in that prison sense can happen, absolutely. But that doesn’t mean desire is the enemy. It means it needs to be baptized, it needs to be healed, rejuvenated. And that brings us to a deeper fulfillment.

[01:14:33] Dr. Peter: Well, and if we go back to what we’re called to, and you brought this up, Gerry, the Song of Songs. That’s full of desire, desire properly ordered, right? Like this isn’t like some sort of, you know, sort of, meditative detachment where I’ve separated myself from my desire. Like this is like the fullness of desire.

[01:14:58] Dr. Christian: It’s intense desire. So much so, I don’t know if you guys know this, but back when the Song of Songs, you know, was an ancient scroll, only a married man was allowed to read from it, only a married man. It’s intense. It is very intense. But when you are predisposed to those desires and them being fulfilled. I mean, that was the idea. That ecstasy is like, I mean, in our own experience, the closest thing that we can think of is the embrace between a man and a woman.

[01:15:35] Dr. Gerry: Yeah. And yet I think that, there’s an interesting thing that I think Bonaventure does. And he talks about perfection of love. And here’s a little quote. He says, “For the perfection of the universe, there had to be a creature endowed with a twofold sense to understand the book written within…” As in the soul. “…and without.” The visible world. “…that is, wisdom and its works.” And so perfection ends up being about, you know, wisdom to see, to understand, you know, at a deeper level, but also the power to reconcile things and the capacity to love. And so it’s not about power and domination, even when there’s a strong desire, a strong love, passion. It isn’t about just power and domination. It’s about mediation. It’s about wanting to connect, wanting to reconcile, wanting to unite. And I feel like, you know, even within Christian unity, like I’m a big hopeful fan of Christian unity, especially with East and West, right? And, you know, it’s not gonna happen because one side or the other is powerful or dominating.

[01:17:12] Dr. Gerry: It’s gonna happen because there’s love and that mediation of love needs to dominate and then bring about wisdom and so on, and listening to each other, loving each other, caring for each other, all that kind of thing. But that’s a big grand example in the world, in the churches. But I think that at a very human level, in our relationships, in our families, in people we care about, our friends. You know, we are meant not to have power and domination. We are meant to be mediators of love. And when we take that on, it changes the dynamic.

[01:17:52] Dr. Peter: That just seems like it takes us right back to Maximus again.

[01:17:55] Dr. Christian: It always comes back to Maximus.

[01:17:57] Dr. Gerry: Tell me more, Peter.

[01:18:01] Dr. Peter: Well, he talks about, you know, man’s role as mediator.

[01:18:14] Dr. Christian: We are meant to be mediators and stewards of creation, not dominators of creation.

[01:18:20] Dr. Gerry: Yeah. We live in a sad world that’s not exactly showing that right now.

[01:18:28] Dr. Christian: Hasn’t for a very long time. If ever, I mean, everything post-fall has been kind of problematic.

[01:18:35] Dr. Peter: So, so a couple of things I’d like to kind of come back to this inner hierarchy, and if you can sort of trace out for us, Gerry, how Bonaventure would understand this maybe in, I don’t know, in the natural realm or how it might translate into IFS terms. Like are there some parallels, you know, when he’s talking about the soul, does he mean the innermost self or does he mean something super ordinate to that, you know, is there a way that we can sort of create that bridge, the conceptual bridge between what the moderns are giving us in the secular, you know, kinda world in IFS or in other parts and systems thinking approaches.

[01:19:13] Dr. Gerry: Well, I’ll be honest, like I might need time to really reflect on that and see how that really corresponds. I mean, I might have some initial thoughts, but I think that’s a pretty complex thing. And I’m just got, you know, I’d have to spend a lot more time with Thomas Galles’s writings and even more time with Bonaventure to kind of flesh that out. Like, what does it mean that there’s a hierarchy within us? But I do think there is a hierarchy because, you know, even in the body of Christ, there’s a hierarchy, you know, there’s difference between the toe and the head, or whatnot. 

[01:19:50] Dr. Peter: But I think we can say pretty safely say, for example, that the innermost self should lead and guide the system. I mean, IFS is all about that, right? So there’s a hierarchy right there, between the innermost self and the parts. At least one that ought to exist, right? 

[01:20:05] Dr. Christian: I also wanna throw an idea out here, because this was something that in my dissertation, I felt like it was a really, really helpful takeaway, and it kind of has oriented my mind toward IFS a little bit differently. Because in IFS, what do we have? We have this arrangement of self and then the parts. And the parts have categories, so to speak. I mean, different ways that we understand them based on their roles. And I’m wondering if there’s something within the hierarchy, the celestial hierarchy that gets at that notion of vocation. Because I’ve heard some distinction made that seraphim, cherubim, thrones, the whole celestial hierarchy, that those are not designations of species, but designations of roles.

[01:20:58] Dr. Peter: So archangels are messengers, for example, or angels are messengers in general, archangels in particular.

[01:21:03] Dr. Christian: And then the seraphim have a particular role. And so it’s not necessarily that they’re different species, so to speak, in the way that we would understand it as humans, but that they have unique roles and that’s part of what makes it a hierarchy. They each have a thing that they fulfill in the system. That to me, I think is a dimension, and I’ll talk about it more in one of the upcoming episodes, but this notion that vocation elevates from a mere role to a calling almost. And within the system, we have these parts. Part of the renewal and the right ordering of these parts, I think the ultimate end for that is finding the vocation of each part. And in that way, is there some metric by which we can understand them taking place in that inner celestial hierarchy? Are they imaging a part of the hierarchy in their vocation?

[01:21:57] Dr. Gerry: Thank you. I love that.

[01:22:01] Dr. Peter: Because every part, every part is indispensable and absolutely necessary. So there’s a place, every part belongs, which means that there is a calling for that part. There is, you know, a reason, and this doesn’t just boil down to the functionality of the part, right? It’s not just that, but because parts are good in their essence.

[01:22:24] Dr. Christian: That’s why I take it, and I say it’s an elevation from a role to a calling. Vocation is greater than just a role. Because a role is more transient. Yeah.

[01:22:34] Dr. Peter: And a role can be really dysfunctional. 

[01:22:37] Dr. Christian: Yes. But the calling is what it’s really meant to be. It’s what the fulfillment of its role.

[01:22:42] Dr. Gerry: I would like to explore this myself more. I just haven’t. What if we really to look at those different angels and what would they look like distorted within us? Because I think that would probably tell us more about ourselves, right?

[01:23:00] Dr. Peter: Well, I wanna kind of get into this with Plato too. I haven’t even necessarily brought this up with you guys, but Plato’s Republic, where he talks about the governance of the five cities, and he talks about the highest form of government is aristocracy, and then a timocracy, then an oligarchy, then a democracy, then tyranny. And he’s talking about how the, the ordering of those cities breaks down as you move through that continuum. Because of the, the problem of the goals and the roles, you know, and what’s being sought. But that’s even just sort of coming from the sort of Western mind, which we were talking about, especially when we were talking about the early church fathers and having to understand the context, with which they were coming from. But to understand this from the best of, you know, the, you know, understanding of the angels and the order of the angels. That would be fascinating, especially if we image that. Like, whoa, like, and what I love about these modern approaches too is that it seems like, and this is where I would love to have that convergence, like IFS was built out of a desire to help primarily those struggling with eating disorders.

[01:24:20] Dr. Peter: Like it kind of started there. But with very practical applications. It’s like the how, right? So it actually gives us a structure to be able to affect the change. And if we can connect that to, which is what we’re trying to do in these podcast episodes, to the patrimony, the history, the tradition, the thought of the church, think through all these generations, through all of these saints and these theologians that had such great insights. Like that just like brings it into a whole different dimension.

[01:24:55] Dr. Christian: Well, it gives it an end to aim at. I think that’s the biggest complaint that I usually see, especially in circles of Christian therapists, is that almost all of the psychological theories fall flat when it comes to what is it that you’re aiming at? What is the end? What is the end goal? 

[01:25:19] Dr. Peter: There’s no telos. Yeah. Well, or the telos is basically hedonism, right? Like to maximize pleasure and, you know, maximize pleasure and minimize pain. That’s the default implicit philosophy underneath so many approaches.

[01:25:39] Dr. Gerry: Now some would at least acknowledge finding meaning in life. Right.

[01:25:43] Dr. Christian: I mean, you get that from something like logotherapy and Frankl. Or from some of the existentialists, but even they will say, I’ll never forget seeing something written by Irvin Yalom where, ’cause he does exist existential psychotherapy. He prefaces it by saying, “We human beings try to make meaning in an inherently meaningless universe.” And I’m just like, well, great. You just undercut everything you do. Whereas here we have a framework of some kind. Look, here’s something to aim for.

[01:26:13] Dr. Gerry: The answer to the universe is what? 42?

[01:26:16] Dr. Peter: 42, right? Yeah. Alright. I was tracking you on that. But it goes back to that quote from St. Bonaventure in Holiness of Life. “If you do not know your own dignity and condition, you cannot value anything at its proper worth.” Like you’re directionless. And that’s why there’s so much fragmentation in the field of psychology is because there’s no agreement on the underlying anthropology or the underlying telos to which we are called like, like, wow. You know? It cannot actually be a unified discipline because the metaphysical and the philosophical and theological, the underpinnings, the things that it has to rest on just vary so much from school to school and from thinker to thinker and from practitioner to practitioner.

[01:27:05] Dr. Christian: And when it’s that varied, here comes the fun question. What is health?

[01:27:15] Dr. Peter: Well, according to the DSM, you know, you can look at it from a, you know, statistical normative perspective, or basically it’s just subjectivity. I’m not healthy ’cause I feel not healthy. Or I’m not healthy because somebody else thinks I’m not healthy or feels I’m not healthy.

[01:27:33] Dr. Christian: Which is basically the reasoning of the DSM-5. 

[01:27:36] Dr. Peter: And not just the five, but the four and the three and you know, taking it all the way back to the, I mean, back in the one and two, they had a little bit more objective criteria for some stuff. It was a little more tied to an underlying anthropology, but we’ve lost that in the more recent edition.

[01:27:50] Dr. Christian: I think that’s why what we’re doing is so important, ’cause we’re trying to kind of give that offer something objective to compare it to.

[01:27:58] Dr. Gerry: Well, Bonaventure describes sin as a sword that pierced the heart of humanity and separated spirit from body.

[01:28:12] Dr. Christian: I wonder how much that coincides with the sword that pierces our Lady’s heart.

[01:28:17] Dr. Gerry: I know, I thought that too. But at the same time, like you have people, like, like I was talking about Dan Siegel, like talking about how there’s that, our self is my personal self versus other selves, right? And he is talking about everybody’s out for themself, kind of his attitude. And he is getting at, you know, what Christianity is trying to say is that we’re all one in the body of Christ. And yes, we each have a self and it’s beautiful and everything created by God, it’s all good. But that self is at the service of other selves. It’s not just out for himself. So there’s that whole, we’re fragmented because we’re all out for ourselves.

[01:29:04] Dr. Peter: Well, I’m wondering if you have a little something for us on, well, maybe a little something Franciscan for us. I thought I heard, I thought I heard in our little warmup here that you had something.

[01:29:18] Dr. Gerry: How about, I have a little tiny, you know, meditation I created. It’s still work in progress probably, but here it is. Before I go there. I did want to say this much. Bonaventure wrote the Life of St. Francis and he did cull it from stories, from people that we were still alive when Francis was alive. And some of the stories were a little hard to like, you know, from a modern mind to kind of like, totally like take in. My favorite, my favorite part of this whole story is about some goat. It’s a goat that followed Francis around and then the goat went in and when Francis went into the church, the goat went into the church, genuflected, and sat in a pew.

[01:30:11] Dr. Christian: I believe that. I have no issue with that.

[01:30:15] Dr. Gerry: So I struggled with that, ’cause I’m like, you know, that doesn’t sound believable. Have you had a single good encounter with a goat?

[01:30:28] Dr. Peter: We’ve raised goats, and there was no goat we ever had. This just doesn’t sound like goaty behavior. This is not caprine behavior. 

[01:30:38] Dr. Christian: Have you not heard? This came out like, like a decade ago. There was a story going around about, there’s this older gentleman in Italy who went to Mass every morning. He passed away, and it has been recorded. His dog went with him every morning. After he passed the dog kept going and would go and sit in the back pew in Mass every morning.

[01:31:00] Dr. Gerry: I can explain that one in a way that I can’t explain the goat. Okay. Like the dog is simply grieving his master and following whatever. Beautiful as that dog is. Truly.

[01:31:16] Dr. Peter: I’m just wondering if this goat wants to be counted among the sheep in the end, right?

[01:31:22] Dr. Gerry: Desperately. Okay, so I sat with a story that to me didn’t make a lot of sense, right? And I went to my Seraphic hermit friend.

[01:31:36] Dr. Peter: Like you do, like you do, right? I mean, Christian, like do you go to your Seraphic friend when you come across a story like this?

[01:31:42] Dr. Christian: Don’t worry everybody. I will get the story from Gerry at some point.

[01:31:47] Dr. Gerry: And I said, you know, I love Bonaventure and I absolutely loved, you know, his, you know, Journey to God. And the Tree of Life is interesting. This one was fascinating, but like, I don’t understand it. And or at least it sort of is jarring. And what he was able to tell me made a lot of sense to me actually, and helped me understand this story. And it is that Francis lived his life in a post-eschatological way. That Francis lived already, even though in this time, in a way, in the world to come and in the world to come, even animals would be reconciled. You know, like, you know, lion and sheep would lie together and all that business. Yeah. And so whether the story’s historical or not, it’s, it’s reflecting the post-eschatological vision of the world to come.

[01:32:54] Dr. Christian: That resonates so much. And it explains Saint Jerome with the lion and Francis with the wolf.

[01:33:05] Dr. Gerry: He’s an orthodox saint, so whatever, he is an Orthodox, but St. Herman of Alaska hung around with bears. And it’s like wild. Like those stories are kind of wild. And you’re like, he hung around with bears and he was also representing a post, you know, eschatological world. Like on some level he was already there.

[01:33:29] Dr. Christian: It also reminds me, I think it’s in the Scriptures. I can’t remember if, I think it was Elisha, the prophet. He had a companion that was fearful and Elisha was just completely like, just calm in the face of so much that was going on, and his companion was like, how can you be calm? And through an act of grace, the companion was able to see what Elisha saw. And if anybody remembers that image in the scriptures, Elisha at all times could see the heavenly host around him. He was never afraid. That was also almost kind of living in that, you know, in the age to come. That’s what it will be like. 

[01:34:10] Dr. Gerry: Has either of you read CS Lewis’s sci-fi books?

[01:34:16] Dr. Peter: I have.

[01:34:17] Dr. Gerry: You have, Peter, you have?

[01:34:18] Dr. Peter: I have. And I really struggle with them. 

[01:34:22] Dr. Gerry: Do you?

[01:34:23] Dr. Christian: I always get halfway through Out of the Silent Planet and then forget that I’m reading it.

[01:34:27] Dr. Gerry: Ah, okay. I’m about like 20 pages or 15 pages, almost at the end. And that I can’t believe I’ve never read these books because I was a sci-fi nerd. 

[01:34:37] Dr. Peter: Right, right. This would be like right up your alley.

[01:34:40] Dr. Gerry: You would’ve thought, yeah. And there’s so much to read, right. And so, maybe I had a bias, like maybe I thought CS Lewis couldn’t write good sci-fi. I don’t know. He did the Narnia books, which I loved, right. But, anyway.

[01:34:54] Dr. Peter: Spaceships and stuff, writing about the stuff in the fifties, it’s gotta be weak.

[01:34:58] Dr. Gerry: Wasn’t it like 1930s? It’s copyrighted 1938.

[01:35:04] Dr. Christian: I mean, the sci-fi trilogy was a bet between him and Tolkien. They looked at each other and they were like, Hey, what, what about this whole space time thing? And they both took a bet. CS Lewis said, I’ll write this thing on space. You write the thing on time. And Lewis finished his thing. Tolkien never did.

[01:35:23] Dr. Gerry: So I might write a Parting Thoughts on it. ’cause I haven’t really done any reviews of books. I’ve only been reviewing films. I’ve been reading it for the last week, isn’t that big of a book, so I’m almost done and it’s been one week. But I’m enjoying just reading something that’s fiction for a change, thank goodness. But he definitely has that feel, a classic sci-fi feel classic kind of British writing. But, I don’t wanna give away too much, but I mean, it was copyright in 1938. But, he is talking about like visiting another planet where the people are unfallen and they’re confused when they encounter a human being who comes from a fallen planet.

[01:36:11] Dr. Peter: Who is fallen. Yep, yep.

[01:36:13] Dr. Gerry: And so it’s explores some very interesting ideas there. Like what does it mean for them when they can’t even quite understand, they don’t even have words for some of the things that humans do. And they see the human planet of Earth or Thulcandra or whatever it’s called as run by the bent one. The bent one is Satan, obviously. And in their world they have these Eldils or whatever. These angels, obviously angels that they all see, but the human can’t. So, you know, we lost our ability to see angels and these aliens see the angels and their concepts are just so different. So getting this glimpse of like, so to me it was like incredibly powerful. Like, wow, this is what a world looks like unfallen. And, and how they would even react to somebody who wasn’t, who was from. And so to me, I just thought that was kind of brilliant and that he was able to write this so long ago with such insight that still applies. Anyway, brilliant in my view.

[01:37:27] Dr. Peter: Well, in the interest of time, we do kind of need to bring this in. All right. Good, good.

[01:37:32] Dr. Gerry: And this is short. Okay. So let’s just open it with, in the name of the Father and the Son, the Holy Spirit. Lord, we ask you to be with us in this little meditation on your servant St. Francis. We ask you to just allow whatever you want to happen through this meditation to happen. And so these words are just simply meant to reflect the words and ideas of St. Francis, but let them be something meaningful for you and what you might need today. So let me begin. The world itself is a theophany of God. Harmonious. Your presence so real in the cosmos. Your servant Francis, drunk with divine love, filled with the spirit of prophecy, the very image of your Son, reliving, replaying the Gospel itself in his very life, like an angel, a Seraph, fiery love. Your servant nourishing us with his love, with his milk, like a mother. I place my mind in the mirror of eternity, my soul in the splendor of glory, my heart transformed by your divinity tasting you, O God, your wisdom, the brightness of eternal life. In this mirror I see my own gaze as a spouse of your son in a beautiful garment. Amen.

[01:40:54] Dr. Christian: Nice.

[01:40:58] Dr. Gerry: Yeah, just a little reflection that came from reading St. Francis and Bonaventure.

[01:41:08] Dr. Gerry: I’m still working on. I may make some changes in time or little adjustments, but that’s what I have so far.

[01:41:16] Dr. Peter: Well, and to all of our listeners and viewers, you know, you’re welcome to share your reactions to that in the comment section of our YouTube channel for this episode, episode 170. Anything that you guys would like to bring up before we bring this to a close? Any final thoughts or key takeaways that you’d just like people, if they remember one thing from this episode, what you would like them to remember.

[01:42:02] Dr. Christian: I don’t think I have anything.

[01:42:04] Dr. Peter: Okay. That’s okay. I have a quote. This is also from the Journey of the Mind to God, and he says, Saint Bonaventure says, “We have these powers implanted within us by nature, deformed through sin, reformed through grace. They must be cleansed by justice, trained by knowledge, and perfected by wisdom.” You know, and I just really love that, that these are all good things. Nothing is left, nothing that’s essential to us is left behind or amputated, but that all is gonna be redeemed and all of it is good. Like when God looks at us, human beings in Genesis and sees that we’re very good, that includes all of us. And so just bringing all of our parts, all of our being into the divine symphony, that we’re not just one instrument, but that our parts can actually play different instruments. Like we’re like even in maybe in a sense like the string section, right? So there’s cellos and violas and violins within us, and basses not just one instrument, but there’s a multiplicity there, you know?

[01:43:36] Dr. Gerry: And I love it. I just love the idea that the word is speaking a song or a symphony in the creation of our whole world. That our world is a musical song, a piece of art, it’s beauty, however we apprehend it. And that we are part of that beauty. Maybe we’re a note. I don’t know what note. I don’t know what, but we are part, we’re not alien to it. We’re part of it. We’re part of that creation.

[01:44:13] Dr. Peter: Or maybe we’re a chord, right? You know, not just a note, but a chord in, you know, with harmony within the chord, but part of a much larger piece of music.

[01:44:21] Dr. Gerry: Hopefully. It’s not like a, you know, a sharp.

[01:44:25] Dr. Peter: A D minor seventh or something. Pretty dark chord.

[01:44:31] Dr. Gerry: I’m the bass line. I think I’m the bass line. That’s right.

[01:44:34] Dr. Christian: In either case there, I can’t remember if this is a direct quote from Tolkien, but in the world he created, it was created through music, there’s this notion that the music echoes through every part of creation. So the echo of the music is within you.

[01:44:52] Dr. Peter: Well, and I’ve heard that one of the qualities of hell is silence. It’s absolutely silent.

[01:45:01] Dr. Christian: It’s immoving. When you look at Dante and you get down to the core, it’s frozen, still, dead.

[01:45:09] Dr. Gerry: Hmm. Interesting.

[01:45:15] Dr. Peter: So I just invite you, reach out to us on YouTube. We love to hear from our listeners, from our viewers. Connect with us. We’re willing to answer your questions, and also check out the Resilient Catholics community. The Resilient Catholics community has answers to these deep issues. I want you to check it out. Go to souls and hearts.com/rcc. We have an interest list you can get on, you can get the updates. We take on new members into the RCC every February, June, and October. It is a step by step, community based. We work in a lot of small groups, but you also have your companion. We do so much of bringing together the best of the secular sources and the Catholic Christian sources to bring that together into a package to help you flourish in life. That’s all about your human formation, and it brings in the best of all of this stuff. If you’re a formator, if you are, for example, a Catholic therapist or a counselor, a spiritual director, a coach, anyone who is involved in the formation of others in a Catholic sense, right?

[01:46:33] Dr. Peter: We’ve got the foundations experiential groups starting up in the Formation for Formators community. These are groups of usually nine Catholic Formators who are working on their own human formation. Those groups are filling up. We’re gonna be launching them in August and September, so that’s coming up in the next month or two. I really invite you, if you’re a formator, to take a good hard look, to do that deep dive into your own human formation, to connect with your own parts, to work with your own system with all of these insights that we’re presenting here in these podcast episodes. We also have advanced groups for those who have finished an FEG or who have IFS training. The Love One Another group that David Edwards is doing is just amazing as people are practicing loving one another at the level of parts, at the level of systems thinking. It goes way beyond just sort of understanding each other in terms of just a separate unity of a person. We’re bringing in that multiplicity. We also have the Preparation for Transcendence groups. Those are all about working with your parts to be able to connect more deeply with God, overcoming the natural level human formation obstacles. There may also still be space in the Formation for Formators retreat, which is called Being at Service. That’s August 11th to the 14th, 2025, so it’s coming up in a few weeks. It’s in Bloomington, Indiana. Check all that stuff out about the Formation for Formators Retreat and the foundation’s experiential groups, and the other groups in the FFF at soulsandhearts.com/fff.

[01:48:13] Dr. Peter: Check out my conversation hours. Give me a call. I’m willing to talk to you every Tuesday and Thursday from 4:30 PM to 5:30 PM Eastern time. You can reach me on my cell phone, (317) 567-9594, about anything we’re talking about in these podcasts or anything that’s coming out in my semi-monthly reflections or the other things that Souls and Hearts offers. All right. And so as we bring this to a close, a lot of gratitude to you, Christian, to you, Gerry, this is just an amazing conversation. This may be my favorite one we’ve had, like somehow it seems like it’s getting richer and fuller as we go along. So thank you for that. And let’s just bring it to a close by invoking our patroness and our patrons. Our Lady, our Mother, Untier of Knots, pray for us. St. Joseph, pray for us. St. John the Baptist, pray for us.