Like no other creatures, humans are storytellers. Moreover, our stories all have a beginning, a middle and an end. And the way we tell stories has to do with the end in mind.   So, think of it: the stories we tell about our lives—not least the parts that we hate the most—will be governed by where the story is ultimately going. Despite the carnage that we see all around us, the God of the bible is intent upon telling a story of beauty. He does not intend to have us waiting until the very end...

Pepper and Curt had the privilege of spending five days in El Salvador as part of a Compassion International team of visitors. Join us as we share about the extraordinarily durable beauty that is emerging in some of the hardest stories we could imagine—and how all of this is pointing to the emerging kingdom of God.   . . . . Episode Links and References Artistic Offering discussed today: Gustav Holst; "Jupiter, The Bringer of Jollity" Artistic Offering for next week: Dave Wilcox: "How Did You...

It is easy to be amazed, even astonished in the presence of beauty. But it is just as easy to forget it, given how easily distracted we are by so many things. If it is true that what we pay attention to, we remember; and what we remember becomes our anticipated future, then we don’t just recall beauty for the sake of itself, we do so in order to shape the futures of our lives that we anticipate. And this is as much true for the parts of our stories that are traumatized as those for which we...

Once we sense beauty, we begin to tell a story about it. We make sense of it. We pay attention to it. We sometimes analyze it. But beauty often reveals things about us. In sensing things, we become aware of feelings and memories that before we were unaware of. In this way, we are enabled to tell our stories more truly. And all of this employs the horizontal domain of integration—the relationship between the right and left hemispheres of the brain. Listen in as Curt and Pepper explore how the...

First, we sense. And then we make sense of what we sense. Beauty is not first something we think about. It is first something we behold with our senses. And our senses necessarily involve our bodies. For indeed, even when we imagine beauty in our mind, we use our brains to do so. This follows the sequence of creation in Genesis 2 when God first formed a body, and then breathed life into it.   Join Pepper and Curt as they explore the role of the body in encountering beauty, and how paying...

In the path of oncoming beauty. Given that we are wired to pay attention to danger for the sake of protection, purposefully attuning to beauty can at times feel risky. But when we make it our intended purpose to create space for beauty, we find ourselves seeing any number of things that we didn’t before. Some of those things include our wounds that we have covered for longer than we know. But that only gives us the chance to imagine the emergence of beauty from parts of our lives that...

In the path of oncoming beauty. Sure, we have talked about this notion over many seasons of The Being Known Podcast. But of what practical value is it? How does it speak to our longings, our grief or the renewal of our relationships, communities and institutions? Is it merely an intellectual exercise, divorced from making a difference in my real life? Join Pepper and Curt as they answer with a resounding, “No!” Instead, journey with them into the deeper recesses of what it means, exactly, to...

Thank you for joining us this season to learn about confessional communities. In this final season episode, Curt, Pepper and Amy answer listener questions to draw you closer to finding and creating your own community.   . . . . Episode Links and References The Center for Being Known New Story Behavioral Health Connections Conference 2023 - Register today for this incredible Oct. 27 event on the theme of Emergence. PLUS, access to the Being Known Podcast LIVE on Thursday, Oct. 26 The Deepest...

Welcome to season 7 of Being Known Podcast were we are continually looking at what it means to be truly known. This season we are exploring confessional communities.   How do we end anything well—and especially those experiences that have become so significant in our growth? Moreover, how do we say goodbye well in a culture that gives us very few resources in knowing how to do that? Pepper and Curt explore how bringing a confessional community to close—either for an individual who is leaving,...

Welcome to season 7 of Being Known Podcast were we are continually looking at what it means to be truly known. This season we are exploring confessional communities.   This week we are continuing the conversation we started last week to "love doing the work"   Over the course of time that a confessional community gathers, many things will be learned, including the process of growing in your awareness of what the process is actually doing to provide the opportunity for growth that you are...

Welcome to season 7 of Being Known Podcast were we are continually looking at what it means to be truly known. This season we are exploring confessional communities.   Over the course of time that a confessional community gathers, many things will be learned, including the process of growing in your awareness of what the process is actually doing to provide the opportunity for growth that you are experiencing.  Pepper and Curt talk about that process of what happens in a confessional...

Welcome to season 7 of Being Known Podcast were we are continually looking at what it means to be truly known. This season we are exploring confessional communities.   This week, Pepper and Curt walk you through the early stages of starting a confessional community, the questions that might come up, and what is necessary to get yourself ready to be part of one. How does a Confessional Community get started? What are the fundamental requirements, and am I ready to dive in? Who are the people...

Welcome to season 7 of Being Known Podcast were we are continually looking at what it means to be truly known. This season we are exploring confessional communities.   There are multiple forces in play that are part of what forms us. That is no different in the confessional community. What are the realities that we encounter in confessional communities that set them apart from other relational and social encounters—and, as a result, then set us apart to be formed into the image of...

Welcome to season 7 of Being Known Podcast were we are continually looking at what it means to be truly known. This season we are exploring confessional communities.   We are continually being formed by something. The question is always, BY WHAT? If we want to become more like Jesus, there is no question that this does not happen magically. It takes work—the hard work of submitting to those formational realities that are most likely to do that.   Confessional communities have the potential to...

Welcome to season 7 of Being Known Podcast were we are continually looking at what it means to be truly known. This season we are exploring confessional communities.   We have shared a great deal about confessional communities over the last several seasons on Being Known Podcast. We thought we would take this opportunity to dive in and take a closer look at their purpose and how they operate. Although the best way to discover these things is to actually participate in a confessional...

BONUS!!  This week Curt and Pepper are joined by our very own Amy Cella, producer of BKP and creator of Bottom Left Drawer (BLD). Together, we discuss the beauty and wisdom of being prepared for various seasons of our life.   Bottom Left Drawer is all about getting your ducks in a row, so you’re good to go. But what does that mean?  Amy shares about BLD and the process of getting your affairs in order, whether that be crafting a will, securing vital documents or getting intentional about the...

We've come to the end of our season on the Beauty of Wisdom. In this end of season episode we review our conversations, answer your questions, and pull it all together.    . . . . . Thank you to our season sponsor - Hope Heals Hope Heals - Hope Heals Camp is a truly unique offering in the world. No other space in existence today invites families experiencing disabilities – of any age, with any diagnosis, from any place – to enjoy multi-day respite, a rich network of relationships, and access...

Welcome to season 6 episode 9 of Being Known Podcast. This season we are looking at The Beauty of Wisdom.   Shame doesn’t just appear out of nowhere. Shame begins in the earliest communities in which we dwell. It is to those communities we now turn to see how shame emerges there—but also what we can do to retell the stories of those communities: our families, our churches and schools. Listen in as we get to the bottom of the places where our stories begin, and begin to reimagine how God can...

Welcome to season 6 episode 8 of Being Known Podcast. This season we are looking at The Beauty of Wisdom.   We live in a world that has trained us to believe that we each live in our own personal silo. But this flies in the face of what neuroscience tells us about the interconnectivity of our minds. So much of our anxiety—and our lack of wisdom—stems from our trying to live against the current of how God has created our minds to function. We think we need to be able to live life on our own,...

Welcome to season 6 episode 7 of Being Known Podcast. This season we are looking at The Beauty of Wisdom.   It’s hard to know where we are going if we first do not know where we are. The integration of the domain of our state of mind is critical if wisdom is what we seek. For if we are not aware of the state that our mind occupies—knowing where we are—how will we be able to move in the path of wisdom?   Join us as Pepper and Curt discover how being known enables us to more consistently be...

Welcome to season 6 episode 6 of Being Known Podcast. This season we are looking at The Beauty of Wisdom.   The book of Proverbs portrays Wisdom as calling out in the streets. She, in effect, is telling her story, and asking us to join her. As it turns out, it is crucial in becoming people of wisdom that we not only understand the stories we tell about ourselves, but that we tell them wisely. And to do this, we need other trustworthy people in our lives who can help us do this. For it is in...

Welcome to season 6 episode 5 of Being Known Podcast. This season we are looking at The Beauty of Wisdom.    The memory domain of integration is not only about the past, it’s about the future. The future we are remembering. And indeed, becoming wise has everything to do with how you make sense of your past, something you are doing every moment of your life, even if you are not aware of it.   For if we are to be wise as we approach our future, we must be aware of how our past is shaping us as...

Welcome to season 6 episode 4 of Being Known Podcast. This season we are looking at The Beauty of Wisdom.    We often assume that wisdom is to be equated with knowing things. And indeed, knowing things is important. But only to the degree that it enables us to create beauty and goodness in the world, not least that of flourishing relationships.   Our challenge is that so often we are interested in acquiring knowledge because we are more concerned with being right than we are about being...

Welcome to season 6 episode 3 of Being Known Podcast. This season we are looking at The Beauty of Wisdom.    God creates mankind in a particular sequence, as Genesis tells us. He begins with mud, into which he breathes his breath. And so we too, in order to become people of wisdom, people who are deeply known, must be present first to our bodies.   What are they telling us? And how do we then make sense of what we are sensing? How do we act with our bodies in such a way that wisdom is...

Welcome to season 6 episode 2 of Being Known Podcast. This season we are looking at The Beauty of Wisdom.    In the beginning, it was God’s presence that hovered over the deep waters of chaos. But before that wisdom was with God, and then was at his side as God brought order and purpose in his creating the world. Presence. For to know what wisdom is, let alone acquire it, we must first be present to it—in the same way that we must be present to God, to ourselves, and to each other as the...