Josh Mortensen (00:05.708)

Laura Lewis Barr, welcome back to the Explorer Podcast.

Wow, Josh, thank you so much. It’s exciting.

Yeah, we were just talking about how long it’s been and I guess it’s at least been over a year since you were last on. And yeah, I had a great conversation with you last time. The one thing I was doing to prepare for this was kind of looking at some of the stuff you’re up to now, but also thinking back on our previous conversation. And the thing that stuck out to me was I remember us talking about Catholicism and you had recently returned to attending Catholic mass.

Yeah, so yeah, we’re talking at least two years ago. Yeah, yeah, time flies. Yeah.

Yeah. you still, is that still part of your weekly practice? Is it, is it something you’re still engaged in?

Laura Lewis-Barr (00:57.836)

Yes, it, my own podcast emerged out of it because I would go to mass and get frustrated by the priest explaining the readings and I had in my head fairy tales and myths. And so we have a weekly podcast where we do the same readings that the Catholic Church is doing. And I speak to the depth psychological

a possible way of maybe looking at it. And my co-host Marcy speaks from her own mystical heart, but she has a more traditional Catholic view. so it’s been, we’ve been doing it since March and it’s, right, so it’s September now. Yeah, it’s.

It’s been trippy. It’s been trippy. I, and I always joke that I just, I’m not trained in this. just, you know, take the readings as if they are dreams. And I’m, and we don’t often don’t know what we’re going to say. I mean, I read the readings, I think about them. but yeah, it’s surprising. It’s surprising what happens.

and wonderful and we’re finding a little niche group of people who are interested in both of these things. And Richard Rohr is a famous Catholic priest who embraces Jung and there are others in the Catholic Church. There’s a wonderful woman named Ilya Delio and she is a neuroscientist and she takes Teilhard’s work and

So we have some people that I can lean into.

Josh Mortensen (03:01.196)

Yeah, this is all very fascinating for me because just recently my family and I started attending church as well. And we have, we have like a Mormon background. Yeah. And so there was no part of us that was ready to go back to that version of religion. But I think particularly for my wife, she’s been looking for some spirituality, some inspiration, maybe some community. And so we’ve been trying out, you know, this, this Christian church that’s just really close to our house. I think it’s non-denominational.

It has a denomination, I couldn’t tell you what it is. But this is really interesting timing for me because what you’re describing about sitting through the Catholic mass and viewing it as if the reading is dreams and trying to interpret it from a psychological perspective, that’s exactly what I’ve been trying to do. Because when I sit in church, it makes sense that these…

churches and their ministers or pastors or priests or whatever they are, it makes sense that they are interpreting to their congregation these readings as literal. Because that’s how institutional religions function. But as I’m sitting there listening to it and getting a very literal interpretation preached to me, I can’t help but just think of how much more useful it would be to approach it from a different perspective. So I want to hear all about

I want to hear all about your podcast and maybe some examples of how you’ve tackled some of these stories or topics. before we do that, just so everybody knows, what is the name of your podcast?

thank you. The laughing mystics.

Josh Mortensen (04:47.232)

The laughing mystic. it’s your good friend and I’m guessing that you chuckle on the podcast.

Marcy laughs a lot, thank God. yeah, yeah, we have a really good time. And we have a ready made, you know, we just go through the church calendar and do the readings. So we don’t have to figure out topics. And I was really worried that, you know, we wouldn’t have anything to say, but no, there’s a lot to say.

So in the Catholic Church, is there a global kind of reading schedule that you go off of, or is it just specific to the congregation you’re attending?

global. It’s called the lectionary. And what they have is a reading from the Old Testament usually. Actually during Easter, the first reading is Revelation often. Wow, I had fun talking about Revelation. I love Revelation now. When you look at it in a depth psychological way. Revelation and then the second reading is usually from one of the letters of Paul.

And then the third reading is Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John, one of the gospels. And so every week in this lectionary, churches around the world are reading the same readings.

Josh Mortensen (06:13.708)

Yeah. And when you say revelation, you mean the book of revelations, the revelations of John. Yeah, that’s, this is very synchronistic for me because sitting in church, we are actually going through the book of Acts. And so we’re studying the, you know, the story of Paul and his ministry. But, you know, I get, I get a little, I don’t know, I wouldn’t say bored. I just get a little sidetracked sometimes. So I picked up the Bible last week and I read about half the book of revelations, just sitting there and

Well, first of all, I grew up reading from the King James version of the Bible, which is very, you know, it’s older language. It’s very poetic. It’s not the easiest thing for some people to read. But for me, just, I don’t know, it connects with me more. I think the poetic language of it is just a little bit more, I don’t know, spiritual, or it’s like different enough from just day to day prose that it allows me to kind of connect with a little bit more. But sitting there reading it as

some version of some new translation. I’m not sure what to call it even. But yeah, it was pretty interesting to sit there and read it and just notice. It’s been a while since I’ve read Revelations. Back when I was religious, attending the LDS Church, I read the entire Old Testament, New Testament, and then also in the Mormon Church, you read the Book of Mormon and their Doctrine and Covenants and their Pearl of Great Price. It just goes on and on.

But was pretty fascinating to sit down and go through revelations. Well, okay. So maybe that’s a good, is that something that you’ve covered in your podcast is, those readings?

Well, one thing that’s cool about our format is we just look at whatever the reading is. And so the reading is generally a paragraph or two, not much longer. And so we’re not we’re getting it completely out of context. And we’re also getting it. Well, what the church tries to do is put a gospel reading, a book, a book of Revelation reading and a letter of Paul together.

Laura Lewis-Barr (08:21.154)

they often have similar themes maybe. You’ll see a theme, the church is telling you indirectly, hey, look at what Paul’s doing here, look at what Jesus is saying here, and they’re doing those links for you. So I haven’t read through any one book, not in the podcast, I mean, in the past I might have, but…

Yeah, Revelation is a good place to probably start because it’s so like the letters of Paul are really hard to get a mythic. They’re the hardest thing for me to talk about because they are just sort of a letter of pep talk. But Revelation is all depth psychological stuff. So those are fun.

Yeah, I would imagine. if you think about Paul writing these letters to the different churches around Central Asia, or guess West Asia at the time, he’s writing these letters in the same manner that when you go to church, might hear it from, you know, over the pulpit because he’s also approaching it in a very literal way. And he’s not, there’s not a lot of, yeah, it’s a lot of commandments. It’s a lot of, you know, I know

you’re struggling with this, I know you’re struggling with that, but there’s not a lot of story, there’s not a lot of developmental myth. So I guess in reading Paul, if you were to read a chapter of Paul, his story is mythical in a way where he starts off as Saul and then he becomes Paul through this conversion experience. But once he starts writing to the various churches, there’s not a lot of new information, he’s kind of just.

encouraging them or chastising them and kind of pointing them towards that same literal interpretation.

Laura Lewis-Barr (10:22.094)

Yeah, he’s been my struggle. And and part of what I try to offer, like I hold the space for the skeptic in our podcast, and I tend to be the the one poking at, you know, come on, Paul, come on, Give us some space to see it differently. Yeah. Yeah. How well.

This is the perfect conversation for me too, but I wanted to ask, so how is it for you going to church?

Well, to be honest, it’s been mostly positive. Good. And I think it’s, I mean, it’s so different from the religion of my past where we were, you know, the Mormon church is very, it’s very, they’re very focused on things like reverence. And so, you know, the hymns that we sing, probably similar to the Catholic church, when there’s music, you’re singing out of a hymnal and a lot of it is much older hymns.

And it’s a part of it that I actually that’s part of the church that I actually enjoyed was the music, very poetic, but going to a more, I don’t know, a more than I wouldn’t say they’re evangelical, but they’re just more kind of modern Protestant religion. And so there’s a band on stage with guitars and a drum set. And the music is much more kind of like Christian rock. There’s not a lot of poetry to it. And so

That portion of the service or the worship is difficult for me to be honest. You have to stand up, like you’re encouraged to stand and listen to this and sing along. That version of Christianity has never connected with me. It’s just a little too direct. There’s not enough depth or poetry to it. It’s just very much this is what it is. But then sitting through the actual

Josh Mortensen (12:23.188)

know, lesson or I don’t know what they would call it. I don’t know the speech or the sermon or whatever it is. It’s been really interesting because we do dive into scripture. We’re in Acts and so we’ve been kind of following the story of Paul. And there are nuggets of really good kind of principles and information in there where, you know, the first week I was there, one of the things that stood out to me, it’s something that I’ve thought about for a long time. I’ve like just seen it in the world and

It’s this idea that comfort or luxury or having things easy, kind of having a nice, easy, settled life is actually a little bit of a trap. doesn’t promote. Yeah. It doesn’t promote growth. It forces it. It causes you to begin to think that you deserve things and deserve is a word that I just almost outright reject. I don’t think anybody deserves anything. You know, the only time you deserve something is probably when you’ve made an agreement with somebody and you both know what you have to do.

for the other person and if you do it, then yeah, you should be able to say I deserve this because you agree to it. Outside of that, I think to deserve something is kind of a childish notion. So there’s like little nuggets in there where I’m like, yeah, I agree with this. I agree with the principle of not leaning back on things like comfort and luxury. At the same time, I have struggled a little bit with some of the messaging because it is so.

black and white or good and bad. is so like set. And yeah, so it’s caused me to actually do a little bit of exploring as far as trying to understand the different religions, the different Christian religions, the Catholics versus the Protestants and then the various versions of Protestantism. And one of the things that’s interesting, and I actually talked to some, a guy just maybe two weeks ago, I don’t think the episode has even come out yet, but his name’s Robert Hopke.

and he’s a union psychologist in the Bay Area. And he was talking about the difference between Catholicism and Protestantism. And the big difference being that the Catholics, they kind of get their authority for the way that they treat church and the way that they behave. They get that authority from tradition. And the Protestants, the separation there was that they wanted to follow not necessarily tradition, but

Josh Mortensen (14:45.358)

the writings, the actual written scripture. And so you have on the Protestant side, you have this combination of scripture and revelation or personal prophecy or inspiration directly from God. Whereas the Catholics are much more tradition-based. And the argument actually, I could see both arguments, but the argument for a tradition-based religion does make sense when you think about Jesus being on the earth.

maybe 40 to 60 years before any of the New Testament books were ever actually written. And so they are the original source. But then, I’m going all over the place now, but there’s like, you know, you then have to rely on whether or not that tradition is actually consistent and reliable from all the way back. But yeah, so I’m sitting there in the service and it’s also just a great time to just sit

and listen and be present and not be on a phone and not have something to do. In a sense, know, it’s very calming that way. It’s kind of meditative. You come out of it feeling a lot more present just because you haven’t been doing things. You haven’t been scrolling or, you know, trying to get something done. And so that’s also been very good. But I would say the one thing that I’ve actually struggled with is in essence, that when I sit there and listen to the sermon,

I’m probably internalizing things the same way you would through a psychological perspective. I’m looking at, you know, when I hear the stories, when I hear the, I don’t know, the kind of the dogma or the interpretations, I don’t think of them as some kind of external thing outside of myself. I don’t think of them as some truth about the universe. I think about them as, well, how am I doing that inside of myself? What characters inside of me?

or what archetypes inside of me are pairing with these characters and how are these things unfolding inside of myself. And when I hear the minister just be so certain about the externalization of things and using those also both to encourage but also to warn away from certain things, it is a little, yeah, it doesn’t exactly sit right with me.

Laura Lewis-Barr (17:08.066)

I’m writing furiously because you are, you’re just triggering me in so many ways, the things you’re saying. And jumping from the very last thing you said, I think a big concern I have with church is, and this was Jung’s work at the end of his life, especially the refusal of the shadow and the demonization of the shadow. And so it’s,

creates a lot of psychological illness and church is still doing that. And there are these people that I’ve mentioned that are actually speaking and mentioning Jung in their work, both of those two people I mentioned and saying, we have to do shadow work. There’s no other way, but this is still

you know, just an emerging trend. This is not the way most churches are presenting.

ideas of faith, ideas of goodness, know, being holy instead of being whole. So.

Yeah, it’s definitely a challenge for me. And you mentioning the demonization of the shadow, I can give you a very specific example from the sermon where the minister, church has run, it seems like I haven’t really like got to know everybody, but it seems like the church is run by a husband and a wife. And so it’s kind of like, I think he’s the pastor or minister and then she’s kind of like the associate minister. So she was giving the sermon on Sunday. And one thing that she talked about

Josh Mortensen (18:57.51)

We were going through the story of Paul and Paul, I can’t remember the names, but Paul goes to visit a certain man and he’s kind of a leader. And when they get there, this man, he’s got a kind of a, advisor who is a sorcerer. And so the sorcerer is whispering in his ear, not to listen to Paul and his fellow disciples or his fellow missionaries or, or preachers. And so then the, the sermon kind of

veered towards sorcery and the minister was very adamant about warning the congregation about things like

crystals, witchcraft, astrology, energy work, which I’m not sure exactly what she means by that. And she labeled all of these things as demonic and told the audience in a very clear way to stay away from these things. I mean, me, I don’t practice these things, but I explore all of them because in the same way that the Christian faith is a way to

know, read into our own psyche the way that our, our Western psyche is oriented in the same way these different things, these different, you know, things that she had mentioned, they’re just little tools. That’s all I see them as their tools for kind of also cracking open the psyche and seeing what’s in there and what’s going well and what’s going poorly. And yeah, you can’t help but sit there and kind of, kind of just think, well,

know, how much do these people who are preaching from the pulpit really understand human psychology or the evolution of the myth itself or, you know, just the history of how these other things have helped people manage their lives, integrate themselves into wholeness because, you know, demonizing the shadow in the Western myth, we have this kind of sun-oriented or light-oriented belief system.

Josh Mortensen (21:08.054)

and we worship Jesus and we worship the Father, but in so doing, we don’t see the shadow behind us. And so all these things that don’t fit into the religion or the dogma, they get put into the shadow. And then we just label them as either Satan or demons. yeah, having taken the journey that I’ve taken, I can just see how all of these things are actually pretty…

helpful in, like you said, finding wholeness rather than holiness and kind of the whole psyche. But when you speak so adamantly about how evil these things are, when really they’re pretty innocuous, then you actually do limit people from discovering and growing and healing.

Yeah, and then there’s a lot of pressure to fit in. And so either you’re going to pretend like you’re not doing to row in the morning, even though you love it, or you didn’t see that psychic, or you won’t do that thing. That pressure that the church exerts. Because for me, and I wondering if your family is feeling this, the great

wonderful thing of the church is it’s a community and I have felt very welcomed and if that’s a double-edged sword because I’m hungry and want community, think it’s part of what the culture needs right now is places of community that are physical and live, not just online. But the double edge is that what am I

what am I cutting off of myself in order to fit in? And so I was in church, we have a similar background. I was in Catholic church and then I got a divorce and I was away from the church for 40 years, 40 years in the desert. And going back, I don’t think I could ever do what I initially did, which was

Laura Lewis-Barr (23:26.604)

deny who I was to fit in. I think I was away too long to make that pivot, but I think that’s the one of the challenges of going to church is maintaining my see Jungians are about individuation and that’s really important too to become who I really meant to be. But I don’t think Jungians are very good at creating community. We’re all really good at creating ourselves.

That’s the creative tension I feel in my life.

Yeah, well said. yeah, that Jungian path towards individuation, doesn’t create a community of people who all have to agree on everything. And in a sense, that’s what church is, is this is a group of people who agree on something. so for me, the path of individuation is actually

allowed me to have really genuine deep connections and friendships that I actually wasn’t having before. But at the same time, they’re few and far between. And I have to start a podcast to make sure that I can have these kind of deep conversations on an ongoing basis. But at the same time, the community is important. It’s important to have a group of people around you. And for us, and particularly for my wife, I think that’s what she was looking for. And then for the kids as well to have a community.

It’s just that when we come home on the drive home, we have to talk about not internalizing things, or sorry, not externalizing things to such a degree that you start to think that this is history rather than myth. yeah, it’s not an easy task. would say that’s my biggest concern is because I think my wife and I are very similar to you where we’re not gonna go back to having this kind of

Josh Mortensen (25:28.954)

fully emerging ourselves or immersing ourselves in this story or this group just so that we can belong because they’re a part of ourselves now that exist and are integrated or welcome parts of ourselves that simply disagree with that externalization. And so it’s not a big concern for me personally. I can sit through it, enjoy it, take something from it. It’s almost like watching a movie to me or like you said, reading a dream.

You can just sit through it and take what you need from it. But my biggest concern is my children who are still young and whether or not they will be able to maintain that kind of balance.

Yeah, well, and I think children are in concrete operations. And a lot of times that’s when religious education is happening. And so the shift from that literal contract con, what was the word I just said? Concrete, concrete operations to abstract thinking, know, making that shift. A lot of people never make that shift.

Well, a lot of people never do, yeah, in terms of religion. So I’m thinking of your kids, they’re in concrete operations in terms of psychological stages.

Yeah, for kids, they definitely want everything to be concrete. They want answers to be black or white. They want it to be very certain. And it makes sense from a kind of a survival perspective for a child. They don’t need a bunch of ambiguity in their life. They need certainty. need to know, you know, don’t touch things that are hot. Don’t you know, don’t play with things that are sharp and.

Laura Lewis-Barr (27:16.854)

It’s also the brain. It’s also their brain at this point, the brain doesn’t become doing abstract thinking till, I think, know, teens. Yeah. Yeah. I want to mention a couple of people and a couple of things. Joseph Campbell is certainly an ally to me during this time and the Jungian Edward Edinger.

If you’re familiar with his work, every time I type in something like the book of Revelation and Jung, I’ll get a book by Edinger. And so he’s been really great for me. He’s not alive anymore, but helping, giving me some tools to analyze deep, more deeply. So I leaned on them really heavily when we first started. And I still, I still do.

And I wanted to say one other thing. I just recently watched Angels in America. Do you know the mini series by Tony Kushner?

No, no I don’t.

The play won the Pulitzer Prize and the mini-series won all these Emmys. Well, I only bring it up because we just watched it. It’s brilliant, but Mormonism features kind of centrally in it. And I don’t know, I felt like I learned a little bit about Mormonism watching that mini-series. I mean, it’s total fiction. It’s angels are in it and…

Laura Lewis-Barr (28:54.956)

Highly recommend.

Okay, yeah, I’d have to check it out. Mormonism is an interesting one because so you take those differences between the Catholic Church and the Protestant Church and one of those big differences is the means of salvation. So in the Catholic Church they have an idea of penitence and you you have to actually do something in order to get into heaven. You have to

what you’re supposed to do and you’re you gotta you know what’s the I can’t remember what the the catholic term for kind of paying for your sins no not

Purgatory.

place you do it.

Josh Mortensen (29:41.274)

Yeah, more in like a monetary way.

That’s old. That’s the popes were getting indulgences.

Yeah, something like that. Yeah. So the Protestants broke clean away from that and they just, they believed all you have to, you have to be like the criminal who hung next to Jesus on the cross, who just said, I believe. And then Jesus said, you know, you will see me in heaven. And so that’s kind of the break there. The interesting thing about the Mormons is that they definitely lean toward modern revelation, personal revelation in a Protestant way.

But the same time, they have this idea that faith without works is dead. So you can be saved through Jesus, but not if you just keep sinning and not if you don’t repent. And so there is this interesting blending of the two.

Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah. Joseph Campbell, I just recently posted on my Facebook page for the podcast that he talked about how his students, as they started to learn the similar symbols that were in Judaism, Islam, ancient Egypt, the early church.

Laura Lewis-Barr (30:59.69)

they found their own faiths opened up because they could see the psychological truth underneath. So he wasn’t a literalist, you know, in any way he wasn’t, but he loved the old mass in Latin. And I’m going back to something you were saying. He didn’t like the modernization because he said,

It’s about mystery. It’s about what is beyond us. It is about the unconscious. And when it’s just sort of this ego trip and we’re not tied into anything that is beyond. So he loved the old Latin mass, which really surprised me with the priest, with his back to the congregation, you know, in the image of the old Jewish.

people that were sending up incense to God, making their sacrifice, know, that tradition all the way back.

that, and I think Jung would say it ties into parts of us that we aren’t even aware of, instead of making it all just what my ego understands.

find it fascinating that people like you who connect so well with Jung and it’s like you understand, not everybody understands perfectly everything that Jung is saying, but on some level, what he’s saying kind of connects with you and you experience it in the world, you experience it with yourself, you experience it with religion. I just find it fascinating how often people who appreciate Jung also read Joseph Campbell. Like the two of them, Campbell was much more

Josh Mortensen (32:53.186)

just writing about stories and their connections and motifs and the evolution of story over time. But when you pair the two, for me, when I paired the two, the way Jung had these models of the psyche and of the collective unconscious with the way that Joseph Campbell was able to explain stories and how they change over time, you get this picture of almost the…

cultural evolution of all of humanity from the very beginning until now. And what’s fascinating about that is once you recognize that this is something that has evolved from the past, you can say like, okay, well, here we are now. But at the same time, there is no, there is never kind of a static, just it’s finished because you can also see that it’s going somewhere in the future. You can see how things are changing. New ideas are being adopted.

There’s shifts in the culture. I find that fascinating. And then, go ahead. Did you have something?

Well, I just wanted to say, I agree with you. And when I start reading Campbell, he writes about Jung a lot. there, yeah, Jung was very big. in early chapters, he’s like doing Jungian diagrams of the psyche and yeah.

Yeah, I think that if I’m remembering correctly, I think that Joseph Campbell was where I came across Jung first. And Joseph Campbell has this great idea around reading is, you know, read what interests you. And then as you do that, you’ll come across the people who influenced the people who you’re reading and then go read them. And that’s been my path of reading is Joseph Campbell and then Jung. then, you know, you mentioned Edward Edinger and there are so many great

Josh Mortensen (34:50.36)

fantastic union writers that I’ve now discovered just because I dove into that world and it just keeps branching outward.

Yeah, it’s true. It’s true.

The other thing that’s interesting to me about Catholicism, and you’re talking about this, you’re supposed to have this mysterious mystical experience. I’ve mentioned this a couple of times on the podcast, but when you go into a Catholic church, they’re so big and ornate and they’re made out of stone and they’re just symbols everywhere and artwork and just.

candles and just all this stuff that kind of pulls you into this kind mystical world. And I like to think about go far enough back in time when, you know, go back a thousand years or 1500 years back into Europe when the Catholic Church was the church and kind of the empire of Europe. And just imagine what it would be like to be a farmer or a peasant.

or a cobbler or just somebody who lives in a small village has never traveled maybe more than 30 or 40 miles from home. You can’t read, there aren’t books. You don’t even know anybody who can read except for maybe the elite class. And then every Sunday you go into this innate building, this building that is just so big and beautiful and decorative. And it’s like spewing wealth.

Josh Mortensen (36:23.008)

in a way that you’ve never, there’s no other place that you ever go or ever see anything like it. And you get to go in there and then hearkening back to this idea of the Catholic mass, the people who run this building, the people who work there and tell you what God wants, they dress different than you, they wear robes and they wear hats and sashes or whatever it may be. And then they have this book, they have this big fat book and they open it and from this book they can read to you the words of God.

but you’re so disconnected from it because not only can you not read, it’s being read to you in a language that you don’t speak, but these men speak this language. And I would just imagine that that experience in the middle ages going to church was just such a different experience where you really did feel like there was just magic all around you, this mystery that you could not fully explain.

Yeah. And when I was thinking about going back to church, I was pretty afraid, but I knew that Campbell and Jung both spoke of the Catholic mass in that way that, in fact, I think both of them said it’s really the only institution that still holds the seeds of those old mystery rights. And that’s what the Protestants lost.

And so I think of Protestants as being, you know, focused on the word where Catholics can be focused on that image, the ritual, the right. It’s much more whole body, not as much in the head. So, I mean, I’m not saying they’re both filled with terrible corruption and

and also wonderful goodness. mean, they both have it. I’m not saying Catholics are better, but I am saying that Jung and Campbell were attracted to that, that tradition and the symbolism. The, yeah.

Josh Mortensen (38:36.29)

Yeah, and the ritual of it, because that is something the Protestant churches don’t have a lot of ritual. And in the Mormon church, they have a couple, you they have baptism and they have what they call the sacrament, which I think might be in the Catholic church, might be the Eucharist. I’m not sure. But yes, they have these rituals. But to go into a Protestant church and particularly to go into a Mormon church, the actual building, it’s just so plain and just so

normal and everything’s kind of stripped down. in a way, I think it’s supposed to be symbolic of, know, particularly from a Mormon perspective, just you’re supposed to just live the religion every day, it’s supposed to just be reality. And when you go to a Catholic church, you know, you go to mass, you go to Christmas or Easter, you walk in and it just pulls you into this different world. And yeah, I’m not too I’m not too familiar with the mass, though. Do you mind just explaining really quick what’s included in a Catholic mass?

Sure. the word, I’m just writing it down, the word numinous, which the Jungians love. So then, well, masses can differ, but the basic structure is there’s singing, and then there’s the three readings and the preaching. And then the priest goes behind the altar and does prayers.

that Catholics believe turn the bread and the wine into the body and blood of Christ, which, wow, there’s a lot of symbolism here that we can chew on, and I’m using that pun intentionally, like.

Father Rohr talks about, you know, taking in God, Campbell and Jung talk about that. So we could get hung up on that, whether it’s like the Catholics want to say, no, it’s not a symbol, it’s literally true. And we can get really hung up on that. And we’ve talked in the podcast about that.

Laura Lewis-Barr (40:51.224)

But that’s kind of the main event. Campbell talks about it as, in Jung too, it’s the sacrifice. It’s like a redoing of the crucifixion. And of course, a lot of the words are coming from the last supper in the gospels. And then you sing and you go home. I mean, there are a lot of prayers and Catholics all know the prayers by heart.

So if you’re not Catholic, that can be a little weird. But yeah, that’s the mass. And there’s high mass with churches and organs and bells, and there’s guitar mass. But the pieces are always the same.

Yeah, and then for the podcast, you being the skeptic, what’s your co-host name again? Marcy. So Marcy is more of the, she’s I guess not as in tune with the Joseph Campbell, Carl Jung way of thinking. And so she takes it a little bit more literally, but you as the skeptic, how do you go pushing back on these ideas or how do you kind of offer up your own interpretation when it comes to something like,

Marcy.

Josh Mortensen (42:08.696)

partaking of God.

Yeah, well…

It can be very scary for me. I’ve had really scary moments where, like recently we talked about why monotheism is a good thing or what’s the deal with monotheism. In terms of the Eucharist, I’m trying to remember.

I guess where I lean into is myth. Myth is the most true thing, and that’s the word that we’re always trying forever and ever to talk about. Everyone is constantly. I was listening to one of your podcasts that I tuned into today and they were talking about the same thing. Myth is the deepest truth. Eucharist, I might say I’m afraid to say it, but I might say.

Eucharist is a myth. It’s the deepest truth. So when the Catholics get hung up on he’s literally, this is what I said. yeah, I was afraid to say this. You know, the, we’re not eating a chunk of bloody body parts. I mean, that would be the literal. We’re not drinking hemoglobin. That’s what I said on the podcast. was so scary.

Laura Lewis-Barr (43:37.71)

So what is it? We’re not talking literal, but we are talking true. So the Catholics walk into the mystery, same with the Trinity, I got yummy stuff to say about that. The Catholics walk into the mystery without even knowing it because it’s not literally true. We’re not drinking hemoglobin.

Yeah. So that’s what I said about that.

Yeah, but then if you take it as a not literal interpretation, then how so I often think that the literal interpretation actually strips the myth and the ritual of its act as like real value. So when you think about the Eucharist and not taking it literally, how how do you explain it? like, what? What does it mean then to partake in this?

Well, I guess I imagine that we’re in a room, God is present, and gosh, we could talk for hours about what that means. God is present, and then we pray around this meal, and God is present in the meal too, and we take in God. I mean, that’s my belief. I think that’s a Catholic belief.

I think that’s the Catholic belief. But I think when Catholics and Protestants fight about whether or not it’s actually the body and blood of Christ, then it gets kind of silly because then we’re kind of playing with literal versus mythic truth. If you’re following what I mean, I think the Eucharist is a mythic truth. It’s true.

Laura Lewis-Barr (45:28.0)

It’s not just some bread, but I think prayer intention changes reality. I think it always changes reality. So now we’ve got a bunch of people together trying to invoke God and God comes or God is there.

Yeah, and you feel that when you’re sitting in mass, you feel that presence or that it doesn’t do that for you.

Sometimes more than others, sometimes really a lot. But yeah, I do feel that. And I do feel that. And we’ve talked lately, Marcy and I, lot about how even as a child, I had a sense of God, and that’s not anything that I… I’m just one of those people that has that sense. But my father…

didn’t have that sense. My husband doesn’t really have that sense. So it’s strange for me that I do.

Yeah, and you mentioned the Trinity as well. like parent, like, you know, God is a part of the Trinity or or the Trinity as a whole. How do you interpret that or what are these, you know, just you said that you had some thoughts on it. I’m curious what those thoughts are.

Laura Lewis-Barr (46:55.094)

Yeah, I read something recently and I’m sorry I can’t remember where it was from, but you know, we do a lot of spinning our wheels around the Trinity. How can it be one God in three parts and what does that even mean? And what I read is that the doctrine of the Trinity is meant to blow your mind. In other words, like we think we know what God is. We talk about God as if God is a thing and

really, there should be no words because we’re like this small spec and we’re talking about the objective psyche, we’re talking about, you know, what is far beyond. So if I try to meditate on three parts in one, then my mind can get blown out enough to go I have no idea. It’s a mystery. But but and the other thing I love about the Trinity that people say is,

it’s a relationship. that God, God, God’s self is a relationship. Like the essence of, well, we could say the essence of the universe is love. I mean, that could be another way of saying it.

I think that that would pair well with some of the stuff Joseph Campbell wrote about the mystics in like the Jewish mystics or the Islamist mystics, where they are much more comfortable saying that God is a mystery. And we use these ideas to, you know, these images or these definitions to try to capture what that mystery is. But the whole point is that it’s a mystery. And

I’ve actually had a couple of conversations on the podcast recently where we talked about this level of ambiguity or this paradox of knowing but not knowing. there is something much more mystical, much more meaningful. It makes you feel much more small in a way, which is a healthy thing sometimes when you don’t have a concrete explanation and when you can look at yourself in the mirror and genuinely say, don’t know.

Josh Mortensen (49:10.104)

but the pursuit of that knowing, the pursuit of that mystery. And even if it just opens up to more mystery, that is part of being a human in a way, is settling on not knowing.

It’s the perfect place. I think that that place of humility that says, don’t know. Yeah, I think you describe it really well.

Yeah, this is all very, it’s very interesting that this is the podcast you’re doing because again, my wife and I going like trying out a church and just looking for a community. And we had this conversation for about a week after this one sermon that we went to where the minister spoke very so strictly against these things that I think are fascinating things, know? She specifically warned against astrology and I…

I had a Jungian astrologer on my podcast just a couple of months ago, and then after that, she did an astrological reading for me. I just thought it was fascinating, and I thought it opened me up to seeing all these different aspects of my own personal history and my story and why might it be that I turned out the way that I did. Even in astrology, I don’t take it literally. It’s just a map that has been developed.

And so the map is useful, but the map is never the complete terrain. And so I, yeah, we found it very, I think probably me more than my wife. just, I just go like, geez, I wish that there was a church I could go to who, you know, Laura would be up on the stand and explain the stories to me in the sense that the, know, in a Jungian sense where these characters are a part of me and

Josh Mortensen (50:58.346)

what am I missing about myself? If I had this story as a dream, what would the dream be trying to tell me? And so we did a lot of searching online and kind of Googling. And one of the interesting things about looking for churches that are not literal is that there, first of all, there aren’t a lot of them out there. And then if you type in, for me, this was my Google result. If I type in, what are the religions or churches that don’t interpret the Bible literally, the thing that often comes up

are churches and religions that are more liberal. The meaning of the word liberal has changed so much since it was first used. Liberal is supposed to mean open-minded, willing to accept other people’s point of views, but when you go and look at the different religions that are listed as more liberal, really what it means is politically leftist. There’s no part of me that wants to

completely dive into a religion that’s literal on the conservative side, that’s teaching me that, you know, this is absolute truth and if you don’t do it, then this will absolutely happen to you. But at the same time, I don’t want to go to a church that’s completely dove into the political left as well, because those are also things that I don’t necessarily want my kid growing up with. You know, if it was simply liberal, then that would be one case, but I think

the churches that label themselves as liberal, when you look at what they’re posting on their website or whatever it may be, it’s actually much more political than it is kind of a mindset or a psychological setting.

I feel like you and I and other people are trying to do a certain kind of work right now that the culture desperately needs a kind of a pulling back together these opposites that are constantly pulling apart, you know, the political opposites, the religious opposites and

Laura Lewis-Barr (53:07.922)

I really do think it is the work of my life to try to build bridges. And I find it really hard. It’s very easy to just hang out in one side, but it feels wrong to me. I resonate with what you’re saying. you do any work or have you talked to people about alchemy and Jung?

I’m fascinated by the idea of alchemy and I’ve had several conversations on the podcast where we talk about it vaguely. I want to say the closest I got into a deep conversation about alchemy was probably with this author named Mina Stillwater. And she had some really good stuff to say about alchemy, but it was probably like a five to 10 minute segment where we covered it. But I would love to learn more about it, but I just haven’t had that chance.

It’s a deep subject, but I was.

in a prayerful state thinking about our culture and what’s going on. I thought of the alchemical. So alchemy has different operations that they do on the on the crud in the test tube. And one of the operations is separatio separating. And I think as a culture

We’re in that state. We’re separated from each other. We’re pulled all apart from each other. And separation is an important place because we need to learn who we are. You know, back in the day when there was no separation, it was one big, like, I’m part of the clan. I don’t know who I am individually. Now we’re learning who I am individually. Now, after separatio,

Laura Lewis-Barr (55:07.084)

We need the coniúptio, the bringing together, right? And so I think that is our next task to, we’re in the separation state and now we have to bring together. anyway, it’s hard. It’s really hard.

It is hard because yeah, it does feel like you and I are trying to do something, particularly in our personal lives. And then just with our creative acts, you know, podcasts or with you with your short stop action films, you’re trying to explain this in a story narrative or through a narrative to people. And the big challenge is that not everybody’s there yet. And a lot of people are still going through that separation. It’s interesting because you brought up monotheism earlier and I genuinely believe

that we could not get to this state where we think of ourselves as individuals without monotheism because monotheism is the worship of one God. so in the worshiping of many gods, if religion is just a reflection of the internal psyche, the orientation of the psyche, in the worshiping of many gods, then you never really do become an individual.

If you look at half the world, the Eastern world, they don’t think in terms of the individual, they think of in terms of the collective because even inside they are a collective. But in this worshiping of a monotheistic God, we are all worshiping this being who stands alone, this one thing. And what is worship is if not emulation, if not an attempt to mimic what you see. And so with enough time, the worshiping of something, and this is very Joseph Campbell, like Joseph Campbell talks about this, the

if you worship something long enough, you become that thing. And then that’s kind of when the old myths fall away is because you’ve achieved the goal of the myth as a group and as individuals. And so now we’re in this state where we have started to become individuals. And that’s why a lot of the old religions are fault. Like the Christian religion, it doesn’t have its grasp on us in the same way it did before. And that’s, I see it as because we’ve actually

Josh Mortensen (57:21.326)

spent 2000 years doing that thing and to the point where now it’s becoming realized. I think you’re right though, because, and man, this all ties in with like Jung’s Red Book as well and kind of the psychological interpretation of the crucifixion and the resurrection. But I think you’re right. So once we become individuals, what you have to do then is find your place in the group again.

And so, and this is even if you read Maslow and his hierarchy of needs that he put out years ago, some 20 or so years after he put out his hierarchy of needs with self-actualization at the top, he came back around and he said, actually, there’s something else. And one of those things was transcendence, meaning that once you become self-actualized, you transcend this idea of being all on your own and you go and find a way to contribute to the collective again.

And so I think about this a lot. Like if you think about it in terms of humans as biological creatures, humans as spiritual creatures, humans as economic units, then all of us do kind of stand alone. We are our own individual, but none of it works without everybody else. And so in a sense, we have to figure out who we are so that we can

best figure out how we benefit the group. That’s like our unique survival mechanism as humans where every other species, the closest thing you could come to humans is maybe in an ant colony where there are worker ants and there are warrior ants. But in the human species, everybody has this unique genetic ability and this unique environment in which to find that one thing

or two things that they bring that not everybody can bring. And that’s kind of the beauty and the power of the human species, the separation of duties and how we all get to kind of pursue our own path in that. So I think that’s kind of the, you know, where the myth is headed.

Laura Lewis-Barr (59:38.07)

Yeah, I’ll again bring up Elio Delio and Teilhard’s work, this evolution of consciousness. whereas I get really afraid of AI and where that’s taking us, she thinks, and I don’t understand her a lot, so I could get this wrong, but she thinks that the internet and AI

We are coming together as a species and that is part of the evolution of consciousness toward love. Teilhard said we’re going toward love. So this is part of the struggle of the evolution right now. Like we’re part of the reason things are falling apart is because something new is going to be created. But it’s a really hard time.

Yeah, yeah, that separation is very strong right now. Yeah.

Yeah, and Michael Meade, you know his podcast? Yeah, so he’s always talking about apocalypse. And that’s our time. We’re in the apocalyptic time right now.

Yeah, it’s a fascinating time because I genuinely believe there may have never been a better time to be alive than right now. But at the same time, we’re just seeing so much turmoil and so much discord. Another good reference is John Booker, who’s the director of the Joseph Campbell Foundation. So I had him on my podcast a few months ago and he has this great idea and I think he’s working on a book and I don’t think it’s out yet, but he’s working on a book.

Josh Mortensen (01:01:19.266)

that’s kind of a follow-up to Joseph Campbell’s The Hero’s Journey. And he kind of pitches it as the collective hero’s journey. So looking at the hero’s journey in terms of a group rather than just an individual. that could be another really interesting one. I’m looking forward to him publishing that and then having a conversation with him about it.

Laura Lewis-Barr

Yeah, that’s really hard. It’s hard enough to have a hero like a single hero. Yeah.

Josh Mortensen

Yeah, well, Laura, this hour went by very fast and there’s no shortage of things that we could talk about, but I appreciate you coming on and sharing an update with me and then just, you you’re doing this thing that I was hoping was out there. So I’m excited to download the podcast and listen to it.

Laura Lewis-Barr

Thank you so much. That gives me hope as I struggle week after week.

Yeah, well, so if people do want to, you know, find your short films, or if they want to find your podcast, where would they go look for you?

Laura Lewis-Barr (01:02:22.798)

PsycheCinema.com are my films, and there is a page about the podcast. And the podcast is The Laughing Mystics. It’s on all the platforms, and it’s weekly, just like yours.

Okay, awesome. Well, I would encourage people to go listen.