Voices in My Head (The Rick Lee James Podcast) Episode 624: Brian Zahnd - Unseen Existences

Well, welcome back to Voices in My Head. As always, I'm your host, Rick Lee James. I'm so glad for all of you who come back week after week to listen and to hear these wonderful conversations that we're having together. It's always a pleasure to welcome Brian Zahn back to my podcast, and I'm always reminded that Brian shared one of the times he was here with me that Even though he does probably a million podcasts a year, it seems like I was the first one he ever did. So I'm so grateful to wear that title that I was the first one to introduce Brian Zahn to podcasting. And now, uh, it— I know you are very busy doing many of them. You've got a great new book out. So glad to have had a chance to read it and to get to talk with you about it today. The book is called Unseen Existences. Of Heaven, Earth, and the Divine Mystery in All Things. So, Brian Zahn, welcome back to Voices in My Head.

Thank you, Rick. Always good to be with you. And yes, you were the first pod to be cast. I mean, you, you must have been early in the game.

I don't know how long you've been doing this, but I, I know people who were doing it earlier than me, and I learned from them. But, uh, yeah, it was feel a lot— felt like I was kind of carving out my own territory at the time. And now it seems like everybody and their dog and their next-door neighbor's dog have a podcast at this point. But, but I love it. I always enjoy these good conversations together. And thank you. I, I so appreciated having a copy of your book in advance to be able to read and look at. And, and now it's out in the world. And I also was able to pick up a copy of the audio version, so I got to hear you reading it along. And it was neat to have you as the, the audio— the, the narrator, I should say— on your book. Is that the first one that you have narrated of your books? I know in the past there have been audiobooks.

Two others I did: Postcards from Babylon and The Wood Between the Worlds.

Oh, okay. That must have been, uh, that must be a very time-consuming process.

It's arduous, I tell you. I, I mean, I do it because people know my voice and You know, they would rather hear the actual author's voice than a professional narrator who would actually be much better in one sense. But if they know my voice, that's what they want to hear. So I try to please the people. I go to Chicago and it takes 3 days and I just find it hard to do. Oh wow. Into each of those days, I am just exhausted. Uh, other people might not find it so difficult, but I find it difficult.

Well, it's one thing to read, and then it's another thing to read it out loud for other people to hear. And so that's quite a task for sure. But you did a great job. I enjoyed it. I actually, many times, because I'm working as a hospital chaplain, I don't always have time to have the book in front of me, but sometimes I can walk the halls and on my way listen a little bit as I go. So I kind of did both back and forth.

Is that what you're telling me?

You were one of the voices in my head, literally. That's for sure. Well, let's get into it and talk about this new book. It's great. I wanted to start, if we could, right around page 17 where you talk about heaven as a present reality. And, and you write about heaven as more than just simply a place where we go after death. And I was so glad to hear someone writing about that perspective. For listeners who might be encountering this idea for the first time, uh, you describe what you mean by heaven as I was wondering if you could describe rather what you mean by heaven as a present reality and why that is something that might be maybe a different concept than people have often heard in their churches.

Yeah, sometimes I think our theological cosmology is a little bit distorted in that we think that if we say, yes, okay, I believe in heaven, that somehow it's, it's way out there in outer space somewhere, you know, go out to Neptune, take a left, keep going till you see the bright lights. Uh, that's not really how it works. Um, heaven is all around us. It's not a distant place. It's a different dimension. Okay. So if you think about, um, if you think about perhaps the space between matter— and in reality, that's almost all space— that could be thought of as the heavens. All right, so heaven is not way off. So, so Christ has ascended to the right hand of God in the heavens. Well, where is that? Well, that's everywhere. That's, that's right here. And so the, the realm of the ascended Christ of the departed saints, of the angels, is all around us. But they are not to be perceived through empirical means, that is, through the senses, through the 5 physical senses. And yet there are ways, through prayer and other things, that we actually engage with that heavenly reality. So, so heaven is not far off. It's, it's, it's right here. It's all around us.

It's the world.

It's the unseen realm, which of course the, the title of the book has that phrase unseen existences. It comes from the epigraph. Uh, the epigraph is from Walt Whitman's Song of the Open Road, where he writes, you paths worn in the irregular hollows by the roadsides, I believe you are latent with unseen existences. You are so dear to me. But the Apostle Paul, 2,000 years earlier, was saying things like, while we look not at things that are seen but that are unseen— of course, Paul recognizes the paradox in that. We look not at that which is seen but that which is unseen, for that which is seen is temporal, that which is unseen is eternal. So, so heaven is the other realm, the other world, the spiritual world that's all around us, that actually sustains this present material world that is temporal and will eventually pass away. That's one way of thinking about it.

Well, that's— I, I— it's really interesting and compelling the way you write about it. And I tend to think that, uh, heaven is this place that is already— it's not yet— it's a place that also, uh, is always in our midst, whether we know it or not. We are always in the midst of heaven because God's presence is with us in these moments. And so this is a beautiful and I think very imaginative way to write about the kingdom of God, to write about the presence of God in our lives each day. And I'm grateful for you taking it on. Uh, and there are many different mysterious realities and ways of interacting with the world that you write about. And, and I want to jump back just a little. I mean, it's, it's basically in the same area, but when we're talking about dimensions, things that are seen and things that are unseen, you write in an interesting way about something you call the serpentine spell. And I really think that that helps us too when we're talking about this concept of sort of different dimensions that we are living in, wrapped up in, caught in. For listeners who haven't read the book yet, I wonder if you might be able to explain also what you were talking about when you write the phrase serpentine spell and why it is such an important theme in understanding our human condition.

Yeah, the serpentine spell, the way I'm using it, would be understood as materialism. That is philosophical materialism that really defines the ethos of modernity. And that is simply the idea or the notion that all of the phenomenon of being is material, that there is no unseen world, there is no, uh, uh, spiritual world, that that's all a fable, that's a fairy tale, that's a child's tale. And the reason I call that a Serpentine Spell is because I'm working with C.S. Lewis and his Chronicles of Narnia book, uh, The Silver Chair, where some children from Earth and some Narnians have been captured in the underworld lair of a witch, uh, the Queen of Under— Underland, I believe, is what it's called. And she is trying to cast a spell upon them and convince them that there, there is no sun, there is no stars, there, there is no land called Narnia, there is no Aslan. Uh, all that exists is in this dark cavern. And they're trying to say, but above the, above the this, the roof, there is the sun, and there is the sky. And she says, you see, there's nothing up, there's nothing above. How could there be something above that, right? You know, so, so eventually, though, they are able to break the spell. And the witch turns into a serpent, and then is slain. So I'm working, I'm playing off of that. But it's the, it's the philosophical assumption, which is nothing more than a modern superstition that the whole phenomenon of being can be explained through material means, that there is no otherworld, spiritual world. So that's what I meant by the serpentine spell.

Whereas we are told, but there's Jesus. You know, I love that you write about that.

There's this defining moment when— is it Jill? I think that's what it is. It's been a while since I read this. I wrote the book 2 years ago. Uh, she says— can I read that passage?

Yeah, please do.

Yeah, since you've already given me the page number, I know where it is.

Sure.

Um, the witch's spell nearly overcomes the children and Narnians as they all begin to agree with her that there is no sun, no Narnia above the roof of Underland. But at last, Jill is able to speak the one essential truth. For the last few minutes— now I'm quoting from The Silver Chair— for the last few minutes, Jill had been feeling that there was something she must remember at all costs, and now she did. But it was dreadfully hard to say it. She felt as if huge weights were laid on her lips. At last, with an effort that seemed to take all the good out of her, she said, "There's Aslan." I'm going to keep reading. Once Jill evoked the name of Aslan, the spell began to weaken. Soon it was broken, and finally the witch who had turned a serpent was slain. In a materialist age that scoffs at the notion of heaven, the incantation that breaks the serpentine spell of modernity may very well be, 'There's Jesus.' Yeah.

Oh, I love it. It's one of my favorite passages in the book. I'm so glad you read that for us. And I think it helps us with this understanding. For, for too long— and you write about this very well in the book— for too long Heaven has been looked at as the place you go after you die and nothing more, in some, in some ways. And you challenge that idea and the common understanding of what we would call a one-time event as far as conversion, or, or that we would be converted just so that we can go to heaven when we die. Um, and I'd love for us maybe to talk a bit, uh, tonight, as in this book, in the way that you write about your understanding of conversion. It may challenge some people to think about it, but what it looks like for the ongoing journey of transformation— that really is what conversion is. We are being converted, we are being saved, we are being made new. And I just love to just stop and talk about that, I think, for a minute as well, because we've talked about the serpentine spell this, uh, philosophical understanding that there is nothing more. And then we've talked about maybe some misconceptions of heaven, but then the idea of being invited into this different dimension, it's so different than what so many people have been taught about— come be invited just to follow Jesus so you can go to heaven as fire insurance when you die. I wonder if you could just talk a little bit more about that.

So A lot of the promotion around the book will say that this is a book about heaven. And that's true. But it's not the whole story. First of all, let me just set this up, because I want, I want people to understand that this is not a sensationalist book about my 30 minutes in heaven, and I saw the streets of gold or something like that. This is the escapist heaven that we no longer care about God's good earth or justice among the people here. Uh, it's not, it's not sensationalist, it's not escapist, it's not sentimental, it's not that. Uh, it's actually an engagement with the historic theology of heaven, but also of the pilgrimage of the soul through life toward our true telos of union with God in the heavens. The opening sentence, I think after the prelude, the opening sentence of the first chapter is, we're all born a long way from home. Which is, you know, it's a, it's a provocative sentence, because in one sense, you think, well, where we're born is home, not necessarily. We're all born a long way from home. And life in some way is understood as the journey of the soul toward our true home of union with God. Initially, throughout, throughout the writing process, the title of the book, again, taken from Walt Whitman's Song of the Road was Paths of Unseen Existences, which combines those two ideas of, of a journey, a pilgrimage, and, and the realm of unseen existences. The publisher, and I think probably rightly so, just shortened it to Unseen Existences to make it simpler. But really, those, those are equal themes in the book, of heaven and the pilgrimage. So, and if we talk about conversion Um, this is somewhat of an evangelical phenomenon, although maybe not entirely limited to that world. Uh, we like to talk about when we were saved, and that's legitimate in one sense. I mean, I look back on my dramatic teenage conversion. I was starting to head down some really destructive roads, and I know myself well enough that that when I get into something, I'm all in. And I was about to really mess up my life as a teenager. And I had a sudden encounter with Jesus that saved me.

It did.

I mean, it saved me from what my life would've been. The problem though is if we think that the journey is complete because we've begun. No, that you have to— it's where, where you start is where you start, but then You have to continue to walk this road. And so I can also look at other moments in my life that were conversion experiences that saved me from, you know, really a squandered life perhaps. Or I mean, in midlife, I needed to be called into a richer, more authentic, deeper Christian faith. I mean, my commitment to Jesus was always there, But at this, by the time I was entering my 40s, I realized that what I knew of Christianity was too consumerist, too thin, too American, and I needed to find a richer faith. And I speak of, in midlife, of being born again, again, and that's real. So, uh, if we can, if we, if we place all of our thinking or conversation about conversion in the past as if it's all finished. I think that's the mistake. And so there may be dramatic moments, or not, where we begin to walk on this path of following Jesus, and that may be significant to us because it's where we began. But beginning to walk the road is not the same thing as having actually walked it. So, uh, I, I don't like to think of conversion as a static state of being, but rather as an ongoing process of continually seeking to draw near to Christ. And that theme's all throughout the book, right?

And I love that idea of, uh, we, we want to shortcut it sometimes, to maybe walk the road without walking the road, saying we've had the experience without actually taking the journey. And you go on to write, uh, I think it's around page. Let me see here. I had some, I had some notes here that I, I took. Um, uh, sorry for getting lost. It's been a long day here. But the idea of, uh, oh, I remember what it was. It's on page 101 where you talk about the, the temptation in Eden, this, this human desire to become like God apart from God. And I think of what you just said about trying to walk the road without actually walking the road. There are many humanist ways that would want us to say, hey, we can basically live the Christian lifestyle without Christ. We can follow God without following God, so to speak. But I do think that the temptation, as you write about in Eden, is this occurring desire to become like God without God, and it leads us to some dangerous places, some unhealthy places, and some difficult ways. I wonder if We could stop for a minute to think about this idea too. I love the way you said the book opens with, "We're all born a long way from home." And I was just thinking, even this week, as I work as a chaplain in hospitals and I walk into patients' rooms, so many times what the patient's main concern is, is they want to go home. That's the main thing. And they tell— and I ask them, tell me what makes home home for you? And so they'll start telling me different things that make it familiar to them, things that make them— they may not use this language, but things that make them feel loved, make them feel like themselves. You don't feel like yourself in a hospital room. You're, you're kind of always on a little bit for whoever comes in the room, and you're wearing this weird gown, and you know, it's got no back to it, and you're, you're just not quite at home. You know, and so it's interesting to me that when we talk about, you know, none of us, all of us are born far from home, that's metaphorically and literally true for born in a hospital. You know, we are, we are then taken home, you know, to this place. And then as we grow up, I was just thinking about the way you were talking now and the way that you've written. It feels like we're always on this journey in and out of home, trying to come back to home. But hopefully home is instilled in us by those people who love us and raise us and care for us so that when we walk away from home, we're still taking home with us in the way that we live. And you do a lot of writing about the journey you take and the roads that you've walked and the pilgrimages that you have taken. And I just get this image in my mind of you being far from home, but walking also in the presence of home. While you're heading home. Does that all— does that make sense in any way?

You know, actual, actual literal walking pilgrimages has become a big part of my life and with my wife over the past decade. We had our first really long walking pilgrimage. We've done a little— some little short things, but it'll be 10 years ago in September that we first began to walk the Camino de Santiago, this 500-mile— the classic route these days begins in Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port, France, and 500 miles later you arrive in Santiago de Compostela, Spain. We've walked on the Camino de Santiago 4 times, and we walked 3 times on the, uh, Saint Cuthbert's Way, which is much shorter. It's like, I think, 65 miles. From Melrose, Scotland to the holy island of Lindisfarne off the coast of England. But, um, they're just such powerful metaphors for life. And for us, it's been a way to slow down. It's been a way for us to simplify our lives. And, uh, I would say that my, my best self is my pilgrim self. And by that I mean when I'm literally, you know, doing one of these walking pilgrimages, but I want to carry that same kind of best self, you know, actually into just my normal day-to-day life. And it helps to do that by understanding that life is a pilgrim journey toward home. I know this has kind of fallen out of favor, this kind of language. Uh, but it's intensely biblical language that, for example, Abraham considered him a stranger— he considered himself a stranger and a pilgrim. He actually used that word, uh, in this world. Um, for here we have no enduring city, it says in the book of Hebrews. So we're looking for the one to come. Now it doesn't mean that we're not concerned about justice and about loving our neighbor, those right around us that we can help. Yes, but we want to be careful to avoid placing too much, an overburdened, um, hope in that this world as it is can become heaven on earth. I, I think we, we try to anticipate that which is to come, but actually we are moving towards the completion that belongs in another dimension, another age called the realm of eternity. Um, so we, we pray, we're taught to pray, thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Well, that presumes that there is a realm where things are right, where all is well, where things are healed. And that's what we're trying— well, that's what we're moving toward. But the church needs to be, uh, this present reality of an anticipation of that. So the church itself needs to be the place where, not in perfection, but at least to some degree that we can perceive it, God's will is being done on earth as it is in heaven. The church at its best is an anticipation of the age to come. So people should be able to look at a healthy functioning church and say, I catch a glimpse of where this is headed, what God's will is, what it looks like for God's will to be done on earth as it is in heaven. I don't— I'm a critic of the church trying to use the political apparatus of the state too directly to bring about change, because when the church directly tries to change the world, it doesn't change the world, it just becomes the world. I don't think our task is to change the world. I think that belongs to Christ, who is the Savior of the world. Our task is more modest. It's simply to be that part of the world already transformed by Christ. And then as we do that, then people begin to see, I think I maybe want to be a part of that. So I sort of rambled there, but—

well, well, no, I— and as Stanley Hauerwas, I think, would say, uh, to let the world be the world. The task of the church is to let the world be the world, you know.

I got to be with Stanley last year. I introduced his latest book, Jesus Changes Everything. It was both an honor and a little bit unnerving.

I bet. I bet.

Divinity School, speaking on Stanley Harawasa's new book, giving an evaluation of it, you know, my take on it, while Stanley Harawasa sat on the front row and stared at me.

That's—

but it all came off. It all turned out to be a positive experience. But I won't lie, I was a little bit nervous.

I bet. I've had him on this podcast and I had the same feeling. I was like, oh boy, I really have to up my game now as I talk to Stanley Hauerwas today.

But no one has influenced political theology more than Stanley Hauerwas.

Yeah, yeah. I think many of us could attest to that. We have much gratitude for his writing over the years, for sure. Well, that's great. Well, we've gone all over the place as we've talked about this, but it's been really good and I've appreciated it. I love this talk about journeying and, and the idea that we are on this road and we encounter a lot of different things and a lot of different people on the road. And I know you and Perry, especially as you've taken the walk together, you, you just brought to my mind something else. But this year I read a book very slowly, um, ironically or not, called Three Mile an Hour God. And, uh, and it really is about, um the way that humans are made to walk at a certain pace, and it's right around 3 miles an hour. And the fact that God becomes not a God who lords over us and speeds past us, but actually becomes one of us and slows down to our speed and walks with us. And I, I think as we talk about this idea of pilgrimage, we have this unseen companion journeying with us down these miles of these roads that's teaching us and discipling us and walking with us and doing it with each other. And with that in mind, before we end our talk, you also write about— since we're talking about journeying, you write about this passage of scripture, the 'depart from me' passage. And I really like where you went with it in the book. One of the more surprising treatments— well, one of the more surprising things, I guess, that we sometimes see in the Bible is Jesus' words, 'Depart from me.' And I wonder if you could talk a little bit about the way that you write about that in this book, because I think it's a very important thing for us to look at and understand, but especially why you see grace at work in those words, depart from me.

Yeah, those are some of the most dreadful, you know, words in red in the New Testament. I never knew you, depart from me. I'm going to suggest that is actually a grace. First of all, Christ says, 'I never knew you.' Well, what is it that the omniscient Christ does not know? Well, what the omniscient Christ does not know is that which ultimately cannot be, that does not really have a foundation. An ontological existence, which is in fact what evil is. Evil does not exist ontologically of its own. It's not a creation of God. It is a marring in the fabric of goodness. You could think of it as a hole. So you have a lovely silk garment, but something has happened. There's a tear in it. There's a hole. But what is a hole? Well, in one sense, hole is nothing. So that if you do mend the garment, where did the hole go? It's just, it doesn't exist anymore. We have a false self deformed by sin that we are trying to be in a mistaken way, um, and Christ refuses to grant this false self, deformed in sin, ontological being. So he says, I never knew you. It's, it's like, I think most of us have had moments when we've been disappointed with ourselves, and maybe we've said to ourselves, that's not who I am. Well, in fact, Jesus agrees with that, and he says, that's not who you are. I don't know who that is. And I'm not going to acknowledge it, but I hold to the hope that that's not the end of the story, that Christ continues to work and form us into that to which he can say, 'I know who you are. Welcome home.' Uh, I don't know if you know this, Rick, I need to say this. Um, originally the book ended with a piece of fiction. I didn't even number it as a chapter. I just called it The Reverend of Fantasy, and it's based upon a historical figure, the, uh, the pastor of the Connecticut Colony that gave his blessing upon the Mystic Massacre. And the Sunday after that massacre, he stood in his pulpit and roared, on that day we sent 600 on Praise be to God that on that day we sent 600 heathen souls to hell. And I had read about this, I kind of knew about this already, but I'd read an essay by a Native American on this man, and when I was on vacation in the mountains, and I said to my wife, can you imagine that, that pastor at the judgment seat of Christ? Well, the next day I did a long solo hike, and that's exactly what happened. Is I began to imagine what that might be, and I wrote a piece of fiction called The Reverend of Fantasy in the style of— I'm not claiming it's anywhere near this, you know, great, but it's in the style of C.S. Lewis's The Great Divorce, where you have the people take the bus to heaven and all of that sort of stuff. But it made the publisher nervous, nervous enough that ultimately, over my protests, they wouldn't put it in the book. So I have published it though on my Substack, and you can read it there.

It's for free.

Go find the Reverend. Or better yet, I have something better. I have something better for y'all to do, and that is go to YouTube, go to Word of Life. Like, it's, it's like W-O-L-C TV. Just search, you know, I don't know, Brian Zahn, the Reverend. You know how you, you know, you search function, because a professional narrator This guy does this for a living, Boyd Barrett, uh, just out of the generosity of his own kind soul. He was, he was so moved by The Reverend as he read it in installments on Pub— on Substack that he recorded it. I mean, it's a dramatic reading. It's about 48 minutes long, and it's— he has the different voices. It was in fact so good It was so good that in listening to it— I mean, it just came out like Wednesday— no, today's— no, this came out last week, like, I don't know, Thursday or Friday. So it's just— it's quite new. Um, in listening to it, there were nuances and interpretations that even I had not seen. And I mean, I wrote it.

Yeah.

Oh, he picked up on something that I hadn't seen in that, in the way he narrated it. So I, I'm just— this is my plug to find this on YouTube and, you know, sometime in the evening just settle down and, and listen to this story and know that, that, that it actually is a companion piece with Unseen Existences.

Yeah. Well, I love that. And I, and I had seen that those were coming out with your Substack, but I have not had a chance to read them yet. So I'm really glad to know.

You can read what you want. But listen to it. Or if you go to my Substack and find the most— it says, you know, one final post on the Reverend. What you can— if you want, you do whatever you want, but, but you can both listen to it and read along. Yeah. Or just listen to it.

I don't know. You do whatever you want. Well, that's my preferred way. I tend to be—

but that is a— that is, you know, this is fiction. I call it a fantasy. I'm not doing, you know, dogmatic theology. But it's an example of how we might think about 'depart from me, I never knew you' as grace, if in fact there is a way for us to become our true self and be welcomed home.

Yeah, you know, that, that whole passage, the sheep and the goats in, in Matthew 25, uh, it has been so formative in my spiritual walk over the last couple of years, last 5 years, I guess I would say, as I've entered into chaplaincy and kind of changed direction in my vocation because I was challenged to think about from one of my CPE instructors when they asked this question, do you want people to see Jesus in you or do you want to see Jesus in people? And nobody had ever asked it quite that way. And that's, that's part of that passage. And for me, it, it helped me to look at ministry in my life and mission through different eyes. And again, not see that passage of depart from me as such a scary thing, which it is a scary thing when you read about that. But it helped me to not be such a performance-oriented Christian because I realized My task is to see Jesus in people much more than for them to see Jesus in me. And if I spend too much time dwelling on me, I miss those people in front of me and the Jesus behind their eyes, you know. And I think in a sense, when we're talking about telling the false self to depart from me, that's part of what we're doing. We're being invited to this new way of seeing Jesus in every person we encounter. You know, and I think that's a beautiful way to look at it for sure. And you do a wonderful job as always. This, this whole book is a wonderful journey. I, I, um, read it with an open heart, as I often— and well, I always try to do— I often do it. But, but I'm grateful to have Unseen Existences of Heaven, Earth, and the Divine Mystery of All Things. And I know that many of our listeners If they haven't had a chance to read it yet, they're going to be picking that up. Before we end our conversation together today, I just wanted to give you a chance. It was— if there's anything that you hope that we would highlight today in our conversation about your new book, or maybe anything in particular just happening in life and ministry that you wanted to share, I just wanted to give you a chance to do that before we end our conversation.

I would say that I hope to encourage people to understand that this life is a pilgrim journey toward our true end, our true goal, our true telos of union with God in the heavens. And that's what life is for, that's what life is about. And because we are walking through this world surrounded by another more real, more eternal world, there continues to be beams of grace from this other world that, that, that assist us and help us along the way. You're not alone. You're surrounded by the angels. Christ is with us. There is grace from the world of unseen existences that is continually breaking into this world to help us and assist us as we journey towards our true telos of union with God in the heavens.

Well, with that, we're going to be closing our time together. Those are great words to close on. Uh, as always, I will do my best to put all the links in the show notes whenever we release this podcast. And on YouTube, that's right, that's right, send the YouTube link. That's right, I'll find that easy enough. Well, as I say every week to my guests, uh, Brian Zahn, thank you for being one of the voices in my head this week. I really appreciate it.

Thank you, Rick.