Mark Buchanan: What We Leave Undone - Learning to Trust Through Sabbath

In this episode of Coastal Theology, Andy Withrow and Vanessa Caruso sit down with pastor and author Mark Buchanan (The Rest of God) to explore how Sabbath, vocation, and trust belong together.

As VISTA prepares for its May 8–9 conference “Called and Formed”, Mark reframes Sabbath as more than a productivity break—it’s a practice that retrains our souls for patience, presence, and interruption, especially in a culture formed by convenience and distraction. The conversation moves from the dignity of ordinary work (as participation in God’s creative purposes) to the spiritual danger of “losing the plot” when work feels disconnected from meaning.

Mark also shares the surprising story of New Story Community, a ministry he and his wife began during COVID—living in close, life-on-life community with First Nations women navigating complex trauma. Together, they reflect on how spiritual disciplines (like fasting, silence, and Sabbath) don’t just soothe us—they form resilience and prepare us for the callings we never would have chosen.

Plus: Mark previews his new novel releasing March 17.

Transcript

Andy Withrow: 0:00

ANNOUNCER.

Vanessa Caruso: 0:17

Welcome to coastal theology, a podcast from the Vancouver Island School of Theology and the arts, we explore how Christian faith, learning and creativity flourish on Vancouver Island, and how you can be part of the story. I'll just like giggle and stuff. Okay?

Andy Withrow: 0:34

Vanessa, giggle, I'm gonna intro this podcast today on coastal theology. We're joined by Mark Buchanan, a pastor and author whose writing has helped many of us rethink work, rest and what it means to live faithfully before God. Mark has many books out a lot there's a lot of books out in one of those is the rest of God, where he invites us to see Sabbath, not as interruption to real life, but as the place where life is most deeply formed. As we prepare for our upcoming Vista conference, May 8 through ninth, called informed we're exploring how vocation takes shape across the rhythms of work, rest and trust and Mark's voice is a gift in that conversation. So in this episode, we're going to talk about why our work matters and why Sabbath may be less about stopping and more about leaning, learning to trust God with what we leave undone.

Vanessa Caruso: 1:27

So let's say hi to mark. Well, I feel very self conscious already, Mark, because you said you had a podcast on Saturday. And as you can tell, we're not a really big operation over here.

Mark Buchanan: 1:40

Well, Vanessa, I mean, it's everything from, you know, Trinity forum to the guy working out of his mom's garage. Like, honestly, yeah,

Andy Withrow: 1:49

we're close to the mom's garage. Yeah, I don't this is the church's garage, basically,

Mark Buchanan: 1:54

yeah, I, I'm just sort of happy to have an opportunity to talk about whatever, whatever.

Vanessa Caruso: 2:02

I'm a little star struck about trinity farm that we're talking to someone who's been on the Trinity forum. I forget the woman's name, but she has such Cherie, yeah, yeah. And she has such great introductions to people, very thoughtful. Yeah, very Yeah. She stands out. Yeah, what did you talk to

Mark Buchanan: 2:22

it was actually on a book I wrote and we did the interview. It was a few years ago. So it's not like, you know, they're calling me up all the time, but it was a book on walking that I did.

Vanessa Caruso: 2:35

Well, of all your books, that's the one I want to get Andy

Andy Withrow: 2:39

hats when I have, but I've not read yet. I spent more time in the rest of God for, okay, for today, but it looks good. I'm looking forward to,

Mark Buchanan: 2:49

yeah, it's kind of, if it's anything that I've written that would be a companion to the rest of God, it would be God, God walk

Vanessa Caruso: 2:57

so Mark, thank you for being here. There are lots of trial and error, and even our whole process getting you here was full of fumbles on our side. So I like to believe that everything means something, but I don't want to interpret that too heavily. Except, oh, this is a stretch, but I feel like Sabbath. A Sabbath lifestyle makes room for lots of mistakes. Is this true? Or is this me? No.

Mark Buchanan: 3:30

One of the things that our culture, especially Western culture, with this high, high value on convenience and comfort, does is it trains us. And impatience is actually just by its very nature, it makes us impatient. And so, you know, if you can order up, you know, anything on Amazon or whatever, and have it same day delivery, if you're in a, you know, certain centers, the long term effect on our formation is we're going to be we're going to be entitled people, and we don't want glitches and so thus mounting anger. If a plane's late and somebody's yelling at the poor, you know, person running the computer the, you know, the counter, of course, she engineered the entire sort of debacle of the plane, you know, getting snowbound in New York or whatever. But the sort of impatience that's marking out more and more culture is we don't know what to do with mistake, with with with with interruption, with disruption, except sort of React out of frustration, anger and a sense of we're old something more. So I actually I do a whole when I teach Sabbath, and I do a full 1212, week three credit course on Sabbath Keeping I talk about cultivating a theology or practice, not even a theology or practice of it. Interruption, like, look for, you know, engineer a little bit of things going wrong for you, so you retrain your soul that things don't always work.

Vanessa Caruso: 5:12

Oh, I thought you were gonna say interruption and but I wasn't sure, but I was craving for you to say that that's that that's a holy thing, or can be at

Andy Withrow: 5:21

least so much so that you almost interrupted him.

Unknown: 5:24

Probably that would have been high level if I could have done what?

Andy Withrow: 5:27

Yeah, display the lack of patience. Yes, I don't think we need these at this point. What you just said, Mark, made me think of the last few weeks have been on this, this patience kick like, How Much Does, does our brokenness, our failures, our sin, come back to a lack of patience? I mean, you can read it, it's it's all. It seems to be always in the background, there, in the in the biblical narrative. It seems to be behind a lot of what Jesus says in his sermon on the mount Ellen crater. Wrote a book called The patient ferment of the early church.

Mark Buchanan: 6:11

I've never heard it sounds wonderful, and he goes back to

Andy Withrow: 6:14

all the church, early church theologians and Christian leaders who write on patients and can't remember, I'm gonna, I can't remember which one it was, Tertullian or someone said called patience, that unique is unique to the Christian virtues, like it's uniquely Christian virtue, more so than the Greco and Roman Greco Roman context, didn't, didn't celebrate it didn't really hold it up. And yeah. So, so this whole kind of connection to Sabbath and rest, and as we'll look at, the conference coming up here in Victoria, May, 8 and ninth, you and Gordon Smith are coming, and we're going to talk about Sabbath and calling, yes, and Sabbath and vocation in kind of the connection of the two. And that comes up a lot in the rest of God. You connect that pretty explicitly early on in that book?

Mark Buchanan: 7:12

Yeah, I hope so. Andy and I mean, partly Gordon and I love to work together. He was my former boss. He was a president to Ambrose, and I've been working there for the last 13 years. So we, over that time, you know, we began to sort of meet outside of work related things and and what emerged is a really rich friendship. And so now that he's he's retired from or step back from there and do another work, we just look for chances to hang out, to be honest, but his one of his areas of really rich reflection, and I think you'll, you'll probably do a separate interview with him, but is this whole area of location, I don't know anybody in the modern context has thought about it quite as much as he has. That's not my shtick. That's not my gig. I mean, I think about that, but I think about it, Chapter link things, not book length things, but I do think about these practices of slowing with all, all that we're talking about, like, like waiting is part of slowing and dealing with, dealing with, you know, logistical glitches, or whatever is slowing, like the whole practice of giving our soul that we're not easily disrupted, vexed, anxious, angry at things not going in our way. That really is it? Because really the Sabbath is just coming back into this, this this one, this, this deep, onto deep with God and God's people, and so that is always a slow work. God's work with us is slow. God's work within community is slow. Things don't happen, you know, AI speed. So, but, but I was Gordon, and I talked about this upcoming event on May, May 9 and Victoria, we thought, why don't we just kind of bring what we we think about, yeah, and can join them. And certainly for me, the vocation piece, I mean, at a personal level. And I, and I share some of this in the book the rest of God. I was pastoring. I pastor for 24 years, and many of them in Vancouver, Island, just up the way from from from Victoria and Duncan. And I, I didn't realize how I had no real sustaining practices around the hard work of being a pastor. And you can run for, I don't know. I mean, I probably ran for five or six years on sheer adrenaline and giftedness. And it wasn't like I was super gifted. It was just like you have enough to, you know, make stuff happen and fake it and all that. And I, I mean, even though I'd written at that point on, or was writing a. On on things like spiritual practices, spiritual disciplines, I wasn't none of them were deeply sustaining in the way Sabbath has been. And partly I, you know, I, like most spiritual disciplines, for me, are a bit of a an unmasking and a remaking of of habits that are pretty you know, they're the long arc of them is destructive. So I am a, I want to get stuff done. It's a, it's a strength, but it can also become this obsessive thing, this self, you know, it could be harder on relationships, harder my health, certain things. So a lot of the things I've written about in spiritual formation are about what has saved me, from me.

Vanessa Caruso: 10:52

I know, yes, yes, you want to. I do it. We'll jump in. Um, I have so many thoughts and questions mark, but something that would make me feel a little more connected to you is to know something about you, like in your life right now, it could be really contextual. We don't even have to include it if it's too personal or something like that. But what's something like, what's a real thing in your life right now that's like, exciting or interesting?

Mark Buchanan: 11:22

Thank you, life. That's a great question. Five years ago during right in the middle of covid, my wife and with my assistants, and we sort of dreamed this together, but it's really something God put in her heart. We launched a ministry called New Story community, and it's it. We basically live in a community for seven months of the year with First Nations women, small group of them who have complex trauma, like deep and complex trauma, and in every case, the women who have come have also starting with a substance addiction. That's not a requirement of getting in. It just happens to be the trauma in every case of the women who have come in a program have have, you know, often years of substance addiction and so and it's a real community. They live in a house. We're in the house next to it. We we eat most of our meals with them. She spends a large part of every day with them, seven days a week. I mean, she she Sabbaths, but she Sabbaths with the women, as I do a part of it. So it's, it's just a real life on life thing. Vanessa, to your question, you know, nothing has quite changed me or been as formative of these five years of doing alongside of my wife, and certainly I can, I think I could attest and watching her, nothing's been more formative than this. These relationships that are truly mutual. There's not any sort of heroism we might have begun with has completely been, you know this, the ministry itself won't. It won't it won't accept that, that you coming in to do heroic things. It you have to become friends. You have to do go on a journey together. It has to be a real interdependence that develops, and we've had to learn that as we do it. And but it's been breathtaking and and so that to me and I it's such that we actually moved up an hour and a half north of where I work in Calgary, and I commute now. I've got a schedule that, you know, I'm not going back and forth every day, but we've, we're so committed to what's happening for these women, with these women, but also with us, like it's been, it's been our Christian community for the last five years, not that we don't have other friends, but that I can't, you know, I love to talk about it just simply because it's been the sort of late in our life. We're both in our 60s, the discovery of a kind of community we never imagined we could be part of. You know, all the years I was pastoring, all the years we're we've been Christ followers for 40 something years, and I did not envision that you could kind of do life with other people quite like this. So so that that would be the number one that just always pops to this for, for when you people are asked, What's going on for you?

Vanessa Caruso: 14:41

Yeah, that was way. It's way more immersive than I was expecting you to say, you know, yeah, it's like, the whole thing. It's not like, oh, I picked up swimming or I got a dog. It's like, I live with other people. Yeah?

Mark Buchanan: 14:55

And, I mean, we don't live in the house, same house, but we like, we're right next door and, like, the same. Spend enormous amounts of time in each of the company, go to church together. And one of the women is awaiting hip surgery so she can walk a little bit, but she's, she's in a, you know, a wheelchair, and so just, wow, does that ever slow you down? Like every time you go somewhere, it's just, I'm, you know, if we, if we go to calgary or something, I'm studying roots to where we're going, just to see, okay, that's the closest I can get to the building. And I may actually have to, I can't. We went to a play in Calgary just before Christmas, and I had to break the law. I had to go down a service lane that, you know, it's saying, you know, you're going to get fined and all that, right? Because I couldn't find, it was snowy. I couldn't find any other access point that would let this dear friend of ours, Maxine, started get into the building. So I'm fine with, like, there's a sense where it's, like, you know, if I have to, you know, make the ethical decision down a service lane you know, you know, in violation of the you know, clearly posted signs or somehow make our Maxine have to push her wheelchair through the snow and ice. I just pick, and I don't think there's probably a police officer planet who isn't going to go, Yeah, good. That's good.

Andy Withrow: 16:25

That's true. Yeah.

Unknown: 16:26

Are you and your wife introverts? That's my first step.

Mark Buchanan: 16:30

Oh, wow. Yeah, totally. Like, I mean, what? Oh, Vanessa, like, Why did God call us into this? Like, we're so introverted?

Unknown: 16:38

Are you? That's what I guessed. But, oh, yeah. How do you do this?

Mark Buchanan: 16:42

I don't know, like a perfect day for either of us is, like, nobody but us in the, you know, nature, yeah, and, you know, writing poetry or so. No, I don't know how this happened, other than God. God got hold of my wife and and I've never seen calling. I mean, I this is where the vocational piece really emerges. For me. I realized I've never been called deeply to anything. I've been fairly gifted at a few things and found really good work to do, but my wife lives and breathes this work and so why us? Why her neither of us have ever struggled with an addiction, had pretty good upbringings, don't have any deep trauma, yeah, like, like, none of it may make sense to me, other than God's enormous sense of humor.

Vanessa Caruso: 17:41

Well, that that's kind of relieving to hear, because I'm listening to like, wow, I don't know if I could do something like that. I lived in an intentional community setting in Philadelphia when I lived there, and it was so hard for me to share the kitchen and to share life with so many people so often. Yeah, so to hear you, I'm kind of like, oh, that sounds so holy, you know, but so it's actually relieving to hear that it's a supernatural calling that makes it sustainable. And I hear the joy and the perplexity, if that's the word in your voice, as we talk about it like it sounds deeply meaningful, and you're very surprised,

Mark Buchanan: 18:25

very both, yeah, thank you. Deeply meaningful, very surprised. Would never have picked this, you know, if I was going, if I, you know, if I went to a, you know, vocational counselor or whatever, I can't imagine. This would have popped up for either my wife or I. I certainly, you know, give me a list of 1000 jobs your life, you know, somehow living in a, you know, a group home or something, no, not that would be well off the and so I and still, I mean, I find, like my wife has, because of The calling, way more capacity than I did, like i i Would not I don't think if we actually all had to live in the same house, I don't think I could handle that. But who knows.

Vanessa Caruso: 19:11

I have a theory already, Mark, okay, my theory is that you two started practicing Sabbath in a really, real way, where the your ground, the ground of your heart, became fertile and fallow, like you talk about, and just like Mary, there was a receptivity there for kind of a radical, a more radical idea than maybe the arc of your Life would have gone if you didn't cultivate an imagination or a receptivity for receiving an idea like this or a comment. Oh, I

Mark Buchanan: 19:48

love that, you know, Vanessa, I love that. I never thought that theory, but it resonates that something prepared us unawares, we weren't, you know, we didn't engage. In that discipline or practice, because we thought, but it does. I think that that's the nature of the of a really well practice discipline over over a long arc, that long obedience in the same direction, is that it, it shifts architectural things and foundational and yeah, so it's not just kind of like it goes beyond the cosmetics. I'm happy. There's something inside of us that starts to shift, and there may be an aging process. But I mean, part of the surprise too is that as we got older, we're normally, I think you move toward more, like, I want my own space and stuff. Yeah, that this should I'm laughing because, I mean, like, we live the place the women lover is quite lovely. We live in a 1970 single wide trailer. We went hillbilly. We went all in. We're in the hall, or on this one, and it's got such a it's, thankfully, has a very effective furnace, but the thing roars like smog, like a dragon down the hallway. So if I was there, I'm in Calgary right now, but if I was in that, that place, I would definitely have to, you know, make sure that we weren't getting the background noise of the furnace howling. And I quite love it, like I just it's all a big surprise to me, like I didn't, I don't think, I mean, our life the last five years have been like steady, downward mobility in terms of living conditions. Yeah, we sold our house, beautiful house in a beautiful town of Cochrane that's about as white, white Ville as you want to get. And we're living in the woods in this little trailer, 70s single white trailer with First Nations women. And I wouldn't have it's just lovely, but I would not have guessed I would. I would not have aspired to this. But I think I love your theory that something made us open, receptive, curious.

Unknown: 22:08

So beware if you practice

Mark Buchanan: 22:17

all I can say, If that's true, if that theory holds and it just, it sounds very valid to me. Vanessa, you don't have to worry about it because, because it's, it's, it's not going to be God is not only lead you into something you hate. Yeah, you just didn't know you loved it.

Andy Withrow: 22:37

Yeah, I believe you. This is going back. I mean, just think, looking at chapter one from your book, the rest of God, it connects very much to this, because then it you, you kind of talk about work and rest together like you can't really understand one without the other. What I hear you saying, or even with your theory of like, well, your Sabbath practice and calling are all kind of bound up together.

Mark Buchanan: 23:05

Yeah, very much. Like one of the things that sort of surprised and maybe a little frustrated me over the years since I wrote the rest of God, I think I came out in 204206, or something. So it's 20 years, 20 ish years old, and that at that point, there was very little that, you know, people in my evangelical world were doing in Sabbath, and the stuff that I read was mostly legalistic and pedantic. It was just sort of like, you know, here's eight things to do, and you'll be sabbathing. And there was some really great Jewish stuff, and there's some really great secular stuff, actually unrest at that point, but nothing that I thought was really, you know, gold standard in the Christian world. So I wrote this in some ways. I call my book on Sabbath, his shell for dummies. You know, the Greek Classic is Abraham, Joshua, shell, Sabbath. But it's a hard read for a lot of people. It's Kabbalistic, you know, Jewish theology and stuff like that. Like most people can't get past 10 page 10. And so I really wanted to kind of take some of the ideas of that, but also just my reading of Scripture, etc. What happened in the 20 years since then? There's a ton of books in Sabbath. I mean, it's just an inundation, but the majority of them are so, you know, focused on my bliss, in a sense, you know, like this, this sort of practice that is most like, you know, a recovery from our own, you know, craziness and haste and whatnot, which I do think is a necessary part of the Sabbath. But what is? What? What? What I noticed as I read many of those books was missing is a an understanding that six days show you work, that there, there is really a culture of work that's up. All that celebrated God is the worker. God does six days, you know, pull six full, full day shifts and takes the day off. And that work is, is not it's part of our formation as well. So that thing that we cannot somehow create a Sabbath world where that's all we do is, I don't think heavens that, I mean, they've depicted, depictions of Heaven is, there's, there's a lot, there's a lot doing. There's a lot going on. So that I almost when I started to teach on Sabbath, and I start to see that there's this trend toward, you know, that our whole life should be more quantum, contemplative and whatnot, and this activistic and and high ethic for work and scripture was being ignored or downplayed. I just felt part of my part of my teaching, was to really recover that. So I've emphasized that even more in the 20 years since the book came out. The other thing is, there's not enough community in my book. I if I were to revise it, I would update the social, communal aspects of Sabbath in a way that I don't in the book I really, really sort of cater to or right out of that. You know, this will help you become a better you with all of that, all true, but, but the reality is, Sabbath was never an individualistic project. In Scripture, it was always a thing done with others and had social implications beyond that. Like you look at the fourth commandment, it's like, you know, make sure that the you know, all the servants, all the workers, yeah, as you do, as you do like so don't give them a sort of a, you know, leftover Sabbath. Don't give them the sort of the dregs of Sabbath. You give them a full Sabbath, as you would take a full Sabbath. So those social implications, I don't draw enough in the book. If I were to, I'm thinking I might do a 25th anniversary, if I could talk the publisher into it reading, and kind of add a few chapters and do some revisions. Yeah, it's fun.

Vanessa Caruso: 27:06

I would, I would like to hear in that 25th anniversary, um, like insights from the Indigenous women about Sabbath, like, how they practice it, or, I don't know,

Mark Buchanan: 27:19

yeah, I at some point, Vanessa, probably write a book about this sort of, this whole journey my wife and I've been on. And if I do it, I'm going to do it in collaboration with the women past, you know, past and present from the program, so that I, I don't, you know, I don't assume, and that I can somehow speak on their behalf. I want we are already my wife's newsletter is wonderful because every, every time, every month she releases a newsletter, she gets one of the women to write their story, and we lightly edit it, like, like, you know, and we make sure that they're good with the edits. And mostly that's just to kind of fit in a sort of a word length, word count, but, but, you know, I the voices, like I say, write their story. I thinking of the conversations I have. And you can, you know, good writing actually, is you can hear the person's voice in the, in the in the writing. And these women are expert at that I can hear the cadence of the voice of text or the voice of what they write. So I am dreaming at some point to sit down and tell you know whatever our story is, but have just a collaborative effort and all these women weighing in, wow.

Andy Withrow: 28:41

Conference May, 8 and ninth. Yes, I've got vocation work and Chris Friday morning, vocation work and career, navigating the transition of life and then Friday evening. Re examining our work, why it matters, and what it means. I have a I have a prepared question. I know we're doing a lot of like spontaneous, spontaneous, yeah, but go ahead. Andy Anglican, I got liturgy, right? Yeah. Mark, you've written about work, not as curse or mere toil, but as participation in what God is already doing. What does it look like for ordinary, everyday work to be genuinely caught up in God's work without becoming another burden we have to carry.

Mark Buchanan: 29:25

Yeah, such a great question. Thank you. I mean, the story of the garden is so foundational that thinking all of this theology through this God who makes us in His image, but also summons us, calls us male and female into co creation and collaboration in the creation. And I mean co creation like there's a sense where, of course, we're not doing anything X in the yellow. We're not, you know, making something from nothing, but we make pretty cool stuff from what. God made and things that God Himself. God doesn't make furniture. He doesn't make loots. He doesn't make he doesn't make, you know, swords. We have to learn the metallurgy, or whatever, the various crafts, and we have to be inventive and ingenious with that build. We have to build tools to work those things, so even that level of ingenuity. So I think about this inventory invitation right at the beginning. You know, any no sins entered in work as part of the dimension or part of the our anthropology, how we're built, how we reflect the image of God, and that this sort of come join me in this, collaborate with me in this, and actually take a lot of this and take it beyond what I did with it. And the the ennobling nature of that is phenomenal. I actually was just just this this morning, and I have a class on preaching, and we were going over the Tower of Babel story in Genesis 11 and and noticing, you know, that this is a pretty these people are building this, this tower. It's ingenious, like, like, I don't think God has a problem with the ingenuity. They're finding new ways to make building materials, right? You know, don't just make Adobe. You can bake this stuff and it turns into bricks. Isn't that cool? And, you know, you don't just have to use whatever you've mortared it with. You can actually use you can use pitch. And now that things going to really hang together. And so there's a beautiful ingenuity picture. The problem isn't that that's what God put into humanity and then called out. The problem is that they're now doing this as a project of complete independence from God that's no longer collaborative. So that, to me, is so you know that understanding of work as that's how, that's a major way of how we work out what it means to be made in the image of God and and to the extent, as I say, it's not just, you know, derivative work. So it's not just sort of like I made everything. But you do, you know, you build something from it. It's not nearly as exalted as the creation. There is a, almost a thing approaching the creational powers of God in the work we do. And this, this is, you know, this is breathtaking to me, yeah,

Andy Withrow: 32:40

yeah, yeah, that's, it's quite, almost overwhelming to think of, yeah, just that delegated power in response, yeah, giving humanity and like you're part of you saying. What was he thinking? Yeah, yeah.

Mark Buchanan: 32:59

What was he saying? Even, you know, even the stuff God makes, you know. So, I make a lion, I make a giraffe, I make a palm tree. He gets the man to name. So there's a sense of, you know, I created the art guide says, but you can, you can sign, sign as the artist, in a way. Or, you know, that level of involvement in his, his pure creation, so and so, I think, you know, coming to your question about just doing ordinary work and whatnot, like, there is work that is soul sucking, you know, there's work that is, is debasing. And so we should, you know, that's if there's anything we can sort of give over to the robots, or AI, or whatever we should, we should give them that work. Yeah, the soulless work, the soulless things, but, but, you know, even the most ordinary, mundane, menial things can be ennobling, if we somehow understand it as this participatory, yeah, involvement in the in the creation of God and in the purposes of God. So, you know, acedia, that got translated in later history as sloth and one of the seven deadly sins. But the the root word is acedia. And acedia is doesn't quite mean sloth, it means kind of losing the plot. You know, this, this, this on we this listlessness where I can no longer understand how my work connects with something bigger than, yeah, you know the work itself that I don't have any transcendent you know that it has no transcendent context or values, and so that's where I think that it's just a good Like Sabbath actually restores a lot of that like it. It restores us back to a sense of centeredness in God and His world, His creation. And therefore, I think we're able to, you know, come out of Sabbath and kind of find a fresh joy in even, you know, ordinary works of our hands.

Andy Withrow: 35:00

Yeah, God loves clean floors, yeah. Luther quote you put in there, yeah. And I think so I can be surprised to myself, as just, I mean, as a pastor who's so often doing certain types of work to go home and, you know, put walls up in my bathroom is different, kind of satisfying. So different. Yeah, it's so different. But it's like, well, I'm surprised how much I like this. Sometimes working a little bit muscle, but I don't know. I find people I and you, you do, you talk about this in the rest of God, a bit people who can take joy in their work, even if, even if it's a bit more menial tasky, like, like cleaning the floors, washing the dishes, keeping up, keeping up the house, or keeping up the office, or whatever, whatever the work is, or cleaning up the streets for garbage and recycling. Like, there's, I've known people who can take a certain amount of pride or dignity in that work. And so you talk a bit about that in in kind of reorienting our work under God. The opposite of a slave is not a free man, it's a worshiper. Kind of, kind of reorienting all of all of work under God in that that's that's inseparable from the practice, as I read you, it's inseparable from the practice of Sabbath. I really appreciated that in separate from the aspect of rest, as opposed to, as opposed to, like, I hate this job. I can't wait to escape to my fantasy life and collapse on a cruise somewhere, or this thing, but then I have to come back and slug away at it. It's like it's just a complete reorientation around what does work mean and what does rest mean in light of that,

Mark Buchanan: 36:52

yeah, and even rest as not some sort of reward after work, but somehow this reorientation to who and who is you really are, the sort of coming back into some centered life that then when out of, out of which you you emerge, maybe going back to the same work. But the same work feels, you know, it feels ennobling. It feels life giving the mary martha story, which I do a little bit in the book, is intriguing to me, because I actually think Martha loves being in the kitchen, but just not today and and there's a bunch of dynamics around that, you know, maybe, maybe Jesus and his gang kind of surprised her by coming. Maybe just her irritation of watching her sister, you know, sitting there and not helping whatever, whatever. But she's, she's very vexed and very, very angry. But I don't think that the cure for her is, you know, I want to quit that job. I think if Jesus had a said, You know what, I'm now giving you divine, Divine Decree, or Pat, you know, a pass on you can now go do anything you want, or you can retire or whatever, and you'll be looked after financially. I don't think she would be down with that. I think she wants to be doing those, those humble but necessary acts of service, but she just doesn't, she doesn't want to do it out of a depleted heart.

Andy Withrow: 38:29

Yeah, right.

Vanessa Caruso: 38:33

I love that take. I'm sorry you can't see us anymore. I don't know what

Andy Withrow: 38:37

happened to my camera. Yeah,

Mark Buchanan: 38:38

I don't know. Either you were frozen and it was eerie,

Andy Withrow: 38:42

yeah, I decided just to shut that down for your sake.

Mark Buchanan: 38:45

Yeah, no. I said it's sort of like, oh my goodness, you know, did, did a virus Get out another catatonic or whatever? So, yeah,

Vanessa Caruso: 38:56

okay, I love that idea of Martha. She loved being in the kitchen, just not today. I'm also still thinking about that quote from you Andy from Mark that the opposite of a slave is not a free person, but a worshiper. That's really evocative. So this, this came out for me reading some of your work, and I don't know it's probably just a very me thing right now, but for some reason, I wanted to ask it to you, which is, I have this sense that I might need to get stronger spiritually. I don't really mean physically, but I mean like, something about your work made me think you you can do hard things, and now, knowing what your last five years have been kind of, you know, proves that to me, a bit like things that are maybe a bit counter cultural or involve some risk or some cost, but they don't, they're not living in you. Like, it's a cost. I see the lightness. I see your joy. I see the ease. So I was like, I wonder what Mark did or does that is like a spiritual practice that, like, gives you strength, that gives you grit or resilience, rather than the ones that piece you out that like, yeah, you know, turn you down. You up. Am I making sense?

Mark Buchanan: 40:27

Yeah, entirely. And I mean, those are the classically the disciplines of of denial or abstinence, so fasting and silence and solitude and whatnot, I actually returned to a regular practice fasting. Just in the last couple of years, I had done it quite, you know, quite a lot when early on in my Christian life and I got away from it, it was very sporadic, and it was actually my African students who are world class pastors. I mean, it's unbelievable to me. I have not met an African student in my my world yet who does not have a fairly regular practice of set of fasting. And so I, I thought, I'm missing that. And so I went back to and it's, it's, it's wonderful, because it's hard, yes, and I just love food so much. And I go through and my personality, you know, my sparkling personality, turns out it's, it's, you know, partly blood sugars. So just learning that, that's denial and being joyful, doing the Jesus thing in it. You know, when you fast don't sort of be like the hypocrites and look all sad and dour. But you know, put on your best face. It's interesting. Just an aside about that. Jesus says, If you're going to fake anything, if you're going to have a secret life, true? Yeah, it's fake, fake, fake that you're less holy than you are. That's so cool. I love that so but I, I just found this very helpful, because it does, kind of, it's extraordinary how it does kind of, in the depths of you, kind of prepare you for for other deprivations, for other losses, for other saying no, or when things, when, when the world or circumstances or people say no to you? Yeah, I just have a capacity for that that has grown, regrown in the last couple years, as I've got back into fasting, solitude and silence, I've done fairly well through my life. And those are, and even, I mean, one of the things that that does, and especially for someone like me, who's just a, you know, I I kiss the Blarney Stone, I can talk and talk and talk in making the decision, choice, and many, many things I go to now to to just be a pure listener, like, like, only talk when I'm absolutely, you know, somebody turns to me and says, and what do you think? Obviously, to your listeners, now it'll sound like, I guess I can't just stop, and it's true, like it's

Andy Withrow: 43:22

we have asked you a lot of questions.

Mark Buchanan: 43:25

If I'm sitting with people, I really do try to practice the discipline of silence in the midst of conversation, but deep attentiveness to what's been going on so I don't zone out that's just been really and also, I mean, you're thinking about getting stronger. Vanessa, I think that that's what how spiritual disciplines work over time, they do develop that muscle that you talked about, Andy, that we get. Let me just one of my favorite movies from the 80s and maybe of all time, is Karate Kid. And there's a phenomenal scene in it that many people will know, where he thinks he's, you know, sanding, sanding the deck and painting the fence and washing, waxing the cars. And it turns out, he discovers he's actually been learning the thing that he thought he and wanted to do. He's been learning karate. But it's a surprise to him, but he's developed all this sort of muscle memory around it that, to me, is a perfect metaphor of spiritual disciplines. You think you're doing something else,

Andy Withrow: 44:30

you know you're you're just painting God Spence, yeah. When am I gonna get to the real stuff?

Mark Buchanan: 44:35

And it turns out you're doing the real stuff, and it's proven in this sort of crisis, no, when something falls apart, when something becomes genuinely difficult, not an engineered difficulty, but a real one, that's where the stuff shows up.

Andy Withrow: 44:51

Well, I'd say when you ask that question, Vanessa, it made me think of Walter brueggemann's book Sabbath as resistance, which I read like a number of years ago. But just because like that, it's true of that too. Even what we've been talking about in Sabbath, it's like we're we're exercising a muscle that is very easy in our cultural moment not to exercise, to get caught up in a different definition of work and a different definition of play and rest and all that stuff and and that's that's got to be preparing us for something really important, especially even as you said, Mark and even as you said Mark, in terms of what it's what it's prepared you for, what it's given, given you space to do in your life that you wouldn't otherwise be able to do.

Mark Buchanan: 45:31

Yeah, yeah. That's such a great book. And I wish that book had been out when I wrote mine.

Andy Withrow: 45:42

I one of the things I think the conferences that's coming up that you and Gordon are coming to Victoria for is asking how congregations can better equip people for their calling. Have you seen or do you have any examples of churches, how churches can cultivate healthier rhythms of work, rest and vocation. What might that look like in our in our local churches?

Mark Buchanan: 46:09

Yeah, I mean, I see it bits and pieces everywhere I when I was in pastoral ministry and for a long time on Duncan, I was just starting to figure out some of this stuff on the ground, and even even sort of how to help people orient to that. What is that thing that God put them on the earth to do that calling? And then how do you kind of prepare for that? How do you what are the how do you steward that and get ready for it and step into it? But one of the things I was discovering, and I've since done fairly significant work in my in my role as a professor now, is the connection between calling and identity. You know, fundamentally, anything we're called to do, we're called as sons and daughters. We're called as the beloved. We're called as, you know, these ones who God has wanted. You know, Mark three says Andy called those whom he wanted, that they might be with him, and then that he might send them out. So this, this desire in the heart of the Lord to have you and fight, to have you come, come to him, and the first thing is just to be with him. This is, to me, that if we, if we're not sort of teaching that, and I see churches again, variously doing that, but I think that we have to pause there and really help people understand that that their calling is going to emerge out of that, that Being the beloved or being the son or daughter of of the good Lord. You know, when Jesus is baptized Henry now, and does a lot with this, but you know, the sky opens and the Father speaks. This is my son whom I love. With him, I'm well pleased. Well, right after that, he's led, if you're reading Luke or driven, if you're eating Mark into the desert in that time of trial and suffering and loneliness and whatnot. And out of then out of the desert, he emerges into that thing he came to do. And but the thing that we can't lose sight of is that the the at the foundation of that both the suffering and the desert, and then they sort of step in with clear mindedness, with with with this real focus on this I came to do. He uses that kind of language for these. For this reason I came that is predicated on this voice of the Father. This is my Son, whom I love. With him, I'm well pleased. So where I'm I mean, I do see that in churches, but I would say, if a church really is serious about this calling stuff, go deep into that, because it's out of that that people are going to be able to sort of discern what it is, feel the deep motivation to do what it is. They're not going to run around trying to sort of get God's attention or please God with the things they're doing there. They've already pleased God, you know, with this is my Son, whom I love. With him, I'm well pleased. So there's already this pleasure of God on you. And so that doesn't need to be, you know, earned or or we're not, we're not working toward that. That's already there. So those sorts of things are really crucial. The other thing I'm seeing, like, there's a church that I do a fair amount of work with in Vancouver, really, like, and they have great stuff. Off programmatically with, they work with, actually, leaders across Canada. So, so the church has a sort of a side ministry, and they, they bring a lot of practitioners to sort of help work, work them through the sense of calling and how to live out that college, and how to prepare for that college. I am seeing more and more of that sort of stuff. And it's, it's usually churches obviously have a certain, you know, size and budget, budgetary resources and stuff, but I don't see any reason why that couldn't happen on a smaller scale in a church. So one last example that we get candle tiny, little Nazarene church in a little a little town of 900 people. It's quite a lively little thing. And the pastor there has a he was a lay person for a long time, came in late into pastoral ministry. So he kind of brings some really cool life experience into it. Well, he when he realized that I was sitting, you know, in the pew, and then I'm a seminary, seminary professor and author and stuff, he approached me and he said, Would you I want to train my people? So I did last year a eight hours of seminar stuff on preaching, and I'm just about to start this this week, doing eight hours in spiritual spiritual formation, spiritual practices. So this is a little church with a little budget, and this very creative, resourceful pastor who's basically saying, I need to do this for my people, many of them like with the preaching thing, it was seven in the morning, a weekday morning in the middle of February, 33 people showed up for four weeks straight. Wow. And then, and then he let them preach, whoever wanted it to. Like, I'm I don't see much of that happening in bigger churches. So I think there's beautiful examples happening, you know, across the landscape, huh?

Vanessa Caruso: 52:09

That's good inspiring. Okay, we should let you go soon, in two minutes mark, anything you want. You wish we asked you or that you were hoping to say, oh,

Mark Buchanan: 52:24

oh, no, I want to say something, though I'm no an expert in it, but, but I knew, I know one of the questions that you'd sent earlier was around, you know, what are some of the the obstacles or hindrances that that may not have been around when I was first started thinking right about this, and clearly it's stuff like just the pervasiveness, invasiveness, of technology, social media and AI are really, really big up there. Yeah, and that, you know, we're just living in this world that we it's, you know, by a conspiracy of culture and our own, you know, our own kind of susceptibility, distraction, whatnot, we've sort of the thing is game now. It's very, very hard to be present where you are. And most spiritual disciplines, well, all of them are being present with you where you are, whether it's Sabbath or it's prayer, or it's fasting or whatever, just be there, be where your feet are. And so I, I just really would urge people that that part of their practices are a deliberate stepping away from those things that are just, you know, constant, little little, little annoyances or distractions and and, you know, just cultivate however you do it. When you're in a conversation, be completely there. Don't, don't be, you know, if you're set your, you know, I if you're if your thing is buzzing in your phone, in your pocket, whatever like, just ignore it or leave it back, you know, in your car or something. But just do what you can to be fully fully awake and fully fully attentive.

Andy Withrow: 54:17

Pay attention like that. Mark, it's time. Thank you so much for joining us. We didn't spend time talking about this, but just wanted to say Quick word. You do have a new book coming out? Yeah?

Mark Buchanan: 54:28

Soon? Yeah, yeah, march 16, or March 17. My fourth novel is called what is left of the night. It's based on a true story of a little village in France, it rescued about 2500 Jewish people during the war, Christian community that was really motivated other Christian sort of convictions, and this beautiful story of defiance of the Nazi regime. But done with it, with it wasn't there. Was there. Was no, you know, there's no viciousness or anger. It was just like, No. These are people that we, God has put on this earth, and we're here and we can do something. And so I fell in love with this, this historical story, many years ago, and spent a lot of time researching it. And so I've turned it into a novel, and it, it comes out in March. And I, yeah, I hope it, I hope it. It's a, it's a perfect book for this, this cultural moment where there's so much cultural, you know, divisiveness. Yeah, it's really a story about how a Christian community can overcome, you know, one of the darkest moments in history, and do it in love.

Andy Withrow: 55:47

Wow. Mark, thanks for joining us. Glad to have you. You're coming to Victoria May, 8 and ninth. Yeah, you and Gordon Smith and your new book is coming out. March, what was the date again? March, 17. March 17, that's St Patrick's Day. It is, yeah, okay, it's coming out St Patrick's Day.

Vanessa Caruso: 56:11

That's the easy way to I look forward to meeting you, yeah, yeah. Love it. Thank you. Thank you so much. Mark. Thanks. Mark, bye, bye, bye. No, it's good. Yeah. We just talked to Mark, yeah. What stood out to you like, what when you drive home? What will you be like turning over in your head? Just well,

Andy Withrow: 56:35

easy guy to talk to,

Unknown: 56:36

really easy. That's true.

Andy Withrow: 56:39

Just imagine having a conversation, yes, with him. Yeah.

Vanessa Caruso: 56:44

I agree, very down to earth, like, kind of a twinkle in his eye, yeah. Like, I don't know if that's mischievous or happy or something. Something that stood out to me is the six days of work like Sabbath against that backdrop, yeah, I think I have been kind of informed by the the more recent Sabbath movement, which I haven't heard, emphasize that it's kind of taken for granted, like we're all so busy, we work so much. Yeah. And then the highlight, the accent is on the 24 hour Sabbath day, right?

Andy Withrow: 57:25

The assumption is you're working seven days a week, yes,

Vanessa Caruso: 57:29

for him to say, like, oh, the Sabbath kind of stands out against a backdrop of like, six days of like, sacred, intentional, hard work. I was like, Oh, that. That kind of changes the rest of the week, yeah, yeah. That's true, yeah. I like

Andy Withrow: 57:45

that, yeah. It's yeah. And what do we count as work? Because we have our, we might have our jobs, but then we're also working, yes, home, doing stuff, right? So, and I think the my, the problem for me, is like everything just kind of gets all muddled. To of gets all muddled together, and it's like you're a Sabbath, whether that's a Saturday or a Sunday, or it could be, guess, could be any day, but yeah, often, well, I go grocery shopping, yeah, the bills, yes, right. But that's all maintenance, all work stuff, too. So just trying to maybe recover the idea of Sabbath and what that means, yeah, rest. But also maybe paying attention, listening might not always be doing what seems like would be restful to us, true, maybe a part of a like, like especially, and he brought up something he would like to change in his book, or if it gets updated, is a communal aspect, yeah? Doesn't always feel restful to some of us. I don't want to do community stuff on Sabbath, yeah, necessarily. I mean, it's not my first choice, necessarily. No, right? So I think some of the, I think he talked a little bit about this, but some of that, some of that, some of the Sabbath teaching or writing, kind of gets caught up in our therapeutic, individualistic culture, definitely. So like, well, what's restful for me? How to take a break and and there's part of that's true, like, that is necessary, but it's maybe not the full of the biblical vision of what Sabbath could be.

Vanessa Caruso: 59:22

Yeah, that was true for me in the whole conversation with him, and what I did read, there's like an edge to what he's talking about, like even the downward mobility of his path. I appreciate that as part of his work. It kind of gives it like teeth to me that this isn't, this isn't like an upward trajectory. It is in some ways, in terms of freedom and joy and purpose or something. But I didn't know if this was appropriate to say so you should take it out if it is. I. Is not but thinking about his walking book, you know, which for efficient people. For me, walking is hard. It's like you could get there way faster, yeah, or I walk my dog, who's slow, right? And I think, well, if we're going to get exercise, we should walk fast. And then I heard the progression of having a dear friend who's in a wheelchair, and now he's looking for accessible routes. That's one downward mobility step, yeah, in his trajectory. Like to go to a play, he has to break a law sometimes to get to the ramp to get his friend there. That was like, Whoa. Look, how where it look, where this goes? Yeah, you might be lowering a mat through a roof of a building in order to get someone somewhere. I'm talking about the peril, of course, if you, if you follow this path, I had that kind of like, eerie, yeah, feeling the whole time. It's not a bad eerie, but it's just like, kind of like a the Jesus way involves

Andy Withrow: 1:01:16

some stuff, the cost, yeah, cost, yeah, to discipleship, yeah, yeah.

Vanessa Caruso: 1:01:23

I hear that Yeah, and I'm drawn to it.

Andy Withrow: 1:01:27

What's Yeah. And by the I think that was talking to somebody yesterday about just being overwhelmed by all the brokenness in the world, yeah, which is, like, easy to do, and it's like you can drown in that sea of need, or you can pay attention to calling and the sense of, okay, well, what? What is God calling me to? Specifically? Because I can't, I can't fix all those things. I can't fix one of them, probably, but I can listen and participate where God is drawing me to, but I don't necessarily know where that is until I can stop and start paying attention and listen and get a sense of, Oh yeah, yeah. I can clean the floors, oh yeah. I can wash the dishes, oh yeah. I can meet one to one with people, oh yeah. I can do this. I can do this. I can do this, and start to get a sense of where it's been put, where your where your gifts desires, meet with some of the world's deepest needs and that sort of thing around you. And not dismissing that, because we can get pretty caught up in some pretty terrible headlines from other parts of the world. And it's not that it's it's important to know about those things, but it's also easy to get paralyzed by them and then not connect with your neighbor or be a part of not having someone you know be isolated and lonely because you're choosing to connect with them for coffee or whatever You know, yeah, whatever.

Vanessa Caruso: 1:03:00

Yeah, yeah, that that calling piece was crucial in this conversation.

Andy Withrow: 1:03:05

It's freedom, because then I don't have to be paralyzed by all the bad things I can say. I That's God's got to do something about those things, but I know that I'm participating with him in these specific areas, and I can be free in that. I can enjoy it. I can work hard in it. I can, you know, yeah, all those things.

Vanessa Caruso: 1:03:26

Andy, guess what? What? I realized my calling just as we were talking. Oh, okay, I did, okay. Do you want to know what it is

Andy Withrow: 1:03:37

next time on? No, just

Unknown: 1:03:40

come back. Let's do it. We really should do another conversation on it

Andy Withrow: 1:03:46

if you want to find out. No, come on. Tell us. Now, tell us.

Vanessa Caruso: 1:03:49

Okay, okay, yeah, I just did this little retreat over Christmas, and it wasn't about calling at all. It was just my own reflection, kind of, I think I was reflecting on the year, like, Wow. I do a lot of things very related. But like, who am I? I forget. So I thought when, when was the last time I just, like, was so immersed in like, This is who I am, that I didn't even have to think about it. Yeah, that's what I went to. And I thought of college. I went to Trinity, Western University. I mean, loved it there. I loved my experience there and in college. I didn't think about what I was going to do with my life. I didn't choose a major according to what I wanted to do, nothing. I didn't think about marriage. I didn't think about job, buying house, helping kids, because I was so just full of knowing who I am and what to do and that. And so I was like, Okay, what were those things? Who was I in college? Yeah. So my two things in college that were everything to me were being a Christian, yeah, and being creative, okay, those were like I would do, though I had to do that to survive, and everything else kind of felt. Into place, but so much so I didn't even think about it so identifying that, yeah, I felt very like, Oh, I think this is part of my calling. I might not be the whole thing, but it felt, it felt like I was hitting bedrock. You know, you do the metal detector over your life, and something beeps. You dig, and then you're like, Wait, there's something really big here. For me, it was, it was inspiring to be like, that's as far as I know, I think that's who I am. It's like, I'm gonna be a Christ follower. Yeah, that's primary, yeah. And I have to be creative or else I'll die. What did being

Andy Withrow: 1:05:38

creative look like at Trinity Western? For you?

Vanessa Caruso: 1:05:42

Great question. Kind of like, following ideas, yeah, so having an idea about something and losing time because I researched it or thought about it, yeah, you know, like, kind of going down bunny trails, yeah, and giving myself

Andy Withrow: 1:06:01

permission, having time and space to pursue things you didn't know where it was going to take you. Yes, interesting. Huh? That's pretty neat. Yeah, right, yeah. So what, what does that mean? What's, what does that mean? Like, are you about that?

Vanessa Caruso: 1:06:15

Yeah, well, now, like, listen to him. I'm like, yeah, how do I find purpose on a normal Tuesday, like, he's like, collaborate with God. And you're like, how well I have, like, seven email addresses. How do I collaborate with God on my emails? That seems hard, but then I thought, Oh, maybe I put it through that lens, like, every day, like, what does it mean to be a Christ follower today in the in my to do list, and is creativity possible if I do those two things, could I kind of call it a day? That's my question. I don't know. Huh? I know the Christian one's kind of cheating, because it's like full life. Yeah, it's like a It's everyone's vocation, yeah, in a way, but it's good to say out loud, it was, it is me, yeah, it's primary for me.

Andy Withrow: 1:07:08

That's exciting, yeah, what's yours?

Vanessa Caruso: 1:07:11

What's my calling? Yeah, I'll give you inspiration. Okay, I read a book and he said my current sense of calling is I'm going to give God a good reputation. Okay? At other times, he was like, I've been a healer, I've been a writer, been a preacher. He was like, right now, I think my job is to like in the world is give

Andy Withrow: 1:07:31

God a good reputation. Interesting. I like that. Yeah, cool, huh? Yeah, I think, and I've thought about this before, going back to at least seminary days, because I think those these questions got explicitly maybe in Daryl Johnson's class. But I like to bring clarity.

Unknown: 1:07:53

You do that resonates Andy

Andy Withrow: 1:07:57

is really fun for me. I like and I think that's why I like teaching. I like that moment where you're unpacking something, or you're explaining something, and then you see, like, a light bulb go off and sort of like, oh, they make a connection. Like, okay, see how that works. Yes, that's really, that's

Vanessa Caruso: 1:08:12

really fun. That's one of your words. They have to be all C's, oh yeah, because I'm a pastor, yeah. And me too. Christian and creative clarity. Do you know what, where you shined in your clarity, vocation?

Andy Withrow: 1:08:26

Do I know where? Yeah, I'm gonna tell you, Oh, so you're gonna answer the

Vanessa Caruso: 1:08:30

your Super Bowl email. It had like 11 rules, okay? Because he had to choose church over Super Bowl. Yeah. And so this is a delayed Super Bowl party. Yeah? Delay. It's not for everybody. No. Andy made that very clear,

Andy Withrow: 1:08:45

like, permission not to come, yeah?

Vanessa Caruso: 1:08:47

But if you do come, here are very clear rules about what you are allowed and not allowed. That's right to do and to say and to be like, Yeah, to ruin the experience. That's right. And you shined. I was like, everyone loved that email.

Andy Withrow: 1:09:02

It's funny. Yeah, that's a good example. Yeah, I'd say that's always, that's always, it's motivated me a lot.

Vanessa Caruso: 1:09:09

I didn't know this about you. I mean, it makes so much sense, but I didn't know you knew the you knew this.

Andy Withrow: 1:09:16

That's why, like, when I went to Syria, I focus on the Old Testament because I thought it's the less it's the less clear to me, testament, I mean, they both have hard parts about them, yeah, but the old ones harder for me, yes. And then took, took a course on apocalyptic literature, because it's like, this most confusing, confounding part, because I want to know, like, let's get I want to I just That's why I like to study. It's why I like to teach.

Vanessa Caruso: 1:09:41

So it's like that movie when I feel, when I run, I feel God's pleasure for you when you're bringing clarity, yeah, you've Andy feels God's pleasure. It's a little like that, right? Yeah, so that can be like a guide for you in terms of how to do your job a bit. Yes? Hmm. Yeah. I think that's, I hope the person listening is like, I wonder what mine is, yeah. Maybe I know what mine is, yeah, yeah.

Andy Withrow: 1:10:08

But I think it's, I think it was helpful to me talking to Mark and reading a bit from from his book on Sabbath. Was just that these things are connected. It's not we get that narrow lens of therapy, like that therapeutic narrow lens, which has its place, but it's narrow and tends to dominate a lot of our cultural stuffs and individualistic. So, you know, personal Sabbath, personal vocational losing, but, but that these, all these things are working together like you can't, like you need to in kind of what Mark said towards the end of our interview with him is you need to have a sense of identity before you can have a sense of vocation, calling being sent before you know and so. And it seems like Sabbath has to play a role in that, in terms of our rhythms and paying it. How do we pay attention to God in our in our surroundings.

Vanessa Caruso: 1:11:03

Yeah, it reminded me of this great article by Henry now and called moving from solitude to community to ministry. And so he, he, he says, that's the flow, like knowing your belovedness in solitude Jesus goes up to the mountain to pray. Yeah, and you you're rooted there. In the morning, Jesus calls the disciples, affirms them, you know, names their gifts, and so that's the next step for us. Is to be in community, to be seen, to see others, to bless, to be blessed. And then in the afternoon, ministry is something that happens, yeah, as a result of those things that makes sense to me. Yeah, it's like a fruit,

Andy Withrow: 1:11:47

yeah, yeah. It comes, it comes last on purpose, yeah, it's got to be coming out of that space of trust and belonging and identity and connection.

Vanessa Caruso: 1:11:58

But then you're exhausted by 6pm that night, yeah. So you go back spiritually to the beginning. You go to the in the night to pray.

Andy Withrow: 1:12:07

You get into some of the rhythms of the prayers and The Daily Office and stuff, some of the traditional church. But there's, there's some connections there, for sure. Yeah, pretty fun.

Vanessa Caruso: 1:12:18

Okay, this is too long, but another inspiring thing is, is like, what him and his wife are doing, yeah? Like, oh, let's do something different and let it evolve into kind of a big deal, right? That takes up a lot of our life. Yeah? Sometimes I think, like, Oh, I was meant to be a little more radical than I am. I just look like a middle aged mom, kind of a fluent in Victoria. It's not, it's not where I thought I was going, reading Cory 10 Boom growing up, you know, Mother, Teresa. But I was like, oh, it's not over yet, hearing his last five years doing something he never thought of for his life. So that was kind of inspiring.

Andy Withrow: 1:13:03

Do you have a few years left in you? Yeah, God willing. You've got and, and that's, that's absolutely right, because that was a great beginning story from Mark, because it's like the small beginnings, right? Yeah, paying attention. What is follow the follow the rabbit trails, yeah, right. Where is God leading me? Was maybe this leads to something bigger. Maybe this leads to something more in this area, and just being open to that? Yeah, no, what's gonna happen?

Vanessa Caruso: 1:13:29

No, I like. That makes me feel like, oh, this story isn't written. There are a lot of chapters, but there's still chapters ahead too.

Andy Withrow: 1:13:40

Yeah, we should, we should be done. But, yeah, this is all I love, I love, I love Gordon's. We're gonna try to get Gordon Smith next for our next episode. And I love Gordon Smith's stuff on discernment, especially the voice of Jesus. And it was probably one of my favorite books, really helpful, so I'm excited to talk to him about that. But if this is resonating or kind of scratching a niche, this is just all appetizers for the conference coming up, may 8 and ninth, called and formed. It's me at Victoria Alliance Church, 10am Friday morning, vocation, work and career, navigating the transitions of life. Friday night, we'll be re examining our work, why it matters, and what it means. And then Saturday, He makes me lie down Sabbath as a way of vocation. How Sabbath Keeping centers vocation. So those are going to be the those are going to be the things

Vanessa Caruso: 1:14:41

I'm more excited for it now, talking to Mark, yeah, so we'll put,

Andy Withrow: 1:14:45

do we, I'm not sure if we've got event stuff up or ticket stuff yet. Well, I'll do it. It'll be out there soon. And as soon as this will be we'll make a link in the podcast notes, so check it there, and obviously the website. Vista, canada.org,

Unknown: 1:15:02

that sounds right.

Andy Withrow: 1:15:06

Great, okay, all right. Well, thanks, Vanessa, thanks, Andy, thanks for listening back next time with Gordon Smith and hope.