Ep11 In The Shadow Of The Mountain C.L.Knox stories

The speaker reflects on the concept of catharsis and how it relates to his storytelling. He discusses his stepfather's hatred for authority and wonders if he inherited the same trait. He shares his experience of living with his stepfather and the influence he had on his life. He talks about his return to school after being away for two years and the conflict that arose between his stepfather and mother. He reflects on the current state of the world, highlighting the tension and division present. He discusses his struggle with authority and the balance between justice and mercy. He expresses his belief in the biblical view of God and the concept of living forever. He comments on the post-Christian society and the disconnect between people and the church. He emphasizes the importance of seeking the Holy Spirit and working on personal growth. He acknowledges his flaws as a husband, father, and friend, but remains committed to seeking God. He reflects on the impact of childhood experiences What is this? Episode 11. Cathartic. Somebody asked me if, well I get asked occasionally why I'm doing this, stories and stuff. A man I respect, he says, are you doing it because it's cathartic? And I thought, okay. If you don't know what cathartic is, it's sort of a purging, a cleansing, something that makes you feel good, makes you feel freer, lighter, like you've exercised something. It's that feeling of cleansing, cleaning it out, getting it out in the open or whatever. Anyway, that's that, cathartic, word for the day. Can you know, in the last episode, I said, I talked about Bryce's, my stepfather's hatred for the Mormon Church. And I think really it was that he had a hatred, maybe still does, for all authority, any kind of authority over him. And often I look at my life and I wonder, I've wondered, I've asked the question if I haven't, if I didn't learn that from him, because I push for stuff, you know, I push for freedom and liberty. Which is, I mean, in the 60s, that's what the hippies started, you know, Berkeley, that's what it was all about, pushing for free speech and liberty. And everything's different now. It's all changed. Words mean different things. And everything was different. You know, there's more to the story of Bryce, like my stepfather living with him. It took me probably, gosh, I don't know, probably till I was 16 or 17, before I started feeling like he was a father figure at all. I never considered him my dad, because I had my dad, and I love my dad, and had, you know, had a desire to reestablish relationship with him too, and heal it. But I came to respect Bryce, he taught me my trade. And I learned a lot about music with him, and his artistic flair. All those things rubbed off on me, they were positive things. I don't believe that he's a man of character. I don't know that he ever was a man of character. So when I was 13, and I went away, and I became a Christian, and then I came back home after the summer. When I got home, my mom was glad to see me home. My siblings were all back in school, like things were changing on the home front. And she wanted me to go back to school, which she had already told me when I talked to her on the phone, when I was in Vancouver. And I decided that was probably a wise thing to do, go back to school. So I went back after being out of school for two years. I left school at the beginning of grade six. And I when I came back to school in Canada, I was in grade, they put me in grade seven. It was difficult for me. I wasn't used to being around a lot of people my own age, for one thing. And it was kind of strange. It's like the hormones are pumping. And you know, you're just all over, all over the place. Emotionally and physically you're changing. And you put a whole bunch of 12, 13, 14 year olds in a confined space and a lot of weird stuff happens. Anyway, when I first came back, Bryce was angry. He and my mom fought. He did not want me living with them. He said, I don't want no GD Christian living there. And I'm sure his language was quite a bit more colorful than that. And they fought. And in the end, my mom went out. She said, you know, my son, he's our responsibilities. So, which was a paradigm shift for her. That was an interesting time. I mean, the commune wasn't, wasn't dissolved. It was dissolving because of my mom's, my mom's paradigm shift. Like I said, she became a vegetarian and for, for religious reasons or spiritual reasons. And so she wanted to be a vegetarian. Like she, there was a fervor that came with that. The same as a fervor that came with my faith. She had this fervor, this new drive to be as good at what she has perceived to be the truth as possible. So it created a lot of friction in the house. I mean, Bryce didn't want to be a vegetarian. The people on the farm certainly didn't want to be vegetarian. There was a lot of conflict. Anyway, there was conflict all over the place. And I don't know, you know, in conflict or in times like there's a lot of stress, which actually right now is one of those times in my life. There's just a lot of, I think it is in a lot of people's lives and take a look at the world, but there's a lot of stuff happening that's in my family in particular, but even outside of the family, friend groups, and there's a lot of tension. There's a lot of division. Look at Israel, look at the Ukraine, and there's a lot, and then on top of that, throw in all the anger and corruption and that dirtiness. You know, I find that I have a hard time relating to authority. That was something that was told to me when I was in my 20s and I started going to a church. It was like a pronouncement on me, like, you have a problem with authority. The man that said it was an ex-RCMP and I'm an ex-hippie. It was interesting, you know, so a little bit of self-examination, am I? Maybe I am. The Bible tells me that I'm supposed to submit to authority, but I also have this sense of justice and I talk about it quite a bit, the combination of justice and mercy. There's an equilibrium in the concept that is difficult to maintain, because how do you have justice if somebody doesn't pay for what they've done wrong? But if you give mercy, somebody's still got to pay for it, right? So that's the hard thing for the people in the world. How can there be justice, you know? And then on the other hand, the mercy part, you know, they're all about the love. Love, love, love. But there's something that true love has, and that's mercy is one of the things it has. But it has a unity with justice too. So we don't, as of human peoples, we don't put those together, love and mercy and justice and judgment. And yet, you know, if you want to understand the biblical view of God, that's who he is. He's those things in balance and those things perfectly. Like, I don't know any other religion or any other spiritual journey that has these concepts. And then the concept that you can live forever, like you, me, I can live forever, and I can keep growing and learning and developing relationships and building on them, except there's going to come this time when the way that we experience reality right now comes to an end, and a new reality will take place. And we now live in this culture that is post-Christian. Like, one of the things I had problems with as a young person in the world, without having the people of the Jesus People's Army with me, or other believers, was there was a predominant dislike, even hatred, for Christianity. And yet there was this move, this groundswell to, you know, in the hippie movement, there was that too. It was like both things. It's like the world is right now. And I think I mentioned post-Christian. We live in a post-Christian society. I don't think people know anything or much about God, the God of the Bible, who Jesus was. You know, people don't often want to trounce on him, but they don't like his church, and his church doesn't like his church. It's a little confusing. It's disheartening for a believer, confusing for an unbeliever. This is humanity. We work out our salvation. We have to not forsake the assembling together. Not forsake the assembling together. We have to learn to rub shoulders with people that believe as we believe. It's a rarity to have that bond, in my experience. It doesn't change. What people do doesn't change my belief in God. Because God's a personality, and I'm a personality. And it's what I do that matters. And I'm working it out, man. I'm not a good husband. I'm not a good father. I'm not a good friend. I fall into those categories for some people. So, I'm no different. We just have to somehow wake up every morning and seek the Lord while he may be found. We need to pray that God's Holy Spirit... This is the thing that Jesus died for. I mean, if you don't know the Bible, fine. But let me tell you. When he died, he said to his disciples, he said, I have to go. If I don't go, then the advocate, the comforter won't come. The teacher won't come. And the teacher's the Holy Spirit. So, the teacher advocates for us, comforts us, shows us the way, speaks truth to us, speaks through us. That's why, you know, no matter what, no matter what I say, no matter... If there's a little bit, and I heard another teacher say this today, if there's a little bit of what I'm saying that touches you, that, you know, that pierces you, then you need to seek God. You need to pray that the Holy Spirit would reveal him. And it's not a feeling. It's not about feeling. It's about feelings. You will have feelings. I don't know how... I mean, I'm telling you about my childhood and just looking at it and seeing how the things that you experience, they form you. They help form the character that you are. I mean, and if we delve into a little bit later, some of Bryce's story, you can wonder, like, you know, how much that played on him. I think it played a lot. We don't fully understand or we don't fully comprehend. I think we understand a lot more than we admit to sometimes, but we don't comprehend how much our history affects us. I mean, nations, cities, people groups, the Jewish nation, the Jewish persons, Scotsman, I'm a Scotsman, and English and First Nations, those traditions, those social conditions that are passed on in your life and the way that tradition and stuff gets formed, it all affects who you are and how you view the world and how you view reality. And that's part of the thing that I'm kind of, even if you're not aware of it, but I'm kind of sensing that people are wondering, like, the Western world, what we now call the Western world, it wasn't called the Western world up until, you know, I don't even know for sure when, but I think it was around less than 100 years ago, maybe 100 years ago, we started, people started saying the Western world. Up until then, it was called Christendom. It was, the Western world was influenced heavily by Christianity. It gave us our social format. It gave us our ethics and our culture and our, it gave us our morals. And, you know, people are people, we're talking about that. So people are people and they're going to come and go with their ability to live their beliefs. This is the trick, I said, working out your salvation. I don't mean you have to do works. I mean, you have to work out living how you view reality. And as you're doing that, you should be able to see whether that is a cohesive worldview. If it's a cohesive belief system, that's the think part. You know, that's the think part. But it's also, that's where the Holy Spirit gets to come in and actually be a revelation of light, like the teacher I call the Holy Spirit, the teacher, the comforter, the guide. Experience the Holy Spirit and look back on your life and look into the Bible and then you will change. You will. I've edited this one. I'm going through some personal sort of struggles right now. So I'm having a hard time doing this. That's, I want to do it. I'm committed to doing it. And what will happen is you'll see, if you keep following, you'll see personality come out. Because if I do this every week, we're all moody. We're all up and down. Our moods change as the weather changes. There's just things I feel like I need to say. Hope you contact me if you have any questions or any comments. I'm going to sing a song. It's one that I recorded quite a while ago. It was the first song that I wrote when I started going back to church after I got married in 1980. So I think I wrote the song in 81 and recorded it in the early, late 80s, early 90s. And it was never finished. It's another one of those recordings that was never finished. But hope you like it. Hopefully I can whittle something out of all of this that's cohesive. And I feel a little better. So I guess in a way it was cathartic. Thank you. Next one is 12. I don't want to lose all my old friends, but I can't stay of the world. And I got a new family of loved ones to share this new found joy. And there's been a change in me. A change in me. Can't you see that I've found my Lord? And there's been a change in me. A change in me. Can't you see that I've found my Lord? I don't need a lot of earthly goods. My God takes care of me. He teaches me to be happy where I am. My God takes care of me. And there's been a change in me. A change in me. Can't you see that I've found my Lord? Sweet Jesus, and there's been a change in me. A change in me. Can't you see that I've found my Lord? I try and pray each minute of every day that His Spirit of love would abound. And if I fall, He's there to catch me where I am with the Spirit of truth and love. And there's been a change in me. A change in me. Can't you see that I've found my Lord? Sweet Jesus, and there's been a change in me. A change in me. Can't you see that I've found my Lord? And there's been a change in me. A change in me. Can't you see that I've found my Lord? Sweet Jesus, and there's been a change in me. A change in me. Can't you see that I've found my Lord? Can't you see that I've found my Lord?