This episode features another hopeful story, though it takes us through some very dark times before focusing on the light and healing ultimately found. This story, told by Coby and Ashlynn Mitchell, and aided by series co-host Bill Turnbull, takes us through Coby’s twenty-plus year addiction to pornography (which had its roots when, at age seven, he was first introduced to a friend’s stepdad’s pornography collection), its effects on and following his mission, its pervasive influence in the first fourteen years of his and Ashlynn’s marriage and the ways it interfered with their ever really experiencing true intimacy, its role in his engaging in two inappropriate and sexually tinged emotional affairs, as well as Ashlynn’s suffering the devastating effects of betrayal trauma. It also gives an account of their recovery processes, healing aided by terrific specialized therapy, the establishment of good, new habits for relieving physical and emotional stresses, as well as aid that came in interesting ways from Coby’s mother who had been dead for several years. It also addresses spiritual growth and new discoveries about the Atonement and its effects in our lives as we seek to forgive ourselves and others, and when we finally choose to surrender to it, to actually "experience" it firsthand (something far different than how we normally think we "understand" it). Finally, Coby and Ashlynn share their story of ridding themselves of shame, so much so that much of their lives now are dedicated to being open about their experiences and assisting others going through similar struggles.

This episode contains a hopeful story, though one difficult to hear in all of its details. Ultimately the marriage of Christian and Kelle Smith has survived the horrible ordeal of Christian’s addictions to pain medication, and eventually other drugs and methods he used to escape paralyzing anxieties. And, in many ways, their marriage is much stronger and far healthier than it was before things got really bad. But it is still, six years-plus into his sobriety, very much a work in progress. It is a privilege to listen in as they share their stories and wrestlings, and we wish them continued healing and trust. We can all learn so much from them about addiction, about ways to watch that we are not enabling the addicts in our lives to continue in their self-defeating behaviors, about discovering self-worth, about what makes genuine relationships (with spouse, children, extended family, and more), and most especially about the spirituality and strength that can come from fearless honesty and finding and accepting God’s and others’ love. I am grateful to be joined again by my co-host in this multi-episode series on addiction and recovery, Bill Turnbull.

Charles Shiro Inouye has just written a fantastic book, _The End of the World, Plan B: A Guide for the Future_ (Greg Kofford Books, 2016). In it, he demonstrates how the most popular ways of framing Apocalyptic narratives--as a violent and cataclysmic event that makes clear the triumph of justice in which the wicked are punished and the righteous rewarded--does not actually match the fullest view on this subject as taught by the great world religions. Justice as the supreme virtue reigning over the end of all things has never been the main point, nor is it the best understanding of that virtue. Certainly it is important, but justice is intended to ultimately lead us toward compassion and a viewing of the world and its inhabitants, human as well as other forms of life, as God does, or as Dharma or the Tao attempt to call us toward. Apocalyptic teachings--with the word "apocalypse" referring to the great "revelation"--whether applied to the final end of the world and human inhabitants, or to our own end of the world that comes with our death, are instead designed to lead us into self-examinations of the world’s conditions, what justice would demand, including its implications for our lives, our own complicity in suffering or unfairness that comes from our communal lives, as well as the sobering realizations that agency will always make it impossible for us to ensure that our children will choose our same values as theirs. The teachings are not to make us feel smug that we’ll the "saved" remnant when the final bell might toll for the earth. Instead, what justice is designed to do, ultimately, is to lead us through sorrow to a state of coming to recognize as our own state of being what it is that God sees, and to then turn in compassion toward those not yet understanding the true nature of reality and the highest forms of fulfillment. It is to call us to be "saviors on Mount Zion," to the path of the Bodhisattva who postpones her or his own entrance into Nirvana in order to be with and teach and model compassion to all forms of life, to the "hero’s journey" described by Joseph Campbell and others that is and embodied in so many stories the world over and in every generation of the one who passes through trials and sorrows, learning from each challenge how she or he has falsely identified with various aspects of life that have prevented their true nature from fully shining forth, only to then come to grasp the life of the Gods and then return to her or his community as a teacher/savior. "Plan B" encompasses learning and turning of these sorts. It is a powerful way of understanding so much that is compelling at the heart of the great world religions, so much that is on the path of a genuine spiritual adventurer. In this two-part episode, author Charles Shiro Inouye, joins Charles Randall Paul, James McLachlan, and Mormon Matters host Dan Wotherspoon for a discussion of these elements present in the great traditions, and which serve--whether distant or immediate--as a call to us all, as something we recognize in our deepest core as the common denominator of our spiritual heroes. Toward the end, the panelists also speak of connections and differences between eastern ideas about "non-attachment" and "nothingness" and LDS (and other western) notions of "eternal" families/relationships. Are there also connections between these concepts and the call of Zion for its members to be of "one heart and mind"?

Charles Shiro Inouye has just written a fantastic book, _The End of the World, Plan B: A Guide for the Future_ (Greg Kofford Books, 2016). In it, he demonstrates how the most popular ways of framing Apocalyptic narratives--as a violent and cataclysmic event that makes clear the triumph of justice in which the wicked are punished and the righteous rewarded--does not actually match the fullest view on this subject as taught by the great world religions. Justice as the supreme virtue reigning over the end of all things has never been the main point, nor is it the best understanding of that virtue. Certainly it is important, but justice is intended to ultimately lead us toward compassion and a viewing of the world and its inhabitants, human as well as other forms of life, as God does, or as Dharma or the Tao attempt to call us toward. Apocalyptic teachings--with the word "apocalypse" referring to the great "revelation"--whether applied to the final end of the world and human inhabitants, or to our own end of the world that comes with our death, are instead designed to lead us into self-examinations of the world’s conditions, what justice would demand, including its implications for our lives, our own complicity in suffering or unfairness that comes from our communal lives, as well as the sobering realizations that agency will always make it impossible for us to ensure that our children will choose our same values as theirs. The teachings are not to make us feel smug that we’ll the "saved" remnant when the final bell might toll for the earth. Instead, what justice is designed to do, ultimately, is to lead us through sorrow to a state of coming to recognize as our own state of being what it is that God sees, and to then turn in compassion toward those not yet understanding the true nature of reality and the highest forms of fulfillment. It is to call us to be "saviors on Mount Zion," to the path of the Bodhisattva who postpones her or his own entrance into Nirvana in order to be with and teach and model compassion to all forms of life, to the "hero’s journey" described by Joseph Campbell and others that is and embodied in so many stories the world over and in every generation of the one who passes through trials and sorrows, learning from each challenge how she or he has falsely identified with various aspects of life that have prevented their true nature from fully shining forth, only to then come to grasp the life of the Gods and then return to her or his community as a teacher/savior. "Plan B" encompasses learning and turning of these sorts. It is a powerful way of understanding so much that is compelling at the heart of the great world religions, so much that is on the path of a genuine spiritual adventurer. In this two-part episode, author Charles Shiro Inouye, joins Charles Randall Paul, James McLachlan, and Mormon Matters host Dan Wotherspoon for a discussion of these elements present in the great traditions, and which serve--whether distant or immediate--as a call to us all, as something we recognize in our deepest core as the common denominator of our spiritual heroes. Toward the end, the panelists also speak of connections and differences between eastern ideas about "non-attachment" and "nothingness" and LDS (and other western) notions of "eternal" families/relationships. Are there also connections between these concepts and the call of Zion for its members to be of "one heart and mind"?