Is our free will overrated given that physiological, psychological, and behavioral factors are so strongly influenced by genetics? Looking back on your lives, are you more aware of genetic influences that explain your life journey, your likes, dislikes, behaviors, etc. (beyond your cholesterol numbers!) How “free” is free will in your thinking? For individuals raised in a violent neighborhood in the 20th century, as a slave in the 19th century, or as an advantaged person in the 21st century, do our life circumstances create different conditioning realities that habituate victims and deprives individuals of choices, or is as much of our life, looking back, a matter of genetics? 

1. What is the role of disciplined, godly, thoughtful polemic in facing today’s unique challenges? 2. What place do the arts (drama, literature, music, etc.) and religion play in it all? The title is a wordplay on our precious civil rights anthem. The song we sing is an example of creative, righteous indignation against any injustice, led by, as usual, creators. Collaborators on the Humanité project were mostly from other countries experiencing similar challenges. The singer & cowriter on this song, Asa, is from Nigeria.  The idea is that the whole world, not just the US, is experiencing this together. And religion, the arts, academia et al must play our roles in prayerful, measured ways.  Is it OK to pray for someone to fail?  What are the alternatives for people of good will who see evil being perpetrated against the vulnerable? 

Who has been the most influential elder in your life? Think hard and please share concisely why that particular individual, whether a mentor, grandparent or other elder - living or deceased - continues to shape you.  How can the aging population of church going folk today inspire the younger among us?

This one is a nod to Ashley and Keia, and their lives in the theatre world. We wouldn’t dare recommend music knowing that this is their wheelhouse and passions! Since the 47th president’s takeover of the Kennedy Center, we have been thinking a lot about the role of the arts in our society and have particularly honed in on the theatre. While theatre productions have always offered social commentary and served as havens of resistance, increasingly there are theatre companies who center their purpose on promoting dialogue on complex and divisive issues – notably, Playback Memphis and Collaboraction in Chicago. 

What does it mean to seek genuine human connection, participate in the vulnerabilities ofrelationships, build a sense of community and belonging in a world that is increasinglydigitized and whose digitization could be leading toward folks opting out of the work ittakes to be "with" one another.The Mystic team reflects on their own relationship to technology, how it entered our livesand how it shapes our lives today. And then move into how we feel about the role ofeverything from AI to dating apps, to virtual meetings, and what that means for how we connect with each other. 

Guest speaker, William Cope Moyers of Hazelden/Betty Ford talks about his experience with addiction and recover and thoughts on how the faith community handles these issues. 

We are personally interested in your thoughts, especially this time of year and into the New Year’s resolutions, about perception & practice of Charity. What are the best ways to do it? Empty ways?  Has it become the tool of oligarchs to justify their dirt in some ways? To avoid a government that would tax them highly to do the same work with no credit? (We’d have to tread lightly on that one!)  And then where would the just and worthy causes be without them? The arts, Etc. How can regular people live into the connection between charitable acts and the self-giving, eternal love of God?  The ways that charity tends to feel top-down and denigrating to those in need when it shouldn’t. 

The Mystic panel reflects on their own life experiences with Christmas, and then they discuss what Christmas means in our national context.  

Panelists react to any of the above and/or share a story of resilience in your experience as a pastor. Where did resilience come from in your hopes and dreams of election time in 2016. From where will it come no matter what the outcome in 2024?

We begin by reflecting on: 

• When do you find yourself feeling most nostalgic these days. 
• Where/when does your nostalgia take you?  
• What are some of the feelings and sensations that accompany that experience.  

• How does nostalgia help you as a pastor/leader? 
• How does it hinder you? 
• Are the laments of the declining mainline church just pining for the "good ol' days" or is there something else within that experience that can be a pathway for renewed relevancy for organied religion in this present moment. 

 Within this initial conversation we explore the power of nostalgia in public, such as the recent influx of advertising pulling on themes from the 90s and early 2000s, the increase in popularity of more analog technologies like vinyl and Polaroids, as well as the political nostalgia behind the claims of MAGA on one end and a "return to normalcy" on the other end.   As religious leaders that are tasked with helping folks navigate change institutionally and in the world:  

A Kindly Look — there is power in a glance. Try to recall one good and one bad experience you’ve had when a stranger “looked at you a certain way.”  I see you.  The importance of a look or greeting to the deeper spiritual work — even “evangelical work” — of folks who desire to represent (and perhaps manifest) the Divine.  The difference between men’s & women’s public bathroom etiquette!  Are there any significant underlying reasons for these differences?  

We’ve been talking a lot about age in this country in the midst of this election year and ageism is one of this least talked about forms of discrimination.  What are your thoughts on age – both how you were brought up to think about age, and also how you think about age now at this moment in your life? What have you noticed about the public discourse about age recently? In sacred texts, someone living a very long time is often seen as receiving favor from God. Since we know that not everyone gets to grow old, what meaning do you ascribe to living to a “ripe, old age.”

The Fourth of July is best known for red, white, and blue attire, drinks, fireworks, and barbecues. The holiday is revered as a summertime staple, but before we look up at fireworks, members of The Mystic panel will reflect on the meaning of The American Dream.

Using voices to speak to issues of the day, no matter what. For religious leaders there are many voices. This discussion will center on the balance between the prophetic voice and the pastoral voice.

he team of the Mystic talks about Martin Luther King Jr. and what he might be working on if he were alive today. 

Are people more self-absorbed these days? Has the proliferation of social media, polarization, and the decline of traditional religious affiliation made it easier for people to be more self-absorbed and less interested in the possibilities and demands of sharing in community? What about self-awareness?  How can the cultivation of self-awareness help us address what seems like a self-absorption epidemic.   

During the first half of the discussion, we reflect on the above questions and try to get a handle on what it’s like to pastor, live, and have faith in a seemingly more self-absorbed world. The second half of the discussion will focus on exploring our journey to deepening self-awareness and how that practice can offer us a way out of the collective naval gazing.   

The Mystic panel shares their parent-child relationships in succinct and fabulous ways with artist Stuart Sheldon. 

 (b. 1963, Miami) Stuart Sheldon is a multimedia artist and podcast host best known for immersive installations and collage paintings exploring literature and social justice. Sheldon's gun-sense billboard, How Was School Today?, in collaboration with the artist collective, For Freedoms, earned him a 2018 Ellies Creator Award from Oolite Arts, honoring “the backbone of Miami’s visual arts community.” His Swan Dive Podcast features guests from all walks of life who made a major life change to chase their dream.  

As we kick off 2024, we focus on “Grace” and specifically looking at how we use it in dealing with division. As we head into what is likely to be an incredibly polarizing election year, there is worry that we will experience living in two worlds, completely separated from those with different political and social perspectives. 

Led by Rabbi Micah Greenstein, the group will discuss change and how it affects us in our daily lives. Music by Karen Smith, Dr. Ashley Davis and Kirk Whallum

From day-to- day, to our politics, to end of life and funerals. What is the funniest thing that has

happened in your role as a clergy person. How much does it matter that our next mayor has a sense of

humor? What is the funniest story you can tell on yourself?

This month's Mystic is a discussion of religious decline led by Rev. Dr. Lillian Lammers. What do you think are the primary drivers for US adults falling away from religious institutions?  What kinds of things can our religious institutions be doing differently that might slow or reverse this decline? Does the new Barbie movie offer any insight? 

How do you stay positive given the avalanche of daily tragedy, locally, nationally, and globally? No theological quick fixes. Heaven will be fine, earth is where all the problems are.  Beyond deep faith and prayer, what helps?What helps you to keep positive through the ages and stages of life?

This month, the Mystic panel discusses apologies, forgiveness, and the role of grace in our public and private lives.

If Dr. King were to be in Memphis in 2023, what would he want to do this week? I suspect he would still want to do God’s will. That of course begins with being committed to the truth—an ever-elusive thing for us to grasp. Writer Leo Tolstoy said, “Truth, like gold, is to be obtained not by its growth, but by washing away from it all that is not gold.” For so much of what we encounter, there is a lot of washing to be done. But I believe that the truth is to be found, and we can find it the same way that King was looking for it on the night of April 4, 1968.

Everyone in Memphis seems to be suffering from what could be labeled as “fear fatigue.”

We spent the past three years with some level of fear about getting sick from COVID. So many in our community have spent the last six months being afraid of being a victim of crime. Folks seem more on edge. Add this to the everyday fears that pop-up in our lives on a regular basis and you can get a sense that folks are tired of the additional energy they have been expending on fear, and the additional space it has taken up in their minds for a sustained time. This month's Mystic is an invitation to speak intelligently about a topic that we all keep bumping up against in conversations.

Fear has function in our lives. Sometimes, it is the powerful catalyst for demonstrations of courage. Sometimes it’s a tool for reminding us of our faith or provoking our imagination. Listen to this month's Mystic to learn more on this important topic.

In this episode of The Mystic, our panel discusses how the seasons of Lent affect our mind, body and spirit. Special musical guests are Ashley Davis and Keia Johnson.

So why do we make resolutions in the first place? And are they really that helpful? The panel explores the role of resolutions at the start of a New Year and try to make sense of the deeper needs, hurts, and desires that are behind our motivation to change. This episode we're led in music by Dr. Ashley Davis and Jonny Pineda.

If indeed "There's no place like home!" then where is home for you? As we enter this holiday season, this month's Mystic tackles the idea of home by reflecting on the people, memories, and experiences that make it possible for home to be wherever we find ourselves. This intimate conversation between regular panelists Rabbi Micah Greenstein and Rev. Joshua Narcisse explores the reality that home is a choice we make about the relationships that matter most to us.

Jonny Pineda conveys musically what his perceptions are during his own storms and connects to the devastation of the current physical storms in Florida, Haiti, etc. We all share about where to hide during, how to be strong in, and how to survive storms.

John Carroll of City Leadership joins the Mystic crew to discuss philanthropy in and around our beloved city of Memphis. Also, Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, begins Sunday, so we will also discuss our thoughts on forgiveness.

In Genesis, even before Adam and Eve eat the apple, Adam is sent to till the earth, not as punishment but as part of what human life is meant to be. How today do we understand work as a path to better knowing God? What does any of this mean during the great resignation and the struggles the country faces in the Labor market of today? How can work draw us closer to God?

Have you chosen the one and only path God wants for you in your life or is flexibility to God's plan a more authentic road? How do you know if you are on the right road for you? Listen for dialog and ideas.

The recent and ongoing mass shootings occurring in the US are just the tip of the iceberg of our countries gun violence crisis. 99% of gun deaths are by violence other than mass shootings. Every day there are more than 110 gun deaths.  Listen in to learn of the advocacy group Moms Demand Action and enhance your understanding of violence, suicide and how the faithful respond.

Enjoy The Mystic's Mother's Day's 2022 edition. While holding space for the reality that not everyone's experience of a mother may be equally nurturing, this discussion explores the question of what our mothers teach us about God. This may be character traits we come to appreciate more fully as adults or specific experiences that left a lasting imprint on our spiritual formation. A saying from the Jewish tradition says, "God cannot be everywhere, so he created mothers." How do we see God more clearly and bear God more fully when we understand both what it means to parent someone in faith and what it means to receive God as "mother" in our own lives?

This episode probes how our individual understanding and experiences of freedom shape our responses to the ways others express their freedom. In what ways do some systems fail to regard freedom as something that should be equally distributed? What is our responsibility to one another with how we use our individual freedom? When we feel our freedom is threatened, how can we find a foothold in faith? And how do we allow each other the humanity of our fears while also nudging each other toward the freedom that our faith tells us God intends?

One hundred percent of us have failure in our stories. The meaning we add to failure—that we've been taught to add—is what holds us hostage in a society obsessed with perfection. Too often we send a curated version of ourselves into the world when what we need most is grace and gentleness toward ourselves as we discover the usefulness in struggle and imperfection. What do we lose when we don't face the challenging parts of our stories? What do we gain when we do? How do we own our stories, including the failures, so that we can be more whole people?

The ongoing pandemic makes a lot of things feel fuzzy around the edges—from outright loss of life of loved ones we haven't felt free to mourn with comforting rituals to the demands of living with the contradictory nature of finding ways to deal with stress without the familiar lifelong patterns of community and activities that help us do that. How do we heal from grief when everyone around us is trying to do that same thing? When we keep waiting for this grievous collective experience to be over, but it's not? Listen in on this episode of the Mystic for some thoughts on planting crops of hope and watering them for one another, taking meaning even from experiences of loss at any level that we can share through our lives with someone else.

Politics, vaccines, the pandemic, religion, culture wars—we hear a lot of talk about how divided we are, even downright angry. Sometimes the wrong people in our lives become scapegoats of anger that has nothing to do with them. It seems like these last two years of pandemic life have the whole country pent-up with anger in need of release. Normalcy fell apart, and anger has become part of the complexity and perplexity of how we respond. Is there always a “right” and “wrong”? A “strong” and “weak”? Or can we make room for the subtleties of grace, love, suffering, mystery and God without dualistic thinking that pits us against each other? Have we learned any positive lessons from our experiences with anger? What is the role of the faith community in navigating through this fraught emotional place and rebuilding connections?

This month's episode of The Mystic explores our relationship with money—what shapes it in the first place and how we can intentionally use our giving habits to express the values we aspire to more intentionally. Whether you have modest means or a high-end income, whether you are planning as an individual or an organization, a budget is a theological document because it is a values document. Do we only give for a tax break? Or do we give because we know money is a means for goodness and because giving is a spiritual discipline that can transform us. We all receive many unhealthy messages about what money signifies, but what do want to choose that it will signify in gifts that reflect who we are, whether at year-end or throughout the year?

This episode features the reflections of people who were born and grew up in Memphis, whomoved away and came back, who thought they would be in Memphis temporarily, and thosewho are full-on transplants.Through their eyes we see the challenges of the city, which alwaysseem front and center, but also the assets, which are too often overlooked. Both are amicrocosm of the experiences of our country and call us to both truth and hope in somethinggreater than ourselves.

Everyone has mental health. The question is how well we care for it as part of seeing ourselves and others as whole persons. We can't compartmentalize our bodies, minds, and spirits. This episode of The Mystic honestly admits that all of us face intensities that twist up what happens in our minds and spirits in ways that impact our bodies, work, and relationships—and might even implode our family. Whatever your spiritual tradition is, how do you rest in hope and see life through a lens of faith that welcomes help when you need it?

As we resume more and more "normal" interactions and routines, many of us face the anxiety of restoring normality. Life is the same, but everything is different. Pat answers are not going to work anymore. Our sense of time feels warped as we relearn how to live with others not in our pandemic bubbles and reevaluate what grounds us day in and day out. The demands of the pandemic don't end just because we take our masks off. It's a time when we need grace for ourselves and each other.

This month, we are sitting together in Crosstown Concourse's Green Room telling stories and jokes to lighten our moods as we exit a traumatic period of time. Life is resuming, and we are meeting it with humor and reflections from our year spent in the pandemic. We hope this episode brings you a few laughs, but more importantly, hope of bright future.

This month’s episode falls during the annual Memphis in May festival where we celebrate the culture, spirit and BBQ that makes Memphis famous. We take time this month to reflect on our most precious “Memphis in May” memories — some intrinsically tied to the festival and others bound to changing seasons in life. Join us for another conversation combining music, matters of the spirit, story and more.

As we continue to progress through the pandemic and every meeting, event and gathering that now occurs virtually, The Mystic is re-assessing and re-imagining what corporate worship means in the context of our online world. This month we are celebrating Easter and Passover and noticing the differences between online worship services and pre-pandemic in-person worship services. Some people choose Peloton Church over traditional corporate worship; other people choose fellowship opportunities like Taco Tuesday. How will corporate worship return when the pandemic is over?

This month marks one year of the pandemic shutdown. Led by Joshua Narcisse, we are spending time reflecting on the many changes the past twelve months have brought. Inequalities glare us in the face and fear is ever-present in our daily lives. We discuss the things that are providing us hope and joy daily, and the changes we anticipate in the future of our society.

This month’s episode of The Mystic covers the topic of white supremacy and white hegemony, which have been at the forefront of our minds since last month’s insurrection at the Capitol. Listen to heartfelt music between our hosts discussing matters of religion vs. faith, the exclusion and oppression tied with American Christianity and race as a verb – not a noun. Join another hour of meaningful conversation propelling the discussion of important issues and spearheading our reflections on the history of Black History Month.

This month, we continue building on last month’s episode by tracing the evolution of conversations around gender and sexual identity and expression through the generations represented by our group. We question and address where the faith community sees these issues, and how over time, faith communities have misappropriated religion as a system of power. Faith is not about certainty, it’s about having the courage to look into the unknown. Are you a person that anybody can lean on?

Last month we discussed the ways that the COVID 19 pandemic has coerced us into investigating our own identities and biases. This week we shift the conversation toward issues surrounding gender and sexual identities and expression. Why are these human identities being used as a wedge to divide?

It has been nine months since we last met as a group. In this first episode back together, we are catching up and investigating the various ways the COVID-19 pandemic has changed our lives and the way we see ourselves. We found that being forced into isolation compelled us to reanalyze who we are. Please join us for this conversation engaging music, matters of the spirit, story, and more.