David Brisbin Podcast

Dave Brisbin 3.22.26 I’ve been on the whole of Lent about how the holy grail of all spiritual work, of Jesus’ teaching, even our most ancient liturgical rites is…awareness. Waking up inside waking life. Until we can poke our heads above the waterline of our egoic selves, we’re only ever seeing the inside of our eyelids, nothing of the real that is not only all around us, but within as well. We can’t see the air; fish can’t see the water. Hopefully our odds are better than theirs. But what happens when we do wake up? Blissful sweetness and light? Jesus sounds an alarm. He didn’t come to bring peace, but a sword that would cut within our own families first. To help decode, the word for peace Jesus uses here is not shalom—he’s the prince of that—but shayna, calm, tranquility. The immediate context is the rift that inevitably stresses our closest relationships after radical transformation, but more deeply, there is an interior rift that opens when we’re no longer experiencing life the way we once did. Some au