Embodying Faith: Healing the Whole Person – Mookie Manalili

Episode 44.
As a psychotherapist, professor and researcher, Mookie believes in attending to the whole person. For him, this care includes his Catholic practice. For his clients, faith or root beliefs might also be included. Mookie has arrived at his philosophy of therapy and groundedness in Catholicism through a circuitous route. Born in the Philippines, raised in California, followed by graduate studies and work over a multi-stage eastward journey across the US, he has landed at Boston College, a Jesuit institution where he has found a home. Each place has had its own Catholicism, from the pink-habited nuns in the Philippines to the Chicano inflection in California and the more stoic version in Boston, while remaining part of the same Church. Despite traversing many communities, he still lives by the values of his childhood – caring for the whole person, with special attention to those at the margins and those who have suffered injustices.

Highlights:
00:05:01 Catholicism shaped and challenged Mookie’s faith journey.
00:06:31 Catholicism's different expressions, faith, and justice.
00:10:43 Mookie’s journey of darkness and light.
00:24:31 Integration of culture, faith, and therapy in practice.
00:37:31 Embodied, sacramental nature of things: Catholic faith.

References:
·       Dorothy Day, The Long Loneliness
·       Thomas Merton, No Man is an Island
·       Catholic Worker – https://catholicworker.org/
·       Ignatian Spirituality – https://www.ignatianspirituality.com/

 
Social Media links for Mookie: 
LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/mookie-manalili/
Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/mr.man.of.lily/

Social Media links for Méli:
Talking with God Project – https://www.talkingwithgodproject.org
LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/melisolomon/
Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100066435622271


Transcript:    https://www.buzzsprout.com/1851013/episodes/13213541

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Transcript

Mookie Manalili transcript 

Embodying Faith and Healing the Whole Person

Meli  [00:00:05]:

Hello and welcome to Living Our Beliefs, a home for open conversations with fellow Christians, Jews and Muslims. Through personal stories and reflection, we will explore how our religious traditions show up in daily life at work, at home, in the community, in good times, end and bad, there is no one size fits all, right answer, just a way to move forward. For you, for here, for now, I am your host, Meli Solomon. So glad you could join us. This is episode 44, and my guest today is Mookie Manalili. Mookie is a psychotherapist professor and researcher interested in suffering, meaning making, narratives, trauma, and memory. In addition to his psychotherapy private practice, he is a parttime faculty member for the Graduate School of Social Work at Boston College, teaching clinical courses like narrative therapy. He also serves as a research consultant at Boston College for Social Psychology Research at the Morality Lab, and for philosophical psychology projects through the center for Psychological Humanities and Ethics. In all his various roles, Mookie hopes to participate in our duty to better our society, particularly for people on the margins and those who suffer injustices, such as the widow, orphan, and stranger. Through helping those in need, he strives to build a more compassionate world. Mookie lives in Boston, Massachusetts. Links to his social media handles are listed in the show notes. Hello, Mookie. Welcome to my Living Our Beliefs, podcast. I'm so happy to have you on today.

Mookie [00:02:03]:

Hey, Meli. Thank you so much for having me. It's quite an honor to journey with you and y'all in this podcast.

Meli  [00:02:09]:

I'd like to begin before I even ask my usual first question with your name. So you go by Mookie, but in your social media listing, there's an M before your name. So could you give us the full name, please?

Mookie [00:02:26]:

My full name is Michael Mookie Cruz Manalili. It comes from four heritages. Michael or Mikael from the political name. Mookie was a nickname that made it into my birth certificate. And then Cruise is my mother's maiden name. It's a Filipino tradition to have the mother's maiden name in the middle name slot. So a bit of my Spanish ancestry over there. And then last name is Manalili, which is my father's ancestral name. And it's one of the few Polynesian Filipino last name. So it's a fun, eclectic name. But I go by Mookie because here in Boston, Mookie is kind of easy to go by.

Meli  [00:03:08]:

It is. So let's dive into your identity. This is where I always start. You've already identified yourself as Filipino. You live in Boston. Do you think of yourself as a Filipino American?

Mookie [00:03:24]:

Yeah, it's a great question. Yeah, definitely see myself as a bit of a phil-am Filipino American. I was born in the island of the Philippines, and I migrated here when I was six, seven years old. Moved around a little bit, about twelve times now, all the way from the West Coast in California. I got my first master's in Notre Dame, so South Bend, I taught a little bit in Houston, Texas, and then went for further graduate degrees here in Boston. So I guess I definitely see myself as a voyager or a pilgrim and then, yes, very closely a Filipino American and religiously.

Meli  [00:04:11]:

What is your identity and religiously?

Mookie [00:04:14]:

I am Roman Catholic in the island of the Philippines. I grew up in a rehab center, and I was taught by Pink habited nuns. So they'd play kickball with us and teach us the faith, but also educate us. So my conception of Roman Catholicism was very different growing up, and needless to say, journeying here in the different contexts in the United States. And of course, I grapple a lot with some of the things that this part of my faith heritage, but I'm happy to grapple within the church as opposed to without the church. So, yes. Filipino American. Roman Catholic.

Meli  [00:04:54]:

So I gather that you were raised within Catholicism and have not really changed that.

Mookie [00:05:01]:

Yeah, I would say so. I would say that within my different journeys and moving around, catholicism was kind of the context that I was raised in. The different imprints of Catholicism in these different spaces was, I guess, what helped shape and challenge and strengthen some of those beliefs. And I would say contact with the other religious traditions have also been something that I've really enjoyed as part of my journey here in the United States. But yeah, I would say maybe there was certain parts of falling away from the faith and harder times in my life and when my version of what I was brought up with didn't really match the context. But, yeah, my faith journey is kind of a through line, even through the light and the darkness that I encountered.

Meli  [00:05:55]:

We'll get to the light and the darkness in a moment, but I just want to better understand the faith path. You have mentioned in other conversations these various Catholicisms, the Spanish and the Filipino and the American, and you're at Boston College, which is Jesuit. I'm curious about how your sense of your own Catholic faith and practice has shifted as you moved through those different environments and grown into an adult.

Mookie [00:06:31]:

Yeah, Meli. That's a great question. In the Philippines, our faith and our cultural traditions are very tied and kind of melded together. Again, I grew up in a rehab center in which my mother and father met. My mom was actually a nurse and my dad was a guard, that kind of context. So in my young mind, the margins, the folks that the scriptures told us about definitely all deserve the second chance. I realized that for me, this idea of faith and justice was very close together in our little village in Tagai Thai City. As I moved to Los Angeles, I was met with a little bit more of the eclectic, the chicano side, the rosaries and the devotions to Our Lady of Guadalupe and there was still a very familial sense to it. After Mass, you'll have those potlucks and the feast days and it was a very fun thing for youth to break bread with, I'd say. As I moved more and more east and also developed more, for example, in undergrad at Leola Marymount, another Jesuit institution, the idea of faith and justice kind of came together even more so, but also the intellectual side of our faith tradition. Some of the thinkers, the way we formulate justice and ethics, those kind of came to mind. But as an adult, as I moved to South Bend and then to Houston, Texas, and then to Boston, I realized that Catholicism had different contexts that kind of shape its universality. We think of ourselves as a Catholicos from the Greek word universal and yet from the metaphor of the body of Christ. The hands and the feet, while connected, look and function very differently. Catholicism in farmlands of South Bend, very different than the Texan ways of understanding the faith. And even more so here in Boston where the Irish, Italian, Polish and other contexts kind of mix together to this. Maybe more stoic, maybe more East Coast New England ways of understanding Catholicism a little bit more, not formulaic but structured and things like that. And all the way into Boston College. Its Catholicism is definitely more intellectual now. It might lean kind of conservative in some of the ways that it's institutionalized and the student body might lean a little bit more liberal in the way that they think. But yeah, bringing it back, I guess to the dialectic where I found myself as a little kid with pink habited nuns and ex prison inmates, I hope that it can see all of that as part of Catholicos, as part of universal, as a boon. I've found a little Filipino mass community. It's called Misang pinoy in Boston. We have it in the School of Theology and Ministry in Boston College. It's a little slice of home. We have our liturgies in the chapel and we sing in our mother tongue. And I also think that pockets of things that remind us of our home and our heritage are important when we practice less faith just be some intellectual or solely political thing, the things that touch to the part of the journeys.

Meli  [00:10:07]:

That we keep so Mookie. I'd like to lean into your current activities, which is really your professional and intellectual interests, but I want to come at it from a comment you made a few moments ago where you mentioned light and dark times. That felt like a personal comment, but it seemed prescient, so wanted to ask you what you meant by that and if that then was the source of your interest in your professional focus.

Mookie [00:10:43]:

Yeah, thank you for inviting me to share gently into it Meli and yeah, I think it's definitely that journey into light and darkness. I would say, kind of opened up the foray. I'm currently a psychotherapist researcher and part time professor, and the path to getting here was quite windy per se. Zooming into, I would say, the emerging adulthood part of my narrative. My first degree was at Leola Mary Mount. I thought my vocation there was to be a civil engineer. However, in addition to serving food in the skid row area, tutoring kids in education, that I realized there was something more there, more maybe than just the excel sheets that I could contribute. I thought I'd just do one or two year service program after. If not, I'll just go back to being a civil engineer with maybe a Master's in theology. I'll find a way to make that make sense on the CV. But from Loyola Marymount. I found the Echo program through Notre Dame where I got a Master's of Arts in theology and pedagogy. And then I taught for two years in straight Jesuit college preparatory. So these kind of contexts continue to shape how I saw the integration of those things. In my second year of teaching and my master's program, there was what I would consider kind of like the dark night of the soul. A lot of spiritual writers talk about this kind of pit that they find themselves in that really maybe test and or breaks the current framework of faith. There was a gal who was really close to my heart at that time, and it didn't work out. There was a death in my family and of course, just a long work week and earning a master's. It was kind of a recipe for frameworks to break. If the younger self believed that God is all loving and all good, how can things like this happen? It looks great in theological theodices like outlines, but what happens when you live and experience this kind of breaking point? So I went looking for answers. I went looking in the philosophy or the theology books. I met a lot of the quote unquote mystics and people who grappled with the question of God's goodness. I went searching in philosophy, and that's how I actually ended up finding psychology. I found a dual degree master's program in Boston College, one in clinical social work and another in systematic theology. One thing that I did find softening was the way that I accompanied people. Whereas maybe before it was theoretical and intellectual. I found that I can sit into darkness with people without being uncomfortable. For me, God and Christ was not just a being in the light, but in the very suffering and crosses, messiness and capital M mysteries of life. I also began to see the divine there. Even as a psychotherapist, I might not invoke Christological or theological language, but there is something very sacred for me. When we sit with somebody's story, when the suffering other enters into our room, when our stranger enters into our room and we break, yes, physical bread with them, but also that emotional space. So that's kind of what wound me up here in Boston College. I thought I'd get a PhD in theology right after my path has since shifted. I think I'm looking to pursue further studies in due time in the intersection now of psychology and theology. I'm in a private group practice where I practice psychotherapy, narrative therapy, trauma informed therapy, and I am a research consultant in two lab spaces the Morality Lab and then the center for Psychological Humanities and Ethics. And then I have the honor of accompanying graduate students, the School of Social Work. So definitely been a journey. But the metaphor of mosaic glass is something that's really salient for this part of the journey, because after the shattering, you can't really put the glass back together. It doesn't serve the function of holding the container anymore per se, but you can rearrange mosaic pieces to tell a different story, and it's brokenness. There is also still a beauty. So, yeah, I hope to accompany teach and question into the darkness and the light that I found in the journey.

Meli  [00:15:44]:

The journey is the way I'm really impressed by how you hold these difficulties in the past with lightness comes to mind. But I don't mean it in a superficial way. I hear a holding with heart and care and gentleness may be a better word. It sounds like that has been its own journey. You mentioned that softness arose for you.

Mookie [00:16:18]:

I think so, too. There's something and to the point of the theme of this space, those embodied things. Yeah, sometimes. It was not the books itself that I was able to actually find those answers to the point Meli of this podcast, this idea of lived experiences and our embodiments. Sometimes our theoretical frameworks of suffering are logical conceptual, and they do hold some sort of weight. But sometimes the gratuitousness of life, the wildness of it, as Mary Oliver would say, or the starkness that people like Victor Fronkel and other people talk about in those times, it shatters the concepts. And when we hold the broken glass of people's frameworks and their suffering, there's a gentleness when we're helping folks rearrange some of that. I would never say that I wish suffering upon people, but I think it is the one constant that we could expect of life. And I am grateful for the way that the pieces have moved me here. I think that gentleness is the thing that I'm grateful in the accompaniment of people. We can never move the pieces of glass for people. Each person has to make meaning of their own suffering, but we can create the space where it's a little easier to pick those up. So that, for me, has what remained in this journey. And that's something that can't be taught in a book. Sometimes it's the teacher of life. And as you said, the way that is the way in which life teaches.

Meli  [00:18:09]:

What's coming through here, Mookie, is gratitude for the hard times, which you said is not what we're grateful for, versus the gratitude for the healing or for the support or for the grace or whatever helps bring the light in and brings the pieces together, the broken pieces together, into a functioning, healthy way forward. I think that's a really important distinction. Sometimes when I speak and I'll be honest, especially with Christians, and I hear things about, you didn't mention this. So that's the caveat that God has a plan for me. And I had this really awful time, and I came through it, and I'm all good. I really struggle with that. And I wanted to bring it up, recognizing that you didn't say you believe God has a plan for you, but it came up in hearing you say, I don't wish hard times on anyone, but we can create these spaces. And this is clearly part of your mission as a psychotherapist and as someone working in the social work sphere as well as the theology, bringing all of that together to help teach and support and guide clients into a healthy way of living through the difficult times, I.

Mookie [00:19:57]:

Mean, very much agreed. That dictum I've always found frustrating. And I've been grappling with, actually, the book of Job. Me and a colleague of mine is writing together an edited volume currently, David Goodman, one of my collaborators at Boston College. And we're struck by how Job and I know this is a scriptural text shared by both of our traditions. Fascinating text, too. It's historically one of the eldest books in our canon. It has no mention of Jewish folks in it. There's kind of a sense that this might predate some of those. And it's actually written kind of like a play. There's the chapter on wisdom, the Pearl of Wisdom. In the middle of it, there's a bit of a prologue and an epilogue, and then there's kind of two ish parts to it. And I reflected also on how when Job goes out seeking answers to his question, he's not met with an answer. He's actually met with the Leviathan, the embodiment of chaos. There's something there, I think, for us to think about that when we seek questions, sometimes we're brought to even more questions brought to humility Job's three friends. They all come with a framework. They all come kind of with an answer of, hey, man, you must be suffering because X, you must be suffering because y, you must be suffering because Z, right? And that why, for me, sometimes just the nice, simple Band Aid of God has a plan. And while short, that might be true for other people's frameworks. That is like taking the shattered pieces of the glass and making the mosaic for them, right? And people suffering, they do not need most of the time for people to do that for them. For me, it's the point of empowerment, especially narrative therapy for people to be able to rewrite the thread of their lives. And it's a stance of empowerment for them to allow themselves to do that. Of course, we provide the space, the resources and the community. And even in these different ways that I've experienced Catholicism and I've experienced this, I would not be in the space that I am without the bread given to me by friends, the meals shared during those hard times, the sports I was invited to to take my mind off it for a little bit or the books given to me by friends of saying there might be something that speaks here to you in the listening ear. The people who solved why. It was never really kind of answer that sal for me. And so too, whether in pastoral care of rabbis, priests, imams, the psychotherapeutic office, it is interesting that we lead more so with questions, right? We don't dictate an answer. And I guess I can't say apologies on behalf of my entire larger tribe of Christianity, but I do feel tough when some of our siblings quickly rush to an answer, quickly become job's friends rather than accompanying folks in that way. And, yeah, I do think that there's some pause there for us to take. As people of faith, what are we called to when our siblings suffer? Do we give them a concept or do we give them bread and accompaniment?

Meli  [00:23:42]:

Thank you for those words. I'd like to lean a little more into this question of the role of faith in healing and how religion and faith are present and entwined in the therapeutic realm. Already, from what you've spoken of, they seem deeply entwined. But I do wonder who your clients are. Are they Catholics? Are they Boston College students? Do you see that moving forward? Do you bring biblical verses into the therapy rooms, all of that? If you could just speak to that for a moment, I'd appreciate that.

Mookie [00:24:31]:

Sure, yeah. Happy to share how these kind of find their integration into clinical work and then maybe later we can touch base in terms of the research and the teaching, where I also see them finding connection. But yeah, I have found I think it gives a nod to one of the values that the US, for better and worse, our individualism. And sometimes we see this at ODS with anything that touches in the communal space. I think when we face suffering and when we understand how we operate in the world, our belief systems are taken into consideration, our unique heritages and cultures, whether it's some Filipino mythologies or ways that we understand the world, whether through our value systems or even superstitions, and likewise our religiosity and our faith and spirituality. When we face suffering, it tests some of those beliefs. Right? And I think they kind of come up organically in conversation. So for me, as a psychotherapist, I don't practice in the role of pastoral care at least in that setting and I am mindful of making it not a space should the people not want it to be there? Although I do open up that space, I say that questions of ethnicity, race, religiosity are welcomed here. So all that to say should the person bring their faith system, their root system into the treatment room? There are some clinicians who might see that as things that we should redact. However, I think if we're dealing with people's meanings and meaning, making some people for them, that is the deepest ways that they make meaning of the world. Narrative therapy is kind of very good and open about this and there's ways that I would like to invite this kind of style of therapy to think about people's culture and heritage and religious traditions, not just their social context as part of the ways that we language our stories. I think narrative therapy understands that our language is already a tradition handed down to us so to our religiosity. So I invite people to do that. Even some of the mindfulness based intervention the medical system has caught on to diaphragmatic breath the Pranayamic practices in which a deep inhalation a pause and a slow exhalation and if you chop it down to neurobiology it does mimic the parasympathetic response. Response is similar to when we sleep, that kind of deep breath. But there are ancient traditions that have queued into this. Just because they haven't written a research article within the past ten years doesn't make them any less true. But when we bring those practices, especially for people who that breath will benefit, I actually invite them to bring whatever tradition for them might be native. Because when we do meditative and mindfulness practices I think there is a story that just kind of erase things and kind of go for the cleanest. I do think there might be some benefit to that but for many it might be helpful to bring something already native to the person. Those are two ways that I think I've found that in my practice. I do see Catholics and Christians and I see people of different traditions in my practice as well. And for the ones who want to use that framework when they make meaning of their particular suffering I do remind them though that it is a quote unquote clinical psychotherapeutic space. So I speak primarily with the language of psychology in that space while welcoming whatever other languages. But I have found that if we want the whole person to heal not just parts of them, I think it's important for us to welcome the wholeness of the person and for many that is also how they believe and see the world.

Meli  [00:29:01]:

I hear what a delicate balancing act you maintain. What I also hear is the vital importance of the whole person and accepting the wholeness of that person as a reality even if they are broken in the moment.

Mookie [00:29:24]:

I think that's very key to our work of healing, I think the acceptance of the whole person and the parts that might even be hidden from themselves, again to echo the psychoanalytic tradition to the parts that they find tough integrating. I think that for me, is very key to healing. There are other clinical psychotherapeutic interventions that don't deal with the whole person and it brings healing. There are forms in which it is mainly cognitive or mainly bodily, and that is just fine. Of course, sometimes speaking about the trauma is not the best way lest we retrigger a person. So there are delicate ways in which some of the different sufferings are handled. But for the styles of therapy that I practice, yes, very much so. I invite the whole person to come into the space as much as they.

Meli  [00:30:22]:

Would like so that all makes sense within the therapeutic field. I am, of course, also mindful that you're a Catholic and even as a Jew, even as someone who's or maybe even especially as someone who's not part of that world, I am very mindful of the really unaccepting aspects of the Catholic faith and doctrine. And I wonder how, given your really beautiful embodying and integrating of all these different the Spanish and the Filipino and the American and all of these things, how you deal with that. How do you think about that?

Mookie [00:31:15]:

Yeah. And on the other side right. I guess this is the flip coin of how do we bring our faith into our practice and vice versa. How do we bring our practices and our mental health into the faith? I think this is something that I've been thinking about, and honestly, this is, I think, one of the callings I see in terms of bringing research more and more into this space. And maybe why I see doctoral work as a bit of a vocation. I'm looking to do something in the intersection of pastoral psychology or something in terms of philosophy and psychology. Because of this, I do find that our church really needs to grapple with psychology and mental health. I think this is a framework that's really been brought to our mind post pandemic, post of the racial injustices and unrest, post society beginning to grapple with the question of death. I think a lot of folks this pandemic that many of us might have just suppressed and repressed and like, oh, were those two years ago, even that might be seen as a societal trauma symptom per se. But I think the church has begun to see that as a space it needs to invest in. I know a lot of parishes beginning to think about mental health initiatives as part of what it means to care for the whole person. The Roman Catholic Church, particularly here in Boston, does not have its hands fully clean in terms of some of the traumas it itself has inflicted, sex abuse scandals and several other things. And those are things that I think psychology could help with as well. The way that we understand human formation and the way that we understand sexuality and embodiment, right. These are things that I think our church really, really needs to take a look at when we take a look at anthropology and all that to say, too, that there are ways that the church has also here on top of a hill in Brighton. And this place has the old Vestiges Franciscan's Hospital, which is a Roman Catholic order, and St. Elizabeth's, which had a lot of nuns operating in it. So again, that dialectic of the Church has been part of this, but sometimes it forgets it when we get caught up in certain binary oppositional things. I'm curious how the Church will work with mental health, with psychology. There are, I think, glimpses of what this could look like. Of course, the optimist and me sees excitement in that. Even just by our root system, there's a lot that already can be connected. I think a lot of the idea of breath and mindfulness is, as I was talking about, this is something we share in our Abrahamic traditions. But the creation story, forgive me for the Hebrew I'm about to butcher, but the ruach or the breath Nishama, the breath, right, the life force and how that was breathed into the very stuff of the earth. Not surprising that breath is very central to a lot of spiritual and religious traditions. Even the idea of nevma from the Greek or Spirit spirit from the Latin, that all means breath. Like, for example, in the last Christological stories, where he says to you, Father, I commend my spirit. We think of it as very Cartesian metaphysical. It quite literally means, to you I give my breath. And then the next verse says, he breathe his last. All that to say SUKE. Psychology also comes from the word to blow, which is breath. Spirituality comes from breath. In the monastic Christian traditions, the early Christians were called followers of the weight. If we dig deep enough, I think there are ways that our traditions have already kind of tiptoed in what psychology, what SUKE, what living and being an animating force is, rather than see all these kind of binaries, oh, this is not our lane. If we go back to some of those ancient questions, I do think that there are ways our tradition has kind of grappled with it and should again, I think I'm still formulating how our traditions should take up and pick up the question of psychology.

Meli  [00:36:11]:

What's coming through is really a tying together, a knitting together, perhaps, of the roots and how we need to evolve into the future. I love that that is such a better, more optimistic, healthier way to look at it than what I sometimes hear. And what a lot of people I know,

Mookie [00:36:34]:

Hum...

Meli  [00:36:36]:

... and I'm sorry again, a lot of Catholics, former labs Catholics I know, have completely. Turned away from the faith and from the practice because of injuries that they have sustained from the Church and from priests. I mean, specific people, not the Church.

Mookie [00:37:01]:

As an institution, but folks who represent.

Meli  [00:37:05]:

Yeah, folks who represent the leadership. And sometimes the response is to reach back and say, well, this is the way we've done it. This is the proper way. And not so much concern for the health and the well being of the parishioner.

Mookie [00:37:31]:

Agreed. The things that keeps me Catholic even amidst all of this is the embodied, the sacramental nature of things. The last dictum of Christ: Do this in memory of me. I like to remind people he didn't say, hey, think about this in memory of me, or you just like, recall this. But it was an experience, right? It was an institution of the Shabbat, the hey, break bread together, we all hold breath. There's a reason why spirit and breath is really important. These things that nourish us. Community as, it kind of echoes in that the sacramental nature of it. K Catholicos in the Greek, there's something universal about breath and bread and community, right? When we drift to sometimes the way that power is utilized and abuse or the rigidity of this is the way it was, this is the way it will be, or when harms are done and we do not address it, when we do not reach for the margins, I think that goes in the face of what we could be standing for. I'm brought to mind of the Catholic Worker movements the Dorothy Day's, who they're not like, hey, are you Catholic or not? What are your needs, stranger? Or the Thomas Merton's, these quote unquote modern day saints, people who embody, right? And that for me, also, the idea of the saints when I was small, I definitely would pray to the saints when I lost things. And I think that's also, of course, a very tender way to understand saints. But more so, I see them now people who embody certain virtues, right? People who embody these things that show us what it could be like to act and live and experience that and then, yeah, finally piggybacking off the things that we said that our faith tradition could look different in different spaces. This brings me to some of the things that I've tried to think about in terms of virtue positive psychology and virtue studies are really big in psychology right now. We see trends towards character development, virtue positive psychology, and I hope not into toxic positivity where you don't look at suffering because it's all just kind of pinterest happiness all the time. But I really do think that there's virtue is this idea of excellence for human beings. When we think of virtue, it's really bound in the sense of morality. A virtuous religious person, we kind of have that idea in our mind. But when I think of an excellent wine, we don't think of one bottle of wine or an excellent tree. Right. We think of the region in the year, maybe the different tastes. And to that note, I do think that's what we need to think of as excellent faithful, virtuous faithful, the way each one grows in the soil and the context of their space, the needs of that community. That's going to look different. An excellent Catholic in Los Angeles is going to look different than an excellent Catholic in South Bend and an excellent Catholic in Houston than an excellent Catholic in Boston. They might be moved by the same breath and spirit and breaking bread in accompaniment, but they should look different, connected, yet different. And I do think that that might be one way that we as church can become more accepting as well. There is a spirit that flows through us even if we do not look alike.

Meli  [00:41:19]:

Just a quick question on that. In speaking of virtue, I'm sensing that it's about striving towards goodness, striving towards the best we can be versus what I have often thought about virtue in the Christian sense is you're perfect, you're pure, you're unblemished. So I just wanted to quickly check on that.

Mookie [00:41:47]:

I love that distinction. Yes. I think in the traditional, this is even the split between the Platonic understanding of virtues and also the Aristotelian understanding. But this idea also of, like, virtue as something to be developed as opposed to this thing that's perfect. And then it only spoils over time because excellence is usually paired up with our sense of perfection, our consumerist sense of perfection, where you buy a new car, it's cookie cutter perfect until you drive it off the lot. Then it depreciates in value already. Right. I do think our sense of virtue framed in this way is the journey. It is the way we grow in excellence, never really reaching perfection, but the way that we can embody that sense of humility or softness or accompaniment with people. We can grow and sharpen that. When I think of a decent human person, that's what it translates to an Aristotle. It's not like the perfect person, actually. He just says that the virtuous person is the decent citizen. Which is kind of funny, right? So that is the person who exists in community, in the polis. Well, striving for udaimnia not emotional happiness like we think, but flourishing and fulfillment. When you go to bed tired at the end of the day, but fulfilled. That's udaimonia good spiritedness, actually. You as in good dimon again as spirit. Right. The thing that exists. Well, and I have to give a nod to my collaborator, Leanne Young. We're studying some of these ways that virtue is grown in these different field contexts and different religious field sites. And that has brought this idea up for me that I think we need to reframe virtue as exactly what you're saying from this. It's perfect, it spoils over time, or it's pure or, again, kind of bound up with this idea of sexuality or don't associate with untouchables versus what does it mean to enact, to, in Christological language, be the body of Christ?

Meli  [00:44:13]:

All right, well, clearly there is much to discuss and we will certainly be speaking again. But in closing, you've spoken of saints quite a bit and I'm wondering if there is a particular saint that is close to your heart these days.

Mookie [00:44:32]:

Yeah, thank you for that question. Yeah, St Joseph. This idea of a builder, this idea who accompanied a Jewish woman who, from his mind, minus Joseph the dreamers and things like that. In the olden scripture, he has no words in the Bible, he's a very silent figure, but you hopefully see through his actions the kind of person that he was. So that, for me, is a saint who speaks. His kind of figure, I think, pops up in the people who accompany me in my pilgrimage. There's been several Joseph like figures. My mentor, Steve Gaddis, who handed me narrative therapy, who passed away recently. I think that saint is one that's close to my heart and that reminds me that our actions should speak louder than our words.

Meli  [00:45:30]:

Sorry to hear of your mentor. May his memory be for a blessing. In many ways, you are that saint. As you work with clients, you are accompanying them, you are more silent than speaking. You take them along the way.

Mookie [00:45:47]:

Thank you for that blessing, Meli.

Meli  [00:45:49]:

My pleasure. Thank you for this time and this wonderful, deep conversation. I have so appreciated having you come on my Living Our Beliefs podcast and I look forward to more conversations.

Mookie [00:46:03]:

Thank you so much, Meli. It was a blessing and I look forward to more dialogue along the way as well.

Meli  [00:46:12]:

Thank you for listening. If you'd like to get notified when new episodes are released, hit the subscribe button. Questions and comments are welcome and can be sent directly to info@talkingwithgodproject.org. A link is in the show notes. Transcripts are available a few weeks after airing. This podcast is an outgrowth of my Talking with God Project. For more information about that research, including workshop and presentation options, go to my website, www.talkingwithgodproject.org. Thank you so much. Till next time. Bye.