Scripture for Your Inner Outcasts

Transcript

Speaker 1: You are listening to Scripture for your inner outcasts. It's Tuesday, September 8th, 2026, the feast of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Today's a very special episode because not only are we celebrating the birthday of our mother Mary, we are also celebrating the birthday of this podcast. Our first episode was a year ago today, and on this, the one year anniversary of Scripture for your inner outcasts, we've put together an all star cast of veteran guest presenters who offered a lively discussion on today's daily mass readings. In addition to myself, producer Elizabeth and Doctor Peter Malinoski, one of the co-founders of Souls and Hearts. We are joined by Justin Brown and IFS trained therapist licensed in Illinois. In Texas, Casey Kimble, a PhD candidate in historical theology at Boston College, and Doctor John Bukowski, an ob gyn and pro-life speaker in Northern Virginia. So without further ado, here is our one year anniversary episode. Hello, everybody. Thank you for coming.

Speaker 2: Thank you. It's great to be here. Good to be here.

Speaker 3: We're looking at the readings today right off the bat. Um, is there any particular verse that stood out to you, stood out to a part of you that you have any kind of commentary on?

Speaker 2: I can share and just, just want to say to. Yeah, it's good to see you guys. It's good to, to be doing this. Like as a group, you had to do this like in community. Yeah, I just, I just found it interesting. Like it's the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary. And for me, I kept coming back to Joseph like I couldn't, like, I just kept getting drawn back to Joseph and the gospel and the gospel of Matthew when his mother Mary, was betrothed to Joseph. But before they lived together, she was found with child through the Holy Spirit. Joseph, her husband, since he was a righteous man yet unwilling to expose her to shame, decided to divorce her quietly. So that one stands out to me.

Speaker 4: Yeah, that's Matthew one, verse 19. And that's what stood out to me, too. And the thing that really got me is I was reading through this in preparation for this episode was some translations will render it as being a just man and unwilling to put her to shame. And what I was thinking about was that he was unwilling to put her to shame because he was just not because he was merciful. It doesn't say because he was merciful. And I was reflecting on how exiled parts struggle so much with shame and being shamed. And he was considering his different courses of action and which would be like the least shaming, you know, he didn't he didn't have the full picture. There's debates among the early church fathers and others about how much he understood. In any event, what was really important to be recorded in the gospel was this unwilling to put her to shame. And I think about like, how important that is for our exile parts. Here he is, you know, really focusing on the implications around shame for Our Lady.

Speaker 3: It's like an example of integrated justice. Yeah, you might say. I'm just wondering, Justin, what you think, how it's the feast day around Our Lady. Yet you were drawn to the line about Joseph. I'm wondering if you could share anything about that.

Speaker 2: Yeah. For Joseph being in that position, I just I was wondering, you know, yeah, we don't know exactly what is up for Joseph in that moment, but we do know he wants to protect Mary from shame. But I was it brought to mind for me situations where, yeah, like what if I don't have a role? Or like, what if I'm not wanted? Um, what if I'm inadequate? It mentions to like he, he decided to like separate and, and turn away and out of what he thought was, was best for her. And he didn't know Jesus, the Son of God was on the way and that he'd be the foster father. But yeah, just think of times where if I'm feeling inadequate or not needed, then yeah, how quick I am to turn away and just try to protect myself from my own shame. But then you see how, like what comes next? There's an amazing role.

Speaker 5: I really appreciate that. And I mean, one thing that you said raises a question for me, and some of it's just cultural background that I don't know, which is he's he's considering what might or might not shame her. And then you introduce the possibility about whether he's trying to kind of avoid the kind of shame of not having a role on his part. But then I also wonder, is what's being proposed like a trading of shame? Like if he if he takes her, she spared the shame. But does he, does he have to take some, you know, my um self sacrifice or will do these things in a disintegrated way. I want to protect someone else from feeling the thing. So I'll take it, which is a disordered thing. But it seems like what Joseph is doing is something that's volunteering to do the same thing, but without that disintegrated motivation. I don't know how that lands with any of you.

Speaker 6: But you know, Casey, I it lands with me in the sense that, uh, I can imagine with Joseph's limited vision, trying to be attuned truly, when he says, I didn't want her to be shamed. But that limited vision that you mentioned, Justin and Doctor Peter. Boy, it makes him a lot more relatable to a father and husband.

Speaker 4: Well, and as a side note to that, there is a kind of antidote to a kind of de facto Gnosticism that can come into ifs. You know, like if you just unblend enough and you are in self enough and you connect with the, you know, the capital self, you know, capital S, capital E, capital L, capital F, like there's this, there's a kind of, there's almost like a kind of Gnosticism, I think, in the anthropological ideas that undergird what is conventional ifs right now. But we see that Joseph needed divine revelation. He needed to be informed about what was going on. It wasn't enough for him to rely on even his the integration that would come from being a just man.

Speaker 3: I don't think I've ever thought of Joseph in in these ways that you all describe. This is all so good. Well, Casey or John, do either of you want to pick out a line and share?

Speaker 5: Well, I'm happy to be angsty about Romans because something Doctor Peter said earlier already kind of got me thinking differently about it.

Speaker 3: Get angsty. Go for it.

Speaker 5: My role in every group be the contrarian.

Speaker 3: Well, there's an external family system as well, so you can play that role.

Speaker 5: So we know that all things work for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose. On the one hand, sounds beautiful. On the other hand, I have a part that says, well, if things aren't going well, then either I don't love God or this whole thing is hogwash, both of which are terrible options. Yeah, it's that same kind of, I guess, my myopic vision that Joseph is tempted by. But and so when you said earlier, Doctor Peter that he needed divine revelation. It's like, yeah, okay, I need more than just the data of my circumstances to know whether all things are working for good. Like, I'm actually not an excellent arbiter of that. Um, and particularly like what I've gathered from IFS that especially parts that are young. Yeah. Have an even narrower vision than the average person. So that, that was really helpful in breaking me out of this. Like, oh, no. Like the only conclusion after reading this verse is that it just must be the case that I don't love God because things don't seem to be working out so well.

Speaker 4: Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think that goes back to, I think what drives a lot of that thinking. It could be, you know, a humble admission of a reality in one sense. Okay. You know, the Saints discuss how little they've loved God, you know, and this is, you know, okay, so it could be that. But what I think often drives that kind of thing is actually a deep sense of shame. You know, it goes to I'm not enough. I'm not good enough. I don't love enough. I don't know how to love. And and it can.

Speaker 7: Get even is love.

Speaker 4: Yeah.

Speaker 8: What is love? Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 4: Yeah. What does that mean? And and then I've tried to love. And it doesn't seem like it's enough. And and boy that can get God images really activated in different parts. Um, as far as like who God must, must then be. Um, but we tend then to make God in the image, in a complimentary image of our parts own distorted images of themselves. Right. You know, so it's really that, that those distorted self-images that Wind up driving the distorted God image in order to make it compliment. You know what, um, what parts are thinking about themselves?

Speaker 6: That lands very strongly in many of my parts because having been on both sides of the reproductive rights issues and performing all these and then having an experience of coming to my senses in the slop, I was very sick while I was doing this work, this pro-life, life affirming work. And I used that verse just like you both were talking about, I must love God. So therefore this, you know, all things work, even my illnesses of near-death experiences. And I it wasn't really until I came to the RCC where covering up the shame and the anger and the not enough and then being vulnerable. Um, that vulnerable exile inside of me, uh, where that's not seen or known or loved. This awakening of the unconscious, really, the, those exiles that I've never known about really have only come up here in the work we're doing in the RCC. And it's an amazing place because in this particular reading, Romans 828 and Psalm 13, I'm reading the Responsorial Psalm, though I trusted in your mercy, let my heart rejoice in your salvation. Let me sing of the Lord.

Speaker 6: He has been good to me. Those verses really reminded me of this recent retreat we were on, and in group sessions, with demonstrations truly running outside in the rain to delight in finding the vulnerable part, the one that's never been seen, known, understood or loved. The angry part. The shamed part. There was a joy there because I remember reading both of those. The second and third verses. How long, Lord, will you utterly forget me? Hide your face from me. Sorrowing in my soul. Hide the grief in my heart. And it was in that dynamic that I think bringing a correct anthropology, just the Catholic, the love, the actually the confidant, the spiritual confidant of Our Lady of Guadalupe. Do not fear any illness, vexation, anxiety or pain. Am I not your mother? Finally, that could land and it connects me back to Joseph. It seems, you know, being able to, you know, see this limited vision and know that the Lord will use it for good. So but it's a process. So thank you for bringing that up. Both of you.

Speaker 5: Yeah. I love the the emphasis on the concrete. And I was thinking about that too, that our discussion of Joseph and this impossible position, like what's less likely than a child to be the answer to an impossible situation? And yeah, I mean, it also feels like a shout out to like the, yeah, the smallest, most innocent, most unlikely, most helpless character in this story is also is the hero of the whole thing.

Speaker 4: It reminds me actually of the end of the Lord of the rings, where Sam and Frodo are just imagining that they're going to be burned up in all of the destruction that was happening around, um, the cracks of doom, you know, and eagles came and rescued them like totally unexpected. Um, and I think it's easy for our managers to lose a sense of adventure in all of this, that we are on an amazing adventure in this living a Christian life, living in this desire and for encounter with our Lord.

Speaker 5: We can actually coined a word for this. He called it eucatastrophe the good catastrophe. Um, and it's he, he wrote about it theologically. Like that's what the incarnation is. It's a eucatastrophe. Um, and all over the Lord of the rings, Gandalf showing up, you know, at dawn on the whatever, the fifth day or the third day of the siege of Mordor, the Eagles, um, the choice of the hobbits at all. It's key to his fiction, this idea that help will come not in a way not of our own making. Um, and that only that only God can bring about the happy ending. Um, and, and engender the happy ending with more than just the ingredients that were already in the story.

Speaker 4: What you were saying, Casey was really resonating with me and I was contrasting it with the seeing stones, the Palantir, and Thor's fate, because Denethor had, you know, the, um, the advantage in quotes of being able to see things that were real, but they weren't the whole story. And it actually led to his despair. Again, he was trying to figure it out with his own natural lights and then with also some, you might say, supernatural lights, but they were coming from the darkness of Sauron's manipulations of the truth. So there, you know, you see the contrast of the childlike trust of of the hobbits and the acceptance of whatever is going to come. And I think that's a reflection of of what we believe and, and Catholicism. And but it can be hard to hold on to that if we lose that sense of parts being connected to the innermost self and to each other, you know, with the innermost self. So.

Speaker 5: Well, and there's that moment where, where Pippin looks into the into the Palantir. Yeah. And is totally wigged out.

Speaker 4: Mhm.

Speaker 5: And it seems like because of relative to his innocence, it's like it does even more violence to him, um, than to Thor, who's kind of, you know, more adult and built up this kind of, you know, evil tolerance for these things. And then you have the moment of Galadriel. I mean, she's a Marianne figure looking in, seeing some things and can take the ring. And then at least in the movie, the line, she says, I will go into the West and remain Galadriel. I'll remain who I am. I won't try to. I won't try to exceed the bounds of who I am.

Speaker 6: There's so much meaning to the Lord of the rings. So thank you for geeking out, both of you. Um. Really does my soul good.

Speaker 1: I think this has been a great discussion. With that, we'll end with our invocations. Our Lady, our Mother, and Tire of knots.

Speaker 9: Pray for us.

Speaker 1: Saint Joseph.

Speaker 10: Pray for us.

Speaker 1: Saint John the Baptist.

Speaker 2: Pray for us.

Speaker 1: Thank you all for tuning in. I hope you enjoyed this episode as much as I did. Today is day one of year two of this podcast, and you can expect even more daily, fruitful reflections that bring scripture to the inner outcast parts of your internal family system.