Super Soul Summer: Rev. Ed Bacon Do You Recognize Grace?

0:00I'm Oprah Winfrey. Welcome to Super Soul Conversations, the podcast. I believe that one of the most valuable gifts you can give yourself is time. Taking time to be more fully present. Your journey to become more inspired and connected to the deeper world around us starts right now. This is a show devoted to try to help us just wake ourselves up, just wake up our lives to our life's purpose. But that, frankly, as we all know, is not an easy path to follow many times. There are many, so many of you who I know are earnest and you are faithful and you are deeply religious and you're having a difficult time reconciling your religious beliefs with the spiritual pursuit.

0:54I have heard from a number of you who are in honest pursuit of answers for yourself. I do understand this question of trying to reconcile your faith with a new sense of spirituality and opening because I too experienced that, because I didn't want to have to throw away the way I'd been raised, everything I had been taught to believe and felt in my heart to be true. And so I thought I would be helpful to invite on the show a bona fide authority on this matter, a man of the cloth, of the cloth, and who happens to be the rector of the All Saints Church in Pasadena, Reverend Ed Bacon. Hello. Hi. Hi.

1:37Welcome. Thank you. So, Reverend Ed, your other designation at the church, I hear, is chief spiritual officer? We're always trying to find 21st century language to explain churchese, church language. Rector is my official title. And some people say, well, that's kind of a spiritual CEO, isn't it, or something like that. So, yeah. It means you run things there. I'm in charge. Yeah, you're in charge. I'm the old guy. And All Saints is, I've heard it described as a liberal activist church. Does that mean it's Christ-centered? Oh, it's very Christ-centered. Do you teach that Jesus is the Savior? We do.

2:17And as a Christian church, we certainly believe that Jesus is the Savior and that Jesus is the Son of God, etc. Right. But when you are in the pew at All Saints, what you're hearing emphasized more than those rather doctrinal and dogmatic issues that kind of go along with religion is about your connection with God, your connection with the spirit, your connection with the cosmos, your connection with other people, and your connection with your deepest self. So that's what's most important for us to emphasize because we have folks who are abused religiously and spiritually who are searching and they want to hear some things that are comforting and challenging and empowering.

3:00Okay. As a man of the cloth, you're actually wearing the collar, and of God, can you help our audience understand what spirituality is? is, you know, I have been trying for years in many different forms on my show to not only say what it is, but to demonstrate the essence of spirit. And I remember many years ago in the 90s, I was doing a show based on a book called The Anatomy of Spirit by Carolyn Mays. You know, familiar with her? All right. We were in the middle of doing this show and I stopped the taping of the show and said, hey, audience, what's going on? and someone woman said, no, we don't get it.

3:45I don't get what are you talking about? Spirit. And I said, no, I'm talking about the spirit that lives inside of all of us, you know, because, you know, you have a mind, you have a body and you have a spirit. And back in this is the mid 90s. I would say the majority of that audience didn't know what I was talking about. I think we've progressed a little bit now, but I always stumble in trying to explain the essence of what spirituality means. So I'm going to let you take a stab at it. All right, here's my stab. Okay. I think it's the experience of feeling unconditionally loved so much, so powerfully, that you know there is some power greater than you are loving you.

4:33This love that you are experiencing is coming from a great power and it's filling you so much that you want to love other people. That, to me, is the experience of spirituality. Can I tell you a story? Please. When I was five, I was playing alone in a pine grove in South Georgia. And all of a sudden, I felt enveloped by warmth and light. and I heard inaudibly in the deepest part of myself, you are the most beloved creature in all of creation. At the same time I got that message, I also heard, and every other person is the most beloved creature in all of creation. Changed my life. It made my life what it is.

5:32It is that experience of unconditional love that is so overwhelming. So was this a voice or a feeling? How come I never get a voice? Good gracious. But was it a voice or a feeling? No, it was something that transcends those kind of categories. There's this wonderful story about Elijah in the Old Testament. I love Elijah. When I grew up, I was reading all the Bible stories, and Elijah was one of my favorites. So let's see if I know this story. Of course you do. You know, he wanted to hear God and there came an earthquake and then wind and then a fire. And God was not in the earthquake, wind or fire.

6:09But in the still, small voice. That is God. In the still, small voice. And that's the importance of the work that you did with Tola. Because he says that we have to go to stillness. He's so right. Whenever we will choose, make a decision to make time for the experience of stillness in our lives. Like a basin of silty water that's all muddy and you let it sit on a table until the silt goes to the bottom of the basin and then you have clear water at the top. That's right. That's what stillness does. And that's spirituality. That's really good. So why is it so misunderstood? You know, as I was saying, I received so many thousands and thousands of emails, and I was really, my heart was opened up by the level of connection that people received from one another when we were doing this webcast.

7:10But there were a lot of people who were upset about it. One person writes, what's happening here? Everybody in the New Earth Forum has abandoned Jesus and made Tole their new Messiah. Jesus did not come to earth to show people how to be Christ-like. I kind of thought he did, but anyway. He came to show the path to his father. He said he will be the judge on how much you've loved him. And this one, spirituality and atheism are two different words for the same thing. Disengage them both. that says to me what does it say that these folks are coming from the house of fear we choose to live at any particular moment in our life either in the house of fear or the house of love and the house of fear always drives us to put god in a box put our theology in a box put our spirituality in the box but to say this is what he said this is what he says and if you depart from it, and if you depart from the language that I use and that I found comfort in, then you are starting your own church, you're anti-Christ, you're not religious, whatever.

8:21And it's the criticism that comes at you because you are pointing to something that's deeper and more universal. When I was reading about the phenomenon that we're addressing today, uh chuck yeager came to mind he was the guy who first human being to fly faster than the speed of sound uh-huh broke through the sound barrier right he landed the media came up and said what do you have to say about this he said just before you break through the sound barrier is when the cockpit shakes the most. Wow. And every leader, every pioneer, has known just before a breakthrough the cockpit was shaking. And that's what happens, I think, as we are trying to go deeper in spirituality, which means go wider also, because there's this connectivity with every other human being.

9:20because when you find and discover the divine in yourself, you know that that exists in everyone else and that no one is advantaged before God. Whoa. I know, but I understand how people can feel that, because this was a very difficult concept for me to accept, being raised Southern Baptist and believing, as I still do, that Jesus was the divine. So to say that the divine is in me sounds like you are comparing yourself to Jesus. Jesus over and over said, as you well know, the kingdom of heaven is at hand. Exactly. And the kingdom of God is within you. Yes. And your faith has made you well. And the first chapter of the Gospel of John says the light that was in every human being is now coming to the world.

10:08The Bible itself talks about the divinity within each one of us. Right, right. The Bible itself. If you choose to look to see that. Yeah, that's right. If you choose to look to see that. But if you don't examine scripture for yourself and read it meditatively and spiritually and just take what the preacher is saying and don't have your own thought processes going on, then you are going to miss an awful lot of sacred scripture. Yes, and I think that a lot of people who have criticized A New Earth and Eckhart Tolle's writings certainly haven't even read any of it. Because if they'd read any of it, you'd come to a better understanding or maybe be open to a better understanding.

10:49Eckhart quotes Jesus more than anybody else. Yes, I think he does. No, I checked the footnotes. Yeah. It is really quite Christian in what he's saying without a lot of the church language. so why is there this fear you know what i understand the essence of a new earth to be saying among other things is to bring a greater sense of consciousness a higher level of consciousness and to let go of your ego take yourself out of your you know thinking thinking head all the time and allow the higher self the greater self the soul of you uh the higher consciousness of yourself to be present at all times.

11:31That's the essence to me of what he is saying. Why would that cause people to be fearful? If these people have developed a theology that makes them dependent on a doctrine or a dogma, they are not interested in being liberated to trust their inner voices. so I'm no longer connecting with God's voice inside me because if you actually really felt that which you speak of God if you actually really felt that you would only be able to come from a place of love precisely how is it that we've gone so far is it because there have been so many charlatans the tradition of false prophets yes is an old one it will be with us always it will be with us always And these folks are doing it for their own self-gratification.

12:30And they're not interested in empowering everyone. They're interested in filling the pews instead of filling the hearts. And so the great thing about an independent, popular expression of the truth, as in your work, is that it encourages and empowers people to think for themselves, to feel for themselves, and to have a connection. That's what's really underneath that notion of the priesthood of all believers so that you don't have to have a priest. And what Jesus is saying to people when he says the kingdom of God is within you and your faith has made you well is that you have this divinity inside you.

13:13It's there. You are your own priest, which leads you to God. It doesn't separate you from God. but it does separate you from having to have an external authority. And that's what people fear. That is so scary to so many people who live in the house of fear. Well, I first learned about Reverend Bacon when I saw Guy Ritchie. He did a documentary called The Ego Has Landed, and in it you talked about God sending Jesus to the wilderness for 40 days to grapple with Satan. We all know that story, those of us who are Christian. are do you believe satan and the ego are are one in the same i do and i know i heard that on there and i thought well well that is a new way of thinking about it save us save me please save the human race from people who think that the devil is purely external for us to talk about evildoers as though evil exists outside of us instead of the fact that we have to struggle ourselves with evil within us.

14:18That leads us to kill. That leads us to be violent. That leads us to abuse other people because we can't see that we have evil within us. And so then the evil within us individuals becomes a collective evil when all of us, you know, agree to allow human rights or not to allow human rights, to cause wars or not cause wars, and how we treat people in the process. Indeed. Yes. That is the manifested evil inside of us coming into the collective to become one that you could call the devil. Correct. Okay. And Satan, or Satan, which means the deceiver, uses fear. as primary instrumentation. Okay, so tell me this.

15:05I'm a person who's been raised, certainly I am, but I'm using this as a hypothetical example, all these people who are trying to reconcile their religious beliefs with this new idea of feeling something powerful beyond yourself that we call God. How do you do that? What do you say for all the people who've, you know, been raised like I was, raised in the church. Went to church Wednesday night, prayer service Friday night, Sunday night, Baptist training union, the whole thing. Yeah. I was raised a Southern Baptist. Southern Baptist too, yeah. Now my answer to your question is, what do we say to all of these people about how to reconcile?

15:47Yeah. Is you follow grace. You follow grace. It's important to understand what grace feels like. It's where you feel all of a sudden overwhelmed by God's goodness. Yes. And you didn't deserve it. You didn't merit it. God just gave it to you because God loves you. That's grace. To the degree that we follow grace instead of trying to get out ahead of it and explain everything, grace will lead us to the reconciliation point that you're talking about, reconciling our minds and our hearts, our souls and our intellects, our doctrine and our spirituality. The reconciliation point is there if we will follow grace.

16:26What does that mean specifically when you say follow it? It means if I'm conflicted between what I've been told and raised to believe, doctrine, dogma, but this idea of feeling something deeper. I'm going to talk Bible to you here a little bit. Talk Bible to me. Jesus said, you can judge a tree by the fruit that it bears. Yes. Paul, St. Paul, says in Galatians, there are two kinds of fruit, The fruit of the spirit and the fruit of the devil. And the fruit of the spirit, peace, joy, love, generosity, self-control, magnanimity. Are you feeling those things? Are you feeling those things? Are you feeling those things?

17:13And the great thing about Tola's point, which is that we are more than our thoughts. Yes. There is a being behind or beneath our thoughts. And if we can just stop and say, suffering is in me or sadness is in me, not I am sad. That was a great distinction he made in the new earth, you remember. And you say, I'm feeling contentious, disparaging, condemning and judgmental. That's not of the spirit. That's not grace. Yes, yes, yeah. Where can I in my experience right now turn to joy, forgiveness, peace, love? That'd be the spirit. That's how you follow grace. Simply stop. Say, I am an observer of myself.

18:02Yeah, totally would say take a breath. Take a breath. Yeah, absolutely. Take a breath. Bring yourself back to this moment. Yes. If you have a moment for stillness. Say, life's too short. I want joy. I want peace. I want love. I want forgiveness. I want to be magnanimous toward this person who is abusing me, who is saying vile things to me. Do you think intuition is the voice of grace? Intuition plays a very important role. You know, I speak a lot of... Intuition, instinct, that thing that you feel inside. I had a conversation with a son two nights ago. He was looking for what he's going to do in life right now.

18:48And we were talking about the role advisors play. And I said, son, take in all that advice, but you have to be the president of your cabinet. Use all those voices as advisors or your cabinet, but you're the president. and the way you have to obey is to obey this voice inside. And people who don't practice listening to that voice, that's a voice that has to be exercised just like you have to go to the gym. That's right. You have to exercise that puppy every day. That's right. And people who don't listen to that voice, a lot of people don't even know they have the voice. And they've been told by external authority that they're their voice.

19:31I am your voice. I shuddered once at a dinner party this was early in my ministry sitting next to a member of a parish where I'd now become rector and she said I expect you to tell me everything to think wow I said you're going to be very disappointed in me my job is to do the opposite someone said to you I want you to tell me everything to think yeah oh wow I want you to tell me everything that's right and wrong I said I'm so sorry I mean I felt so sad Can't do it. No, no. Shouldn't do it. And shouldn't do it. And won't do it. Save me from folks who try to do that for me. Can you be spiritual and not be religious?

20:10Yes. Can you be both? Yes. So they don't have to converge? No. Okay. I mean, I say that because there's wonderful people who have spiritual experiences on their horses on Sunday morning. And they just are not going to bother with this religious stuff for a lot of very good reasons. and some are lazy reasons. Let's respect everybody exactly where they are and let's let grace lead them where grace needs to lead them. You don't want everybody to be in church on Sunday? No, I don't. Wow, what kind of preacher are you? I want everybody to know God. You want everybody to know God? I want everybody to know the love that I know that fills their hearts so much that they are joyful and peaceful and they are respectful of every human being.

21:10What I want, Oprah, is to turn the human race into the human family. Wow. And you don't have to be in church to be a part of that. Do you call yourself a Christian? Yes. Yeah. I call myself a follower of Jesus. Jesus is my man. I think Jesus did it, knew it, embodied it. And if Jesus, the Jesus that the Bible speaks of, if that Jesus were to come to earth today in the same characterization as he was 2 ,000 years ago, 2 ,000 odd years ago, what do you think would happen? He'd be ridiculed and attacked as the Antichrist. Absolutely. Yes. And he would be killed or something. Why? Because people couldn't hear it.

21:58That's correct. Because he would say the homeless person on the street, the Iraqi mother who just lost her child, the man in Iran you're thinking of bombing, the gay and lesbian person you're excluding, they all have the kingdom of God within them. God is in them and they're just as valuable As you think you are Exactly And as you are And they're just as advantaged before God as you are Gandhi talked about the democracy of souls Jesus lived that out Every soul is of equal worth Jesus said one of the most radical things Now see, this Jesus doesn't get preached a lot But in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said, God makes his reign to fall on the just and the unjust alike.

23:01And God makes the sun to shine on the good as well as the evil. God's grace is democratic. It's equal. and we want to say my tribe, my group, the people who think the way I do, the people who feel the way I do, we've got a leg up on everybody else. And as soon as I put myself with a leg up over some other group, that's the first step toward abusing those people or excluding them or maybe even bombing them. And the leg up is your ego. Exactly. The leg up over the other person is your ego saying, I am better. My religion is better. My way is better. Which is the evil one finding a place in my life.

23:51And to seek God in someone who's doing you harm is the test of spirituality, it seems to me. I haven't gotten that far. I haven't either. Okay. Okay. We're confessing today. No, no, this is good. This is really good. We're confessing today. Now, listen, I am with you on the oneness. We're all the same. I can see God in all races, all people. I'm there. It's hard for me to see it in the people who are attacking me or other people. It's hard. That's where it gets very hard. Jesus says, pray for your enemies. Love your enemies. Yes. So to be able to, now this is spiritual maturity that I have not.

24:35Yeah. It's a level of spiritual maturity I have not yet acquired. Yeah, I'm wanting it. Yes. I'm praying for it. Yeah. But in the midst of the battle. In the midst of the battle. When somebody is taking you down. At that moment. To be able to step back and observe that and say, look at that person attacking me. Am I going to choose not to retaliate or to give in kind, but am I going to choose something bigger than they? Or am I going to get mad? Yeah, exactly. Which is to give them your power. Oh, getting mad is giving them my power. No, but to lose yourself in madness so that you don't have that voice and you don't have that consciousness and that awareness.

25:25You have fallen asleep. If you want your dreams to come true, you have to wake up. Wakeness, awareness is huge in this. and you can fall asleep in the midst of retaliation. Because you get so caught up in it, so caught up in, I'm going to get him, I can't believe he did that to me and I'll show them who they think they are, all of that. All of that. And when you find yourself in that space, it means you've lost. You have now fallen asleep. The ego has taken over. And you are spiritually deadened. But never without the possibility of resurrection, just like that. Okay. Because Grace can come in and say, wake up now.

26:08Okay. So when you, okay, this is really good. Because we have to interrupt the cycle of violence, see? Yes. And as long as we are doing tit for tat, then we are, as Dr. King said, violence leads to violence. Absolutely. Hatred leads to hatred. But I'm just trying to apply it to practical everyday living. Exactly. So when we find ourselves in that moment of, I can't believe and I'm furious, the thing to do is to take a breath. Exactly. Yeah. And step back and observe because this now could be your holiest moment. Exactly. One of your holiest moments. Rabbi Heschel said, in every moment something sacred is at stake.

26:49And even in that moment of being attacked, something sacred is at stake. can I choose or be awake or aware enough to see that going on and to say, I need an imaginative, creative, loving response that keeps my power rather than give it over to that person and just act the way they want me to act. Because when I become angry, I've engaged in giving away my power. Precisely. All right. Okay. And that's the beauty of yoga. Yes. is that you concentrate on your breath. Yes. The idea is for all of us who are in the same room practicing yoga to be breathing, slow, non-reactive, breathing through your nose.

27:38And if your breath starts to get too fast, don't continue the exercises. Put your knees on the mat. Oh, is that what we're supposed to do? That's why people hurt themselves in yoga. That is right. By continuing to do that instead of focusing on the breath. I know. I did a yoga class with my best friend, Gail, and afterwards she says, I don't like yoga. And I said, really? What part don't you like? She goes, the bending, the stretching, the breathing part. Well, that would be all of it. Well, my yoga teacher taught me about, we were talking about this anger thing. He says, you are so wrong if you think that yoga is about what's going on in this room, about bending, stretching, breathing, sweating on this yoga mat.

28:25yoga is about whether you not whether or not you can keep this breath slow non-reactive breathing through your nose when somebody flips you off on the freeway in LA oh and you keep that breath and you don't fall into that because there's a great Christian hymn about may we not become the evil we deplore. Yes, yes. When we hate evil so much that we become that. In the hating of it, you become it. Which is what Dr. King was saying over and over and over again. Thank God he came into my life. I was 17 when I met him and he said that racism and bigotry and oppression have two victims. not just the person who's on the short end of the stick, but the oppressor is being victimized also because evil hurts both the perpetrator and the victim.

29:32And that's why it's important for us to keep this unifying breath. If we could have this unifying breath throughout the world, the breath of grace, the breath of love, the breath of forgiveness, then we can turn the human race into the human family. I'm speaking with a man of the cloth who was wearing his cloth, Reverend Ed Bacon. You notice, I think just walking around here, I mean, when people see the cloth, people, do you get a kick out of it, what happens? I do. Yeah. People try to be on their best behavior. Yeah, yeah. Bet you get a lot of free stuff, too. I do. Come on in, have breakfast.

30:10You don't have to pay. You're wearing the cloth. Can I tell you a story about free? Yes, please. It was about grace. Yes. So this man who lived north of the Mason-Dixon line went into a southern restaurant. Okay. And the waitress came over and said, honey, what do you want? I love southern waitresses. I agree. Honey, what do you want? Honey. So he looked at the menu and he said, I will have bacon, two eggs over easy, and whole wheat toast dry and orange juice and coffee. So she goes away. She comes back, brings the orange juice coffee, then brings this plate, two eggs, bacon, toast, and a glob of white stuff that he's never seen.

31:03And he says, ma 'am, what's that? And she says, honey, them's grits. He says, but I didn't order grits. She says, you don't order grits. Grits just comes. No, that's grace. Isn't that grace? You don't order grace. Grits just comes. That breath can come if we'll follow grace. Speaking of breath, do you espouse meditation in your church? And is that a way to get closer to grace by following the breath? Oh, yes. I make it very... You pray every day? Every day. Many times a day? Oh, yeah. My major time is 45 to 90 minutes before I go out into the world. You pray for 90 minutes? Sometimes I do. Martin Luther, the great reformer in the 15th century, said, I'm going to be very busy today, so I'm going to have to pray another extra hour.

32:00Wow. The more challenge I'm in, the busier I am, the more I pray. Or I'm going to get caught up in that anger thing or lose myself. And what do you pray when you pray? I mentioned the basin of silty water. Yes. Okay. So I sit there with my very silty water in the basin. Maybe 30, 35, 40 minutes. And that's why people oftentimes just give up on this prayer stuff because they say, oh, I'm so distracted. I'm having all these thoughts and I'm having to process my dream from last night. and all the... So you're sitting, are you meditating? Yes. Just being with yourself. Just being still. Not calling it a big woo.

32:48No, no, no. Just sitting with yourself. Yeah, yeah. Just sitting. My favorite prayer chair. And then... Well, you have a prayer chair. I'm going to get me one. Good. I don't have that. It's just a nice, comfortable armchair. Yeah, a prayer chair. Okay, good. With an ottoman. Yeah, a place where you pray regularly. Every day. So then I would like that. You know why? Because then it takes on the energy. Absolutely. And then, Oprah, immediately I start praying for people. People come into my mind who've been asking me to pray for them, people in the hospital, people going through divorce, people who are struggling in life, people I wouldn't think of praying for.

33:26So I know it's not my mind doing this. This is more even in my consciousness. This is God. I call it the Spirit. God's Spirit asking me to pray. And sometimes I feel their bodies come into me. I hope you don't mind my time this mystically. And it's just amazing. I love mystical talk. And I call them and I say, I was praying for you this morning. What? Of all days? Because I was going through this and that. And that's the spirit connecting us all. Here I am, this country preacher, and somebody else over there, and the Spirit has connected us because I chose to give it 60 minutes to stay there to let it happen.

34:16Wow. So my prayer is not about, okay, Lord, I need this and I need that. This is God saying, Ed, I need this from you. And I think that's what real prayer is. Instead of my bringing all my needs to God, I sit until I can be still enough for God to bring God's needs through me. Well, that's my prayer constantly. My prayer is always, God, how would you use me? I want to be used for something greater than myself. When you say, I'm ready to be an instrument, you're in business. You're in business. It's been great sharing with you. I could talk all night, you know. Thank you, Reverend Ed Bacon, really.

35:01I can't wait to come to your church. I want to come to All Saints. Okay. I got a few for you. I got a few for me. Casadina. Thank you so much. Thank you. That was great. I'm Oprah Winfrey, and you've been listening to Super Soul Conversations, the podcast. You can follow Super Soul on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. If you haven't yet, go to Apple Podcasts and subscribe, rate, and review this podcast. Join me next week for another Super Soul Conversation. Thank you for listening.