Tara: [00:00:00] Welcome to Holy Shenanigans. I'm your muse, Tara Lamont Eastman, pastor, podcaster, and practitioner of Holy Shenanigans. You might be curious what it means to be a practitioner of holy shenanigans.
Tara: For me, practicing holy shenanigans is paying attention to the sacred happenings in everyday life. I'm so glad to have you along for this adventure that I call Holy Shenanigans podcast.
Tara: Hi there friends of Holy shenanigans podcast. Welcome to week two of our Advent series. And this week we are focusing on peace. And today I'm very happy to have with me, Chris Dahlie from [00:01:00] first Presbyterian church of Jamestown, New York. Chris, could you tell us a little bit about who you are?
Dr. Christopher Dahlie: I'm technically a visiting assistant professor for the State University of New York at Fredonia that just has to do with the temporary status this year.
Dr. Christopher Dahlie: Normally, I'm an assistant professor in the communication department in the College of Letters, Arts, and Sciences. And I teach primarily. Courses to do with the audio production program in that department.
Dr. Christopher Dahlie: I also teach normally rhetoric of vision and sound, which is kind of our intro to filmmaking and audio production, general education course this is my fifth year working for them. I also am head of audio for Chautauqua Institution Ample Theater, and I've been doing that for a long time . for those of your podcast listeners that don't know, Chautauqua Institution is our kind of multidisciplinary Place of lifelong learning in the county and the amphitheater is our main program venue that holds about 5, 000 people.
Dr. Christopher Dahlie: My doctoral work for my PhD [00:02:00] was in communication studies in the media technology track at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.
Dr. Christopher Dahlie: On the way to that doctorate, I also got awarded a Masters of Arts at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. My dissertation work was on kind of the history of live sound in arenas and the labor of audio engineers in that field from 19 66 to the present. My undergraduate work was at university of Southern California.
Dr. Christopher Dahlie: I got a bachelor's of science in music recording with a year abroad done at the University of Sussex in both music history and analysis and the study of popular culture. I was born to James Daly, who's a diagnostic radiologist for his entire post residency career for Jamestown Radiologists at WCA Hospital, now UPMC Hospital in Jamestown. My mother was a physical therapist until she became a mother of four boys. I was the oldest. I'm married to Roslyn Fulton Dailey, who's contingent faculty instructor here at SUNY Fredonia in the [00:03:00] theater department.
Dr. Christopher Dahlie: And I have a nine year old daughter named Charlotte.
Tara: Thank you so much for giving that thorough and broad introduction as well as giving us that incredible background in communications and audio. I'm just curious, Chris, what inspired your interest in communications. Okay.
Dr. Christopher Dahlie: the lack of its success rate.
Dr. Christopher Dahlie: My adolescent dreams were becoming a rock star basically but I was also very good at fixing technical stuff. My parents were pretty busy and non adept at fixing technical. Items around the house, such as personal computers and VCRs and stereo equipment and that kind of thing. So they kind of entrusted me as the oldest of four boys to fix that stuff I started playing guitar when I was 10. When I was 14, I delivered what were called advertising guides. In [00:04:00] addition to the Chautauqua daily paper every day to buy a big foot pedal processor called a Digitech RP1, And I spent just hours and hours and hours fiddling around with that to kind of make my guitar sound like the guitars , I heard on rock and roll records.
Tara: Wow. So as you alluded to earlier, your interest in communications does come from this place of hoping for better communication in the world. Well, well,
Dr. Christopher Dahlie: My favorite song title ever is by this group called Satanized, and it's called Hope is a Lack of Information.
Tara: As we talk about these themes of Advent, which are hope, peace, joy, and love there can be a face value understanding of those things. I think of peace as being not necessarily everything calm and quiet. For me, peace is, [00:05:00] something that is activated. But having an internal foundation with hope to then, even in challenging times, be able to stand in those spaces of challenge and miscommunication.
Tara: I wrote , this series of poems around 2018 for the Advent season this is the poem. It's called Peace Call. . Peace calls to pause, embrace, act, contemplate, and exhale, pause. Storms make me feel like running and hiding when I'm frantic.
Tara: But can peace be present? Peace. Embrace. In conflicts and hurt that push people apart, is peace working to break the ice? Peace. Act. When anxiety freezes me in an action, does peace [00:06:00] give a warm nudge to move? Peace. Contemplate. When swirls of activity tempt me to do, be, and see all things at once, will peace slow me down to savor each beautiful thing?
Tara: Peace. Exhale. Filling of lungs can only be sweet when exhale helps me let go of what is no longer of use. Will peace help me to release and fill my heart, mind, and lungs? Peace. Peace calls to pause fear. Peace calls to embrace a need for people. Peace calls to act in life giving ways. Peace calls to contemplate beauty.
Tara: Peace calls us to exhale and trust the oxygen to keep breathing is [00:07:00] just on the cusp of letting go. Light one candle to inhale, light another to exhale, peace, peace, peace. So Chris, as you hear those various definitions of peace, I wonder if there was anything in there that matched your understanding of it, or if you have a different definition of peace.
Dr. Christopher Dahlie: Let's react to what you wrote and read first and then I can personalize it a little. So, you know, the fact that you're kind of breaking it up into five stanzas, let's be good literary critics and go after that first. So I like that you start with the pause, which is kind of the most, the most obvious and kind of typical , but then [00:08:00] you make it as counter to, an activity canopy present while you have agency and that you leave it an open question.
Dr. Christopher Dahlie: I like that's something to be considered. I think that's a challenge that, you know, maybe people can consider in your work is, you know, can you hold some level of peace while, you're under threat , and I'd say that's actually, a matter of everybody's personal faith.
Dr. Christopher Dahlie: The Holy Spirit ghost, whatever it is, that, that third thing of the triumvirate I think is the most kind of troubling and because of that, they're left unexplored, at least in the Presbyterian faith that I've been part of most of my life. You know, because it's the least tangible of the thing, but actually as much as I think Star Wars is possibly the most overrated popular culture franchise in human history.
Dr. Christopher Dahlie: You know, that idea of the force is kind of helpful with that one. And the fact that like inhalation of something that's kind of, [00:09:00] Tangibly around you that God and Jesus kind of have invested the world with is something that can be present in you and around you even when under duress. And if you can kind of have balance with that, even when you're in a frantic condition, that's something that your faith, if you are willing to kind of take the Holy Spirit in you.
Dr. Christopher Dahlie: I remember in my church in North Carolina, I was in both university Presbyterian church, Chapel Hill, and then a smaller kind of home church started by a professor of mine one thing our Bible study class kind of worked on is the metaphor breath and wind being all over the place.
Tara: hmm.
Dr. Christopher Dahlie: Especially we always came back to that bit of Jesus talking to Nicodemus where Nicodemus is coming to warn him the wind blows, but you kind of don't know where it's coming from or going and you just need to kind of be part of that.
Dr. Christopher Dahlie: Maybe that's kind of, you know, a contextual thing to take [00:10:00] as far as that pause bit,
Dr. Christopher Dahlie: the embrace bit. That's again a more agentic thing, but the passing of the piece that we do every Sunday is something that you can kind of put in there. I'm kind of most constructively at peace.
Dr. Christopher Dahlie: Is when, we typically wake up in my house on a school day around. You know, 7 a. m. and my daughter, even though she's nine is still a pretty good snuggle bug as far as coming in with us and like hanging out and warming up before our day starts.
Tara: Mm hmm.
Dr. Christopher Dahlie: So then I'm looking to act now. That one's weird.
Dr. Christopher Dahlie: It goes back to that pause one, what's the balance there what does finding that inner peace ask you to do , , what does the popular meme that's been going around for all these years now, w w j d, what would Jesus do? What does that motivate you to do in the material world?
Dr. Christopher Dahlie: And does that bring you peace? Where I urge caution Where we get into problems is when [00:11:00] people decide to act, you know, in the Lord's name and do rather awful things like, you know, go on crusades and perform the Holocaust and
Tara: To do any terrible kind of, harm. Yeah.
Dr. Christopher Dahlie: You gotta watch that one where is peace getting lost?
Dr. Christopher Dahlie: So we'll move to contemplation, and savoring to kind of be present I was just thinking about that.
Dr. Christopher Dahlie: For me, this is always a problem when, you know, for example, I'm at my daughter's, holiday choir concert the other night at her school. Extremely hard, stuff that day. And it was just very difficult for me to push that out of my brain to concentrate on that thing in front of me
Tara: Yeah.
Dr. Christopher Dahlie: I personally, in my faith journey and struggle and practice have a very, very difficult time. with focused contemplation in that way, that's something I'm working on or not working hard enough on [00:12:00] depending on the time of day,
Tara: Yeah.
Dr. Christopher Dahlie: Exhalation the way you frame it , I actually really like because you're kind of making it a call to faith. And you bring that back, , in the last bit there where, you have to depend, and you have to be at peace with the dependence that, the Holy Ghost and your God and your savior and Jesus Christ is going to be there when you let oxygen go, which is a weird thing, right?
Dr. Christopher Dahlie: One of my favorite gospel things is, when the centurion comes to him and says I'd like my servant healed. And Jesus is just like, Hey, you know, go home and you know, he'll be taken care of in the century and says, I don't, need to do that.
Dr. Christopher Dahlie: I'm a man under authority. And when I tell, my dudes, go and do this thing, I know it's done because I have to know it's done because otherwise legions aren't going to work. And Jesus says, the faith of this dude is way better than my disciples faith.
Dr. Christopher Dahlie: anD that's kind of another evidence of that. Like the legion ain't going to work if you can't. count on the legion doing what you say and [00:13:00] you know, your life isn't going to work if you can't count on the oxygen being there. So your faith is going to work if you can't count on, the Trinity and the presence being there.
Dr. Christopher Dahlie: And I think you kind of get to that in a real good way there. So, peace is a struggle but you kind of get to practices and struggles around that without making it. Overly dramatic and referential to present context and struggles here where I get kind of impatient with pastoral prayers and things like that is the constant kind of pleading for relevance and talking about present issues and whatever, like, I kind of Like to say that, this time is no worse, if anything, it's probably better than most people's pastimes , there's stuff going on that's obviously unpleasant, but at the same time, I'm not deciding which of my family to eat, because I'm starving, like the seeds of St. Petersburg or something like that.
Dr. Christopher Dahlie: So, the Lord's prayer and a kind of hug and a handshake of people is probably enough to [00:14:00] get you through, you know, a decent piece of bread from Walmart's probably pretty good as people have had it for like thousands of years. So kind of get over yourself and get on with it a little bit and be at peace with that is kind of how I'd, put in an end on your poem here.
Tara: Yeah.
Dr. Christopher Dahlie: Especially in the Advent season and be open to, the presence that is meant to give us peace, give us forgiveness in the season coming up is I guess what I'd say about it.
Tara: Thank you. I love the opportunity that advent season gives us to focus on these four aspects. But in the repetition of going over these four different aspects of advent. There's still a lot more digging and learning that can take place
Dr. Christopher Dahlie: I'd say of the four, like if you're listing the ones you were talking about, which is hope, peace, joy, love, right, is the
Dr. Christopher Dahlie: order. We're not built for peace. We're [00:15:00] animals, in a constant struggle for survival and the collection of and stockpiling of and ripping off other animals for energy. That's what you're doing here. is storing calories. So you're not built in your reptile brain to experience peace. That's not what you're doing here on an animalistic level. But it is your job as a sentient being touched by the finger of God and given salvation by Christ and given the presence of the Holy Spirit on a day to day basis to overcome that material reality.
Dr. Christopher Dahlie: To approach the divine, on your journey towards, that divine through mortality one way or the other, but you best not forget ever, your status is that material animal and those that try to sell you that you can or that they can help you do it run from those people because they're because they're selling something.
Dr. Christopher Dahlie: And it's not good
Tara: And I'm dipping back to [00:16:00] Lutheran theology because that's my background. And there's a saying that says we're at the same time, both saint and center. And that's a very good reminder, both animal and beyond that, right? We're both and.
Dr. Christopher Dahlie: and Christ knows that Christ experienced that and that's why you're forgiven. But that's why he's calling you out to like, he knows you're this thing.
Tara: That is true. So as we've talked about peace, we've talked about the different stanzas of this poem. I wonder if you have a message of peace that you'd like to share with our folks that are listening?
Dr. Christopher Dahlie: If it works for you, maybe spike your wassail extra, but that doesn't work for everybody. So I can't give that advice in good conscience,
Dr. Christopher Dahlie: It's [00:17:00] tough for me. I'm not at peace very often. I'm a kind of salty individual about a lot of issues and I got a lot of beef with a lot of people and a lot of stuff. Um, but, you know, you just sit down and kind of, and your stanza basically states it.
Dr. Christopher Dahlie: You gotta let it go if that's your faith. And Christ is going to be your example, you got to let that stuff go. And you got to be forgiving and charitable towards people too. And just understand that, you know, being angry, doesn't get you anywhere.
Dr. Christopher Dahlie: It didn't get God anywhere either, you know, floods and turning people to pillars of salt and this and that and send people into a hole with a golden calf and, you know, I'm going to rewrite. Ten Commandments a couple times and God got angry, you know, it being angry after a while too. iT seems to stop being productive and. is destructive of things after a while. So, it seems the message of the [00:18:00] Bible overall is, finding peace through forgiveness and some level of surrender and resignation is really the only way forward. And so everyone has to kind of sit and remember that message. And welcome that message is coming, which is what, , Christmas is,
Tara: Yes! . Advent is the beginning of a brand new church year. It's a new start. And it's my hope that as, people hear our conversation today, that they have the space to wrestle with their own understanding of peace , and what new life means to them from their own perspectives.
Tara: But I hope that this is an opportunity to for people to really hear that call to forgive goodness and how that does give us somewhere to go and to move forward.
Dr. Christopher Dahlie: Amen.
Tara: So thank you so much,
Dr. Christopher Dahlie: Sure.
Dr. Christopher Dahlie: Thanks for inviting me.
Tara: [00:19:00] To all of our folks that are listening today. I hope that your Advent season is full of peace a peace that is activated, a peace that brings forgiveness, a peace that brings people closer together and a peace that allows people to really communicate, to really connect may you be at peace. May you know that you are loved and we'll see you next time.
Tara: I'm your Holy Shenanigans muse, Tara Lamont Eastman. Thank you for joining us this week for Holy Shenanigans that surprise, encourage, redirect, and turn life upside down, all in the name of love. This is an unpredictable spiritual adventure that is always sacred, but never stuffy.
Tara: Thanks to Ian Eastman for [00:20:00] sound production and editing. Also, thanks to you, HSP listeners for supporting our work with this podcast by way of www. buymeacoffee. com backslash Tara L Eastman
.