GOD: An Autobiography, As Told to a Philosopher - The Podcast

207. Special Thanksgiving Episode | Suffering and Growth: Finding Gratitude Throughout Life’s Seasons

• Jerry L. Martin, Scott Langdon, Laura Buck, Amanda Horgan

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In this special Thanksgiving episode of God: An Autobiography, The Podcast, the team gathers for a heartfelt conversation filled with gratitude and reflection.

Creative Director and Host, Scott Langdon, takes listeners behind the scenes as he, along with Dr. Jerry L. Martin, Laura Buck, and Amanda Horgan, explores the theme of seasons in life, gratitude, and the unique challenges of suffering each team member has faced.

Throughout this candid discussion, Jerry prompts the team to express what they're grateful for, leading to a poignant exchange that unveils the depth of their connections and the role of gratitude in their lives. Touching on topics of personal growth, coping with difficult times, and the impact of seasonal changes on mental health, listeners are sure to find gratitude in unexpected places.

The conversation digs into a spiritual perspective, probing the concepts of suffering as the law of growth in the universe, and the notion of God enduring alongside us.

Join the team for this intimate and reflective episode that goes beyond the traditional narrative, providing listeners with a genuine glimpse into the team's journey of spirituality, growth, gratitude, and understanding.

Other Series:

The podcast began with the Dramatic Adaptation of the book and now has several series:

Resources

READ: "Love Yourself As I Love You"

LISTEN: Special Episodes with the Team: Thanksgiving: God's Story | 100th Episode Celebration

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Scott Langdon  00:17: This is God: An Autobiography, The Podcast. A dramatic adaptation and continuing discussion of the book God: An Autobiography, As Told To A Philosopher by Jerry L. Martin. He was a lifelong agnostic, but one day he had an occasion to pray. To his vast surprise, God answered- in words. Being a philosopher, he had a lot of questions, and God had a lot to tell him. Hi, I'm Scott Langdon. Thank you for joining us as we celebrate Thanksgiving Day here in America. We're so grateful that you're listening, no matter where you might be. In last year's Thanksgiving episode, our team here at the podcast got together for a special conversation about gratitude and suffering. Listening to it again this year, fresh, as if for the first time, I heard things I hadn't before and was at the same time, reminded of so many reasons why I'm so grateful to have this project in my life and to work with such wonderful, caring, loving and serious people. So, in celebration of Thanksgiving Day, we offer you another listen to our special Thanksgiving episode we call Suffering and Growth: Finding Gratitude Throughout Life's Seasons. I hope you enjoy the episode.

Scott Langdon 02:17: Hello, I'm Scott Langdon, creative director and host of God: An Autobiography, The Podcast. And today I want to welcome you to another special episode on Thanksgiving Day. On Thursday of every week, we release a new episode of the podcast, and as is the case every fourth Sunday in November here in the United States, a new episode gets scheduled to be released on our national holiday of Thanksgiving. This year, we here at God: An Autobiography, The Podcast decided to do something a little different with our Thanksgiving episode. Every week, our team gets together for a teleconference meeting so that we can see each other, make sure we're all on the same page, and really spend some time sharing our lives with one another. A few weeks ago we had our regular Zoom meeting and we were brainstorming about what we wanted to do for this year's Thanksgiving episode. It turned out to be such a beautiful conversation that we thought we'd share some of it with you today. Joining Jerry and me on today's episode will be Amanda Horgan, our copywriter, editor and all things about the internet superstar, and Laura Buck, our show's producer, who handles all the detail things that would fall right through the cracks if she weren't so amazing. We thought it would be really fun for you to hear a little behind the scenes stuff, but also understand that we're all on this journey together- Jerry, Laura, Amanda, me and all of you. So thanks for listening to God: An Autobiography, The Podcast, and if you find something you like and is useful to you, would you mind sharing it with your friends? Happy Thanksgiving from all of us to all of you. I hope you enjoy the episode. 

Scott Langdon 04:11: One of the universally recognized features of a job you love doing is having a great group of people to work with. This job has that feature in spades. What a blessing it's been for me to do this work for what's coming up on four years next March. We began just a few short weeks before the pandemic shut everything down and had to rely, as so many did, on Zoom calls and emails for our communication. Our weekly Zoom as a team has become an hour a week I truly cherish. I have learned so much and felt so safe to be able to grow alongside such heartfelt people. A few weeks ago we met at our regular time and filled the hour with laughter, contemplation, compassion and hope for whatever God has in store for us. At the beginning of our conversation, we got to talking about the changing of the seasons and how when we go through difficult times in our lives, people often talk about that tough time as a season. I had been going through a particularly difficult season at the time, so I brought it up. Amanda Horgan or Mandi, as we call her, speaks after me. 

Scott Langdon 05:19: I just think it's really interesting how we sometimes, and I've heard this a few times in the recent past, or just the past few days, past couple of weeks, the idea of talking about a time in your life as a season. So you have a depression or something- I'm going through this season and people talk about it with that word. And whenever the seasons change like this, from summer to autumn and so forth, and you see those colors, like you say, Jerry, of whatever season it is, and it's the changing part that fascinates me. 

Scott Langdon 06:00: You know, so it's just interesting because this part of the year, literally, like you said, October, there's something about it with your daughter's situation, I've recently been dealing with this. This is a time with where my bipolar disorder, this is a kind of a place where it's noticeably a thing this time of year. And so, you know, we've found over the course of therapy over years the way my you know, I was raised with two teachers. You know, it's fall semester, spring semester, summer. 

Dr. Jerry L. Martin 06:33: Yes, yes. 

Scott Langdon 06:34: You know, and it just kind of like you get in that cycle and within that there are, you know, times of ups and downs and stuff. And October, like September into October is a time like that. 

Amanda Horgan 06:47: My mother-in-law calls it her winter persona-- down from that seasonal, you know, actually it's called seasonal depression, or sad, or something…

Scott Langdon: Seasonal Affective Disorder. 

Amanda Horgan: Yes, Affective disorder. That's right. 

Scott Langdon: Yeah. 

Dr. Jerry L. Martin: Yeah. 

Dr. Jerry L. Martin  06:51: I love that Down from that seasonal, that seasonal, you know.

Amanda Horgan 06:54: Her and my husband are very much affected by it. And my therapist, who I meet with weekly, asked me if I-- she was actually asking about that. I guess a lot of her clients deal with it. But for me, oh my gosh, give me a cold, dark place and I'm happy. So I was like, that's not an issue for me- I'm good. But for my mother-in-law and husband they're like opening the blinds, trying to get as much light as they can in, and it's like, you're killing me. But that's their-- they get their winter persona around this time of year. I love that she said that, though. So, now I always poke fun at her and I'm like, "Are we in a summer persona, or winter today?"

Scott Langdon: That's so funny, Mandi, that you say that because you know, you look at where I mean, I call this the workspace, this is my office-- it's the basement of my house. You know what I mean? I'm like this is my-- there's a window out here to the outside world.

Dr. Jerry L. Martin: A tiny window.

Scott Langdon: You stay like. And yet-- and here's how I think of this as God in movement. But I'll be down here and I'll just you know-- and Watson would come down.

Dr. Jerry L. Martin: Yes.

Scott Langdon: Let's go, we gotta go for a walk.

Amanda Horgan: Get to the outside world.

Scott Langdon: And I'll be like, "No, no, no, I can't go out into that world. No!" And he's like, "Let's go." And then we get outside and and get some of the sun in and the vitamin D and all the stuff that you need. And it was like, I think God sent Watson. I say, God sent Watson to say, "Get your butt out of the chair and get out of your dark place that you love."

Dr. Jerry L. Martin: Yes, yes, yes.

Scott Langdon: Get outside. And then you can come back later in a dark place...

Scott Langdon: As our Zoom meeting continued and we began to think more specifically about today's Thanksgiving episode, Jerry shares with us what he had been thinking- that giving thanks and being grateful come up in God: An Autobiography straight from the get go. Then he asked each one of us an unexpected question.

Scott Langdon: Anybody have any thoughts about that? I think, Jerry, you had an idea.

Dr. Jerry L. Martin: One thing I had mentioned was, you know, as where does it come up and God: An Autobiography? It comes up in chapter one. I feel, well why do I first connect with God? The first communication is from me to God. It's because Abigail has come into my life. I've now found, wow, there is such a thing as love, you know, and not just compatibility and so forth. And I think this is extraordinary. As I say, the world goes from black and white to technicolor. And how did that happen? I didn't bring it about. And so I just say this earnest prayer of thanks to whomever, whatever- I don't worry about that. I just know this is an authentic feeling, and so I express it. So that's how that story begins, but I was always thinking, you know-- I'm thinking we have all had some difficult challenges in our lives during the time we've been together. Sometimes the pain, and I certainly have, and I guess I was thinking about Laura in particular. You know, you're going through a very difficult time and your daughter is going through a very difficult time. But if you pause and think, well, what am I grateful for? Are there things in my life I'm grateful for? Might you just say something about that? If you think about it for a moment? What comes to mind?

Laura Buck: Oh, well, I always think about just I'm grateful for that I have family and friends to support me. And I'm grateful, like where Isabella is or where she was before. You know, I'm grateful that I have the opportunity to be an advocate for her. Like I'm grateful for just like waking up in the morning and like, knowing that, okay, everything is good. It's good right now. Like, it's not getting worse. It's stable.

Dr. Jerry L. Martin: Amanda, you've been through things that seem to me of excruciating pain and difficulty in the past year or two, and yet here you are. So if you were to answer the question, well, what am I grateful for? What would you say?

Amanda Horgan: Well, there's a lot to be grateful and thankful for. But today, specifically, I was focusing on that. I'm working on a yoga certification. I'm a registered certified yoga teacher, and the one certification I'm working on is something called restorative yoga. So it's staying in a position for a really long time and you're not supposed to feel any strain at all. You're just supposed to open up, which is really hard to do, for some reason- I don't know why. But I got into a position that worked today when I was practicing for this certification, and I had my first emotional release where I just started crying for no-- not because of any emotional feeling. It was coming out of my body without my control. And I guess there was a little emotion, and what the emotion was at that moment was me being really grateful for this dingy pillow that I have that I carry around everywhere. And it just supports me in so many ways, and it was in my practice and I just had it with me and I was just sobbing, thinking about, like, loving this pillow. So it's hard to answer because it's, you know, as a mom and a wife and, you know, someone with so many roles, I'm really grateful and thankful for my family and where they're at now. But I have been trying to really focus on being thankful for my dirty little pillow and--

Dr. Jerry L. Martin: Yeah.

Amanda Horgan: That I had the time to practice today, which I haven't been able to get. So, you know, it's funny how sometimes thankfulness can come in surprising ways.

Dr. Jerry L. Martin: Yeah, it can be little, little things in our lives that somehow sustain us. That's an interesting example. That's an interesting example. Scott, can I ask you the same question? You certainly have been through one thing after another. We were talking about bipolar and that there are events and, you know, family events that aren't fully reconciled or brought to peace or fruition. But anyway, but then if I were to ask, what are you grateful for or thankful for, what would you say?

Scott Langdon: I mean, I make a list every day and it's just, I mean, if I sit here and I start like, where should I start? Sarah, Watson, my kids, my mom and dad are still alive, Jerry and the team, and like, I could just go all day and I'm like, okay-- In one way, that's the point, but in another way, I could go all day. So then I think if I could go all day, why don't I just keep going all day while I'm doing everything else. And I just start looking around for what's interesting and beautiful and what I'm supposed to be doing. And then I just kind of look around for what has God given me. And here's a quick example. Michael Caine, great actor. I don't know, I mean, I know why the algorithm and all of that, but this short video came up recently. I don't know why it hasn't come up before, that was in my feed or whatever, of him in a symposium of some sort, somebody is interviewing him about acting and stuff. And he tells this story about being a young actor in this class his improvization class. And this couple is having this scene. It's all improv and they're really arguing with one another and they get worked up.

Scott Langdon 15:44: and one of them throws a chair and it slides across into the doorway and kind of gets wedged in the doorway. And Michael Caine's supposed to come in and enter this scene and he can't get in. And so he says, "I'm sorry, we have to stop. I can't get in." And the director, sort of teacher of the class says, you know, "What are you doing?" And he said, "Well, this chair is-- I can't." And he said, "Well, use the difficulty." What do you mean? He said, "Well, if it's a comedy, if the scene is comedy, then fall over the chair. If it's a drama, pick the chair up and smash it. Like, what's there, use that." And when that came to me, this couple of weeks as I was having this sort  of difficult emotional season, I go, okay. Not only would I want to use the difficulty, but maybe before I can use difficulty, I have to notice that I can use the difficulty, and just noticing what it is and being grateful for it as just having the option to make that shift. Just being grateful for that has just sort of changed things for me. So whenever something is difficult, I just I'm like, okay, how can I be grateful for this, because how can I use this now? It's subtle and it's not like, oh, that's the cure for everything, but just knowing that it's there, that it works, that I have the power to do that- I know there's no way to not be grateful. 

Dr. Jerry L. Martin  17:20: No. That's an amazing reflection, Scott, as all of these have been, you know. This is-- each one I could not have predicted what you would have said. Each one, even though I know you all well, each one was surprising and illuminating of a different facet of yourselves, of your lives, of our of everybody's life. You know, these are useful for everybody.

Scott Langdon  17:57: One of the things I'm most grateful for when it comes to working with these three wonderful humans is the way we talk with each other about far more than just the details of producing a weekly podcast. We share both our ups and downs with one another, and on this particular Zoom, as we contemplated what we were grateful for, we also contemplated suffering itself and how difficult it can sometimes be to turn to gratitude when our lives move through a season of difficult change and growth.  I was thinking about a lot this week, God saying, "Suffering is the law of growth in the universe." That quote is so-- So, just that. Let me just pause that right there. So just that, where does that come from? Why did I need to think that? I didn't think, "Hmm, I need a thought now, give me a thought." It's– that occurred to me. Why did it occur to me, that, but it did. And you say all of us have gone through some very difficult times. We have Mandi with her children, Laura, me, you, Abigail, and then we go, well, that's suffering. That's the law of growth in the universe?

Dr. Jerry L. Martin  19:23: An analogy I was given as I went back and forth with God was of how you build muscle. You, as I understand it, you basically tear them apart. That's why they often say do those heavy lifting things every other day because one day you're tearing them apart, then they grow back stronger, you know, somehow more interwoven or something. And that's a sort of physiological analogy. It's merely an analogy, but of course, a major theme of God: An Autobiography, is that God suffers. God's suffering through all of this, you know, through the hardships each of us have had. God was suffering through those, and of course, the God I experience is so radically personal that this means really suffering, not just standing up high and watching suffering, because suffering is real. At least I'm told that it's wrong to say suffering is unreal. That may be a meditational move or something. But, no, suffering is quite real. And, in fact, I think what I was told is, suffering is as real as the people who reject God because of it, think it is. It's the worst, you might say, it's the pits. And the things going on now at different parts of the world, this is really horrible. It's really horrible, and God suffers through this. But oddly enough, the story of God-- you know I'm told, tell the story of God -- the story of God is the story of God growing in relation to us, and to our suffering, and God's suffering. So we're all going through that together. 

Scott Langdon  21:23: I think the tricky part for me is when we talk about su-- we'll stay with the muscle building analogy to tear apart and then you do it every other day because the day off you're healing and it builds back up and it heals and then it-- So, the tricky part is, in life, I think we all know how to suffer. You know what I mean? Like suffering is there. Our children, all these things that we've gone through, we know how to do that like that, but how do we do the healing part? 

Dr. Jerry L. Martin  21:54: And there's no day off. I mean, that's part of it, and part of the meditational processes that we each do in our different ways, using that term in a broad way, in a way, that's the time for the healing in between. Yeah, we all know how to suffer. But it may be hard precisely because the suffering often has an unrelenting aspect. You're confronting the same thing this day and the next day, and if it's not the same thing it's another equally horrible thing, equally challenging, difficult thing. So you have to do something where you step away from that. You have to have some step-- and there are many ways, even comedy is a way of stepping away from it. You make fun of your suffering. Under the most oppressive regimes, you often have the funniest comedy, because that's the only way to-- they're making fun in part of the powers that oppress them, but they're also just it's a way of living with it, relieving the pressure. 

Scott Langdon  23:34: Thank you for listening to God: An Autobiography, The Podcast. Subscribe for free today wherever you listen to your podcasts and hear a new episode every week. You can hear the complete dramatic adaptation of God: An Autobiography, As Told To A Philosopher by Jerry L. Martin by beginning with episode one of our podcast and listening through its conclusion with Episode 44. You can read the original true story in the book from which this podcast is adapted, God: An Autobiography, As Told to a Philosopher, available now at amazon.com, and always at godanautobiography.com. Pick up your own copy today. If you have any questions about this or any other episode, please email us at questions@godanautobiography.com, and experience the world from God's perspective as it was told to a philosopher. This is Scott Langdon. I'll see you next time.