241: Why Did It Hurt So Much? The Reaction to Charlie Kirk, Featuring Jeff Lilley.

In this powerful and reflective episode, Nole sits down with his father, Jeff Lilley, to process their deep, visceral reactions to the assassination of Charlie Kirk. They explore why this event stirred up such strong emotions for so many. The conversation delves into the complex emotions of anger, grief, and the desire for justice, while also examining the political polarization that has led to a moment where tragedy is celebrated by some and mourned by others. Ultimately, they ask the crucial question: How does an event like this become a catalyst for change, and what do we do now?

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Transcript

Nole (00:13.624)
You are listening to the fire you carry podcast. This is Noel. And on today's episode, I'm sitting down with my own father, Jeff Lilly. You've heard him on the podcast before. is one of Kevin and I's favorite guests. Unfortunately, Kevin was unable to be with us for this recording, but what we are delving into is the assassination of Charlie Kirk. And we are specifically talking about that from the angle of the emotional response that we had that the people around us had.

why it was so intense, why it was so visceral, and we unpack what we think should be done about that and how we should think about it. Thank you for listening.

So we make it a watershed moment. In other words, Charlie Kirk at age 31, that's relatively young, found himself without even a college degree, inserting himself into culture and had tremendous impact in America. And it's proving so even more so now. But then the question is us. What do we do with this moment?

Do we allow it to be something? How do we use our voice? How do we use what our next steps are? Can this moment be a catalyst personally, but also for our country? To look introspectively at who we are and what we've become and to say, do we do this different?

Nole (01:43.916)
Well, Jeff Lilly, dad, welcome back to the fire. You carry podcasts. have to make a confession before I even allow you to say thank you for having me. I feel guilty about doing this because I live in this world where I have conversations with people. You're one of my favorite people to have a conversation with. And yet I find myself in podcasting brain thinking,

We could have this great conversation for the podcast and it feels almost selfish. Like I'm somehow using you. You're here to visit us for three days, which is awesome. And my first, I don't know if it was my first question to you, but it was close to my first question was, you ready to record a podcast again? So, so my apologies, but thank you for letting me course you into this chair.

Yes. Well, now, now I can say thank you for having me. Yeah. Well, know that I've been feeling bad because, know, it's been a couple of years, I think, since the last time you had me on your podcast. So I was like, must not like me Dang it.

Now that I've told you that I feel bad.

Nole (02:51.212)
fair, fair, fair point. So obviously you and I have been talking about this for the last couple of days. But the question that I thought we could launch off with today was just the one that has hit me so hard this week. And it is why did the assassination, the murder of Charlie Kirk, why did that affect me so deeply? And also those people, the people around me, which we'll get into a little bit, but

It was so visceral. It was so shocking. And I was surprised by my emotional response to it. And just I'd like to impact that a little bit and just trying to see where it takes us.

Good. Well, I would say right off the bat that it's not unusual. In fact, I think every generation has two or three of these events, if not a couple more. So like when I was growing up, you would hear the stories of where were you when John F. Kennedy was assassinated. Right. And then I was old enough to remember Martin Luther King being assassinated or Robert Kennedy when he was assassinated.

or when the space shuttle exploded. yeah. When the planes went into 9-11.

Right. That's, that's my generation's version of that, where people ask, where were you when the towers went down?

Jeff (04:13.342)
And we can relive those moments. We can go back and remember right where we were, maybe even what we're wearing, but we remember this just visceral feel and emotion that went over us. So that whole question, when we heard the news that Charlie Kirk had been shot, or in my case, I didn't hear he was shot until I heard he was dead.

Yeah, why don't you tell me, let's talk about our experience of finding out and then we'll go.

Yeah, for me, I was at work and I tend to not look at my phone at work. It's not that I'm particularly focused. just, I might be literally on my laptop doing something else, but my phone pops up with alerts all the time and I'm a news junkie. So I love to read the news. I have lots of friends that send me, you know, anything from, Hey, it's important that you hear this, or it's a funny meme, either one or both equally important. Exactly. So my phone lights up all the time. So I typically just flip it up.

You need both kinds of friends.

Jeff (05:11.534)
side down on my desk, so I don't see those, they would be distracting. And I was sitting at my desk and I had just finished up a project and so I was going to take a quick break and I flipped my phone over and there was the news. And as I read it, it was like, I have to be reading that wrong. Why would Charlie Kirk be dead? He's a young man and as much as we're talking about hate speech or how many people hated him or whatever, I didn't feel that.

And I didn't think that. And I thought, why would somebody kill Charlie Kirk? And so I literally stood up from my desk and I have another chair in the desk and I stood up for a second. And then I went and sat down in the other chair and just felt like my head was not spinning. wasn't like I was out of control or anything, but it was just a disbelief. was, it was if this can't be. And then the emotions started stirring in me that just felt like, the world going to change? And you and I had talked about that earlier.

That if you go back in history, you have that moment with Franz Ferdinand in World War I when he was assassinated, that it just seems like somebody got shot and killed and it's tragic and there's all kinds of thoughts you might have to that. But what comes after that is sometimes the world spins out of control and goes in a whole new direction. And so as I sat there, one, I was fascinated by the fact that Charlie Kirk had been murdered.

But then my thoughts were, what does this mean? Like if our country has come to this level, what comes next after this? And then obviously we still don't know, but that was my first emotion. And so it was a deep sadness because I do listen to Charlie Kirk. It helps me to process issues. I am almost a hundred percent aligned with Charlie Kirk's faith.

Kirk's views on cultural issues. And I know that that might upset some people, but we all have our beliefs and views. And so when I would hear discussions about any cultural issue, I would often go and just pop up Charlie Kirk and say, well, what's Charlie saying about this? And fascinated the guy never graduated from college, but he's way just smarter, better communicator than me.

Jeff (07:32.13)
So all of that to say that was a resource for me. He was, I can't say like a friend. I'd never met him, never even thought I would. It was just an issue that he had been helpful in my life and to have to lose him was both a personal feeling and then a larger cultural feeling about what's going to happen next. Where are we going from here? What does this mean? And I didn't have answers for that at the time. It was just simply, that's how I felt. Yeah.

We had just pulled up to Hume. We were up there for every year we go up there for about a week with Heather's side of the family and It's a really good time to unplug because there's no cellular service at Hume Lake But I always have to pay for the Wi-Fi because I have to be able to check in with work and make sure that they're not Recalling me right so I buy the Wi-Fi and My daughter Avery your granddaughter She also buys the Wi-Fi because she's

She's, you know, she's 20 years old, so she needs.

We should clarify she's not four.

She's got a adult job and a boyfriend who's not there anyway, long story short, she buys the internet. So we're standing there in of the general store and we're kind of milling around waiting for the rest of our group to arrive. And she goes, Charlie Kirk was shot. And I said, what, what does that mean? Cause she's looking at the news and she says, I don't know, there's no news, but he's been shot. And I said, he'll be all right. I'm sure it's not a big deal. That was my

Jeff (09:02.456)
finish

And I felt that I thought that's gonna be a big deal. People get shot all the time and survive. And so we moved on and a short time later now we're in the snack shop and I'm trying my best not to get on my phone because for me this trip is I'm not gonna be on my phone. I literally have a moment every day where I go and I check in and then that's it. I try to only do it once a day and so I'm trying to be really disciplined. We just got here right? I need to be unplugged.

great time to be present with your family. Right.

And that's what I'm trying to do, but I'm in the snack shop and now it's the only thing I can think about is what happened. And so she's getting a little bit more news. And now I don't have my phone flipped face down. I've got it face up. We're sitting at the snack shop table waiting for our food and I'm watching my notifications and minor coming from Edward and David Hartman, Edward, your son, my brother. I'm in a single little chat group with them and I can see that they're talking about it I can kind of catch a little bit of what they're saying just based on the notifications, but I'm not opening that up. I'm not reading it.

And I'm not present. People are talking. I'm not listening. I'm just totally sucked in, but trying not to be like, I'm pretending like I'm not, but I'm in another world. So finally I pick up my phone and I know that Edward and David are going be my best sources for news. Cause Edward especially is, he knows how to find information when stuff is like actively happening and David too. He's a law enforcement guy. So I opened up their chat and Edward is at that point saying, I'm pretty sure he's dead. They're not saying anything official yet, but I watched the video.

Nole (10:30.08)
I think he's dead. And then he posts the video, he, I'll link to the video and he says, I wouldn't watch this. It's brutal, but I think he's dead. And in that moment I knew, I knew two things. I knew that I wanted to watch the video and I also didn't want to watch the video, right? Cause I've seen a lot of violence you have to what we all have. And I just, I just didn't want to see it. But then at the same time I thought, well, I'm struggling right now with wanting to know, he okay?

Cause at this point, Avery saying Trump is saying to pray for him and it's the only thing that's going to save him. So I'm like, well, they're working on him. What's happening. I'm just dying to know. And I kind of feel like, well, if I can know and get closure, then I can come back to being present. And so I, I click on the video. Cause I believe that if I watched the video of him getting shot, I will know, does he have a chance or is he gone? And the video was very short and I had my sound off and it was just simply him talking for a couple of seconds. And then you can see him get hit.

in the aftermath of that. And I didn't even watch the full, I just saw the impact and there's the beginning of the aftermath. And then I just put my phone down and I knew immediately he was dead that you don't survive that. And, and so then that hit me like a ton of bricks and I kept it to myself cause they're still kind of talking about it and then talking about other things. And I know now I don't know cause it hasn't been officially announced, but for me, I know, but I don't just come out immediately and say it until then Avery.

reads the news a short time later and says, they're saying he's passed, he didn't make it. And so I said, yeah, I saw the video. I think that is right. That is accurate. Because even then, early on, you never know.

But you're feeling something when this is happening.

Nole (12:09.878)
yeah, I'm devastated. And so now I've gone from not being present cause I'm dying to know what happened to not being present because I'm just in my initial thought was why in the, why, why in the world is this affecting me so much? Cause I was immediately emotional. I was upset and I didn't, I didn't start crying or anything like that, but I had a very emotional, visceral response to it and two things. But the thing that happened immediately after that was once Avery announced to the group,

that that had happened. you know, everyone's starting to lament and now they're starting to try and process. I said, well, Charlie is with God now he's in heaven and he's, he's no longer suffering. He's, he's free of all that. And so we can, we can rest in that. And I spoke that and it sounded kind of contrite, like kind of not contrite. That's right. and it, it hurt some of the people around me. They were like, what, why would you say that right now? Like we're kind of

That's right.

Nole (13:08.546)
They didn't verbalize it this way, but I understood it afterward of like, just sounded like I was being like, it's no big deal. Right. Which isn't how I felt, but I was in that moment. I feel like I was kind of trying to protect them, like insulate them from the, what I was feeling.

Right, and there's a logic to that too, just in the idea that this is no longer Charlie's problem. Right. You know, the minute he's dead, this isn't something, you know, even as somebody says, hey, pray for Charlie, at that point, there's no need to pray for Charlie anymore. And the problems that are about to happen to Charlie's family, to the rest of his friends, the country is all different. So it's not actually trite. It's actually a great perspective. But in the moment, I could see that people would have a hard time with it.

Yeah. So I kind of had to walk that back a little bit. And then one of my initial first thoughts, cause I was, I was trying to figure it out. Like why? And I'm watching the people that I'm with, my wife and her family. And some of the point anybody out cause they're not here to share their side of the story. But, but some of them are crying, like actually shedding tears. And of course women will do that easier than men. It's natural. It's fine. It's good. But I'm seeing this happen. So I'm having this response. seeing them have this extreme response and

I'm still confused. And the thing that came to my mind was when Rush Limbaugh passed away and I was very sad when Rush Limbaugh passed away. I grew up listening to Rush Limbaugh with you in the car. And I don't know that you knew when we were on those long drives that I was in the back just eating it up and just listening to every word Rush Limbaugh said, but I did. And I loved it.

I was doing my best to indoctrinate my children. It's not actually true. just simply, same reason we were just talking about Charlie earlier is that you're just watching culture take some strange turns and you're trying to find somebody to be your guide, to help navigate. How do I process this? So I was listening for my own purpose, but I am glad that my children were listening to it.

Nole (14:43.441)
It worked.

Nole (15:03.01)
And he was such a perfect voice for his time and was able to speak into so many parts of the culture in a way that when he would do it, I would go, yeah.

And he was funny. was sarcastic and irreverent.

great. But when he passed away, I was sad. But we all knew that it was coming. He was older, he had some illnesses and

So we knew it was coming and it wasn't, it wasn't sudden. And he was at, you know, he wasn't super old, but he was closer to the tail end of his life than Charlie for sure. But I didn't have the same response to that. It was just, I was sad. And the thing that I was primarily sad about with Trump, not Trump, with the thing that I was primarily sad about with Rush was simply that I wouldn't be able to have that voice for my son. And not that Rush Limbaugh was ever

like the guy who I would go to for my son and say, this is the man you need to follow. But he was incredibly useful, right? Because for Rush, Rush, think is a little different than Charlie Kirk because he didn't really have the faith aspect of it. Like he would talk about it a little bit and I believe he was a man of faith, but it wasn't front and center what he was about. Like with Charlie, where it was, it was absolutely more political and cultural. And I felt like, well now, you my son will never get to experience that voice. And I didn't have a replacement for him.

Jeff (16:07.789)
Right.

Jeff (16:14.923)
Charlie O's Foundation.

Nole (16:24.77)
you know, as far as like, well, of course we'll jump over to, you know, the names that would come up. And this is not the point, but the bench heroes, the Sean, Sean Hannity's, I listened to those guys, not regularly, although bench hero I have in the past, but, but they're so much different. They're angrier. They're more click-baity. They're more kind of the rage bait side of the internet. And so it's almost, yeah. And so valuable at times for sure.

Hannity.

Jeff (16:45.592)
Yeah.

Jeff (16:48.969)
militant.

Nole (16:53.25)
but not to the point where I would be like, yeah, this is a good resource. anyway, so that was my kind of immediate comparison, which didn't answer the question because it wasn't a good comparison. It was just like, this is kind of the only figure in my life that meant something to me that I agreed with so much that was very public that I didn't know, but I felt like I did that we lost.

Well, I think that's an interesting point. And I think the concept in the middle of that is there are the sense of loss as part of life. Like, you know, there's things we lose, we can lose our car keys and, you know, feel agitated about that. We can lose family members. But it's the it's that thing where.

You've had loss in your life and you can lose a grandfather and that'll feel like one thing. You can lose a child and that's going to fill another. If that child is under five years of ongoing cancer and a steady decline, there's a point that there might even be a little bit of relief that the person has finally slipped away and you feel that they may finally be at rest and that it changes your life. You're still going to grieve, but

There's a point where grief can be coming to you and it's still going to ravish you. But then there's another one that comes up that is out of nowhere where you're not anticipating it. And suddenly there's snaps from your life. And so there's that, that conversation of the middle of this, I guess I have a question for you is when you describe the emotions, is it, is it grief? Is it sadness? Is it anger? Is it shock? Is it disbelief? If you're going to put words to it, what were you feeling?

I would love to sit here and say that it was initially mostly grief, but honestly, I think it was mostly anger. I prayed a prayer shortly after this was a little bit later on in the day. So I was, we had moved on from the snack shop and I kind of had a moment to myself when we got up to the cabin and I prayed that, cause then, then the next thing that I'm checking in with David and Edward on is do they have the shooter? Like where's the guy? They didn't have him.

Nole (19:05.582)
They hadn't caught him, which I thought was crazy and was making me die to be on my phone. But now I'm at the cabin, so I can't even get on the wifi. So it was a huge blessing. I think that side note, I think the fact that we found out up there was actually a blessing because if we had been here, we all would have been on the phones and on the news a lot for a while. And we weren't able to do that. So we would come and check in and get a little bit, a little piece of it, and then go on about our day and do our thing. So I think that was a blessing, but my prayer

what has gone down the rabbit hole.

Nole (19:34.656)
I prayed to God and I said, Lord, I pray that they find this guy and I pray that he tries to fight back and that he dies a painful, violent death in fear. That's what I prayed. I was angry. I was really angry because I mean, well, I don't even have to say why, but I think that was probably my primary emotion. And then I was, I was also sad. And when I saw, when I did get emotional was when I saw how my wife responded and my daughter and Heather's sister, Elizabeth, when she came up and just seeing how

Emotionally they were responding to it now devastated they were that then made me feel more emotional and more of the grief side of it But that was definitely my initial response. Yeah, just like I want this guy to pay Yeah, I want I want what I view justice to be

Yeah, somebody had taken something from you. Right. And you want a justice. Yeah.

Nole (20:29.058)
Yeah, which is tough because later on, this was days later, I was sitting at the cabin. was outside of the deck by myself was enjoying my pipe and I was talking to God about other stuff and I pulled open my phone and I was looking at pictures from the day and then I just out of habit opened my email app, which doesn't work, but I was scrolling through. could see the titles of the emails and I'm just mindlessly now starting to doom scroll.

my email cause I haven't been on the internet for so long. Brain's like, you need that dopamine hit. Look at your phone. And there's a gentleman that I follow his channel on YouTube is called Christian warrior training. And I don't want to go too deep into who he is or what he does, but I've, found him recently and he does a lot of talks about church security and things like that. And he's a believer. He's a former law enforcement guy. And I've really agreed with a lot of his perspective on

Exactly. You have to catch up.

Nole (21:25.164)
keeping the flock safe. And so his perspective on this was something I'd already heard him say, but he put out an email and I clicked on it and it opened. It had somehow loaded when I was in camp. And so I was able to read the whole email and his message about this was, you know, what do we do next? And he reiterated something that he talks about on his channel all the time, which was this idea that we need to take lessons from this and do a better job of protecting our, our people. Like we need to protect our pastors and our Charlie Kirk's and we need to do a better job of it. But

we cannot close the doors of the church and turn it into a fortress in order to do that. We have to remain open for the lost to be able to come in. And we have to find a way to do that in such a manner that we can protect our pastor or whoever, but that the lost guy who's seeking who might even be like this shooter, right? Can come in and hear the gospel and hear the truth and be saved. And then that was his, his follow-up point was when you look at Paul and where he came from and who he was,

and what happened to him when Jesus met him on the road and that transformation, you have to know that this man that killed Charlie Kirk could be saved and could end up in the kingdom with us. And so you, you can't then, which then as I began to talk about that with a couple of other people, the thing that of course, Lord of the Rings is always in my brain, which I think is appropriate.

Yep.

Nole (22:52.408)
But the conversation between Frodo and Gandalf about Gollum came to my mind and about pity, right? Pity that didn't, that Bilbo didn't kill Gollum when he had the chance in Gandalf's line. was pity that stayed his hand. And then he goes into, you know, some people that deserve life, get death and some people that deserve life or get death, deserve life. And who are you to give it to them and that whole idea.

Yeah, I have a story that's haunted me for years, sort of in that vein, in that I used to lead high schoolers on nature hikes. And one time we took a bunch of high schoolers out for to watch the Perseids meteor showers. And we did it early in the morning, got them all about a bed, took them out on the edge of Kings Canyon. And we're watching the stars. And it was a pretty cool morning. And I brought a pair of very nice high powered binoculars to

see the stars and to share that with the students. By the time we'd watched sunrise over the canyon and packed all the students up and got them all back into camp, I noticed that the binoculars were long gone. I searched the vans, I went back out to the spot and they were gone. And I knew that one of those high school students had taken this very expensive pair of binoculars. I'd saved money for, I loved them. was that kind of thing. I'd never even had a pair like that. And now I finally did and somebody had taken them. And I

I did similarly, I had some of the emotions you were just describing, that it was anger. It was like, well, what a punk. And I found myself praying on one of David's prayers. That it was like, Lord, I just pray that you make that person miserable, that they'll never enjoy the binoculars, that every time they touch them, it'll burn their hands and that they will just live in misery and guilt their whole life.

Meanwhile, I find myself praying for myself and all the bad things I've done in my life that God would have mercy and grace on me, that he would not give me the just rewards of what I was to me. But man, I prayed just the opposite for that individual. And it's sort of a silly story now. I could buy a pair of binoculars now if I wanted and I've never replaced them. But I've often wondered about my heart in that moment.

Nole (24:57.762)
that kid.

Jeff (25:09.92)
I think, I think we saw some of that over the last week or so that there are some people that feel a bit of compassion for that young troubled man. Yeah. that what he did, what he brought on his family, what he sacrificed for the rest of his life. but it's, it's also cited with this sense of justice and injustice and, the culture has taken a much broader.

a cloak and put it upon him that this is good versus evil. I believe that's true, but I don't believe that he was evil personified. I believe he was a twisted broken young man, obviously very disturbed and to the point that he would murder anyone. we feel the emotion that it was Charlie Kirk. He could have killed his next door neighbor and we would have never heard about it.

It would have been just as vile, just as evil. But in this case, he violated something in our realm. And then we feel this anger because he's stolen something from us. Had he shot his neighbor, and we don't know his neighbor, St. George, Utah, I have one friend who lives in St. George, Utah, and I don't stay in touch with him. So even if he was the one that they got shot, I wouldn't know it. I might hear about it in a year or two, but I would go, that's tragic. And I wouldn't feel much about the shooter at all.

So the emotions of those are like the binoculars is that something was taken from me and it was something that had value to me. And I think that in that regard, that's a little bit perspective wise for me of why the conservative movement in particular has felt this emotion more than anything else is because

Charlie Kirk was a voice that represented our conscience, it represented our morality, that represented who we were collectively. And I don't want to say as a movement because I think that I think we're all on different paths of why we got to where we got with our, our political views, our personal philosophies, our moral convictions, and all of those are wrapped up with somebody like Charlie Kirk.

Jeff (27:31.414)
And so just like you said, you look for a voice like that for your children, you know, that there's a part for me, I looked at it as for me to think through some of the just difficult issues that our culture faces right now. And then you find a voice that's aligned and then somebody takes that voice away from you. And then that too becomes then another thing where we might be stirred to anger. Like what is that? And we might've been, think Ian, I'm.

rambling here, need to cut that idea off, but that the idea is we are perched leaning in as a sense of that people that are Democrats, left, progressives are a bit of the enemy for those who are right conservatives, know, Republicans. And much of our country has been propped up that way, whether that's media, social media, just algorithms in our Instagram account.

that feed that to us all, we have gladly consumed it. And that's the part of it is that that is layered on top of what's happening to us personally and individually is that we've also had a Pied Piper who has played us right into the roles and emotions we feel.

Yeah. For financial reasons, really. I mean, I would say that there's probably a lot more behind it than that, but that gets eyeballs and it comes from both sides, right? Cause the other side is doing the same thing to us, pitting us against one another. And that's been a thing that we've seen ongoing and accelerating for as long as I can remember paying attention. And it's certainly gotten, it's gone. I don't know.

Yeah, it does.

Jeff (29:01.858)
both sides are great.

Nole (29:13.984)
If this is, this is probably overblown, but it's gone from being kind of a cold war to kind of starting to be a hot war. Now there's actually starting to be casualties on either side. Yeah. The thing, the thing that.

Yep, both sides.

Nole (29:28.962)
The thing that I hadn't thought through until we just started talking about this and you asked your question that I'm curious about and don't have a good thought on, but this question of was my response and my prayer about that. How much of that came out of my past and my background of being the army ranger. And that was what we did. Right. That was our job.

So for guys like me or law enforcement guys, where your job is to go out and be the enforcer, like for lack of a better way to say it, do we risk stepping into that role or desiring to step into that role in a way that's, that's not biblical, that's kind of sinful or that I've been removed from, right? I haven't been an army ranger for 20 years. That's not my job. And of course I wasn't like, I'm going to go find this guy. was praying that someone else would, but still that response, like, does it come from that place? And is that something to guard against?

I think there's an even as I'm speaking this, there's obviously an appropriate time and a place for that, right? Like if someone comes down the driveway right now to harm our family, the women and children upstairs, we're going to go to work and we're going to do what we have to do. But is there a place where that line needs to be drawn? And it's like, that's not, that's actually not my role. I don't know.

Yeah, the concept of proximity is an issue. Like in one other words, if it's our family, then we don't care what their philosophical underpinnings are of why they're doing what they're doing. It doesn't matter to us in that moment. If you're driving down the freeway and you're getting involved in an incident of road rage, it doesn't matter who cut off who you're watching it you're going, that's wrong. Right. You know, that there's a moral value there that the motivation of why the individual did it doesn't matter.

And I think that even as we look at the Charlie Kirk situation, there was a, there was a almost a, I don't know how to say it, defensiveness on both sides or an aggressiveness on both sides of, well, clearly this is the left taking out the right and nobody knew anything. We hadn't caught the guy. We had no idea why the person did what they did, but that there's a, there's a, there was an immediate jump to the motivations of the individual.

Jeff (31:44.27)
and it's still being discussed. What are the motives and go on that route? But what you're talking about here is that there's a point where you're threatened or your family is threatened and you respond. And there's a, there's a thing in most people that they would defend. Not everybody has that though. And so you, as an army ranger, you would look at it and go, I have responded in dangerous situations and knew that I moved towards the danger than away. That's different than a lot of people. A lot of other people did.

just what happened when that bullet, the crack of that shot went out, people dropped down, people ran, very few people moved towards Charlie, very few people looked for a shooter. That's a different individual that literally in that moment says I'm going to move towards the danger in that and try to find some resolve. There's a self preservation that's in there.

Well, what happens afterwards is then we start to stack up the thoughts and that's where the social media is, the algorithms begin to try to feed us messages about what we should think, how we think the two different sides go to war at each other. And I'm still fascinated by that idea of, know, there's, there's a lot of conversation about the fact that the FBI came out right away and said, Hey, we've got a guy in custody right away. And it turned out to be this old guy who just inserted himself into the event.

had nothing to do with it whatsoever. Then they realized that it wasn't him. And so then they caught a second guy that they thought matched the physical description and it turned out not to be him. But what you have in that story is you had, just as you've said, where you want him caught, you want justice that fast. And so we were all wishing that that was the guy and that he got caught right away and justice would be done.

And sometimes, and this is gonna sound bad, but sometimes we feel slightly robbed because the person put the gun to their own head and finished the job and it's like, well, he's never gonna face justice. But he did, if that's what would it happen. In this case, a young man got away and was free and had gone back home and we felt like, you haven't caught him. And it took a while before the information came out. But the point of all of that is,

Jeff (34:04.416)
All of us faced that point of there was an unknown left for us to process who did this, why did they do this, what would I do with him? And even again, on the left there, we have this whole fallout from people that celebrate it. And almost made him a hero. And then you have the other side who feels like they've lost an icon for them.

And people have used the word saint, you know, for Charlie Kirk. And I think that's overblown, but I still understand the emotion. So at that point, you're looking at a secondary emotion that's coming on over time. So just as we started, we're feeling those emotions in the moment when we first hear and our body responds for whatever happened to us and our sense of personal loss, personal grief, personal anger, just in the moment.

And then over the next 36 hours, we're processing it before we get news that he has been captured and then what comes next. So it's a, the, the proximity question is if somebody's running down your driveway, that's going to cause a completely different response than if somebody, when the journalism world, we use the reference to, if your dog gets hit out in your driveway, you have an emotional.

Attachment to that dog. You have the feeling of pain Somebody else a citizen in your city could be shot on the other side of town and you're not gonna feel the same thing if you don't know that person you feel far more for the dog that got hit by the car then you do the person that got shot and killed on the other side of the city and the further it gets away from you can have a bus that goes off a road in India and 37 people can die and you don't really care and then that becomes this challenge of

How do we deal with these emotions and what happens with that? And when, when it's close to us, it means one thing. When it's further away, it means another. And I think that that's the interesting thing of this is that for those who knew who Charlie Kirk was and knew what he represented, it was close to us. We didn't know him. We didn't know him personally. but the different things of media have been, we've watched the YouTube channels. We've seen the Tik Toks. We've seen him on Instagram. We've watched them on TV.

Jeff (36:22.636)
we've heard a lot of this young man's talking, thinking, and we've adopted it to say, hey, we're aligned with that. Now the ones that weren't aligned with that, that's why we shouldn't be shocked that they're not feeling the same emotions. Cause it's not theirs. He's the guy on the other side of town. He's the guy on the bus in India. And in fact, in some cases he's the guy in the bus that they don't like at all. And so that's why they're like, sort of glad the bus rolled off the hill, you know, because that's a guy I didn't like to begin with. And so when we look at it that way,

The emotion shouldn't have us at each other's throats. It doesn't mean that that's right for us to wish for somebody else's demise, but it should be that we at least understand why they might be happy that somebody else met their demise.

That's really interesting because one of the early things that I was verbal about as I was processing through it was because at this point we were actually talking as a group about why is this affecting us so much? Like that was an active question for our group, for our family. And one of the things that I said, I thought it was, was that we had all to one degree or another.

invited Charlie Kirk into our homes and had watched him on our TVs and our phones. And, and so there was that, that connection that you feel and listeners to this podcast feel it. I've met people who listen to this podcast and they feel like they know me because they've listened to me now for maybe five years, which is wild. And so they feel like they have this connection because they've invited me into their life, wherever it is that they listen and have heard me talk about.

million different things and the same thing over and over again and whatever. And so I thought that there was a lot of it that was that. And I think there is a part of it that is, but as I'm listening to you talk about the alignment and that aspect of it, I think it's actually less that than I thought, because if you, if you flip it around and you put anybody else in that chair, and I'm not going to use any names, but if you put somebody in that chair, that is

Nole (38:22.88)
from the other side or from the middle somewhere, or even somebody that I don't actually know about, right? Somebody from the other side of town. And I go watch the same video. Well, that I do have to put a name on it or at least a persona because it would have to be somebody that I had invited into my home. So it would have to be somebody who I'd be familiar with. And I had watched on my phone or on the TV or whatever. So there would have to be that level of connection. couldn't just be someone from the other side of town for it to work.

But if you do that, and if I run through names in my head of other people that it could have been, I don't have that same response. It would still be visceral and awful to watch. And I still, I'd like to believe that I'm the type of person that even if it is someone who is completely unaligned with me and my values, I still wouldn't celebrate it. I don't think I'm that person, but there are people who I wouldn't feel that emotion about at all.

Yeah, well, this one, I'll put a name to part of the idea because I think this happened. This happened to me anyway, is that in the last election, we had a debate with Joe Biden and it went very poorly. And there was a part of me that was actually sort of excited that he had done so poorly.

And I thought about that of when did I get to the point where an older person who's facing mental challenges in their older years, that I got excited that they were in that kind of state of decline. Now I let that override because I had so many other things that, know, I, I wanted the world to turn out a certain way and I didn't wish for Joe Biden to die. I didn't wish for Joe Biden to fail miserably, but I didn't want him to win. Yeah.

And so when I saw that moment, I felt a bit of exuberance and that was puzzling to me and not really puzzling. I just think surprising in the sense of, whoa, where is my heart? That I'm excited that this guy and I'll, I'll put my view flat out out there is that I look at it and go, he should have been a good grandpa and gone home with his grandkids and loved on them and stopped trying to be the president of the United States. That was my personal take.

Jeff (40:36.33)
is that I just looked at it and go, dude, you shouldn't be here anymore. And regardless of your political values, like the whole question is going to come to Trump in a couple of years because he also is old and will he face the same kind of mental decline? We don't know yet, but that whole question, I should feel that same thought, but I shouldn't be giddy about how poorly Joe Biden did, but I let my personal values ride that one pretty quick.

Now to the point that there are political people, do I wish they would die? Do I wish they would get sick? That I wish they, you know, well, that's what I did with Joe Biden. I didn't necessarily wish he would die, but I was happy that his infirmity was strong enough that it made him inept as a candidate.

family.

Nole (41:18.872)
Yeah, it guaranteed that he was done.

Yeah. So that's, that's just that me peeling back a little bit of my heart and going, I'm not sure I like what I see there. Yeah.

Yeah, I went through that same process when that happened and I had been in a phase where I was, I was involved in the news. was being the political news junkie of political news. So I was involved. And so I knew that was coming. Everyone knew there was the decline, but then that was the most obvious moment that everyone got to see. And that's when, you know, the tables turned and now suddenly everyone's talking openly about it. And I was initially jubilant, but I came around and I can't remember what it is that I heard, but I heard somebody talking about it.

It might've even been a conversation with you about that whole grandfather and you should be enjoying your family in the last bit of time that you have that whole idea. I thought at some point I remember thinking, I work with Joe Biden, people exactly like him at that phase in their life, dealing with dementia or Alzheimer's or whatever it is that he's got on a, on a fairly regular basis through my job. And it's tragic and it's hard. And we've had that in our own family.

I know how devastating it can be and how difficult it is for the family to walk through. so then just looking at him as like, he is just a grandpa to some people. Right. And he, he wasn't a good president and I would like a better president and I would like cheaper gas prices and the border clothes and all these things. But that doesn't mean that I should wish ill on him. I, it, and then it started to make me sad when I saw that, that stuff happening, it was just so tragic because he didn't walk away because he's still, they still tried to maintain.

Nole (42:57.164)
which reminded me of seeing Saddam Hussein for the first time in his room after we had captured him. I can't tell it right now.

Yeah, you got to tell that story. Well, yeah, you can. too long. Well, just, just because I've had the chance to hear it, the moment you walked into the room and you saw him eye to eye and how you felt. So tell that.

Yeah, yeah. That's what I'm talking about. Okay. So we have him. I'm not going to talk about any of the other stuff, but at some point I get to go into the room where he is and we've had him for a couple of weeks now. So he's been cleaned up. His, his hair is cut. He's not the guy you see in the mugshot. His beard is trimmed. His hair is cut. He's clean. And I walked into the room and he was sitting to my right on his little bed, not four feet away from me. And he looked up from his Quran that he was reading. That was the book we let him have.

And we made eye contact. And in that moment, I was just looking at someone's grandpa. He was just an older gentleman with a beard that looked like a nice guy. knew immediately who he was. I obviously knew all the, not all the things, knew a lot of the horrible things he had done. I knew what he represented for the Iraqi people. I knew what he represented for us. But in that moment, I didn't hate the guy. I felt bad for him.

because he looked peaceful. He looked happy. And I was like, you have no idea what's about to happen to you, my friend. Like you're done. And it was a weird moment because I, I don't know what I expected. I don't think I, I can't remember going in there expecting anything, but I definitely didn't expect that to feel empathy, I guess. Maybe not empathy though. Well,

Jeff (44:30.186)
But I think that's all right because you felt the other emotions too. Like you weren't letting them go. No, you didn't say, Hey, I felt bad for you, dude. So I think you can carry both. I think you can carry a sense of justice and feel sorry for the individual. And that's the thing with Joe Biden is you look at it and you hear later on what the administration did by propping him up because they were afraid of losing the power that they had.

Let's go back in.

Jeff (44:57.718)
And that's huge. That's immoral. That's wrong. That's taking the entire country down a road that they're not being honest with us. They know fully fully and fully. Sorry. They knew fully what they were doing. They didn't have a mental challenge. They were doing it for power purposes of power. And that gives me a completely different emotion of an emotion of anger and emotion of

of injustice. And those are the things that we don't want to hear our government is doing. And so at the same time, I feel empathy on the one side and Biden was complicit in it. He hung onto the reins and had to know I'm not as sharp as I once was, but he didn't let go of the reins. And those are things that I look at and say, that puts us in a position where we can hold both. And I think that it's sometimes again, because the current

culture tries to drive the wedge between us. We're not having these conversations with the other side about, hey, I felt some of what you're feeling too. And that ability for us to look each other in the eye and say, hey, we don't agree on principle on some of these things, but what we are feeling in the moment is that there's something broken, there's something not right. And both sides feel that right now, that America's broken, things aren't all right. And I think we have to agree on that.

And then that becomes the question, the bigger question of what do we do about that? Especially when we can't have those conversations. And again, coming back to Charlie Kirk, that was his primary, I was saying, if we do not have these conversations, we will result to violence. And then the irony of him being murdered because of that, it's just, that's why I think this is going to be one of those moments like JFK, MLK, 9-11 that

That's what he did.

Jeff (46:48.466)
Charlie Kirk moment is one where we felt the almost the it's not imbalance. What's the word just a the loss of equilibrium that part of what what seemed to be like hey maybe we're settled in here we're still at odds with each other but things are are sort of okay and sort of normal and then they're not

Two things, shift gears a little bit. We had a conversation, we've talked about this ongoing for the last couple of days as I mentioned, but we were talking last night around the fire and we had mom there and Heather and Avery. So a lot of these things for me are coming from that conversation and listening to their thoughts and how they processed it. yeah.

Yeah, it should be said that none of this is original to us.

these, we're stealing all these ideas from other people. You've actually had some original thoughts. I don't think I have, but something that, actually I'm to read something that one of the, one of the ladies said last night, but I'm going to read it second. A buddy of mine sent me this and I'm going to leave his name out of it. He knows who he is, but he sent me this on September 11th. He said, Charlie died surrounded by enemies in quotations, right? He was in.

quote unquote, hostile territory at this university, martyred for preaching the gospel and how faith should be practically lived out unashamed. I'm sad and encouraged by his example. And this is the part right here. Also a little jealous. Is that crazy to be on the enemy's radar to the point where he is expending resources to stop you. That's how I want to live. And I heard this from multiple other people in my life, multiple other men, not

Nole (48:31.434)
He said it very eloquently. I really like this, but I actually heard similar thoughts from other people that I was having conversations with, which I found really interesting and encouraging. it leads to the next question that I want to ask you, which is, you know, what do we do that with this? You know, how now should we live? Which is something you were talking about yesterday, but before, before we get there, cause I kind of want to close on that something that one of the ladies said last night was just this idea of being shaken by seeing

friends and acquaintances from the other political side that were not sad about it and that we're even maybe kind of celebrating it a little bit like what you've been talking about. And the question was, you hated Charlie Kirk for what he believes, but I believe those same things. So how do you feel about me and that aspect of it, which is back to watching another political figure in that same scenario, it wouldn't be the same in that context.

which makes it a lot harder.

Yeah. And I think that's exactly it. I think it's, it, feels like an attack on us. Yeah. Those are our values. If somebody hates those values and they hate a person who holds those values, they hate us. And I think that many of us, and you know, me, you've, you followed me in a lot of different jobs that have put me in a position where I've had to hold my views personally.

to be able to do my job effectively in a place where I was surrounded by people who didn't agree with me. And that was very difficult at times where I have very strong convictions. And yet for me to do the job that my organization has hired me to do, for me to speak out and say, hey, this is what I believe. And then here's Charlie Kirk who speaks out and says, absolutely everything he believes. So there was even a push from the right to stop and say, if you're not putting it all

Jeff (50:28.482)
there. And again, this is that, you know, if you're silent, then that's violence. Right. You know, and I'm like, no, that's not at all the case. Charlie Kirk was given a unique skill set. He used it very, very well. Yeah. But there are other people that are given other skill sets and they do what they're supposed to do. It's just like police at a protest who are just protecting the crowd and letting everybody else speak. Those police officers have opinions. They have convictions, right? Their job isn't there to say their convictions. Their job is to keep everybody safe.

And so I think that even in those regards, we have to look at it and say, we we've all been thrust into that moment. And the part of feeling like, well, wait a minute, this attacks me. This feels like it hits closer to home gets us to where we suddenly have had a lot of conversations and we've seen it across the country. Even in the, and I work at a church now and even at the church, we're facing a scenario where suddenly the Sunday after this, the,

Attendance at church went up at all kinds of churches all across the country. Yeah people showing up and That puzzles me. Yeah, you know, it's like But I'm to church every Sunday. So I'm not feeling motivated by what happened to Charlie Kirk to go to church I'm going to church anyway But I'm wondering about those individuals who weren't going to church that what they felt so that again the reason for this podcast is that we're talking about the emotions we felt there's so many other talking heads about the Charlie Kirk scenario

This one's a little more just the personal philosophies of what we felt, how we responded and what happened in that moment. But even there, and again, as I referred to early on about the Franz Ferdinand moment of the world was shoved into the first World War War, first World War War. I've said it twice.

They called it the world war. They called it world war one later because then there was a second one. So it was the world war.

Jeff (52:24.322)
Yeah, I was the same war twice and I don't know why, but it felt.

Because if you say the World War One, doesn't sound right.

The first World War I, nevermind. Anyway, that's the question of, you know, are we at a watershed moment? But that's coming to that other question is, should we make it a watershed moment? In other words, Charlie Kirk at age 31, that's relatively young, found himself without even a college degree, inserting himself into culture and had tremendous impact in America.

And it's proving so even more so now. But then the question is us, what do we do with this moment? Do we allow it to be something? How do we use our voice? How do we use what our next steps are? And that becomes one that I've been like that in my whole life, that anytime you have something, if I go to the doctor and he says, hey, your cholesterol is a little high, we maybe should put you on a medication. And I'm like, will you let me work out first?

And suddenly I've got motivation to go work out and you know, right, lose weight, eat different to do whatever it takes to catalog. Yeah. And can this moment be a catalyst personally, but also for our country to look introspectively at who we are and what we've become and to say, how do we do this different? I got a couple of quotes that go with that idea. one is, there's a quote by Jim Elliott who was,

Nole (53:52.526)
Let's hear them.

Jeff (53:59.274)
a missionary down in South America who in the efforts of reaching a tribe that had not heard the gospel, the good news of the gospel, they went out and in the process the tribe killed him and four other young men. But one of the things Jim Elliott had written in his journal before he passed away was, I seek not a long life, but a full one.

like you, Lord Jesus. What I love about that quote is that, well, sadly, he didn't get a long life. Right. He died. He died shortly after writing those words. But his point was, it's not about how long I live, but it's that I would live a full one, that my life would have some kind of impact and meaning. And that his life went on to do just that. Like literally his wife, Elizabeth Elliott wrote a great book called Through the Gates of Splendor. If you haven't read that, you should. But that that

that book pulled apart Jim Elliot's life and made something with it. And literally thousands of people went onto the mission field because of Jim Elliot's life. But the second part of his quote, seek not a long life, but a full one like you, Lord Jesus. Here's Jesus Christ, he lived to 33. A young man who never went to college. You you're looking at it and saying he too was robbed by somebody who

Yeah.

Nole (55:17.004)
Yeah.

Jeff (55:26.208)
no longer wanted his voice, wanted his values silenced and they silenced him. And so that's one quote is that I look at it and say, what about me? Do I desire a long life? Am I going to seek to be safe in a time when maybe our voices are needed now more than ever? Cause that's the one thing Charlie Kirk did was he said, I have thoughts, I have convictions. I'm going to speak those. Should we live in such a way that somehow our life is

bringing out a message is a fuller life, and not so much a longer life. The second one is second quote, is a quote from Corey Tinboom, where she says life is not measured by its duration, but by its donation. It's not measured by its duration. It's not how long we live now occasionally, you know, there's, there's a Japanese lady that lives to be 115 and

Yeah, and we talk about it,

Yeah, she's pretty awesome. And you know that she smokes and drinks, does cliff diving and things like that. And that's, that's, you know, all of us should live a life like that. But her point is it's not the duration. It's not even how long we live. It's actually by its donation. It's what we did with that life. So I think Charlie Kirk, we all I've heard this said so many times, but I'll say it as well. think Charlie Kirk would echo that.

I don't know that he would say, Hey, I would rather be dead and have this impact next. I don't think he would say that. think he'd rather be with his wife and children. For sure. But he knew there were threats against his life and he chose to say, but God has gifted me uniquely. need to use those gifts. That question comes up to me. And this moment for me becomes a, you know, a catalyst. Like you said, the word catalyst, should it be a catalyst for me to live my life differently, to stop and say,

Jeff (57:18.082)
What am I bringing to the world? What am I bringing to my family? What am I bringing to my community? If God has gifted me with some skill sets, am I using those? They might not be the same skill sets that Charlie had, but there's things that God has equipped me. I'm a writer and I'm not even writing right now. So will this be a moment that causes me to put thoughts and ideas down to paper and to say, Hey, here's what I'm thinking. Here's what I'm feeling.

I hope so. There's a great many people listening to this podcast that hope so as well. People ask me, you know, this is, don't want to go down this road too far, but people ask me when they see me and they're more your friends than mine or they know it's both and they go, when's your dad, is your dad writing? When's your dad going to write a book? I could ask that. And I always say the same thing. I don't know.

Yeah, I don't know either.

The catalyst thing is interesting though, because to your point, we're obviously not all called to be Charlie Kirk, right? There's, we're not gifted. I'm not gifted like that. In fact, I have had times in my life in the past where I, there's been a cultural event or something that I wanted to have a cohesive thought about because I thought I might get in a conversation about it. And I knew what I believed, but I didn't really know how to verbalize it. And Charlie Kirk is one of those voices I would go to, to hear him talk about it.

because he was able to use his words in such a way that it made sense and it was concise and, and I agreed with it. And I knew that was a place I could find that. And so I'm not that guy who's going to, you know, go sit at the college campus and do the things. But I, so where is that catalyst for the rest of us? And I, isn't a question to even answer, but that's, that will be the thought process is like, well, how should I change my life? If I feel that this is something that I need to do something with.

Nole (59:08.782)
What is it then that I do?

Yeah. And that hits on several levels because I did see the stat that said that as of a couple of days ago, there's like 54,000 people that have requested to start, you know, and I'm looking at it and going, you know, they're thinking I'm going to be the next Charlie Kirk. And I'm like, 54,000 of them. No.

Turning Point chapter.

Jeff (59:31.552)
ain't gonna happen. Yeah, don't even want to hear their voice, know, that kind of thing. But they've been motivated. They felt like I'm stirred to do something. So I think the question is more, and obviously I'm a Christian, I'm a pastor, I look at it from the angle of what is God calling me to do in this moment. So I would hope that each of us would actually do just that, is turn towards Christ and saying, look, you're the creator, you made me, you made me uniquely, how would you use me?

not just in this moment of Charlie Kirk, but this moment of our country and this moment like you, you're surrounded by your family and your family's feeling all these emotions. How do you lead them well through a moment like this and to say, Lord, what do I do here? And I think that that's where I'm going. That's the questions that I'm asking is to stop and say, I don't want my brain to answer that. I would actually like my creator to answer that and to say, I've created you uniquely to do these things.

The gift of Charlie Kirk, whether you love him or hate him, is here is a guy who could organize his thoughts sitting on a little stool surrounded by a bunch of angry voices and he would answer sharply, clearly. You might've hated his answer, but the reason you hated it is because man, hit the nail on the head. If you loved his answer, it's because man, hit the nail on the head. That was his gift. And he had a mind that was sharp and clear. And regardless of what side you're on, you knew it.

And that's why people hated him. And it's also why people loved him. The question for us is what's our gift? How have we been made? How do we uniquely rise in a moment like this? If it stirs us emotionally, can we use it for a catalyst to do something good for the good of others?

I don't know long-term really what this catalyst actually means for me, but in the short term, I think the biggest lesson I've pulled out of it through talking about it with you and the rest of the family and through walking through it was just the realization that in moments like that in the snack shop where we all found out I need to slow down and I need to be more present and be more aware of what the people around me actually need and not give them what I think they need.

Nole (01:01:45.986)
because I think I have the answer and I think I know what the right thing to say is because, you know, I'm a wordsmith. can, I can talk on a podcast. I can write, of course I know the right thing to say. That's my arrogance. But in that moment, I didn't know the right thing to say. And I know as well as anybody else that in a moment of tragedy, there isn't a right thing to say, right? When someone loses someone close to them, people don't say anything because they don't know what to say. don't

they want to have the right thing to say the perfect thing to say that doesn't exist. And it doesn't mean you stay silent all the time, but it does mean that there are times when you do say silent and you're just there with your people, the ministry of presence that you've talked about. So that for me is a short term lesson of taking more time to really be aware of what's going on around me, what my wife is experiencing, what my daughter is experiencing and not just knee jerk reaction. Well, this is what we say in this type of scenario.

Well, he's with heaven now. He's with God now in heaven. Absolutely true. I believe that and I can take comfort in that, but that may not be the best. And then the context of this, that wasn't the best thing to say in that moment, which sounds a little bit heretical. not really, that's too extreme, but you're like, what? But it wasn't the right thing in that moment because it, like I said, like I said, like I said, I used the wrong word, but trite, it seemed to make it cheaper, smaller. Like it didn't matter as much in that moment.

But it's us processing. know, something hits us and immediately it takes some time to process. And oftentimes you're a first responder and sometimes you have to debrief what just happened. You have an after action report. You have to think through it and say, hey, let's unpack this and go what just happened and why.

And that's a moment that has that. So even if our response, we might look at it later and say, I'm not sure. I probably should have responded that way. It is how we responded. It's how we felt. It's what we said. It's what we did. And I think it means we should have grace with somebody else when they do something to stop and go, wait a minute. We're just processing this together. And I think we're corporately, we learned from each other and go, well, if somebody else responded this way, they're feeling certain things.

Jeff (01:04:00.086)
One of the things that happened with me was I had this, this reflection on it of realizing that this may be one of those moments that when JFK gets shot and I wasn't, I was alive when JFK got shot, but I was three years old. So I don't remember that moment, but I have other moments that are just as vivid and those kinds of things still play out of my mind. But one of the things that I read years ago,

And I've seen it happen on these kinds of moments is that the day that JFK died, John F. Kennedy assassinated president of the United States. So he's in a big position. It affected the entire country and probably the entire world. But on that same day, CS Lewis died. The author of mere Christianity, the Chronicles of Narnia, screw tape letters. We could go on and on. wrote a

But he died and his life, his, his death was completely eclipsed by the death of John F. Kennedy. So it was just silent, quiet. He slipped away. Same thing happened with Princess Di when she died in the car accident and, and the tunnel, it just gripped the world. Everybody was so fascinated by our life. And yet on that day, Mother Teresa passed away and

nobody really knew much about that. didn't make the same level of news and we were so enraptured with the other. Now, when we have Charlie Kirk die, I'm not aware of everybody that's died on that day. we did somebody die. Robert Redford died just a couple of days later. I don't think he rises to that same level of a CS Lewis or Mother Teresa. Maybe he will. But, but it's what I was thinking about of that moment is that years later,

I still hand people mere Christianity. I still quote C.S. Lewis. I still am impacted by that man in his writings and not so much JFK. I've read one of his books, but the bottom line is he has not had that impact on the long-term culture that C.S. Lewis had. But C.S. Lewis slipped away quietly. When we look at Princess Di, I haven't read anything she ever wrote.

Nole (01:06:12.206)
You

You know her life did have an impact. She was caring for the poor but compared to Mother Teresa, right? It's no comparison and I have read several books of Mother Teresa's, you know, and so my reflection on that was even with Charlie Kirk's passing, was there somebody else that died around that time that is going to have a far bigger impact in it? Right now we're stirred by the emotions.

It's hard to imagine right now, yeah. it could be.

But that's what happened with Princess Di and John F. Kennedy. And meanwhile, there's somebody else that maybe should have been more highly revered and even modeled and we should have mourned more. And once again, that becomes a question for us of how then do we live?

So what are you going to do? You're going to write a book. You want to commit to it now on the podcast.

Jeff (01:07:02.414)
Well, I am changing my schedule at work a little bit to try to find some margin, not specifically for writing, but for being able to take some of the gifts God's given me, which includes writing. So I don't want to assume that because I haven't written yet, the one thing I need to do in life is to write. I may very well find myself writing and nobody wants to read it. That could be devastating to me. So I don't want to hang all my hopes on that.

Who knows that I can even write well? But the issue is is that it's an area that I haven't The times that I have attempted to write it's gone on well What I need to do is carve out some time and attempt to write and to see what happens and what comes of that So it's not a full-blown promise that I'm going to become a writer. That's not my goal But there is a part of me that stops and says is there a voice in me that I have been holding back on that I really need to Give it some

some rain or give it its bit and bridle, whatever that phrase is for a horse to let it run. right now I need to give it some margin to be able to do that. My jobs typically require me to think and be present with that. And I try to do my best with that so I don't try to distract myself with other things. this may be a season, getting closer to retirement and having even more time on my hands and knowing that if I don't use my time well, then I'm wasting.

what God's given me.

I think I'm to be trying to continue to lean into a couple of questions that I've been exploring a lot in the past, probably six months, maybe a little bit longer, maybe a year. I'm bad with keeping track of time, but Jamie Winship has these two questions and they've been impactful for me. And I've been asking them of God on a regular basis and in certain contexts have heard like back answers. And the two questions are God, what do you want me to know about this? And what do want me to do?

Nole (01:09:03.745)
And then just waiting. And so I think for this, that, that is a question that I haven't asked yet. I, I kind of feel like I, well, that kind of thing. I think I'm a little bit too, I don't know what the word would be like. It has to be just, it's gotta be the right moment. I can't just ask God that in like on a whim when I'm driving from.

Hume to Fresno with my family in the car, like I need to be in a moment where I can really, really ask him. And so I haven't done that yet. But I think with this moment and with whatever it means for me and my family moving forward, I think that'll be kind of the starting place of, I had this emotional response. My family had this emotional response. It obviously meant something to a great many other people. And so what does that mean for us? And I think that's.

That's where I'm going to start. I don't have anything that I can say that I'm going to go do differently or change, but

Nole (01:11:54.646)
I love that. Thank you for coming on.

This has been the Fire You Carry podcast.

Nole (01:12:11.714)
Hey real quick, I just want to say that we missed Kevin on this episode. We did try to get him on, but with his work schedule and with the schedule of Dad, Jeff being here, it didn't work out. You heard that last call to action that...

Jeff gave about putting a date on the calendar. You know how much Kevin loves that, except it's different this time, right? Because he's asking us to put a day on the calendar, to be reflective, to ask the questions, to try to wrestle with what do I do with this or what do I do with whatever else it is I'm, I'm dealing with in life. Take that moment to find space and time to be quiet.

to be alone with your thoughts, to be alone with God and to ask those questions and then to listen and hear. So Kevin's going to love that because he says that phrase all the time, put something on a calendar. He says it from a more kind of physical challenge place, which we love and still think you should do, but this is, this is different. This is unique. So I'm personally going to take advantage of that, that call to action. I'm going to do that. We encourage you to do the same, but thanks again.

Nole (01:13:18.744)
Thank you again for listening, we'll see you next week.

Nole (01:14:11.17)
the curse of budget equipment.

It works well. Just don't...

Nole (01:14:25.472)
In fact, so in unison.

Yeah, yeah. Well, we could do them separately. This is for this. This is for you, Joel Weldon.

Nole (01:14:41.346)
You know Joel Weldon. He told us that we shouldn't drink sparkling water when we do any kind of voice work.

And he taught us a lot and we learned a ton, but I can't I can't take that lesson on I can't do it He's a good guy

yeah.

Yeah, he was fun to have on the show.

Nole (01:15:36.206)
Hahaha

Nole (01:15:42.414)
Did you have any final thoughts?

Nole (01:15:55.966)
I don't know. I don't know, but everyone says it. Yeah, I've never once listened to a podcast conversation that didn't end up with, thanks for having me. Cause you always get thanked for being here, of course. Are you good? Do you feel like there was anything else you wanted to say? Did you have any final points? Cause I can, that's just, I love ending on a statement like that, but we don't have to.

Nole (01:16:36.014)
Let's pause, let's go a little longer.

No, because it's gonna make it really difficult for me to splice in. So let me transition from the statement you made before I fake close the podcast. And then and then you can roll into that. I'll ask you if you have any final thoughts.

Nole (01:16:57.944)
Hey

Nole (01:17:06.03)
that's a really good.

Nole (01:17:13.726)
six twelve. Let's go. Let's go a tiny bit longer. All right. So you just made your epic statement. I fake closed the podcast. This is gold by the way. I put this at the end of the episode. I don't know if you knew that I always put the outtakes at the end of the episode if they're usable. Sometimes they're just not. But I like putting out takes at the end after the music for the people that stick around for the whole thing. All right. So what I'll say after your thing is