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PODCAST

True North with Dave Brisbin

True North with Dave Brisbin is a podcast about the things that can bring you back to center, whether God, spirituality, community or family or all of them. Never esoteric or abstract for its own sake; always practical and full of common sense, we’re interested in exploring the effect of what we believe on our lives and questioning what we believe in light of the deep connection we’re meant to live. Dave Brisbin is an author, speaker, coach, and songwriter. He is the teaching pastor of theeffect, a

religion & spirituality

All Episodes

00:50:59

Knowing God

True North with Dave Brisbin ·

2025/10/26

Dave Brisbin 10.26.25Book of Genesis tells us that God gave Adam permission to name all the animals in the Garden. It’s not a casual detail. For the ancient Hebrews, authority to name something like a child or an animal, was a symbol of dominion over that something. That’s the point. Control. To this day, Jews do not speak the name of God. But the rest of us continue to name everything in sight, including God…and the theology we build around God. God told Moses from the burning bush that his name

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00:49:42

Between Heaven and Earth

True North with Dave Brisbin ·

2025/10/19

Dave Brisbin 10.19.25As we look farther into the observable universe, dig deeper into subatomic particles, science is coming full circle back to what contemplatives and mystics have always known. One aspect of quantum physics is especially revealing. Called superposition, it’s the mathematical concept that subatomic particles exist in a kind of cloud of probability—a continuous wave—where all states and properties are possible at the same time. But the moment an observer interacts with them,

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00:46:34

Newborn Eyes

True North with Dave Brisbin ·

2025/10/12

Dave Brisbin 10.12.25Watching a friend of twenty years wind her way through cancer treatment and now hospice care has been a master’s course in radical, serial acceptance. Just yesterday, to abruptly realize that the cause of her new pain was now moot—that no one was looking for causes anymore, only the management of pain—was another level of reality to absorb. I saw it in her eyes, but just for a moment. Then an implied shrug, and the conversation continued. It’s that ability to recover from the

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00:48:37

Loving the Unfolding

True North with Dave Brisbin ·

2025/10/05

After running a 7.5-million-year program, a fictional super computer says the answer to the meaning of life, the universe, and everything is…wait for it…42. For the forty-six years since that novel was published, fans have been speculating as to the meaning of 42. Looking so hard for certainty, we miss the point. The author said publicly that the number was completely random, chosen for its insignificance. Making the point that any rational answer to the meaning of life is itself meaningless.My

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00:51:42

Doubt and Common Sense

True North with Dave Brisbin ·

2025/09/28

Dave Brisbin 9.28.25If you want to protect and consolidate any institution, church, or state, the most effective one-two punch is to stigmatize doubt and proclaim dogma—belief accepted just because authority says so…which stigmatizes common sense. Then with enough power, you outlaw doubt and common sense altogether. Just about every religion and every political institution has done it. If we’re paying attention, it’s happening all around us. Orwell enshrined it in his novel 1984, though he was just

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00:53:04

Silent Fields of Home

True North with Dave Brisbin ·

2025/09/21

Dave Brisbin 9.21.25When an event has the immense impact Charlie Kirk’s assassination is having on us collectively if not personally, we need to stop and take a look around and inside. I was shocked at the news of his assassination, but even more at the worldwide response—hadn’t realized the depth of his following. The political response was predictable, though, supporters and detractors alike making him a symbol for their respective positions. It was sad to see the real man, the complicated,

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00:42:04

Who Is Asking

True North with Dave Brisbin ·

2025/09/14

Nothing like a nice existential crisis to dig up questions of identity. Who am I? Of course. But beyond that, who’s asking? And beyond that, what does it mean that I can even ask such a question? To be aware that I don’t know who I am, that I can conceive of myself in such a state? The only word we have is consciousness. What is consciousness? What does it mean to be conscious? Dictionary answers: to be awake and aware of our exterior surroundings and inward psychological and spiritual states. Is

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00:49:38

A Week in the Life

True North with Dave Brisbin ·

2025/09/07

Dave Brisbin 9.7.25 How could we have known about the first week of September? My wife’s back pain had grown into numbness down her legs and feet, prompting an MRI, but still waiting for those results Tuesday morning, a feeling in my chest grew to what I could only imagine was a heart attack. Finally told Marian I needed to go to ER, and in the midst of endless cycles of testing and waiting, a text comes in telling her to go immediately to ER for emergency surgery. She didn’t even tell me until

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00:45:41

Remembering Who We Are

True North with Dave Brisbin ·

2025/08/31

I’ve always known I was adopted. From earliest memory, my adoptive parents so normalized it, it was just what it was. Why think more? Or maybe it was a guy thing. In her twenties, my also-adopted sister searched for her bio parents and found them. Was a brief, unfulfilling encounter, yet when my life imploded in my thirties, I put a waiver in my file at the agency that would release my identity if my bio parents did the same. Was a passive nod to a deeper need I was finally beginning to

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00:56:50

Unashamed Heretic

True North with Dave Brisbin ·

2025/08/24

Since I’ve been talking about the need to question everything, arrive at a personal theology that we’ve tested in the streets of our lives, become willing to be called heretic for our trouble, one of our members commented that I must have been called a heretic at some point and asked if I saw that as a badge of honor. Called heretic at some point? I’ve lost count. Along with being told I was going to hell and taking anyone along who’d listen to me, I wouldn’t call it a badge of honor. Surprising

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00:56:19

Two Track Minds

True North with Dave Brisbin ·

2025/08/17

Dave Brisbin 8.17.25Not long after we started our faith community based on understanding Jesus’ teaching from a first century, Eastern/Aramaic point of view, I received an email from a man on the east coast who told me about debates he was having with his 17-year-old son over Christian doctrine. The boy was increasingly challenging his beliefs, and at one point asked his father: is what you believe really true, or just what you believe? Exasperated, the man asked his son where he was getting all

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00:46:48

Micro and Macro

True North with Dave Brisbin ·

2025/08/10

Dave Brisbin 8.10.25Central jail is a different world. Humorless guards, colorless surfaces, bolted down tables, stools. Time is wherever you are told to wait for as long as it turns out to be. I have plenty of time to take it all in. Unexpected energy, more family reunion than jail visit. Young women dressed up, made up, parents, grandparents, two girls next to me over the low, privacyless divider speaking fast and high, Spanish and English in same sentences. I spin on my stool to face the

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00:43:15

Choosing Well

True North with Dave Brisbin ·

2025/08/03

Dave Brisbin 8.3.25 When we are presented with difficult ethical decisions, looking to the law, rules we are obligated to obey, can be comforting as we imagine that choice has been taken out of our hands. But as followers of Jesus, we also look to him as the ideal human who embodies good ethical choice. So knowing how Jesus looked to law is a primary guide in making our own choices. Jesus says he didn’t come to abolish the law but to fulfill, that until heaven and earth passes away, not the

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00:50:57

WWJD

True North with Dave Brisbin ·

2025/07/27

Dave Brisbin 7.27.25 Had a conversation with two devout Christians about Gaza. One believed Israel was committing genocide and saw no justification for their military action, nor for killing a human being under any circumstances. The other, heartbroken over civilian deaths, saw more nuance in Israel fighting for survival against an enemy hiding behind its civilians. Two loving, sincere Christians using Jesus and scripture as guides came to very different conclusions. Is there a “right” way to

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00:44:06

Mind in the Box

True North with Dave Brisbin ·

2025/07/20

Dave Brisbin 7.20.25We’ve painfully learned that when something seems too good to be true…be very careful or run. Grace falls into this category. What’s too good to be true more than unmerited favor, unconditional acceptance? Not only too good, but not even fair or ethical. Our theology speaks of grace, but denies it in practice, lost in the glare of reward and punishment. That paradigm, created for us and reinforced by us, is like a box for our minds, describing life and our role so rigidly that

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00:52:05

Belly of the Beast

True North with Dave Brisbin ·

2025/07/13

Dave Brisbin 7.13.25How many times have you asked God for a sign? Desperately cried out for any toehold you could get on some certainty…imploring, making bargains. Great scene in the movie Bruce Almighty, begging for a sign but too focused on his pain to see all the signs along the road until he’s finally stopped in his tracks, forced to admit his loss of control. Art imitating life. When religious authorities ask Jesus for a sign, he refuses, calling them an evil generation—bisha in

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00:43:47

Into Grace

True North with Dave Brisbin ·

2025/07/06

Dave Brisbin 7.6.25Leader of a retreat some thirty years ago, Catholic priest, asked the group—who attended same weekend every year—why Jesus came, why was he born. Hands went up to answer right out of the Baltimore Catechism—to die for our sins. Priest was so frustrated he said that after all their years of attending, if they weren’t willing to grow, learn anything new, next year just stay home. Wow. I had also been drilled that Jesus came to save us from our sins, shocked by his

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00:43:32

A Good Hug

True North with Dave Brisbin ·

2025/06/28

Dave Brisbin 6.29.25A leper approaches Jesus, calls out: If you are willing, you can make me clean. A statement. Not asking anything. No question whether Jesus is able to heal. Only if he’s willing. We’re obsessed with whether we’re worthy or capable of connection, acceptance. It’s our fear talking. But moved with compassion, Jesus reaches out and touches the man saying, saba ana, I am willing. In his language, it’s his deepest desire, pleasure, and purpose that he/we are healed, reconnected. His

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00:49:02

Small Boat Deep Water

True North with Dave Brisbin ·

2025/06/22

Dave Brisbin 6.22.25Chances are, if you were raised in a Christian tradition, you learned that doubt was the enemy of faith, the opposite of faith, if you had any doubt at all you had no faith. Such learning goes deep and doesn’t go away without a fight. Makes us so hard on ourselves, feeling the inevitable doubts of uncertain human life only to pile on the condemnation of childhood. Making matters worse, we read the gospels to see the first followers of Jesus drop their nets, their entire lives,

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00:46:55

Keeping Awe Alive

True North with Dave Brisbin ·

2025/06/15

Dave Brisbin 6.15.25Past week brought a series of headlines each pre-empting each other’s news cycle. Against a backdrop of wars in Ukraine and Gaza and the disruption of a new US administration intent on radical change, protests and riots broke out in LA, then aerial offensives between Israel and Iran, political assassinations in Minnesota, more protests nationwide. Huge issues we can’t ignore, that demand a response, a personal way forward. In the midst of it, I receive an email about a

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