The Laughing Heart, June 14, 2026
The Laughing Heart with Errol Strider
Fear, Trust, and the Search for a Palpable God
A Doorway Into the Current Dilemma
In this episode of The Laughing Heart, host Errol Strider opens by describing the show as a doorway into what is essential, absurd, and hopefully enlightening. He frames the episode around what he calls the current dilemma: the breakdown of culture, threats to democracy, divisiveness, global warming, possible nuclear catastrophe, pandemics, authoritarian tendencies, distrust, and fear. Rather than treating these issues only as separate crises, he suggests they may be symptoms of an old worldview breaking down.
From “Not Enough” to “Enough Already”
Errol says the culture has long been driven by the phrase “not enough.” In his view, this scarcity-based worldview has shaped everything from agriculture and industry to war, domination, and social organization. He proposes that the next epoch may be characterized by a different phrase: “enough already.” This shift, as he describes it, is a turning away from separation, competition, fear, and duality toward a recognition that people are part of one body of shared consciousness.
Cooperation Over Competition
Drawing on the book No Contest, Errol questions the assumption that competition is necessary for human flourishing. He suggests that evolution and spiritual insight point more strongly toward cooperation as the path of thriving. Yet he acknowledges that when a society is caught in fear, division, and reaction, it becomes difficult to share perspectives rooted in peace, growth, and understanding. He warns that division makes it easier for controlling forces to dominate a culture.
Betrayal, Distrust, and the Collapse of Confidence
Errol reflects on a workshop he once led with his friend John titled “Reclaiming Trust in a Society of Betrayal.” He connects today’s cultural distrust to deeper experiences of betrayal, referencing psychologist James Hillman’s work on reactions to betrayal such as paranoia, denial, anger, and self-betrayal. He asks how trust can be established when people depend on realities that are fundamentally unstable or untrustworthy. This leads him toward the need for a more holistic and spiritual orientation to life.
Spiritual Gravity and the Evolutionary Imperative
Quoting a line from The Urantia Book, Errol says a lasting social system without morality grounded in spiritual realities is like a solar system without gravity. He describes gravity as the cohesive force that draws things together, then compares that to what he calls the evolutionary imperative. In his view, evolution involves two balancing movements: the push toward agency, freedom, liberation, and new creation, and the pull toward center, harmony, and coordination.
Teilhard, Tangential Energy, and Radial Energy
Errol brings in the work of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, describing two kinds of energy: tangential and radial. He connects tangential energy with movement outward into agency, diversity, and new phenomena, while radial energy calls things back toward center and wholeness. The quality of human life, he says, depends on how people participate in that evolutionary dance between freedom and harmony, individuality and unity, movement and integration.
“What About You?” and the Quest Beyond the Known
Errol then shares his poem “What About You?” The poem invites listeners into a shared quest beyond the known, asking whether they will walk the mountain of trust, move beyond self-limitation, leave behind the weighty past, hear clashing points of view, abandon the easier way, and follow the infinite path of faith. The poem serves as a direct challenge to the listener: will they participate in a deeper journey of trust, mystery, and transformation?
You Gotta Love It
Returning to his daily practice, Errol says he has begun responding to moments of disappointment, frustration, grief, and fear with the phrase “you gotta love it.” He presents this not as sentimental denial, but as a spiritual discipline. Since he sees love as the essential dynamic of the universe, he suggests that fear is ultimately illusory. He uses an image from Planet of the Apes, where a projected fire barrier keeps the apes away, as a metaphor for fear: a projected image that appears threatening but may not be ultimately real.
Convicted of Fear
Errol compares older Christian teachings about being convicted of sin with what he sees as a modern need to be convicted of fear. He argues that people must recognize the extent to which they are driven by fear. Quoting A Course in Miracles, he says the ego will allow people to see themselves in many negative ways, but not as truly afraid, because the ego depends on separation and maintains that separation through fear. The work, then, is not merely to manage fear but to see through it.
A Palpable God
The episode closes with Errol’s provocative poem “A Palpable God,” set to music by Charles Mazzell. The poem imagines a speaker longing for a God who can be touched, held, recognized, and encountered in ordinary life: at the mall, supermarket, unemployment line, human longing, spiritual hunger, and the messy places where people search for meaning. The poem wrestles with depression, yearning, disbelief, ritual, desire, disappointment, and the hope for a God who fills the emptiness. Errol acknowledges that the piece has drawn resistance, but he still offers it as a curious, challenging, and potentially helpful exploration of the human search for divine presence.
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The Laughing Heart--a podcast
Humor, story, and spoken word for insight, inspiration, and connection
Hosted by Errol Strider, poet, performer, and non-prophet.
Welcome to The Laughing Heart, your doorway to what is most essential, often most absurd,
and hopefully very if not most enlightening.
This is Errol Strider, delighted you could be with me for this episode of The Laughing
Heart.
For this time together, I want to focus on, well, our current dilemma and how it might
fit into the overall scheme of things.
By current dilemma, I'm talking about the, well, utter breakdown of culture and as we
know it.
Certainly, the threat to our democracy and the divisiveness that we are engaged in.
Not to mention global warming, the threat of possible nuclear catastrophe, the pandemics,
etc., etc.
Many people are being treated, to say the least, harshly by what's happening in America and
in the world, as we seem to be retreating to a position of authoritarianism and being
controlled and driven by distrust and fear.
I would like to suggest that, while these things may be true, from a larger perspective, the
way I see it is that the world view as we have known it is breaking down.
Not comfortable, very challenging to say the least, but inevitably necessary.
We have been living for centuries in a culture that has essentially been one driven by two
words, not enough.
As a result, we have been motivated to compensate and deal with that through a variety of methods
in ways from simply agriculture, etc., and industry, all the way up to war and domination.
I would suggest that this new epoch that we are entering as we pass through this transition
is also characterized by two words, and those words are enough already.
I think we've done the separation motif long enough.
The duality, acting as if absurd as it may sound, we are separate from each other.
In fact, we are part of all one body of shared consciousness.
But being the immature species that we are, and driven by not enough, and the fear that
comes out of that, we are not even close to recognizing it, let alone allowing it to
motivate our lives.
So what I'd like to suggest is, as the system breaks down, which is, as I said, inevitable,
we could be thinking about what's going to take its place.
Are we going to institute basically the same mechanisms and formulas and cultural ways of
organizing ourselves, or are we going to shift to a way of being together that is more consistent
with the actual nature of successful reality?
I read a book many years ago called No Contest, and basically it's an argument against the fact that
we need competition.
And in fact, evolution seems to indicate, along with spiritual perspectives, that we thrive
better with cooperation.
Of course, when a culture and a society is in the spasm of fear and the reactions there
too, it's very hard to share a perspective that is essentially about peace, growth, and understanding,
especially with all the efforts to dumb down our culture and exacerbate the division.
We know this, that divisiveness makes it more powerful and possible for dominant controlling
forces to take over our culture.
We've seen that throughout history, of course, and evidently we are undergoing it at this
very moment in time.
Some people are oblivious about it, continue on our everyday lives, and are not affected
by it.
On the other hand, there are many of those who are dramatically and painfully affected
by it at so many levels.
From journalists who are being displaced and the threat to our freedom of speech to all
the billions of people who are being starved and driven out of existence.
Wow, what a planet!
Who would have thought?
Many years ago, I led a workshop with my good friend John called Reclaiming Trust in a
Society of Betrayal.
When you think about those who have committed to a more dominant force that wants to squash
out democracy and the voices of freedom, I think you can arguably trace it back to our
experience of betrayal.
James Hillman, the noted psychologist, talked about several reactions to betrayal and his
essay on betrayal.
Paranoia, denial, anger, self-betrayal, etc.
And I think we're seeing that.
Here's the deal.
How can we establish trust if we are dependent upon aspects of our experience that are fundamentally
untrustworthy?
At the very least, death is a betrayal of life.
Ergo, why we need to move into a more holistic, or I would suggest a spiritual orientation
to life.
I read a line from the year Wrench-a-book that says,
A lasting social system without a morality predicated on spiritual realities can no more
be maintained than the solar system without gravity.
Gravity is the cohesive force that draws things together.
I would suggest that the movement of evolution, what I call the evolutionary imperative, which
is the same as many religionists might call God's will, is the simultaneous effort to
move into agency, liberation, freedom, and the creation of new phenomena.
Balancing that is the pull towards center, the coordinating effort to bring things into
harmony.
Not easy.
Evolution is a tough game, which we know if we are participants in it.
Well, of course, how can we not be?
So what's it going to take to establish a way of living together where we know how to
balance those two forces, the forces of agency, and the forces of harmony?
One of, if not my favorite, teachers, scientists, philosopher, and mystic, the French men,
Chehart Desjardins, talked about two energies.
One is tangential energy, and the other is radial energy.
Pretty much what I just described.
Radial energy is the movement of reality to move off at a tangent toward agency, diversity,
and new developing phenomena.
Radial energy is, again, calling it to center.
And that is, again, I say, the dance of evolution and how we participate in that dance determines
the quality of our life and the degree to which we can successfully participate in the
dynamics of evolution and spiritual development.
I'm a poet, as you may know, and so I tend to look at things, well, a scance, pulling
images together that hopefully will reveal a deeper level of awareness and insight.
That being said, I'm going to ask you a question in a poetic way.
I hope you'll give it some thought and consider what your answer might be.
This piece is called, What About You?
Will you participate with me in the quest Beyond the Known?
Will you walk by my side as I ascend the mountain of trust?
Will you accompany me through a vision beyond sight?
Will you bear with me as I transcend the limits of self?
Will you walk along with me and leave behind your weighty past?
Will you hear my point of view, though it clashes with your own?
Will you discern those subtle roads that lead you away from the city and set off with
me on ultimate trails that end in a cosmical clearing?
Will you let go of the easier way with dependable sights and sounds and abandon yourself to
the sterling unseen and the bountiful mystery of light?
Will we arrive together on a crest overlooking time, having transcended the tasty finite
and the surging appeal of matter?
Will you run along with me keeping your eye on the gold before us, trusting that you
will not fall down or will have placed your hopes in a fiction?
Will you join and harmonize me by falling in unified step?
Will you blaze the trail of faith as we follow the infinite way?
What about you?
Most days I am faced with a challenge like many people to deal with the disappointment,
frustration, grief that many of us experience in our lives.
But because I have chosen to practice love in the face of doubt and fear, I seek ways
to reinforce that in my experience.
One of the things I just started this week was every time I catch myself going off-track,
I say to myself, you gotta love it.
And I think that's an appropriate response to almost everything, things that are easy
to love and things are, well, not so easy to love.
And since I have found and deepening into that awareness that love is the essential dynamic
of the universe, certainly it is fear which is the opposite of love, which is also ironic
because love has no opposite and therefore fear is basically an illusion.
I remember a movie, I think it was The Planet of the Apes and two plays played in the movie
and the apes would not go past this barrier which was a fire.
And it turns out later in the movie that the fire was an image projected by the leftover
humans to keep the apes from going there.
And in many ways I thought that was a good metaphor for what we are dealing with as we
face fear, a projected image that creates the illusion that there is something that threatens
us.
As I deepen into spiritual dimension which I perceive as the fundamental essence of reality,
the ground of being as the theologian Paul Tillett described it, I recognize more and
more that the fears that drive me are basically predicated on nothing.
Now here's another thought.
For many centuries really Christians who were trying to convert people to Christianity
believe that people had to be convicted that they were sinners first in order to quote
enter the kingdom of heaven.
I would like to suggest a modern parallel to that which is people need to be convicted
of fear in the sense that we need to recognize we are driven by fear.
Now the ego, the part of ourselves that defines itself by separation doesn't want to be found
out that is basically fueled and driven and in fact made up of fear.
So it will do almost anything to keep us from recognizing it.
This from of course in miracles.
The ego can and does allow you to regard yourself as supercilious, unbelieving, lighthearted,
distant, emotionally shallow, callous, uninvolved and even desperate.
But not really afraid.
Minimizing fear but not its undoing is the ego's constant effort and indeed is the skill
at which we're very ingenious.
How can it preach separation without upholding it through fear?
And would you listen to it if you recognize that this is what it is doing?
Having said that I'd like to shift gears here and play a poem I wrote many years ago with
music by Charles Mazzell.
It's called A Popable God and features a character who's earnestly looking for some way to touch
into that phenomenon that we call God.
Needless to say it's a challenging quest we've been on as a race for centuries but this character
brings it well down to earth in some provocative ways.
Just a warning of all the pieces I've ever written, this piece has gotten the most, well,
resistance.
It caused people a lot of trouble.
But I still feel it's worth sharing and I hope you find it provocative, curious, perhaps
insightful and even helpful.
It's called A Popable God.
What I need is a popable God.
A God I can snuggle with, tickle and fondle.
Now how do I fondle God?
Do I fondle God when I will perhaps?
What about a God that is apparent as the grinding demands?
As merciful as the squeeze is mercilence.
You know the squeeze between what I say I want and what I think I have, between what
I think I want and what I say I have.
Fill me up, Gody.
Fill me up.
What I need is a get down God who will hobnob with my tastes and catches me as I fall into
the molten yearning I reside in.
Forced to wonder who I am.
Wonder where I'm from and where where I'm headed.
Trying to bum a ride on stale assumptions that lead me off at nowhere.
You know a God I can hold hands with who let me parlay my depression into jubilence.
Or at least fill my tin cup with some sour dough satisfaction.
Fill me up, Gody.
Fill me up.
How about a no nonsense God?
Who will saturate my pleading heart and get me high on intoxicating blood.
Cemented blessing.
Capable of transporting tired old me.
Out, out.
Through the breathless pores of my illusions.
Illusions.
Illusions.
Those dark imaginings painted over with opulence.
Rising the quicksand beneath.
Though the beach is tempting and the rancid water looks like it will quench my aging thirst.
Hey.
Hey.
What about a neighborly God?
Who will fill my empty cup with sweet granules of please or thank you or I believe in you
too.
Look in my lips for fresh donuts or kisses.
That's it.
That's what I want for God to hand out ecstasy.
So I can let go of my compulsion to find effervescence in a bottle.
A meal.
A bank account.
Or a roving vagina.
Or other familiar betrayers.
Tarnished hopes, corpse.
Slithering down my insides.
Leaking the smell of disappointment.
Like a slug.
Prawling down my esophagus.
Fill me up, Gody.
Fill me up.
But for beginners.
A stand up.
How do you do God'll do?
As long as he isn't bloated and malnourished from being fed on bleached rituals and nutritionless
praise.
For one standing in the unemployment line like me because there isn't any work for
a bona fide God in this world of marketing shares and nostalgia for a second hand God
that never really was.
But I guess I'll take a make believe God.
As long as I can get it on sale.
Or even better.
Naked.
So I don't have to peek under the circus tent.
Cause I ain't got a ticket.
I ain't got a friend.
Fill me up, Gody.
Fill me up.
What I need is a sleek harmonious God.
A sleek harmonious God.
Conducting a pure tone symphony.
To drown out those discordant voices that try to scream away my presence.
And shout down my joy.
Who sing a beautiful melody.
To quiet my doubts.
And in a still small voice whisper away my misgivy.
And then I might be willing to trade in my sordid sagging disbelief for some fucksome
faith.
Or at least let go of all the noisy rusty reasons why I can't believe.
Basically, I use a friendly God.
Who oppress the right keys in my consciousness.
As long as they aren't all controlled.
Delete.
Fill me up, Gody.
Fill me up.
But in the meantime, and it is a meantime.
Maybe we could meet at the shopping mall, God.
Or at the supermarket.
Or at that junction where my longing meets your impulse to nourish and fulfill.
I'll be wearing a loose fitting human facade.
But how will I recognize you, God?
Maybe you could be that little old lady who hands out those free goodies or beauties.
Or that good-looking Jewish fellow who serves up some of those set you free truthies.
Or those succulent delights made up of answered prayers.
So come on.
How about it?
How about showing up, God?
Or is it?
How about showing up?
Human.
Ooh.
Fill me up, Gody.
Fill me up.
Well, there you have it.
The palpable God.
I'd be very curious to know if you resonated any way with that.
You can reach me at estrider at gmail.com.
I'd love to hear from you.
This is Errol Strider, The Laughing Heart.
Please check out our website, TheLaughingHeart.org, to find out more about what we have available.
We, as in Rochelle Strider and myself, you can also go to our YouTube channel, Strider
Entertainment, that's I-N-N-E-R.
We'll see you next time.
I hope this is a time of transformation and renewal for you.
