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Merry Christmas friends! kk here goes:

HOUSE OF THE WORLD.

Ancient story and artifact meets lo-fi and Mediterranean hip hop in this journey to reclaim the art of the Bible’s creation story. Poetry… in cosmological motion. haha!

HOUSE OF THE WORLD was craft-brewed to give you the wisdom that our end is in our beginning.

If you grew up with the Bible and it seemed like you were the only one who had serious questions about the creation story... here is a way forward with full acceptance of science and reason applied to ancient literature in context.

We think this can profoundly help you rediscover who you are and what you are here to do and how to hold the sacred text of your childhood now that you've grown up.

Along the way you'll

• learn how the world made in Genesis 1 is less "planet spinning in space and more cosmic snow globe floating safely through chaos waters."
• discover how in creation myths, the creator God makes the world by separating into realms (sky, land, sea) and assigning roles (flying things, land animals, sea creatures).
• observe what it means in context to be made in the statue (צלם) of the divine counsel and ask "what is the best way to be a divine counsel mini-figure anyways?"
• meet a lovable collection of archetypal-first-humans from near Eastern Literature and consider what the first humans in first human stories actually represent.
• explore ancient artifacts and musings from ancient literature like the Book of the Dead and the Epic of Gilgamesh to Seneca, New Testament authors, and Rabbinic Midrash Agaddah.

At the end of the day, we made HOUSE OF THE WORLD to help you reclaim ancient story for a better tomorrow. See you inside!

Be good to each other!

Mark and Eric

For Text and Rock Poetry, Podcasts, and Video Content or to contact Mark and Eric, visit us at www.textandrock.com.

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A friend of the show and I continue talking about faith and doubt. This episode we chat about how to be sincere friends with people we love all across the spectrum of faith and doubt. Serving your atheist friend might be the most Christian thing you can do. A lot of times being right is less important than being in healthy relationships.

We also talk about how many people frame God in very specific ways-- God is the judgmental father in the sky, God is like Santa Clause, God is like an angry storm God-- but this imagery often comes out our own wounds and disappointment.

Then we pivot and talk more about faith in God and particularly Christianity is not a religion, it is a creed. At least for Mark, he tries to let go of faith as being convinced of uncertain theological tenets or even miracles, and instead about binding yourself to an ethical creed centered around the teachings of Jesus.

We hope you love it!

For Text and Rock Poetry, Podcasts, and Video Content or to contact Mark and Eric, visit us at www.textandrock.com.

You can find all of social handles here:

TEXT AND ROCK SOCIALS.

Want to support the show, experience our best creative work, buy one of our books or give an uncommonly better gift or art and heart? Ha! Head to the TEXT AND ROCK DIGITAL PRESS.

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A friend of the show and I continue talking about faith and doubt. This episode we talk about what to do when the bottom falls out-- to have faith or not to have faith?

We both believe that whenever something truly horrible happens, we actually have a choice whether to lean into God/Source/Universe/Being/Oneness, or to lean out. At these times people either grow in faith immensely or become very bitter and angry.

Along the way, we talk about Jesus' disciple Thomas, hope for all of us part-time believers, and how God fights us with kid gloves.

We hope you love it!

For Text and Rock Poetry, Podcasts, and Video Content or to contact Mark and Eric, visit us at www.textandrock.com.

You can find all of social handles here:

TEXT AND ROCK SOCIALS.

Want to support the show, experience our best creative work, buy one of our books or give an uncommonly better gift or art and heart? Ha! Head to the TEXT AND ROCK DIGITAL PRESS.

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A friend of the show stops by to chat about the Faith and Doubt Series. This episode we chat about how tough questions about God from our children actually get to the heart of adult issues with faith, doubt, and being a good human.

Along the way, we talk about God behaving badly in the Bible, the Flood narratives, and how to read with the grain of the editors of sections of the Bible...

It's a trip! We hope you love it!

For Text and Rock Poetry, Podcasts, and Video Content or to contact Mark and Eric, visit us at www.textandrock.com.

You can find all of social handles here:

TEXT AND ROCK SOCIALS.

Want to support the show, experience our best creative work, buy one of our books or give an uncommonly better gift or art and heart? Ha! Head to the TEXT AND ROCK DIGITAL PRESS.

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Faith & Doubt 03 — God as Mosaic, Faith as a Creed

When you stay in the tradition long enough, you realize something unsettling: God doesn’t hold still. The moment you think you’ve got God figured out—a verse, a doctrine, a tidy metaphor—life shifts. A diagnosis, a betrayal, a miracle, a silence. Suddenly, God looks different again.

That’s what this episode is about. The idea that God is not static
. The story of Scripture is a moving picture—God in gardens, God in deserts, God in exile, God in flesh. From Genesis to Revelation, the divine keeps showing up in new and surprising forms. The faithful are always being asked to reorient, to find holiness inside the disorientation.

In this third piece of the Faith & Doubt series, I explore how faith was never meant to be a posture of certainty, but of fidelity. Faith as showing up. Faith as staying loyal even when the picture blurs. Because maybe what God wants from us isn’t perfect answers—but steady presence.

I talk about the danger of cherry-picking only the comforting images of God
—the gentle shepherd, the loving father, the still small voice—while ignoring the wilder parts: the fire, the storm, the silence that won’t speak. What if the truest picture of God is a mosaic? Jagged, colorful, and whole only when we hold all the pieces together.

That’s the center of this reflection. That faith is less about having answers and more about staying in the questions. That doubt doesn’t make you faithless—it makes you honest. God isn’t afraid of your questions; God is in them.

If this episode speaks to you, you can read the full essay here on Text & Rock
and check out the rest of the Faith & Doubt series for more reflections on belief, deconstruction, and becoming whole again.

For Text and Rock Poetry, Podcasts, and Video Content or to contact Mark and Eric, visit us at www.textandrock.com.

You can find all of social handles here:

TEXT AND ROCK SOCIALS.

Want to support the show, experience our best creative work, buy one of our books or give an uncommonly better gift or art and heart? Ha! Head to the TEXT AND ROCK DIGITAL PRESS.

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Who gets to say what God is like? For many, the early answers were simple: God is good, loving, and holy. But as you grow, those answers get more complicated. The Bible’s portraits of God are not one-dimensional—they include the God who liberates and loves, but also the God who floods, rages, and stays silent. The tradition itself preserves these tensions, refusing to sanitize the divine image.

In this episode, we explore how our images of God are always filtered—through culture, trauma, power, or longing. We want a God who looks like what we most need: a liberator for the oppressed, a warrior for soldiers, a philosopher’s unchanging ideal, or a gentle shepherd. But the mosaic is bigger than any single frame. Wrestling with unfamiliar or uncomfortable images of God may be the very thing that expands us.

Faith, then, isn’t about certainty—it’s about relationship, even struggle. Scripture itself makes room for bargaining, lament, doubt, and anger. What if your unraveling is actually the path to a deeper encounter with God? In a world of loss, injustice, and unanswered prayers, you don’t need a cleaned-up God. You need a God who holds light and dark together, and who isn’t afraid of your questions—because maybe God is in your questions.

For Text and Rock Poetry, Podcasts, and Video Content or to contact Mark and Eric, visit us at www.textandrock.com.

You can find all of social handles here:

TEXT AND ROCK SOCIALS.

Want to support the show, experience our best creative work, buy one of our books or give an uncommonly better gift or art and heart? Ha! Head to the TEXT AND ROCK DIGITAL PRESS.

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What happens when the God you grew up with turns out to be a moving target? From the garden stroll in Genesis to the cosmic transcendence of the New Testament, the Bible presents wildly different portraits of the divine—each shaped by its time, place, and author.

In this episode, I trace the fascinating evolution of God in the Judeo-Christian tradition:

Genesis: God as an embodied human-like figure.
Exodus: Storm deity on the mountain.
Prophets: King above the nations.
Job: Unfathomable whirlwind.
Wisdom literature: Moral force woven into the universe.
New Testament & Philo: Spirit, Love, and the need for a mediator.

Along the way, we’ll explore why God became more transcendent, less human, and what that means for seekers today. This isn’t about losing faith—it’s about seeing the tradition in its full depth, complexity, and beauty.

📌 Subscribe for more explorations of faith, doubt, and ancient wisdom.
💬 Question for you: Which portrait of God has shaped you the most—and has it changed over time?

#FaithAndDoubt #BibleStudy #AncientWisdom #Theology #PhilosopherKings #SpiritualityDescription:

For Text and Rock Poetry, Podcasts, and Video Content or to contact Mark and Eric, visit us at www.textandrock.com.

You can find all of social handles here:

TEXT AND ROCK SOCIALS.

Want to support the show, experience our best creative work, buy one of our books or give an uncommonly better gift or art and heart? Ha! Head to the TEXT AND ROCK DIGITAL PRESS.

Send us a text

Hey Text and Rockers!

Just to change it up, Mark outlines the next several episodes of Text and Rock, including an introduction to the Text and Rock Blog and a 3-part series on Faith and Doubt.

It's all about leaving the Judeo-Christian tradition so that you enter it again. How to lose old names for new names, and stop trying to fit new wine in old wineskins... If you are somewhere along the path of deconstruction and reconstruction, we hope it profoundly helps... or at least lets you know you are not alone.

As always, we hope you love it!

For Text and Rock Poetry, Podcasts, and Video Content or to contact Mark and Eric, visit us at www.textandrock.com.

You can find all of social handles here:

TEXT AND ROCK SOCIALS.

Want to support the show, experience our best creative work, buy one of our books or give an uncommonly better gift or art and heart? Ha! Head to the TEXT AND ROCK DIGITAL PRESS.