Flirting With Enchantment

Help bring JONAH & THE WORM to life. Support the first artwork and pages of my graphic novel, and help us rediscover the strange, complex, and untamed beauty of ancient Scripture.

https://www.prospect.art/artists/john-mark-mcmillan/jonah-graphic-novel

Your donation through Prospect is tax-deductible.

What if the part of Jonah’s story we usually leave out is the whole point? Beyond the great fish is a prophet furious at God’s mercy, a violent empire, and a worm that brings everything into focus.

John Mark McMillan joins Paul Anleitner and Parker Settecase to share the vision behind JONAH & THE WORM, a graphic novel reimagining the biblical story as mythological fantasy for grown-ups. He traces its beginnings to a crisis of faith while recording Mercury & Lightning and an unexpected encounter with Martin Scorsese’s Silence. Together, they explore how art can help us see familiar stories afresh, why Jonah’s struggle to love his enemies still matters, and what human craft and friendship bring to creative work. They also share how listeners can help fund the first stages of the project.

Key topics

• How a crisis of faith revealed deeper questions about identity, success, and belonging.
• The scene in Silence that changed John Mark’s understanding of faith.
• Why moving Jonah into a mythological setting can reveal details we’ve stopped noticing.
• What the worm, the animals, and Jonah’s anger reveal about the heart of the story.
• How the violence of the Assyrian empire makes God’s invitation to mercy so difficult.
• Why the time, risk, and personal cost of making art shape the finished work.
• How friendship, community, and patronage can help ambitious creative projects become real.

Help bring JONAH & THE WORM to life

We’re raising the first round of funding to develop characters, artwork, and initial pages that will contribute to the finished book and help prepare for a larger campaign. A donor has committed matching funds up to a set limit.

This is an invitation to support the creation of the project through donations, rather than a book preorder. Contributions will go through Prospect and the project’s fiscal sponsor, with tax information available through the donation process.

Mentioned in the conversation

• Silence by Shūsaku Endō and Martin Scorsese’s film adaptation
• Mercury & Lightning by John Mark McMillan
• The biblical book of Jonah
• C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and Malcolm Guite
• Good Makers Guild, Prospect, and the Cultural Renewal Fund

A note before listening: This conversation includes major spoilers for Silence and discussion of torture and violence.

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What if God’s exact location is a Dollar General?

My friend Andy Squyres finds glory in strange and mundane places. We work through all four tracks on his EP Praise Songs, talking about finding God in everyday life, unanswered prayer, and learning to live without a breakthrough. Andy shares how grief changes his songwriting and why he still wants his most Pentecostal friends praying for him. Along the way, we talk fishing, Buc-ee’s billboards, and worship songs that make room for what people are actually
going through.

KEY TOPICS
• How constantly improving your life can leave little time to enjoy it.
• What fishing teaches us about attention and giving up control.
• How ordinary places become the setting for encounters with God.
• Why faith after unanswered prayer needs words of its own.
• How humor and grief can belong in the same praise song.
• Why Christian songwriting needs room for surprise, mystery, and unresolved questions.

ABOUT ANDY
Andy Squyres is a songwriter, poet, and author of the Poet Priest books. His work draws on years in pastoral ministry and a Pentecostal upbringing that he continues to wrestle with and cherish. He writes about life with God through everyday encounters, bringing humor and honesty to questions of faith, suffering, and hope.

RESOURCES & LINKS
Praise Songs - Andy’s four-song EP, available to stream or purchase. https://linktr.ee/andysquyres
Poet Priest books - Andy’s collections of poetic essays, available directly from his shop. https://tr.ee/7HM-6zLBCQ

TIMESTAMPS
00:07 - Songs you understand differently years later
01:49 - Making a living without missing your life
10:18 - Fishing, attention, and surrender
13:16 - Andy’s calling as a poet and priest
20:43 - My Honda: Finding glory beside the highway
31:14 - Sing Your Glory: Living without a breakthrough
40:52 - Mountain of Transfiguration: God in a parking lot
51:02 - I Praise You God: Grief, gratitude, and faith
58:49 - Why worship songs need room to take chances
61:58 - Poetry, mystery, and the songs that change us

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What if you’re so busy trying to fix your life that you forget to live it?

We spend a lot of energy trying to understand ourselves, make better decisions, avoid pain, and gain some control over where our lives are going. But painter and therapist Josh Jensen wonders if we’ve begun to mistake thinking for doing—and knowledge for wisdom.

Josh and I talk about overthinking, our illusion of control, and the parts of life that can only be known by actually experiencing them. We explore the different selves inside each of us—the artist, the provider, the ambitious self, the playful self—and what it might mean to let them belong to one whole person. Eventually, we find our way to suffering, beauty, love, and the strange possibility that what we want most may not be control at all, but to lose ourselves in something greater that we can trust.

IN THIS EPISODE

• Why thinking is only one way of knowing
• How overthinking can become a substitute for actually living
• The illusion of control and why knowledge can make us feel safer than we really are
• What happens when creativity collides with the need to make a living
• Learning to accept the different, sometimes conflicting parts of ourselves
• Why feelings and embodied experience can reach deeper than words
• Moving from naïveté through cynicism toward a “second naïveté”
• How suffering and conflict can become opportunities for transformation
• The surprising connection between beauty, trust, love, and losing control

ABOUT JOSH JENSEN
Josh Jensen is an abstract painter and marriage and family therapist whose two vocations continually inform one another. His paintings explore the tension between spontaneity and intention, chaos and order, beauty and meaning. Alongside his studio practice, Josh works as a therapist, helping people navigate relationships, grief, anxiety, spirituality, creativity, and the complexity of being human.

RESOURCES
Josh Jensen Art — Explore Josh’s paintings and current work.
https://jsjensenart.com
Introduction to Abstract Painting — Josh’s Domestika course exploring abstraction, composition, color, and the creative process.
https://www.domestika.org/en/courses/5206-introduction-to-abstract-painting
Josh Jensen at Ballantyne Well-Being — Learn more about Josh’s work as a marriage and family therapist.
https://bewellcharlotte.com/staff/josh-jensen

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Wine tastes like people. It tastes like the soil, the weather, the altitude, the years—and the hands that tended it. Because wine doesn’t come from nowhere. It comes from a particular place, at a particular time, made by particular people. We’re like wine.

We come from places, from times, and from people. Families, friendships, traditions, neighborhoods. We’re shaped by the ground beneath our feet and by the people who have known us and loved us. But in a world where it’s increasingly possible to be connected to everyone and belong to nothing, what does it mean to actually put down roots?

My guest Adam Russell is a pastor, songwriter, and amateur winemaker who has spent a lot of time thinking about place, friendship, hospitality, and the slow work of becoming a person. We talk about why friendship might be a spiritual practice, why discipleship happens in community, what wine can teach us about belonging, and Adam’s beautifully simple answer to one of the biggest questions we can ask: What are people for? To watch, to tend, and to care.

IN THIS EPISODE

• What wine can teach us about people, place, and belonging
• Why Genesis describes human beings as creatures who watch, tend, and care
• How what we give our attention to slowly shapes who we become
• Why friendship may be the foundation—or container—for discipleship
• Why modern life requires us to develop intentional friendship practices
• How beauty, fun, and friendship restore our creativity
• Why Adam chose to stay rooted in rural Kentucky instead of chasing a bigger platform
• What can only happen when you stay with a place, a person, or a craft for a long time

ABOUT ADAM RUSSELL
Adam Russell is the Lead Pastor of Vineyard Campbellsville and a wine maker. He is a pastor, songwriter, worship leader, and producer whose work has helped shape the Vineyard movement for decades. Adam and his wife Heather live with their family on a small farm in rural Kentucky, where they grow grapes and make wine. His work and life are deeply rooted in questions of place, community, creativity, and what it means to faithfully tend the life right in front of you.

RESOURCES & LINKS
Vineyard Campbellsville — Adam’s church in Campbellsville, Kentucky.
What Are People For? by Wendell Berry — The collection containing the essay Adam references when answering the question at the heart of this conversation.
How Music Works by David Byrne — Referenced in our conversation about the way environments and places shape what artists create.
Beholding by Strahan Coleman — Referenced in our conversation about attention, contemplation, and what it means to truly behold.

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Human beings are storytelling creatures. Whether we realize it or not, we all live by guiding stories and those stories shape thousands of small decisions that eventually shape our lives, our culture, and the world we’re making together. So what happens when our guiding stories become cynical, defined more by what we’re tearing down than what we’re building? And could cultural and spiritual renewal begin by telling better stories?

John Mark sits down with cultural theologian Paul Anleitner to explore the stories underneath our modern crisis of meaning. They talk about what happens when we lose the religious and cultural narratives that once gave us a sense of purpose, why no one actually lives without a guiding story, and how disenchantment can emerge when life is flattened into questions of matter, politics, and power. Paul also explores the limits of deconstruction and argues that the way forward isn’t simply another revolution—it’s recovering a positive vision of what is good, beautiful, and worth building.

KEY TOPICS

• How the stories we live by shape our individual lives, communities, and culture
• Why the modern meaning crisis may also be a crisis of story
• What we lose when we walk away from religious traditions and the narratives that formed us
• Why no one is truly without a guiding story—even when they claim to believe in nothing
• How reducing life to matter, politics, and power can contribute to disenchantment
• The difference between deconstruction, rebellion, and genuine reform
• Why cynicism can trap us in an endless cycle of defining ourselves by what we oppose
• How better stories might help us recover meaning, transcendence, and a vision of human flourishing

ABOUT PAUL ANLEITNER
Paul Anleitner is a cultural theologian whose work focuses on the role of culture and story in our quest for meaning. His interdisciplinary approach brings together theology, philosophy, science, and cultural analysis to help individuals and institutions navigate cultural shifts and perennial religious longings.
Paul is also the author of Based on a True Story: Vibe Shifts, the End of Deconstruction, and the Reboot of Meaning, which explores many of the ideas at the center of this conversation.

RESOURCES & LINKS
Based on a True Story: Vibe Shifts, the End of Deconstruction, and the Reboot of Meaning — Paul’s book on story, deconstruction, meaning, and cultural renewal.
https://churchsource.com/products/based-on-a-true-story-vibe-shifts-the-end-of-deconstruction-and-the-reboot-of-meaning
Goodmakers — Paul’s work exploring cultural renewal, leadership, meaning, and the stories that shape us. https://www.goodmakers.co

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What do you do when singing has been your whole life and suddenly you can’t sing anymore?

For Strahan Coleman, chronic illness and the loss of his voice forced him to slow down and discover an inner life he hadn’t known how to access before. In losing the primary way he had always connected with God and the world, Strahan found himself entering what he calls the “interior wilderness” and discovering a deeper life of prayer.

We talk about suffering and desire, the attention economy, why we become what we behold, and what it means to cultivate a rich interior life. Strahan also tells the story behind his song “Already Home” and the realization that peace doesn’t require the absence of pain.

IN THIS CONVERSATION

• Why suffering can force us into parts of our inner world we might otherwise never discover
• How desire may be at the very heart of Christian spirituality
• Why prayer is less about accomplishing something and more about learning to behold God
• How the things we give our attention to gradually form us
• Why spiritual practices without a life of beholding can become little more than behavior modification
• How beauty, silence, and attention can deepen our experience of God
• What the Beatitudes reveal about finding the kingdom in sorrow rather than simply escaping it
• Why peace can be present even when our circumstances remain unresolved

ABOUT STRAHAN COLEMAN
Strahan Coleman is an award-winning musician, poet, writer, and spiritual director from Aotearoa, New Zealand. He is the founder of Commoners Communion, a community and resource platform exploring a deeper life with God through retreats, prayer schools, books, podcasts, and spiritual practices. His work centers on prayer, desire, contemplation, and learning to experience communion with God in ordinary life.

RESOURCES
Commoners Communion — Strahan’s home for books, prayer resources, retreats, courses, and spiritual formation.
Thirsting: Quenching Our Soul’s Deepest Desire — Strahan’s exploration of human longing, desire, and communion with God.
Beholding: Deepening Our Experience in God — An invitation to move from transactional prayer toward a deeper friendship with God.
Strahan’s Prayer Books & Resources — Strahan’s collection of poetic prayers, contemplations, and spiritual resources.

Text Me - Join the SMS list for occasional thoughts, recommendations, and new work.
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What if the life you’re longing for isn’t somewhere out there waiting for you, but hidden inside the life you already have?

Poet, songwriter, author, and community builder Joshua Luke Smith joins me for a conversation about suffering, limitation, freedom, creativity, and learning to find God in the life that’s actually in front of us.

Joshua shares what more than a decade of working with incarcerated men has taught him about belonging, prayer, and the strange freedom that can emerge inside limitation. We talk about writing Psalms in prison, his own journey through grief and addiction, and the idea behind his new book, This Is the Main Event: that we spend so much of our lives waiting for something else to finally begin, when God may already be present in the ordinary, painful, beautiful life we have now.

We also explore why grief may be the doorway back into a fully lived life, why numbing our pain inevitably numbs our joy, and how meaningful lives require risk, responsibility, friendship, and burdens worth carrying.

IN THIS CONVERSATION

• What writing Psalms with incarcerated men reveals about suffering, confession, and belonging
• Why the life you long for may be hidden in the life you already have
• Finding liberation through limitation instead of endlessly trying to escape it
• Why grief is often the doorway back into your actual life
• How anesthetizing sorrow can also anesthetize joy, passion, and wonder
• The difference between freedom as unlimited choice and freedom found through a worthy burden
• Why some of the most meaningful things in life, friendship, art, children, feasting, can also seem “unnecessary”
• How suffering can produce endurance, character, and ultimately hope

ABOUT JOSHUA LUKE SMITH

Joshua Luke Smith is a poet, songwriter, author, and community builder whose work explores faith, creativity, belonging, and what it means to live a fully human life. He is the founder of Orphan No More and The Psalmists, a charity working with incarcerated men through creative expression and spiritual formation. Through poetry workshops rooted in the Psalms, Joshua helps men find language for lament, repentance, hope, and life beyond suffering. His latest book, This Is the Main Event, explores the invitation to stop escaping our lives and discover the sacred hidden within them.

RESOURCES

This Is the Main Event — Joshua Luke Smith
Joshua’s book about learning to inhabit the life you already have.
Buy This Is the Main Event

The Psalmists — Joshua Luke Smith
Joshua’s work with incarcerated men using poetry, the Psalms, creative expression, and spiritual formation.

Orphan No More — Joshua Luke Smith
The wider creative community and organization founded by Joshua.

Text Me - Join the SMS list for occasional thoughts, recommendations, and new work.
https://my.community.com/johnmarkmcmillan
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Join me on Patreon - Bonus conversations, extended episodes, and more from Flirting with Enchantment.

https://www.patreon.com/c/johnmarkmcmillan