Author Lisa Colon Delay explores early Christian desert elders, monastic roots, and practical spirituality for today’s world.
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Explore the fascinating world of the desert elders with Lisa Colón DeLay, uncovering their history, practices, and relevance today. Learn about early Christian asceticism, forgotten female leaders, and spiritual practices that can inspire modern life.
Lisa Colón DeLay is a repeat guest on Compass. We previously talked to her about her book “The Wild Land Within” which is about cultivating wholeness and healing through spiritual practices. She has now released “The Way of The Desert Elders”. Lisa is a coach in spiritual formation and creates products and resources related to spiritual formation. Since 2015, she has produced the Spark My Muse podcast featuring luminaries, authors, and her own work.
Episode Notes:
Find out more about Lisa Colón DeLay and the desert elders at Lisa's website.
Excited about the video game? Take a step back in time with Desert Pilgrim Quest.
Explore the YouTube channel for episodes of the Spark My Muse podcast and more for Lisa.
In this episode:
00:00 Introduction to the Desert Elders
02:31 Christian Nationalism and Its Impact
05:44 The Reaction of the Desert Elders
09:14 Life in the Desert: Community and Mentorship
12:40 Transformation Stories of the Desert Elders
16:48 Modern Applications of Desert Wisdom
19:37 The Video Game: A New Pilgrimage Experience
23:12 Further Reading and Resources
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This episode posted on May 13, 2026
Episode Transcript:
Ryan Dunn (00:00)
What can ancient hermits teach us about Christian nationalism? We're talking about the desert elders with Lisa Colon DeLay on Compass.
Welcome back to Compass Finding Spirituality in the everyday, my name is Ryan Dunn. In this episode I spoke with Lisa Colon DeLay. We had an exploration of the fascinating and often overlooked world of the desert elders. This is a movement within early Christianity which is marked by radical simplicity, renunciation, and spiritual depth. You'll hear who these desert mothers and fathers were.
what motivated thousands to leave behind wealth, power, and societal expectations to seek wisdom in the deserts, and why their stories are deeply relevant today. You can find out more about forgotten female leaders, rigorous aesthetic practices, and the ways in which the desert elders' still shape spiritual practices around the world now. Lisa Colon DeLay
is a repeat guest here on Compass. We've previously talked to her about her book The Wild Land Within, which is about cultivating wholeness and healing through spiritual practices. She's now released The Way of the Desert Elders, which we're going to learn all about in this episode. Lisa is a coach in spiritual formation and creates lots of related products and resources. And since 2015, she's produced the Spark My Muse podcast featuring luminaries,
authors and her own work. If conversations like this are meaningful for you, go ahead and hit the like and subscribe buttons wherever it is that you're listening to this podcast. appreciate it. Now let's get to talking about ancient aesthetics with Lisa Colon DeLay.
Ryan Dunn (01:58)
Lisa, welcome back to the Compass podcast. It's so nice to see you again and great to be able to talk about something that I've been curious about, but haven't been able to find a ton of information about. So I want to set the table for our listener a little bit. Can you tell us a little bit about who the desert elders were?
Lisa Colón DeLay (02:18)
Absolutely. And first I'll just say thank you so much, Ryan, for your interest and it's nice to be with you again. Yeah, the Desert Elders are this, it's a whole movement of Christianity I knew extremely little about. ⁓ A lot of forgotten voices in our ancestry, in our Christian ancestry, and a lot of forgotten female leaders as well. And ⁓ it was kind of like a whole...
Ryan Dunn (02:21)
You bet.
Lisa Colón DeLay (02:45)
side quest, I guess you could say. was an entire ⁓ new world that sort of opened up to me. ⁓ when I was writing my first book and I was learning about a vagrius, this desert hermit, I thought, he's not actually, he's a hermit, but there's a whole community supporting him. And that's not just the community. There's all these essentially cities in the desert that sprung up. I thought, you know, what, up to a half a million people leave their villages and cities for the desert.
Ryan Dunn (03:02)
Hmm.
Lisa Colón DeLay (03:15)
We should know about that in Christian history. Why did it happen and what can we learn from them? And so it's been a really intriguing ride.
Ryan Dunn (03:17)
Yeah.
Yeah. You noted in the beginning of the book that some of the situations or societal conditions that the elders were reacting to are present in our own day. What might be some of those aspects that we would identify with?
Lisa Colón DeLay (03:41)
Yeah, it's the first instance of Christian nationalism, which is really interesting. So Christianity goes from being this religion or really a walk of faith that follows Jesus. It's people of the way, the way of Jesus. And the Roman Empire does everything they can to kill off this group. just slaughter after slaughter, crucifixion after crucifixion. There's 300 years of all kinds of martyrdom.
Ryan Dunn (03:45)
Mmm.
Lisa Colón DeLay (04:10)
and all kinds of ⁓ persecution. And then they decided, well, if we can't beat them, let's just join them. Let's co-op this and take it for ourselves and assume power. And a huge shift happened. And we still live under these kinds of influences today and how we view ⁓ sin and punishment and justice. This all comes from empire Christianity, not the way of Jesus, not the sermon on the Mount.
Ryan Dunn (04:17)
Yeah, co-op. Yep, there it is. Yeah.
Lisa Colón DeLay (04:39)
So we're finding in our country, but also in other places around the world and repeatedly through history, this kind of co-opting of power and authority or state by taking over religion saying you're gonna see it this way. We're gonna do government this way with this God and you're gonna have to fall in line. And so it switches it around from being a kind of faith that's related to Jesus to something that's. ⁓
centered around domination and power.
Ryan Dunn (05:09)
All right. And so what did then the desert elders do? What was their reaction?
Lisa Colón DeLay (05:14)
They just got the heck out of there. Now some of them actually sort of reformed and did things like simplifying their way of life. We see this in ascetic practices within Rome itself and these house churches that were there, some of them began their own little communities where they'd give up their wealth, they'd free their slaves. You some of them had hundreds and hundreds of slaves and they would just start doing things in a simple devoted way.
Ryan Dunn (05:16)
All right.
Lisa Colón DeLay (05:43)
without looking to the powers that be for luxury and privilege and all these kind of cushy situations that start to arrive on the scene. If you're wealthy in this period of time as things are changing, you don't want your son to go into the military. You want him to go into the priesthood and you kind of buy your way in and you wind up influencing it. And then it really starts to switch the kind of leadership you see in the highest places in the church.
And also Constantine tried to get all the Christians on the same page. So let's do the creeds, let's decide what we actually believe. And anybody who doesn't believe outside of this thing, they're out, you know, or we might wind up killing them. And so, yeah, what the desert elders did, but also a lot of people in that period that were devoted, that really cared about the way of Jesus, they decided, well, let's do what Jesus did and John the Baptist and some of the prophets and let's
⁓ give everything up, let's renounce that. And this is the first instance of monasteries and monastic practice. It's what's considered a protomonastic period that wound up influencing the medieval period in an extreme way when ⁓ Rome breaks down. The only real stable centers a lot of times were monasteries, and this is where we have the beginnings of universities too.
Ryan Dunn (07:10)
Okay, all right, so they kind of left the society behind in a way or at least retreated from it I mean, there's still a sense of society and that they are a community. We're out in this space What were they doing out there in the desert?
Lisa Colón DeLay (07:15)
Mm-hmm.
Yes.
They were being mentored by the mothers and fathers, by the spiritual mothers and fathers who would walk with them, give them lessons. They would learn how to be in community together. After decades and decades of living in community, they'd sort of be given permission to go out and be hermits in these sort of utterly desolate places and these little huts. But then they would have, ⁓ they needed to be supported by the community. These people would come back on Sundays and Saturdays. They would fellowship together and do.
the liturgy, the divine liturgy, and break bread together. And so even though they were set apart in many ways in silence and prayer and fasting a lot of times, then they would come back and be in community again. they started this whole new way of life of being together. of course, we all know that when you're even in a family situation, living together is not always easy. They had a rule of life that would help them know when are our
Ryan Dunn (08:17)
Mm-hmm.
Lisa Colón DeLay (08:21)
hours of the day that we work or pray or how do we solve disputes? And they were also in strict obedience to the father or the mother of that community. In the female communities there was an Amma or a mother and in the male communities there was a father. And you gave up everything, you gave up whatever wealth you had for the good of everyone and you walked in the ways of Jesus.
Ryan Dunn (08:48)
So some people came from modest backgrounds, but other people were really kind of, they were a part of the system and rejected it. ⁓ Can you tell us about some of those folks?
Lisa Colón DeLay (08:51)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, well lot of the, particularly the women we find out ⁓ who gave up their wealth, tremendous wealth, some aristocracy sometimes of Rome and other countries as well, they would ⁓ give it all up, but also to build communities and to help the sick, help the poor, and also visitors were always welcome and so there was enough money to buy food or necessities for visitors that came by. It was very important hospitality that you were.
entertaining in that type of way, but caring for people that would come in as if it was Jesus himself. And so both men and women, ⁓ plenty of them gave up everything and came there and gave it up for the group. They went poor doing it and accepting this new way of life. And also it was celibacy as well. And so this was giving up your chance at a legacy of, ⁓ you'd have a spiritual legacy perhaps, but you wouldn't have a
necessarily have children. Some came after they had children and some of course never married.
Ryan Dunn (10:04)
Hmm.
Yeah. What inspired you to write about this at this time? you looking to kind of kickstart a new desert aesthetic movement? Okay.
Lisa Colón DeLay (10:12)
Yeah. A little bit.
Like when I think about it, I don't want to have that life. I would be one of those people and hundreds of thousands of people did this. They would go to the desert and visit or they'd stay for a few weeks or a few months. I don't know if I could handle that. So I'm not saying, hey, everybody, let's do the desert. That sounds fun. But I do want us to be inspired by their wisdom and their stories. And because I didn't
Ryan Dunn (10:34)
Right.
Lisa Colón DeLay (10:42)
ever really know about this group of people and their stories were forgotten, their wisdom was unknown to me. That inspired me as I started learning about all these different people. There was the crime boss that came out to the desert and changed his way of life. There was the woman who ⁓ paid her way to the Holy Land through sexual favors. And she's ⁓ trying to seduce pilgrims along the way, not a Jesus follower, just kind of.
Ryan Dunn (11:09)
Mm.
Lisa Colón DeLay (11:10)
taking advantage
of people. She changes her whole life. And just these kind of stunning and inspiring stories drew me in. And I thought, I want to share this. I feel like their stories have been forgotten.
Ryan Dunn (11:21)
So was Avigrius kind of your entry point? Was that your aha moment of like, I just really want to know more about this.
Lisa Colón DeLay (11:25)
I can't.
Well, Avagras was such a fascinating character because he's kind of doing genius level psychology work, know, eons before psychology was a field, but he really, by his own ⁓ empathy and his own experiences and then really being a good noticer and helping people along the way, he's a very, very educated man and he has a lot of students and he notices there's these eight or nine things that everybody falls into. It's just because we're human beings.
Ryan Dunn (11:35)
Mmm, yeah.
Lisa Colón DeLay (11:56)
It's not to put anybody into a shame spiral, but it's to kind of do this preventative spiritual medicine. I was super inspired by him from my first book. And then I found out his backstory and he ⁓ changes his whole life because of a spiritual mother. And I thought, I didn't know that. There's so much more to his story and there are so many people that he influenced. And it totally was like a gateway guy into the whole era.
Ryan Dunn (12:24)
So is there one now as you look through I guess the catalog of different desert elders who you've discovered that ⁓ you feel a kinship with or admire?
Lisa Colón DeLay (12:32)
Mm-hmm.
⁓
yeah, and it's hard to pick. It's like, you you can't ask someone to pick their favorite kid or something that maybe shouldn't happen. But I have a deep respect and admiration for Alma Sinclairica, Alma Theodora, Alma Matrona, the women who have been left out often. But also, Alma Moses is probably my sentimental favorite because he goes through this... ⁓
Ryan Dunn (12:40)
Sure.
Okay, yeah.
That's the crime boss guy. Okay.
Lisa Colón DeLay (13:01)
a very violent, angry person. And he had some real trauma that that would be, you would understand why that would happen, but he really doubled down. He was a bad, bad, bad dude. But I think because he fought against all of the vices, all the nine vices, and had to work for decades and decades and went into service to the brothers, he would wind up staying up all night and walking out to the cistern to get water and refill the...
the jars of his brothers who were sleeping in order to humble himself and really take on the character of Christ and become this completely transformed pacifist in the end.
Ryan Dunn (13:43)
Yeah. And it's a funny paradox to think about because as you paint the picture, you compare them to somebody who might be built like a professional wrestler. And here's this person who's waking up before everybody else to go haul the water out.
Lisa Colón DeLay (13:51)
Huge. Right,
right. He is such a big dude that ⁓ there's a story about him that some people tried to rob, some men tried to come and ransack the monastery where he was and he captures them, throws four of them over his back and carries them to his spiritual father and says, what do I do with these guys? And meanwhile, he's subdued.
tied up and subdued for men. And his spiritual father says, let him go. And he goes, OK. And his obedience and his ⁓ kindness to them, they're completely blown away. And they realize, we know who you are. You were our boss back in the day. And why haven't you decided to just rip us limb for limb? They're so stunned by this reversal that they also become part of the community too.
Ryan Dunn (14:48)
Well, how did you go about the research of this book? I had mentioned before that it's really tough to find information on these people because I don't think they were recording a whole lot, were they?
Lisa Colón DeLay (15:00)
in terms of like their histories and things like that.
Ryan Dunn (15:02)
I mean, they themselves weren't weren't writing tomes to pass down.
Lisa Colón DeLay (15:06)
Right, right.
Yeah, what we have are a lot of sayings that were just passed down orally for a while. Also the thing I really was impressed by was that my Protestant tradition doesn't really value them or revere them, but the Coptic Christians, the Egyptian Christians, the Orthodox Christians, Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox, these are their heroes.
They have feast days for them and they celebrate them and they know about them. Their liturgy and church refers to them and ⁓ some of their prayers that were written are prayed throughout the services and things like that. really on other parts of the world, they're their ancestors that they actually claim. And so that's where I found the most material you could say that sort of just looking in that direction, instead of my own tradition basically.
was really, really helped by Phoebe Farag-McKeel, who's a Coptic Christian. lives in New Jersey, but she's Egyptian. And she really was able to kind of add, when she read an early version, add the tweaks that were needed to understand things in a culturally appropriate way. Like she mentioned to me, this is something I would have not realized. think of, there's us Western Christians and Protestantism and Catholicism. Then there's these Eastern Christians. But she would say,
There are Eastern Orthodox Christians, but there are Oriental Orthodox Christians. And Oriental Orthodox Christians tend to be people who are not white. But Eastern Orthodox Christians tend to be people who are white. Well, I would have never known this. This is a really great insight. And ⁓ kind of embracing that side of our Christian tradition that goes all the way far back. Her tradition goes back to Mark founding their church in Egypt in like 45.
Ryan Dunn (16:36)
Mm-hmm.
Mm.
Lisa Colón DeLay (17:01)
pretty early on. ⁓ And so that's really what I was looking to draw from. it opened my eyes to this kind of neglected historical era in Christianity. tend to focus in Protestantism anyway. We tend to focus on like the last 500 years of Christianity.
Ryan Dunn (17:02)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah. And we tend to think that the way that we're doing it here in the U.S. is the way that's kind of been handed down over the centuries, right? we it's sometimes a wake up call to realize, well, there are these other limbs of the family tree. Were you aware of those other limbs before this process? Or was this process in researching about the desert elders a way of
Lisa Colón DeLay (17:26)
Right. Right.
Mm-hmm.
Ryan Dunn (17:47)
becoming aware of some of those other limbs.
Lisa Colón DeLay (17:48)
Yeah,
very much both of those answers. I was aware of Eastern ⁓ Christianity to a degree. I really enjoy reading the Church Fathers, like in my own research, reading the early Church Fathers. And then a whole world did open up to me, especially when I have a friendship with someone who's Coptic Christian. And that really makes a huge difference, you know, who...
Ryan Dunn (18:08)
Hmm.
Lisa Colón DeLay (18:11)
who is influencing you and who's saying, well, read this book and read this book, books that would never kind of come in my algorithm, you could say. they kind of, it really opens your eyes. And these are our brothers and sisters in Christ. This is not some errant group that, they're just very early on. And we are a split of a split of a split of a split down the tree of Christianity. But ⁓ yeah, we have a lot to learn.
Ryan Dunn (18:19)
Right.
So are there ⁓ certain practices that you discovered the ⁓ desert elders utilizing that you see being practiced today or maybe you've even brought into your own life?
Lisa Colón DeLay (18:56)
Yeah, and I really love that question because it's kind of like we can talk about these ancient people and it can be like these fun stories, but like what impact does it have in real day to day life for us? I really do hope.
Ryan Dunn (19:07)
Right, yeah, I think we can both admit that we're not
gonna pack things up and go to the desert, but that doesn't mean that we don't have anything to learn here, right? So, yeah.
Lisa Colón DeLay (19:13)
Right, right. So what should we do? Right. And
I think it's important to mention two major two things is that there are people still practicing this in this exact locations that I reference in the book. You can go to Abba Moses ⁓ monastery and there are people there who are monks. It was broken up in history. Sometimes these communities were raided. Everybody was run off. And then they
Ryan Dunn (19:24)
Really? ⁓
Lisa Colón DeLay (19:38)
come back eventually they'd rebuild and this has happened over and over and over especially with Islamic the Islamic religion moving through and kind of taking over but then they would sort of push back and there's been this thing going on for a really long time so and then there's monastics all over the world today living in these very simple practices with these stillness silence and solitude me being these pillars of their spiritual life and I for myself and I hope that other people
⁓ I sense that people are thinking, you know, maybe we should unplug a little more. Maybe we should simplify. Maybe we should divest of ⁓ power in these sort of worldly ways. And I think it draws us into certain practices, perhaps fasting, perhaps renunciation, cultivating inner stillness and silence and solitude in our own ways that kind of are inspired by the desert and
Ryan Dunn (20:13)
Mm.
Lisa Colón DeLay (20:35)
kind of taking our cues from them and reading their wisdom, how do we do it? And they have specific information for us about it. I think those are all things I'm trying to do personally because I do just like a lot of people, I do the doom scrolling when I'm in a bad way. I don't wanna be malformed spiritually by all these cultural influences that wind up affecting me. And I really look to the desert.
Ryan Dunn (20:53)
Mmm, yeah.
Lisa Colón DeLay (21:05)
that spirituality and the wisdom of the mothers and fathers to kind of inform how I want to live my life and my own rule of life that I've crafted and then wind up updating every six months or a year.
Ryan Dunn (21:20)
I think part of their practice was the pilgrimage of going out into this space. And I think ⁓ there's a novel way that you've kind of come about to invite us into that practice of pilgrimage as well with the video game that ⁓ is, I guess, yeah. ⁓
Lisa Colón DeLay (21:37)
Surprise.
Yeah. Yeah, right.
Ryan Dunn (21:44)
a side part of all of this. Like we're
invited into the story of that. ⁓ Can you tell us about the video game, it came about?
Lisa Colón DeLay (21:50)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, you know, this is funny. Nobody ever asks about this, and no one really... Have you tried it at all? Did you give it a try? Okay.
Ryan Dunn (21:57)
Yeah, yes. So for me, it
was very reminiscent of if people are into video games like the Knights of the Old Republic Star Wars games, like this kind of RPG turn-based. ⁓
Lisa Colón DeLay (22:08)
yeah. gosh, right, right.
Now, what happened was, how this happened was, I turned in the manuscript, but I wanted people to kind of be invited to come into a whole other world. you know, the graphics aren't like, it's not, it was a shoestring couple hundred dollar thing I did. And I really do, if people wanted me to develop it more, I'd have to do like a fundraising round or something like that.
But the whole idea was like, what would it be like to kind of take a walk and look for them? Like you're supposed to look for a vagreus and then you wind up finding Athanasius and Alexandria and you kind of, and it's very slow. It's supposed to kind of slow you down, slow your roll. And then just get interested in the time period and the aesthetic of the desert and looking for a vagreus and finding his wisdom. And it would be super fun. I kind of just dug into this as a way to
Ryan Dunn (22:44)
Yeah.
Lisa Colón DeLay (23:06)
I edits to do and stuff. So I thought, well, this could be fun. But honestly, don't hear too many people that too many people have tried it. And then you can extend your play by putting in your email address. And it's not supposed to be spammy or anything like that. But I hope that people enjoy it more. It's a little, yeah. And it's really kind of, it slows you down. So if people go to desert.lisadelay.com.
Ryan Dunn (23:09)
Hahaha
Okay, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it's a little long to do in one sitting, but yeah.
Lisa Colón DeLay (23:35)
you can try it and see if you like it and let me know. And there's another thing I hope that people do, which is like match yourself to an elder, almost like those old time Cosmo or Buzzfeed matches, like which Disney princess are you? would be like, which elder would you be well matched with? And so there's questions, there's like six or seven questions and sort of about your personal needs and your spiritual goals and things like that and personality. And then as you answer that, get
paired with somebody and then I can send you additional information if you're interested in going beyond that. And I have also a devotional that includes some of their wisdom and some things to reflect on too. So I'm kind of trying to draw people into even being mentored by someone who's a forebearer and getting people into this idea of having a spiritual mother or father, someone you can trust and that will companion with you.
⁓ Even though these people aren't alive, they can still sort of companion us. But I also am a firm believer in getting a spiritual director or a trusted spiritual friend who's trained who can just walk with you. ⁓ Because I think a lot of church is very programmatic and event-based. It's not necessarily life-to-life based. We kind of come together for events and then we kind of go back to our lives and that sort of thing.
Ryan Dunn (24:57)
Yeah, see you Sunday
morning. Yeah.
Lisa Colón DeLay (24:58)
Yeah,
hi, nice to meet you. a good day. But then, it sort of a little disappear from each other's lives sometimes. And so, what's nice about these ideas of companionship, spiritual companionship is that you know someone always has your back and you can go to them, you know, maybe once a month or twice a month. And I want the desert elders to kind of play a part in that too.
Ryan Dunn (25:20)
Hmm. Did you go through your own exercise? Did you get paired up with somebody? Was it surprising to you?
Lisa Colón DeLay (25:26)
I pretty much am like a Moses disciple. Yeah, I'm just like totally a fangirl of Moses. So yeah, I can't shake him. He's just so beautiful. He's such a beautiful soul. And he's so...
Ryan Dunn (25:30)
Okay, alright.
Lisa Colón DeLay (25:45)
Like he doesn't let stuff bother him and he doesn't get rattled and he's so humble. So people would, there's another story, I'm not sure if this made it in, but there were dignitaries that went to see him because his reputation is just going far and wide. People would come see him and just go back to where they're from and just talk about him. So dignitaries come to see him and they are not sure it's him. And they say, can you help us find Moses? And he goes, that fool, you're not gonna find him around here. So they're like,
okay and they go back and they said we couldn't find him. And it's like that was him. He doesn't want to really advise you. Like he's pretty chill, he's very humble, he's not gonna think he has a lot to tell you, he's not gonna be a sage on the stage. He's really different and very, very humble. So it's just him kind of dodging these dignitaries being like, nah, that's all right, not interested.
Ryan Dunn (26:43)
Well, you mentioned being turned on to some new books. there any that stick out to you for somebody that wanted to do further reading?
Lisa Colón DeLay (26:53)
Well, in my opinion, the stuff I list in the back of the book is worth the price of the book, especially if you care it all about digging in deeper because the references that I have in here that I read from and also that are just important works. ⁓ there's things like important works in the back of the book by Mary C. Earle is Desert Mother's Spiritual Practices from the Women of the Wilderness. ⁓ There's ⁓ Henry Carrigan who wrote The Wisdom of the Desert.
Ryan Dunn (26:58)
Okay.
Lisa Colón DeLay (27:22)
fathers and mothers and there's just a whole bunch of listings back here that if you're my book could I hope be the kind of the gateway into that world as well but also what's nice I list them in there too is that reading the original works like some of Avagius's work on prayer and just reading what he had to say and what he would teach that's pretty cool pretty amazing stuff and so I hope people get further interested in the era I have noticed a few other books popping up about them and I hope it's a little bit of a movement toward
Ryan Dunn (27:49)
Okay.
Lisa Colón DeLay (27:52)
being interested in them again.
Ryan Dunn (27:54)
Very good. And for folks who want to know a little bit more about you and your work, you've mentioned the website once, but is there kind of a catch-all website to reach out to you?
Lisa Colón DeLay (28:01)
Yeah.
Yeah. So the desert website is desert.lisadelay.com. Lisadelay.com is my main website and I've done the Spark My News podcast since 2015. You can also find me on Substack and I'm on Instagram a little bit. Just your basic Google of Lisa Colon Delay will get you to plenty of things. Oh, and the other thing I've been doing recently, like the last year, is coming up with videos on YouTube.
and really getting into ⁓ some of the work of David Bentley Hart, who's just a fascinating philosophy of mind and theologian ⁓ kind of guy. there's little things that I've been doing sort of teaching-wise on the YouTubes.
Ryan Dunn (28:44)
Hmm, okay. Philosophy of mind. Tell me about that a little bit.
Lisa Colón DeLay (28:47)
Yeah, it's
ontology. It's kind of like ⁓ the study of being in a way and God, high theism, so the God beyond God's. So the real, the really real and consciousness and reality. Those are kind of things that all sort of trip my trigger. And I really get interested in, ⁓ you know, for me too, I think being a pastor's kid, I've kind of been deconstructing here and there since like seven years old, you know, wondering like, what is...
Ryan Dunn (29:13)
Yeah.
Lisa Colón DeLay (29:16)
what is construct that we're bringing to this, to the truth or to the words of Jesus and what is the essence, what is the really real? ⁓ so all those things kind of get me excited about ⁓ delving into things like consciousness and ⁓ not so much non-dualism but monism. So it's just this idea that there isn't any duality of.
Ryan Dunn (29:18)
Hmm.
Lisa Colón DeLay (29:42)
material and spiritual. There's no such, you know, that's just a false dichotomy. And I kind of appreciated when those barriers have been broken down by somebody as intelligent as David Bentley Hart. I wind up trying to just distill his stuff. It's such a tough slog to get through and just distill it into, okay, here's the bullet points of what this actually means. But ⁓ it's been really interesting. also talking about, he talks about universal reconciliation and ⁓ this idea of ⁓
Ryan Dunn (29:54)
Mm.
Lisa Colón DeLay (30:12)
going against this later idea of eternal conscious torment, which is an add-on later in Christianity. So all that's been really interesting to me. Not sure I'll write a book about it, but it's been stuff I've been kind of toying with and digging into a little deeper.
Ryan Dunn (30:22)
Okay.
Yeah,
and that you can explore on YouTube. yeah, very cool. Very cool. Well, thank you so much for sharing these stories with us and for ⁓ giving us this book and this wisdom from the past. Appreciate it.
Lisa Colón DeLay (30:29)
Right.
Thank you so much for your interest.
Ryan Dunn (30:41)
What are you taking away from this conversation? Are you ready to create a little more space in your life? If you want to check out the game that we talked about or other resources about the Desert Elders, then visit our show notes at umc.org slash compass. Thanks for taking this journey with us. We also want to extend a special thank you to the team at United Methodist Communications who make this whole podcast possible. If you haven't already.
Please take a moment to subscribe, rate, and review Compass on your favorite podcast platform. Helps others find us and join the conversation too. Thanks again for listening. Look forward to journeying with you again next time in a couple of weeks. Peace.
