God In All Things

Andy Otto

This podcast hopes to find God in all things, mulling over questions about God from an Ignatian perspective, reflecting on scripture, and being attentive to how God permeates the moments of our exciting and mundane life.

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20 episodes
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Avg 11 min
English

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September 4 · 13 min
The Terrible, No-Good, Very Bad Week
A convergence of unrelated family crises in a single week raises the question of what it means to feel spiritually attacked. Can we assign blame to an external force for the misfortunes of life? There is a way to experience suffering honestly without collapsing into negativity or denial.
August 10 · 10 min
On the Heels of Love
The Spanish verb Ignatius used in the Contemplatio, alcanzar, means not "to attain" but "to catch up to," revealing the exercise as an invitation to close a distance rather than reach a static goal. Because God has already been moving toward humanity in love, prayer becomes the act of running to catch up with a closeness that was in motion long before it was noticed.
July 27 · 7 min
What Ignatius Actually Meant by Indifference
Ignatian indifference is not apathy or the absence of desire, but a hard-won freedom to hold even our deepest, most genuine desires loosely enough to trust God's invitation in whatever the moment actually brings. Ignatius did not arrive at this teaching through insight alone; it was forged gradually across Manresa, Jerusalem, Paris, and the Inquisition, each a real disappointment or trial that asked him to trust again.
June 11 · 9 min
The Body Knows: Ignatian Discernment and Felt Sense
The body is not an obstacle to spiritual knowledge but one of its most reliable channels, a truth independently discovered by Ignatius of Loyola on a sickbed and by psychologist Eugene Gendlin in a Chicago laboratory four hundred years later. Ignatian discernment, far from being an intellectual exercise, is grounded in a somatic attentiveness to the interior movements of consolation and desolation that the body registers before the mind can name them.
April 22 · 14 min
Under Whose Flag? – An Ignatian Response to Political Power
The Gospel is inherently political—concerned with how human beings live together, how power is exercised, and who bears its cost—but it is not partisan, and the difference between those two things matters enormously. The Ignatian tradition, from Ignatius's own Two Standards meditation through five centuries of Jesuit witness, offers a framework for engaging political reality not through tribal allegiance but through fidelity to a gospel that consistently finds itself on the side of the poor, the marginalised, and the truth.
March 20 · 15 min
Hope Is Not Optimism
Hope and optimism are not the same thing: optimism is a prediction about outcomes, while hope is an orientation of the spirit that doesn't require a particular future to hold firm. Drawing on Havel, Rahner, Byung-Chul Han, and Ignatian spirituality, this is a reflection on hope as a deliberate choice to remain open to God's future, even in the midst of darkness and uncertainty.
March 4 · 12 min
The Benevolent Glance: A Spirituality of Seeing
We are made for mutual gaze and this fundamental human need points toward something deeper: a God who gazes upon us with love before we get anything right or wrong. To be truly seen by another, and to truly see them, is not merely a social act but a spiritual one, a tangible making-present of divine love in the world.
February 2 · 15 min
Cherished Belonging: Reimagining Sin as Woundedness
What Christianity has called sin can now be named more precisely as trauma, developmental wounds, and disconnection from our true selves—a shift from moral failure to existential brokenness. Greg Boyle's work at Homeboy Industries, grounded in the conviction that there are no bad people but only wounded ones, suggests that redemption means being reminded of our inherent goodness rather than being saved from inherent badness.
January 19 · 10 min
The Wisdom of Holy Mess
The universe operates on a rhythm of order and creative disruption, from the primordial soup to scattered toys on a living room floor. God doesn't sterilize our chaos—whether the playful mess of children at creative play or the painful mess of suffering and brokenness—but enters into it, revealing even disorder as holy ground where grace emerges.
Dec 17, 2025 · 8 min
Lost in the Cloud of Knowing
We live in an age of instant information where every question can be answered with a quick search, but this efficiency kills the wonder that questions are meant to inspire. The spiritual life requires us to be comfortable with mystery and unknowing, trusting that faith lives not in certainty but in the gap between "I don't know" and "yet."
Nov 24, 2025 · 10 min
The Labyrinth, the Race, and the Spirit of Haste
Hastiness reveals the spirit that treats even sacred practices as achievements to be completed rather than journeys to be trusted. The labyrinth teaches us that God's path is inefficient by the world's standards, winding away from the center just when we think we're getting close, requiring patient trust rather than strategic speed.
Nov 10, 2025 · 11 min
Between Opulence and Simplicity: An Ignatian Pilgrimage
On a recent pilgrimage to Spain visiting Ignatian sites, I wrestled with how ornate decoration and costly adornments often obscure St. Ignatius's radical journey from opulence to simplicity. The sacred exists not in elaborate structures but in the simple, authentic presence that connects us to the God who dwells in living stones rather than buildings.
Sep 25, 2025 · 12 min
Political Grief and the False Comfort of Enemies: A Gospel Response to Violence
Charlie Kirk's assassination and the contrasting responses at his memorial service—his widow's radical forgiveness versus calls for political warfare—reveal the collision between authentic Gospel witness and civil religion in American Christianity. Our culture's addiction to immediate mobilisation after tragedy robs us of the contemplative space necessary for genuine transformation, replacing the narrow path of forgiveness with the broad highway of tribal retaliation.
Sep 15, 2025 · 5 min
What Names Reveal: Defence, War, and the Kingdom
The recent proposal to rename the Department of Defense to the Department of War represents more than a simple change in terminology—it reveals a fundamental shift from defensive protection to aggressive warfare as a primary orientation. This linguistic change challenges Christians to examine whether our ultimate trust lies in military might or in the God who calls us to be peacemakers and transforms symbols of violence into instruments of redemption.
Aug 11, 2025 · 6 min
The Spirituality of the Long View
Christian hope is a steady posture of the heart that joins human longing to God’s greater plan. It endures with patience, recognising that the ultimate promise transcends individual lifetimes.
Jun 26, 2025 · 8 min
The Spiritual Neuroscience of Revenge: Choosing Freedom Over Retaliation
Neuroscience research reveals that revenge activates the same reward circuits in our brains as addictive drugs, keeping us trapped in what Ignatian spirituality calls the "false self." Faith-based practices like prayer and meditation literally rewire the brain for mercy over retaliation, offering a path to the spiritual freedom that comes when we choose forgiveness over the ego's demand for revenge.
Jun 9, 2025 · 24 min
Yes, And: How Improv Teaches Radical Acceptance and Love
I recently had a fascinating conversation with Will Dennis, a high school theology teacher and founder of Unscripted Productions, an improv studio dedicated to helping individuals and teams discover their full potential. With a unique background spanning professional theatre, campus ministry, and applied improvisation, Will currently teaches world religions and discernment at Villa Joseph Marie, an all-girls Catholic high school in Pennsylvania. What makes Will's work particularly compelling is his conviction that improv—rooted in radical acceptance and contribution—can genuinely change the world. In our discussion, we explored the profound connections between improvisational theatre and spirituality, particularly through the lens of Ignatian principles like presence, discernment, and finding God in all things. Will shared how improv has become a laboratory for experiencing deep spiritual truths about acceptance, vulnerability, and collaborative co-creation, offering insights that bridge the sacred and the seemingly silly in remarkable ways. Read Will's Substack Unscripted Productions
Apr 29, 2025 · 12 min
Can God Get Offended? – Rethinking Divine Emotions
God's emotional responses are not rooted in ego or woundedness like human resentment, despair, or vengeance. Instead, divine emotions such as righteous anger, sadness, concern, disappointment, and the desire for justice flow from unconditional love and seek the wholeness and restoration of all creation.
Apr 7, 2025 · 8 min
Finding God in the Algorithm: A Non-Dualistic Approach to AI
Western Christianity often approaches artificial intelligence with anxiety rooted in dualistic thinking that separates the spiritual from the material, human from machine. Non-dualistic elements within Christian traditions, particularly Ignatian spirituality, offer a more integrated vision that can help us engage with AI as a potential extension of divine creativity rather than a threat to human uniqueness.
Mar 24, 2025 · 16 min
The First Virtue: St. Ignatius on the Power of Gratitude
Gratitude forms the cornerstone of Ignatian spirituality, establishing the proper relationship between the gift-giver God and humans as recipients rather than takers. This fundamental orientation shapes our entire spiritual life, fostering virtues like humility and generosity whilst providing a powerful antidote to anxiety and negativity.

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