Drawing from the writings of Donna and Jamie Winship as well as Amazon Kindle books by yours truly, Graham Landgraff, dual hosts take the notable "deep dive" into the notion of Kingdom of God Identity.

Given the premise that Our Creator knows us by name and has a unique plan to transform our world with His help, they explore the proven steps towards finding the silence in which to hear the Father's voice.

We are in this regard far more than a collection of God's children. Rather we are distinct players in a divine drama who may not even know we have a part to play because we have been trained to be deaf to our calling.

*If is worth noting that the half-hour discussion sinks in better over several listens as we become increasingly better at producing these podcast episodes. There are nuggets for you to gather in the realization that prayer is notably best when it is interactive and our hearing includes acting on what we hear.

Missionary to Mars: A Catholic Prayer Drama

Part Two of Episode One — "Silence": A Reflection with the Shema Council

The spacecraft has gone quiet. The engines have shut down. Marisol Reyes is in Mars orbit — and something she didn't plan for happened during those four minutes of fire.

In Part Two of Episode One, we step outside the drama to examine what it just showed us.

The Shema Council — a company of voices drawn from Scripture, Church history, and the tradition of conversational prayer — gathers around three moments from Marisol's story: the prayer she whispered without knowing it was one, the silence that felt like abandonment but may have been invitation, and her commander's challenge that set faith against competence as if the two were strangers.

Frank Laubach, Madame Guyon, Brother Lawrence, George Müller, John of the Cross, Andrew Murray — these are not names dropped for credibility. They are witnesses. Each of them arrived, by a different road, at the same discovery: that God speaks continuously, that the interior life is simply the discipline of learning to hear what has always been said, and that the stripping away of familiar spiritual supports is not a punishment. It is the gift underneath the gift.

The reflections are followed by three questions — not rhetorical ones. Ones with edges. Ones designed to locate, in the ordinary geography of your week, the exact lines Marisol is navigating sixty-three million kilometers from home.

This is not commentary on a story. It is the story continuing — in you.

For those who recognize the room she is standing in.

Support the show

Patreon.com/Missionary_To_Mars

Missionary To Mars — Episode One: "Silence"

An Audio Drama for Spiritual Formation | Runtime: Approx. 45 minutes

Sixty-three million kilometers from Earth, with no margin for error and four minutes to live or die by her own calculations, mission specialist Marisol Reyes discovers that the prayer she's practiced for thirty years may not be prayer at all.

Red Desert is not science fiction. It is a desert story — the oldest kind. Like the fourth-century monastics who walked into the Egyptian wilderness until only God remained, Marisol has been placed somewhere the familiar supports no longer reach: no parish, no schedule, no comfortable noise to fill the silence she's been quietly avoiding. What happens in that silence — and in one unscripted moment of surrender at engine ignition — is the subject of everything that follows.

In Part One, hear the drama unfold aboard the spacecraft Ares VI as orbital insertion forces a crisis that strips away technique and leaves only the real thing underneath. In Part Two, the Shema Council — drawing from Frank Laubach, Madame Guyon, Thomas Kelly, George Müller, and the Desert Fathers — reflects on what Marisol encountered, why the dryness is not God's absence, and why Park Jin's challenge ("your invisible friend didn't write those equations") may be the most theologically honest line in the script.

Both parts close with a practice — not a suggestion. An invitation to sit in what Marisol is learning to sit in.

Bring your silence. Bring your trying. That's enough to begin.

Support the show

Patreon.com/Missionary_To_Mars