Cross Word

When You Squint Your Eyes, You Can See God

• Michele McAloon • Season 3 • Episode 139

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What happens when God breaks out of the church walls we've confined Him to? Author Philip Martin invites us into this provocative question through his collection of Catholic short stories titled "Ephaphatha" – an Aramaic word meaning "be opened."

Martin weaves together elements of Southern Gothic and magical realism to create stories where divine mercy and justice intersect with everyday life. Drawing from his experience as a Catholic theology teacher, he understands that while truth may be black and white, people are wonderfully complex. This complexity demands more than simple doctrinal statements – it requires stories that speak to the heart.

"Falsehood is not attractive," Martin observes during our conversation. "It might be comfortable, but it's not attractive." This insight drives his storytelling approach, one that recognizes today's young people as "fertile soil" thirsting for authentic truth rather than comfortable lies. Through tales of hands breaking through church walls, mysterious healings, and unexpected divine encounters, Martin creates narrative spaces where readers can experience what happens when God refuses to stay confined to Sunday mornings.

The discussion extends beyond literature to explore the interconnection between truth, beauty, and goodness – transcendental qualities that have traditionally guided Christian understanding of reality. When truth is abandoned, beauty inevitably suffers as well. Conversely, beauty can serve as a powerful pathway back to truth, making aesthetically rich storytelling a particularly effective evangelistic tool in our visually-oriented culture.

Listen now to discover how Catholic fiction speaks to modern hearts and minds through the timeless power of story. Whether you're interested in faith, literature, or simply compelling narratives, this conversation offers fresh perspectives on how stories can transform lives in ways straightforward facts never could.

Michele McAloon:

You're listening to Crossword, where cultural clues lead to the truth of the word, and my name is Michele McAloon, your host. And guess what? I have been a little bit lazy over the last couple weeks because it is summertime and I found myself on the beach reading. What have I been reading? Mostly murder mysteries. So what can I say? Everybody needs a snack every once in a while.

Michele McAloon:

Anyway, today we have a good interview with a young author named Philip Martin, who, incidentally, was also my son's philosophy teacher in high school. So it was really fun to interview him. I've got a couple of great interviews also coming up with Professor Robert George Just finished an interview with John Ferling on the Revolutionary War Shots Heard Around the World, and those will be out in later August, I think. For right now a lot of people are on vacation, a lot of people are reading fiction, so what I will do is the few fiction interviews that I have done, I will re-release those and I hope everybody is having a great summer vacation. I, incidentally, have an article about to come out in Catholic National Register about a hike here in Germany and I believe it is due out this weekend, so hopefully you will get to read that if you so want to, and I will leave a link on my show notes. All right, thanks, have a great summer. Guys Want to find out more about me? Go to my website, bookclues. com. Thanks, god bless.

Phillip Martin:

Thank you so much, Michele. It's a pleasure to be here.

Michele McAloon:

Finally have the opportunity to talk. It's been kind of a long time coming, but I am glad. I don't usually do fiction, I do nonfiction, but I do select fiction, especially of authors that I know and of authors that are good, that I know, and this is a very, very well-written book. Let me tell you a little bit about who Philip Martin is. He's a graduate of both Auburn University and Franciscan University of Steubenville. In 2014, he was awarded second prize in the Tuscany Prize in Catholic Fiction and in 2015, he was awarded first prize in the same competition.

Michele McAloon:

His writing was essential in the making of the documentary film Sign of Contradiction, where he both edited and contributed to the anthology of the same name, both by 4PM Media. His fiction, stories, poetry and nonfiction boasts numerous publications, both online and in print. Phil lives and writes and teaches in beautiful Daphne, alabama, and enjoys spending his free time with his wife and children. And, philip, we are lucky to have you on. Let's talk about your book that you have written, and it has actually the most unusual title of the 200 or so episodes I have done, and it is ephaphatha, is that right?

Phillip Martin:

Ephaphatha, although if you find somebody who speaks great Aramaic, they might say it even better.

Michele McAloon:

Okay, so it's a Greek, aramaic word, and what does it mean?

Phillip Martin:

Yeah, so it comes from Mark's gospel, from Mark, chapter 7, and it means be opened. So it's this really intimate moment where our Lord takes this man off by the hand. It's one of those moments where the crowd wants to see something, they want to see a show or whatever of this deaf man, and so Jesus carries this man off kind of by the hand, intimately, alone, and this is a word that Jesus speaks up to heaven Ephathah, be opened. It's one of the few times where the actual words that were spoken are recorded in Scripture instead of being translated strictly into the Greek. And, yeah, it means be opened, and so, of course, the deaf man is healed.

Phillip Martin:

But, as you can imagine, with a title like Ephathah, what I really want is for our current generation to wake up a little bit to, I guess, the truth of what our Lord wants to tell us, and especially intimately and one-on-one, in an atmosphere of constant noise and division and a lack of grace, where truth is confusing to people or people completely reject truth. These are the basic things that we need to return to People completely reject truth.

Michele McAloon:

These are the basic things that we need to return to. Absolutely it is. It's an anthology, really, of short stories, or a compendium of the short stories that you have written, and the subtitle of the book is Catholic Fiction for Modern Times. Let's kind of break that down a little bit. When we talk about Catholic fiction, what are we talking about? So when we say Catholic fiction, some of the great writers come to mind Flannery O'Connor who else is out there? Jared Hawkins? Yeah, absolutely. How is Catholic fiction different from regular fiction?

Phillip Martin:

Sure, that's a great question, and I took this question not too long ago and I've thought about it ever since. So I think what makes a piece of fiction Catholic fiction? Of course you have to start with the theme. You know, what is the truth that's being communicated here? And this makes me want to go off on a bit of a tangent about how to communicate truth through story or the nature of truth, but I'll kind of table that for just a second.

Phillip Martin:

But the themes in these stories are, I guess, what you would call Catholic themes. That doesn't mean that they're not Christian themes overall. It doesn't mean that they're not basically true themes overall as well. But the themes are the things that you find throughout the Catholic tradition as being of the utmost importance. So, for example, the union of mercy and justice might be a theme that you are going to find in a few of these stories as being the motive factor, and that's obviously a traditionally Christian or Catholic theme.

Phillip Martin:

You know, in our lives, at least for us human beings, we're tempted to either act sometimes with only mercy or with only justice, you know, for example. So like probably when my kids get in trouble and they are wondering which dad is going to show up. Is it going to be the dad of mercy or the dad of justice, you know? Is he going to come down with a hammer and get us in trouble, or is he going to come and say everything's okay and give me a hug? Well, god isn't divided like that, huh, like we might divide ourselves like that, or our personalities into these two camps.

Phillip Martin:

But when God acts, let's say it's an act of punishment which we're all afraid of. But that kind of an action from God isn't just justice raining down, but it's his mercy too, because punishment, if you will, is a formative thing. It's supposed to change us into becoming the person that we're supposed to be. That's why good parents punish their children, and so even these punishments are an act of mercy. They're not just justice or something. So these kinds of themes being endemic in the stories and coming to the surface and reclaiming these basic ideas are what make these stories Catholic fiction. Perhaps, probably there are better people out there. If you could ask Flannery or Connor what she would mean by that, she'd probably give a much more eloquent answer. But I think that's what I would say.

Michele McAloon:

The Catholic fiction. The stories that you have written are sort of interposed on Southern Gothic too. There's no question about it. I mean, you are in the line of a Flannery O'Connor, a Carson McCullough. There's a grittiness about it. There's a grittiness in your details of the reality, of the absurdity of some of the things that we've lived in a daily experience, and your writing shows how God seeps through the cracks of that. It's brilliant.

Phillip Martin:

I was going to say, whose life isn't gritty, like Southern Gothic or these kinds of stories traditionally, that are very over the top or grotesque. Well, isn't that? Every person's life? Our lives are one big theodrama, aren't they, where we? We have, of course, the mundane or the everyday, but then these unexpected things happen that carry us out of ourselves, and that's god's grace in motion. At least that's what flannery connor would say. You know her, her gothic stories or her over the top stories. I wouldn't say my stories are in this vein at all, but thank you for the compliment. But her stories are so over-the-top and you have these crazy situations and these unimaginable things happening, and that's, of course, where God stoops to conquer, huh so, but whose lives aren't like that, like who wants a life where everything is just so, I don't know, flatlined all the time compared to where these, yeah, these things happen that are perhaps over the top, perhaps crazy, perhaps a little bit strange at times, but that's the unexpected life we're supposed to live.

Michele McAloon:

Well, Philip Martin, that is not true. What is the one with the hand that comes out of the church? I'm sorry.

Phillip Martin:

Oh yeah, tohu Vobohu, that's another, that's one I can't really pronounce very well myself.

Michele McAloon:

What does that mean? What does that?

Phillip Martin:

mean Formless and void. So it's back to the book of Genesis, where the world was formless and void. And I was inspired to write this story because in some news cycle years and years and years ago, I just remember how emphasized it was that, okay, the church, christians, catholics you need to keep your faith. That's something that's reserved for an hour on a Sunday morning, but the real world is out here. You know, from 9 am Sunday morning to 8 am the next Sunday morning, you get that one hour. And if you're going to have these ideas or these opinions or if you're going to call it truth, whatever, just kind of keep it within the walls of that building. But once you come out, here's the real world and people are different, they have different opinions and people are complex and all these things. So you know, just kind of keep your faith bottled up inside of one building. And so I don't know if we can give away what happens in the story and that's totally fine.

Phillip Martin:

But you know, the idea is that God is trying to break out of this building and the people themselves don't even want that to happen. They want him stuck inside. Let's be honest, like even myself, you know when I go to church and when I pray, do I really want God to change me that much? You know like it's not comfortable. We'd rather probably kind of keep God in there and kind of leave my heart kind of the way that it is. I don't really want to change that much because I'm really comfortable the way that I am. But if God can just change one person, you know, that's all he needs and all we need to see. That is the example of the lives of the saints, right? How? Just pick one soul? God can. Just that one person, you know. Then the rest is history and big things can happen.

Michele McAloon:

Absolutely, absolutely. I always tell people there's two things that Christ is not cuddly, he's a hard man, was a hard man, I mean he is not warm and cuddly. He is a demanding, very demanding, and God is too. God is more complicated and more intrusive in our lives than we want him to be, and he has to be he's inconvenient. Yeah, he's inconvenient for us.

Phillip Martin:

Aslan is not a tank lion. That's what CS Lewis said, huh.

Michele McAloon:

Wow, yeah, in these stories you really kind of nail the you do because you squint your eyes. And I had a woman tell me one time if you squint your eyes you can see God, but you have to squint real hard. And in these stories you see how people are reacting to things that are bigger than themselves, but also how does that mercy and justice play out in their lives. And the stories are very charming the priest who has to write his bishop because something crazy happened in his church, right.

Phillip Martin:

That's right. That's right. Well, you touched on something there about people's lives, and truth, if you will, is very black and white. Right, something's true or it's not. It's very simple. A computer can tell us that. Right, it's very simple, it's black and white. Something's right or it's not. It's very simple, like a computer can tell us that. Right, it's very simple, it's black and white. Something's right or it's not. Something's true or it's false. Something's moral or it's immoral, something's good or it's evil, and in that case it's very simple.

Phillip Martin:

We like to say modern things like my truth, your truth, our truth, don't let your truth invade my space, or whatever. But people are very complex, aren't they? If we're going to change people, it's not just going to be here's the truth, here's a computer printout of a list of the true things and a computer printout of the list of the false things. Now, here you should be changed. Now, you know, like I said, we can just run people through AI or something and they're just going to be printed out.

Phillip Martin:

On the other side, completely different, people are very complex and I think that in stories, that's where truth that's black and white and the complexity of people really overlaps the way that we're going to change people and the way that I'm going to be changed is just in little bits.

Phillip Martin:

Every person is an amalgamation of our circumstances, the way we were raised, the things that we've seen, the choices we've made, the consequences of those choices, the things that have happened to us, that we didn't choose to happen to us, the things that happened that you know, like I said, are a result of our own free wills. But I think in stories, this is where we can kind of begin to move people, because we put ourselves in the stories, don't we? We can kind of begin to move people because we put ourselves in the stories, don't we? And traditionally, it's people who are not favorable to Christianity or not favorable to truth who have been winning culturally. But I do feel like in recent years there's been a bit of a pushback on that, especially as maybe Christian storytellers get better, we're able to kind of reclaim our heritage of being the ultimate storytellers, of course, beginning with the Bible, but all the way through to today.

Michele McAloon:

Christ taught in parables and parables were stories. They had grains of truth that people culturally recognized.

Michele McAloon:

And they could identify with that truth. So I mean the storytelling part, excellence, belongs so squarely on the Catholic tradition. It's good to see young writers. I think we're in another golden age of Catholic writing now and you see a lot of the new magazines. You see a lot of the new publishing houses journals I want to say not magazines coming out, different forms of storytelling through podcasting and videos and stuff like that, and I think we are seeing the fruit of getting this message out as we see the pews crowd up a little bit in the United States and people I know as a canon lawyer I am writing key annulment case after annulment case as people come into the church and that's a good thing, not complaining folks about that. We see a church that I think is healthier because of writers like you and of the arts.

Phillip Martin:

Yeah, you're right that these things belong in our tradition and we have to reclaim them. Our Lord was the master storyteller. You mentioned him being a storyteller. You know, I'm thinking of the parable of the prodigal son. He could have just said hey, listen up everyone. God is merciful. If you sin, just come on back, don't be jealous of your friends who come on back, or whatever. Like he could have just listed out these truth statements and just got straight to the point. But he doesn't. You know, he tells this story and that allows it not only to be remembered or makes it memorable, but there's something about that that kind of latches into the heart, especially, as you mentioned it, with the cultural elements of the day. We have to do the same thing today.

Michele McAloon:

That's about getting the message out, about getting the good news out, is how do we do it? How do we amalgamate ourselves in human culture? And I think that is that's really true when you're writing these stories. Where did you get some of these inspiration for some of these stories? Because some of them are are pretty wild. They border on kind of a magical realism. A couple of them do. This would be great summer reading. I'm going to talk to the audience here for just a minute because it is. It's not a hard read and the stories read very quickly, but they're kind of all over the map. We just talked about Southern Gothic, we're talking a little bit about magical realism, so it has a lot of variety in it. But where did you get some of the inspiration for these stories?

Phillip Martin:

Yeah, I can tell you where it started. So when I was in graduate school for theology, I remember I was in a class called sacraments and for your audience, who don't understand necessarily the meaning of that word, traditionally when we say the word sacraments we're talking about like the sacraments of the church, like baptism, for example, but that word like with a lowercase s, the word sacramental, you might mean like a sign or something symbolic or something communicating something much more deeply. So this class was, although it was about the sacraments in a biblical sense or a theological sense, it was also about being sacramental, or learning to see things sacramentally, or looking along the things of this world to find their truth in God. And so I just remember in this class, while I was sitting there, while I should have been taking notes probably, I just remember the things the professor was saying were being translated through my mind in characters and in plots and in scenes and in stories, and so I remember just jotting in the margins things about this or that or whatever, and that was the beginnings of some of my I guess some of my earlier stories that you see in there.

Phillip Martin:

But you said that you've kind of moved more to nonfiction, even once you're a fiction writer, do you still have an itch to tell a story? Do you still see stories? Wherever you are, my little Colonel, someone will say something and you'll think that can't be true. But like what if we carry that out to its logical end? Okay, you're saying X. Okay, well, let's, let's carry that all the way to Z, and and see what happens, and then you can imagine some scene or scenario in your mind. Okay, if this person's saying this is true, then that must mean this is true over here, and, and then it means this apocalypse is going to play out or whatever. So, yeah, I do hope to write more and more. For sure, and those things do pop up from time to time and I tend to write them down. But the story that I'm writing right now is the story of my family with many small children whom I love very much, so their stories are most important to me. So when I get more and more time.

Phillip Martin:

yes, I'm going to be writing more and more and more, but we can't forget that our lives are stories too.

Michele McAloon:

Yes, they absolutely are. Now you kind of live a story though, Philip, because you are a theology teacher in a Catholic high school. So for people who didn't go to Catholic high school, or maybe not even Catholic, what does a theology teacher in a Catholic high school do?

Phillip Martin:

That's a great question. So it really starts probably even bigger than that like what's a Catholic school? And probably there are a lot of Catholic schools out there that will say so-and-so Catholic school, but they're the same as every other school. So that would be a shame, except maybe they have like a crucifix on the wall or something similar, and that would be a shame.

Phillip Martin:

A Catholic school, I think, has to begin with an anthropology. So it has to begin with asking the question like what is the human person? What is a man, what is a woman? What is a young man? What is a young woman? What are they coming into? What's our purpose here? And of course, we can't answer those questions without a reference to God himself. I think it was the Second Vatican Council that said something like when God is forgotten, the human creature becomes unintelligible. So, in other words, god is. We forget who we are, and that's going to destroy our anthropology. So that just leaves us looking in the mirror thinking who am I? You know, without any reference to the outside world. It's like speaking into an echo chamber and hearing things back and just affirming it to ourselves.

Phillip Martin:

So it has to begin with that anthropology. Okay, so who are we in the eyes of God. Okay, we're God's sons and daughters. We have to begin there. So what is the purpose of education?

Phillip Martin:

Okay, the purpose of education is back to its Latin root, which means to lead out right, to lead out of the darkness of ignorance into truth, and so a Catholic school ought to be a very formative thing in these very formative years for our young people. So it's not. Education isn't about necessarily inculcating a list of facts that can be found on Wikipedia, you know, like young people say all the time I can find this online. Why do I need to know this? Or whatever. I can just ask chat GPT, you know. Well, I'm not here to like to form chat GPT like I'm here to form you, you know.

Phillip Martin:

And so it has to begin there with this formative understanding that our young people yeah, they need to be formed in the positive direction so that God's grace can build on their nature. That's kind of where to begin. So, in a Catholic high school, in a theology class, a theology formation or formative theology class, of course, is going to inculcate in our young people not only the truths of the faith but also a desire to know more. It's also going to take advantage of the fact that they're there and perhaps lead them closer into the heart of who Christ is, primarily through an educational environment. And the school, being a formative institution, should have more elements as well that draw people deeper into the heart of God. So a campus ministry program and it's not only those two things, it's every other classroom too, you know like an effective math class that forms our young people into the truth of mathematics, for example, is forming them into a godly kind of person, because it's true, if that makes sense.

Michele McAloon:

The teenagers that you're teaching. What grades do you teach, philip?

Phillip Martin:

I've taught them all, primarily seniors, upperclassmen, freshmen, from time to time too. No, I just said from 14 to 18 years old.

Michele McAloon:

How receptive are they to exploring their Catholicism, to exploring God, to exploring the truth of Jesus Christ? What is their receptivity towards this?

Phillip Martin:

They're extremely receptive. Our young people today are like fertile soil it's just like it's waiting for someone to come in there with a spade and to start cultivating it a little bit, you know, and to start watering it a little bit, because falsehood is just not attractive. If you're raised in falsehood by whatever the media is telling you, whatever media you're absorbing, for however many hours a day, it's not attractive. It might be comfortable, but it's not attractive. And so our young people are just. They are absolutely thirsty for the truth and they are so open to what the Bible has to say, to what the faith has to say. It's almost unfair because it makes my job almost so easy because they're so open to it. Now, is that true for every single person? No, probably 10% of students have already stiff-armed the faith and they're saying no, and they'll probably bang their head up against a wall for a few more years until maybe you know, god's grace can enter in like a Flannery O'Connor story or something. Okay, so maybe maybe that'll happen.

Phillip Martin:

And then there's probably 10% who are just, they're absolutely on fire. I could be the most scandalous, worst teacher of all time and it wouldn't affect them because their faith is so deep. But then there's that 80% in the middle who just, they don't know, they're just looking for they're not looking for a sage on the stage, so to speak, who can just come in and tell them everything. They're looking for maybe some guides at the side who can, like we said, form them into who God is calling them to be, because that's really where adventure is. You know, we think adventure means throwing off every good disposition we have and throwing off our upbringing and getting out there and doing whatever we want. Okay, well, we know where that leads us. It leads us to the pigsty next to the prodigal son. But they're so hungry for that formation they want to know.

Phillip Martin:

Now, that doesn't mean there's no pushback. Obviously, when you're teaching and speaking about difficult things and difficult topics that, like we said earlier, that kind of challenge you as a person, that draw you out of your comfort zone and make you think about things, maybe for the first time, or maybe even push you to be a different kind of person, maybe to make you throw off what you've thought to be true or throw off a lifestyle that you've kind of gotten used to or been raised in. It's not going to be comfortable, so there's going to be pushback. So maybe that's where that mercy and justice kind of enters in to walk with these young people, meet them where they are, with the mercy, understanding of you know they're coming from a particular place, but also with the justice that there is this thing called truth that we need to be raised in.

Michele McAloon:

As you speak. I'm so proud because our son, one of your students, and you know what His faith is really firmly he's in the pew. I know it's a family effort but it also a school that is reinforcing that and that is absolutely amazing. Does your faith stay steadfast in teaching? I mean, does it grow in teaching? How do you, as a faithful Christian, as a faithful Catholic, how does your faith interact with teaching theology, christian?

Phillip Martin:

as a faithful Catholic. How does your faith interact with teaching theology? It's probably God's mercy that he put me here because maybe, without being in an environment surrounded by the faith at all times, maybe he'd know that I would also be at the pigsty next to the prodigal son. No, it's a wonderful environment, of course, and it absolutely uplifts my faith and it challenges me too to see a young person, for example, who's thirsty for Christ and thirsty for prayer and thirsty for the sacraments. You know it makes you kind of step back and think like, didn't I have that at some point? Or you know how do I regain that for myself?

Phillip Martin:

You know, like I, you know I think any mischaracterization of a theology teacher as, I don't know, st Thomas Aquinas or something, is going to be a big mistake. You know I'm in my own theodrama of ups and downs. You know there are times when my faith is just on fire and nothing could hold me back from receiving every sacrament every day and spending three hours in prayer, and then there are other times when I have to, you know, fall back on the rules and regulations and remember. Oh wait, like this is like I'm a sinner too. I have to remember, like God, he wants to conquer me with his grace. Also, like I need to remember that he's the one who's writing this script and I'm, you know, I'm just helping him along with my free will, and that needs to be informed by grace, you know. And so, yeah, it's a tremendous blessing to be in an environment like that for my own faith.

Michele McAloon:

Well, and you Well, you've said some brilliant things here, and one of the things that you said in the previous question, when you said falsehood is ugly. And that is so true, oh my goodness. It is so true that the truth is beautiful. But falsity, what's false? What are lies? Where evil lives, it is, it's not beautiful, it's ugly. Where evil lives, it is, it's not beautiful, it's ugly. And I see you as teaching people how to find that truth, how to find beauty, how to shun what is false.

Phillip Martin:

That's the stuff of prophets no-transcript without throwing off all three. So if we're going to throw off truth, then our beauty is also going to be thrown off, you know. So even we see this in our modern art, don't we? Where we're throwing off the truth, we're throwing off where we came from. We're throwing it all away and look what we've created and it's a rotting cow head in a room or whatever. And that's a real example. I used to teach philosophy too. Your son was a student of mine in philosophy, I remember, and we used to do projects about this. So yeah, that kind of thing. You're right, falsehood is ugly, but it does have a way of keeping us comfortable. You know, it's like dessert sometimes, like it tastes really good, and then after there's that regret, huh.

Michele McAloon:

Yeah, that is so true. Well, speaking of beautiful art, tell folks a little bit about 4PM Media too, that you've worked in with as a family venture and as a professional venture. What 4PM Media is, because it's absolutely beautiful.

Phillip Martin:

Yeah, sure, and everybody should check out 10th Hour Productions, which is kind of the nonprofit wing of this division as well. So 4PM Media and 10th Hour Productions is a media group that's dedicated to communicating the truth of the faith through beautiful film, and when I say through beautiful film, I really mean through beautiful film. Dan Johnson is the creative director and CEO, and if you put a camera in his hands, you can believe it's going to be beautiful on the other end, and so a lot of their work is available for free online through their own streaming platform called Wild Goose TV. Everybody should check that out for sure, because it is beautiful. I like to joke that, dan, if you had to to film you know one scene about St Francis of Assisi, for example you mentioned that documentary project and if, to make it the most beautiful thing possible, if he had to fly in 10 people from around the country just to film a five second scene, he would do it, you know so.

Phillip Martin:

So, again, like I think that also this is kind of touching on a bigger point as well the via pulchritudinous that seems to be kind of popping up, especially like through ministries, like Word on Fire, and Pope Francis himself used to speak about this a lot too.

Phillip Martin:

There's something about this kind of in the modern age that seems to be important that you know, like listing out the truth of things isn't necessarily going to draw people back, but like here's some beauty and that's attractive, and I actually I remember reading an article some years ago about um, about one of the most important factors for converts at the time was walking into a beautiful, a beautiful church Like there's something about like the, the beauty of it that just draws us in. And so we live in this um time where the internet makes things very difficult sometimes and um makes people very vulnerable and can affect people in a lot of negative ways, but at the same time, it's the weeds among the weed, isn't it? So we have this opportunity as well to like to ourselves create beautiful things and put it out there to really lure those hearts back in with beauty. So that's what 10th Hour Productions and 4PM Media are all about.

Michele McAloon:

And your book is like that, your book Ephephatha, which is published by Full Quiver Press. Is that correct? Old woman back to reality, or a snake right, A snake bite, or I mean, there's so many elements in this book and I do. Why the cover of the book? I have to ask you that.

Phillip Martin:

It's a scene from the title story Ephatha, which, as you mentioned, is another one of those magic realism type of stories. So a scene from this little boy hiding up in a tree and this kind of this vulnerable moment between him and this other little girl who would go on to be his wife, and the truth of their future marriages and of marriage as a whole, is essentially the theme of this story. So I thought it fitting to choose a small scene from this story as the cover.

Michele McAloon:

That's right. Okay, I forgot you know what? You're absolutely right. Oh my goodness. Thinking about that story. Well, philip Martin, I really want to thank you for taking time out of your summer schedule. I know it's short for a teacher and I hope you'll come back and talk to us again sometime about any theology projects or any writing projects. We are waiting for another book.

Phillip Martin:

No pressure, all right. Thank you so much. It's been such a blessing to reconnect with you and to speak with you again, and all the best to you and your family. Thank you so much.

Michele McAloon:

Likewise, likewise. Thank you.