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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Join me on Patreon -  Bonus conversations, extended episodes, and more from Flirting with Enchantment.
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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
Text Me - Join the SMS list for occasional thoughts, recommendations, and new work.
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Or text +1 (704) 286-1171
Join me on Patreon -  Bonus conversations, extended episodes, and more from Flirting with Enchantment.
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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
Text Me - Join the SMS list for occasional thoughts, recommendations, and new work.
https://my.community.com/johnmarkmcmillan
Or text +1 (704) 286-1171
Join me on Patreon -  Bonus conversations, extended episodes, and more from Flirting with Enchantment.
https://www.patreon.com/c/johnmarkmcmillan

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.

Text Me - Join the SMS list for occasional thoughts, recommendations, and new work.
https://my.community.com/johnmarkmcmillan
Or text +1 (704) 286-1171
Join me on Patreon -  Bonus conversations, extended episodes, and more from Flirting with Enchantment.
https://www.patreon.com/c/johnmarkmcmillan

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
Text Me - Join the SMS list for occasional thoughts, recommendations, and new work.
https://my.community.com/johnmarkmcmillan
Or text +1 (704) 286-1171
Join me on Patreon -  Bonus conversations, extended episodes, and more from Flirting with Enchantment.
https://www.patreon.com/c/johnmarkmcmillan