This is a world that is suffering. This is a world I think we're all hurting. We're all sad sometimes.

And I want people to be able to see resurrection. I want people to understand that there is life after failure.

Hello and welcome to Why is this happening with me your host Chris Hays.

Well it is week two here of our special COVID physical distancing podcast studio with a huge assist from two time

Wise is happening guest Kate Shaw one of the co-hosts of strict scrutiny which is her own legal podcast you should listen to.

We are like most of you adjusting to the new life that we all live had a nice science lesson my kids today that involved collecting worms.

I'm not sure really what cut taught there but a lot of ones were collected so that was good.

And we're going to try to start sort of moving into doing more pandemic related podcast content.

I don't know about that weirdly I am sort of obsessed and have kind of a depless appetite. I can't tell people want to scapeism at this moment.

But today we have an amazing conversation with an amazing person and we recorded this before the pandemic was really in view.

But it's sort of an oddly fitting conversation because you know one of the things that gets so hard for all of us right now is like remember in the way things used to be.

And you know if I read a lot of history particularly first person accounts you know diaries of people in moments of great violence or war or illness.

There's this kind of moment before and moment after right like you know someone is a shot keeper in Berlin and then the next thing we know it's crystal locked and everything changes.

Or someone is you know a housewife in a part of India and then partition happens and there's you know the knock at the door and this should happen over and over you know we know this experience exists of a moment before and a moment after when everything changes.

Mom before and a moment after for a lot of people I think in my generation 9-11 was very much like that that was the moment before and the moment after and that moment after is some ways extended into the now.

In fact it's relevant directly to the story we're talking today.

Thomas Burke who I spoke with today his life I think it's here to say it's sort of divided into moment before moment after he was a young man who joined the Marines and the aftermath of 9-11 who went off to Iraq, who went to Afghanistan, who saw some truly horrific and brutal things who struggled deeply with addiction and depression and who came out the other side a priest.

A believer, a pastor, a deeply spiritual person who I first encountered on Twitter and found so compelling and distinct and strange in his voice and wanted to speak to him for this podcast and I find that listening to him in these times is a kind of comfort.

I should note that there are very very intense discussions in this conversation about violence and war, about grief, about addiction, about suicides and suicidal ideation but at the end of it it is a beautiful and I think happy story about a kind of spiritual journey that ends with a certain kind of profound peace and grace and I think it's a good listen in these time times.

So Thomas where did you grow up? I grew up in Bethel, Connecticut which is not too far away from the city and what was your upbringing like? I grew up in a Roman Catholic household much like yourself.

My mother was Italian, Roman Catholic and my father was Irish Catholic. Same here, exactly. Mother had two siblings, my father had 11 siblings.

Oh wow. That's real Irish Catholic. Absolutely. That's not messing around. That's like committed to the cause. Yes.

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