Welcome to Untangle, the podcast from Five Star App Meditation Studio.

I'm Patricia Carpus, co-founder of Meditation Studio and your host on Untangle, along with my co-host, Ariel Garten, one of the founders of brain-sensing headband Muse.

Join us each week as we introduce you to authors, experts, and thought leaders who share

their stories on how meditation, mindfulness, and brain-focused practices have the power

to change our lives.

Whether you're just learning to meditate or want to deepen your practice, meditation studio

with hundreds of guided meditations, and Muse, which gives you real-time feedback on your

mind during meditation, and Muse 2, which also tracks your breath, your heart, and your body

are tools you'll definitely want to have in your back pocket. Now, here's this week's episode

with R.A.L. Welcome to a special holiday edition

of Untangle. Today, we're going to spend some time getting back into the mystery of the

holidays. For a lot of people, holidays mean something beautiful and magical like you remember

in your childhood, but today they

might be in the stress and frustration of gifts and family. My guest today is Dr. John Markey,

and he's a professor of theology and the director for the Institute for the Study of Contemporary

Spirituality. He's also Father John, a homosexual Roman Catholic priest, And he's going to introduce us to his perspective

on the Christmas season and how we can get back in touch with the mystery of it. Welcome, Father John.

Well, thank you, Ariel. It's good to be with you. It is a great pleasure to be with you today.

I know you have some beautiful memories from your

childhood that brought you some lessons of the magic and the mystery of Christmas. Can you share

one of those with us today? Well, I always, for me, one of the unique things about my childhood

was that, you know, I grew up in a large family,

...