Ep 110: Part 10/12, Greg Kelly Says Grace is a Springboard for Transformation: How to Build a Relationship with God Series

In this episode of Permission to Be Human, hosts Janelle Orion and Andrea Enright sit down with investor Greg Kelly for a conversation that refuses to play small. They dive into the messy, mystical, utterly human process of building a relationship with God—one that’s less about dogma and more about direct experience, curiosity, and love in motion. Greg, raised Catholic, opens up about his encounters with the divine, the healing tension between skepticism and faith, and how a simple postcard project became a quiet revolution of compassion. It’s an unexpectedly rip-roaring good time. There’s a nod to Les Mis, spiritual consultant Kristin Bredimus and The Emerald podcast. You’ll hear:

-Why if we make space, a relationship with God is always available.

-An encounter with a witch, Jesus and spirits in Boston

-A new take of the “placebo” effect

-How faith can unlock dormant human potential. For real.

-Why logic vs. mysticism is part of the spiritual path.

-Greg’s definition of Grace--a springboard for transformation

-About the day a pedestrian ran out in front of his car

-How spirituality and mental health are often playing together

-Why playing your little part in peace might be enough

TRANSCRIPT:

Janelle Orion 0:00

Janelle, struggling to discuss sex and intimacy with your partner, not feeling met, seen or heard in your relationships. I'm Janelle And I'm Andrea. We're two midlife Mavericks sharing our own experiences, messy, AF and no regrets with marriage, divorce, polyamory and pleasure. We've learned that when you're brave enough to figure out what you want and ask for it, with partners, friends, family and most importantly, yourself, you'll feel more alive and free question everything, especially your mother's advice. There's no rom com formula for this. But don't panic. Being alone matters, honey, I can't miss you if you don't leave, what if your breakup could be your breakthrough? Our podcast is for brave hearts. Anyone who seeks or has found the courage to confront their fears and limiting beliefs about breaking societal norms in the spirit of finding their truth. If you're seeking permission to be brave in your relationships and want to feel less alone along the way. We got you. That's great, Kelly, it's fucking electric. It's like, it's like, he is like, such a force, like, Oh my God, he's always like that. Yes, Bravehearts, you're about to experience one of the most electrifying interviews we have done on any topic here by this friend of Andrea's, who is so funny, so passionate, so descriptive, so eloquent. And yeah, it's like, it's like a rip roaring good time. Yeah, yeah, we're talking about redefining the placebo effect. We're talking about redefining grace, the struggle we all have with faith, despite the miracles we see every day, and just how someone can go from Catholicism

Janelle Orion 1:57

to to a witch, exactly. So buckle the fuck up.

Janelle Orion 2:08

Welcome to permission to be human. Brave hearts. It's so good to be back. I'm Janelle And I'm Andrea, and we are here today with our latest guest in our installment of building a relationship with God, and this is an old friend of Angie, right? Yeah, so I want to welcome Greg Kelly to the show. He is an investor living in Salt Lake City, and he's fairly obsessed with skiing, cycling and grace, which is a really good answer. Have to ask him more about that. But I've known Greg a long time. We were in the Peace Corps together. We served in Bulgaria for 27 months, a long time ago, and have kept in touch ever since. And Greg is the OG of the postcard project. Some people listening, some of you brave hearts, may have received a postcard from me from time to time. It's purple, and it says, You are loved unconditionally. And Greg is the one who really started this trend. Greg, can you? Can you kick us off by just telling that story?

Greg Kelly 3:13

Well, I was living in Boston at the time, and I heard a voice. I was driving my car, and I heard a voice that told me to slow down. Slow down. You do not know what you cannot see. And my first thought was that I had suddenly turned schizophrenic. And a couple of blocks later, someone ran out from between two parked busses, and I hit them on Boylston Street in the middle of Boston. I hit them. They went down. They jumped back up, apologized, and ran across the street. And I pulled my car over to the side of the road, and there were these two women sitting on the bench in Copley Square, and they said, you know, he put a debt in your car. I was like, out of my mind, right? Like, here, I've heard a voice, someone just run into my car. I've hit them a pedestrian. I've hit a pedestrian in the middle of Austin. They've run across the street. So I run after them, thinking, we should sort this out. And I catch them, and they're fine. They're totally fine. They they don't want to go to the ER, and I have a dent in my car from making contact with this person so hard. And again, you know, I thought like, Oh, this is insane. I went to my doctor twice in the process, saying, I think that we should figure out if I'm losing my mind. And both times she was like, this is these things happen, but so that happened, and then soon thereafter, that sort of kicked off a whole series of things. But as it relates to the postcards, I in three separate instances, not religious experiences, experiences, just on the street in Boston, I heard three separate things, and one was that I was loved on. Conditionally. The second was that there was nothing I could not be forgiven for. And the third time it happened was just the word grace, just the word grace. And I had to stop and look up what that even meant, because it was not a term that I was particularly familiar with beyond someone's name. But I tell that whole story because it was only as these experiences unfolded that I realized why I had the first experience, which I think was to tell me that shit is about to happen and you should pay attention and the shit that you're about to hear when it sounds like it's coming from someone else, it actually is coming from someone else, and there's truth to it that is going to make you very uncomfortable, but I'm gonna go ahead and prove it first. And the postcards were born because they were incredibly powerful experiences, right? That you just want to go we should probably share this.

Janelle Orion 5:54

Wow, Greg, I've never heard that story.

Greg Kelly 5:56

Oh, really, you didn't. Yeah, no, no, yeah, it's quite a bit Whoa. Okay.

Janelle Orion 6:06

Well, that just fits in perfectly with our theme. And this funny thing is, okay, I'm just receiving and taking all that in, but you then the only part I knew was that you then stuck it to trees, outside your park, outside your house in the park, so that the meth addicts in the park could read it

Greg Kelly 6:27

well. It has taken on multiple permutations. I mean, they were, they were as each message came, it was like very, I mean, it's very powerful to sort of have to to really believe any of these things is kind of an overwhelming concept, right? The idea that you're loved unconditionally, the idea that you can be forgiven for anything, and the concept of grace, right, the concept of unearned blessings, right, that these are that your God wants you to have. It's not a meritocracy. Your life with God is not a quid pro quo. It's not you do this, he'll do this. It is that God wants you always, right? It's totally overwhelming. And so to me, it was like, Well, okay, you know, what do I do with this? And the answer seemed like, well, you should probably share it, right? And so, I mean, it started off with Postgres. I would get a whole bunch of them made, and then, like, I think the first ones was just like, handwritten to friends and family, and then would start, that's

Janelle Orion 7:27

how we, we received those. And then there was, there was they were handwritten, or they were just like Greg Kelly, you know, on the back, just like, you know, your usual, just like, very simple, right? But, but they were written, they were written to us. And there was four of them. There Was You are loved unconditionally. You are enough, heal yourself, forgive others and be Yeah.

Greg Kelly 7:49

So yeah. It's funny, because I, like I thought, that it was very punchy to send a postcard to people anonymously, saying that there's nothing you could not be forgiven for, not something that people wants to get in the mail, right? And so I tweaked that. It also just sounds, I mean, it sounds creepy, and it sounds, if I got that in the mail, I'd be like, go fuck yourself, really, right? So, right. So I changed that to, you are already enough. Because what it really, what it really is saying, is that, right, that you are enough, right? Like, so, well, I don't need to tell some random stranger that they can be forgiven, right? That's, yeah, I think God's fine with my reinterpretation of that for the mass audience, but Right? So it started just like friends and family, and then it expanded. I essentially made it to the spreadsheets of anybody I touch, right? So my doctor's office and my dog walker and the vet and whatever. And then, as it kept expanding, I've started buying mailing lists to zip codes so that, like I could literally just, first it was, like my block in Boston that got them all. Then I just did the whole fucking zip code in Boston where I lived. And so I don't know if people will see this now in Boston, but you know, it was a thing for a period of time where, like, I could see on the Facebook community board people posting this shit, right? And the reaction was awesome. It was pretty much exactly what you wanted, right? It was like people being like, who's doing this? I don't know, but I love the messages. The anonymity was important, because if you knew it was coming from me, I mean, if you knew me, you'd know that I'm a very flawed person. It would sort of color, like, Who is this guy and why and all that shit, right? Like, you know, it's what. This was not about me. I very much felt like this was not about me. Like, I I got this message. I'm going to share it. You don't know who you don't you need to know that. It came from me, though, right? But it's expanded, right? So everybody in, like, the Massachusetts State House got one. I mean, there's been times where it's just gone, been like, oh, I should do all of those people, right? Congress, right? At one point, everybody in Congress got them, right? You can download all sorts of mailing lists, right? And then essentially outweighs like you. Like you upload it to Vistaprint. Vistaprint handles all the mailing, and you just sit back and know that these are going out, right? So, yeah. So now I do, like I've done parts of Salt Lake City. I've done, you know, City Hall, and you know, if I want to sort of try to throw a vibe a certain way, I

Andrea Enright 10:17

love this. You said so much. Okay, so, Janelle, do you have a question? Yeah, well, more just like, okay, so what you just said was, like, if you want to send a vibe a certain way, what I hear you doing is sending snail mail, postcards of loving messages to strangers, and that's what you're doing, and that's how you're spreading love around the world and to Congress and to your neighbors and to whomever, yeah, wow, just, wow. Yeah, that's amazing. Like, it's even bigger than I realized. We haven't talked about it in a while. So how has your belief in those messages shifted, or the belief in in the source of them shifted across the last, what, 10 years since you've been doing it?

Greg Kelly 11:04

Yeah, it hasn't been 10 years. How I feel like, at least five. Least five. Yeah, it's interesting. There's, I would guess, two ways. So one, I don't hear voices, right? So these were three discrete things that happened and then stopped, fourth, if you count the first, and then stopped. And it's interesting because you read about people like Mother Teresa and all these people who've had mystical experiences, right? And they seem to happen and then stop. And it leaves you wondering, was that real? Is that for sure, which can leave you sort of almost empty, but I think it pushes you into this point, this place where you now have to work on faith. And I think that that becomes a different place, but a place where every journey with the divine includes, like, by definition, has to include this element of faith. Because I think faith is like, faith is actually the thing that unlocks human potential. I've come to sort of appreciate, right? We, in our current society, we tend to play down faith. In fact, we have this expression when the placebo effect works in a drug trial, we say, that's just the placebo effect, right? We have an expression to play down the capacity that belief and faith created in your healing. We have a way to say it's trash, right? And the fact of the matter is, we should say, well, Holy fuck, that was just the placebo effect, right? That's actually, there should be an exclamation along with that, right? But instead we say, for like, whatever, it's nothing. It's just the placebo effect, just brain fixing itself because you told it that it could with this pill, with this sugar pill, right? So, long story short, now it's like, well, what can you do with faith, right? What can you do with faith? Yeah.

Andrea Enright 13:02

So what can you do with faith? We just said about the placebo effect. It feels like you have more faith than you did seven years ago. Do you struggle with the faith?

Greg Kelly 13:14

Yes. So this whole experience, for me, got very I mean, hearing voices is the biblical experience, right? Like there's no way about, there's no way around, like the idea that this is just an Old Testament Samuel biblical experience of hearing voices. And so I spent, I spent a month in Israel, and I spent a lot of before this. I probably never really read the Bible, certainly not cover to cover. I never really, still haven't read the bible cover to cover, but I'd never, like just opened up and read the gospels. Now I've read them several times, and I sort of you learn a lot when you actually read them as a chunk. And I mean, one of my big takeaways was that the disciples, in spite of the fact that they were sitting there, ostensibly witnesses to hundreds, if not 1000s of miracles. Always struggled with faith themselves, right? I mean, time and time again, we don't even need to wait for the crucifixion, for that whole show to play out. We see it constantly where, you know, the time they're in the boat, and it's, you know, right there, seas are crashing, and you can see all these miracles. And then you still don't have faith, right now, that I'll take care of this, right? And it happens constantly to these people, and they're the original witnesses to all sorts of crazy shit, right? So, yes, they had struggles. I have struggles, of course, right? I mean, it's part of the game. It's part of the game. It doesn't go

Janelle Orion 14:41

away. I'm hearing, like, some permission there, though. She's like, Oh yeah, I have permission to have to not trust, right? Yeah, of course, it's natural, right? It is natural. But I see myself like, I fall into that, and then I trust, and then I fall into that, and then I trust, and so, but it's just, it's such an ongoing thing.

Greg Kelly 14:58

I mean, I think all. All of this stuff is it's like this tension between the rational and the irrational, right? Because on one hand, you're like, you apply your rational brain, which is part of this thing that God made you with, and then you're sort of expected to have faith in things that you cannot see and you cannot apply the same rationality too, right? And so how do you exist in this world of faith and irrationality but still be rational, right? It's inherently full of tension.

Janelle Orion 15:34

I want to dig in to a little bit of your original relationship with God and faith, because I believe you consider yourself Catholic, and Catholicism is a big part of your faith. So can you tell me a little bit about the beginning of that and how it intersects with what you've shared?

Greg Kelly 15:51

Well, I'll tell you. So yeah, grew up Catholic. I think I was sort of standard issue Catholic, which is you were raised to believe certain things. I certainly had plenty of doubts about the things I was raised to believe. I didn't have, like, a supernatural sense of faith, source of tradition, and that's, I think, a good thing. But I was not a regular participant, I would say,

Janelle Orion 16:12

So you weren't a regular participant. And then at what point did that change? Or did it not change until you heard that voice in the car?

Greg Kelly 16:19

So the voice in the car was very meaningful, and all of these things really sort of impacted me tremendously, more than more than a million masses. Because i The problem is, you know, the church is like a man made institution, and there's power issues, and there's corruption, and there's all the things that make it very unattractive, right? You can't escape God like touching you on the shoulder and inviting you a little closer you just that's not a you know, you cannot. You could decline it. I think, I mean, I actually think, when I've talked to friends about this stuff, I'm so always surprised by how many people have had not the exact, not the same. There's nothing ever the same. But people who've had experiences along these lines, and have chosen to sort of not engage because it is sort of a crazy, crazy thing, and it creates like, I mean, as amazing as it is, it also means like, Someone's probably fucking watching you. And, you know, all of a sense of, there's, a sense of accountability, right? And I think for me, also, there was a sense of, okay, well, if I do believe that there's a spiritual world that I cannot see, I think the thing that we love to talk about is guardian angels and great vibes that help you, but we don't want to talk about is the inverse of that, which is probably also true. If there's a spiritual world we cannot see, right? There are probably negative forces also out there vying for influence. Can't prove it, wow, like it doesn't I mean all the all. I mean, fucking, why would that not be the case, right? Why would that not be the case? Yeah, right. I don't know. I don't just, thankfully, they don't talk to me, right? But I just, it's not all sunshine lollipops at this point, right? No, absolutely not. No. I'd love

Janelle Orion 18:02

to interject with a recommendation for a podcast which is called the Emerald by Joshua Shrey, and he has one specifically called guardians and protectors. That episode really goes into why so many indigenous communities and traditional cultures have a lot of protections around like, you know, like in rituals and practices around how to protect themselves from whatever you want to call it negative spirits, something, right? Because there's they're just acknowledging that when you go into the unseen, you don't know what you're going to see, and so you need to see, and so you need to protect yourself. Got it? Got it? Okay, interesting. Okay, so that, yeah, it's an introduction of a different something. I don't think about a lot, at least, but I get it makes sense. So on that note, you had mentioned that there can be a thin line between faith and mental health,

Greg Kelly 19:03

sure, mental illness, let's be frank, mental illness. Let's start in like a crazy scenario, right? Like you see a schizophrenic walking down the street, they're also hearing voices, right? I mean straight up, right? So, you know, and then we may not hear voices, may have thoughts all the time, right? And so how do you go from hearing thoughts about what you need to pick up at the grocery store to like thoughts about doing harm to other people, right? I mean, shit is out there, right? So, you know, yeah. And then I just, I think all the time, right? We pray. We think God's telling us to do one thing or another, you know. But the whole spectrum of mental illness is right out there, where people are hearing voices and thinking that God is telling them to do one thing or another. That is crazy, right? So I struggle with that. I don't have, I don't have an easy answer. I mean, like, I told you, when this started, I went to my doctor pretty early on, and I was like, I have an uncle who was schizophrenic, who was bipolar, or schizophrenic, I forget what, but killed himself when he was. Was 20s, like, I think this is happening to me. And she was like, tell me why. And I told her the story, and she was like, This is not what mental illness looks like. So a bunch of other crazy shit happened all sort of at the same time as these voices. I went back to her a couple months later, and I was like, I think we should really test me for, like, some very serious mental illnesses. And she was like, No, this is, this is not mentally ill. This is not mental illness, right? So I don't know. I don't know. I'm not a trained professional. All I'll say is, there are times where I'm like, it's really hard. It's really hard.

Janelle Orion 20:31

I empathize with what you're saying in that like the like, the life that I'm leading now is like, oh, it's, it could definitely be classified as insane and by someone else's perspective, right? And that I also feel really clear that, like, oh, born in a different generation or born in a different time, right? I could have been burned at the stake, like, because someone would have said, Oh, that's not, that's not okay. And my experience is like how I feel now about a lot of people with mental illness, especially those who are living on the streets, is that they are having spiritual experiences, but they haven't been able to reconcile the human experience with that spiritual experience, and so they've lost touch with the human part, but they're ultimately almost operating on a different plane, and I have no proof, but that's just the sense that is what's true for me, and that what has deeply, deeply allowed me to feel grounded in how it doesn't come through as voices for me, but like the messages that I get, and then knowing that I'm following, is that I'm able to share them with others and be seen and accepted that I'm not alone, having to be like, was this true or not true? But like I tell my friends, and they're like, Okay, is

Greg Kelly 21:57

there another way you have to discern who you're getting thoughts from. Is it always the same? Is it always a good source that's whispering in your ear? Do you

Janelle Orion 22:06

think so in my experience? So what I believe is that, like love, is at the center of things, and so if, if what it's asking me to do is question something that essentially was man made or construct or a conditioning that I've been told by outside of me, right, versus a direct experience, then it's like, I'm like, Okay, I'm going to question if it came from outside of me versus it came from inside of me. Yeah, this is very much what the podcast is about to like Greg, it's just like questioning, question everything, right, particularly the conditioning that we've been we've been given across time, and in some ways, right? Like I just had someone, you know, say to me, oh, when d found out that I'm an erotic wellness practitioner, he's like, I'm gonna pray for your soul. I was like, you can pray for myself. My soul feels really great to me, and I feel like I'm in service. And I know I'm like, from reflections, I'm not even saying like, Oh, I'm doing the best thing ever. Right? People that I'm working with are telling me how much more alive and how much more free and how much more themselves, and how much like they feel different as a result. So I'm not even saying, Oh, I'm this healer who's going out and saving the world. It's like, No, I'm just doing my thing, and someone's telling me, thank you. I'm also am attuning to that, but I will say that it is as we're like, as I'm navigating anyway, these concepts and these ideas that are coming through me that are not reflected in the world around me, that I do have, Andrea and several other friends who I am counting on to reflect back to me if I deviate to a path that does not have love at the center of it. Yes, I think that's true. Like, Janelle is like dancing between dimensions on the reg and like, you know, I'm like going to piano recitals. So like, you know, I'm more, a little more grounded, and there's a nice, like tension, or like a rope that's kept hot there between, and she's like showing me things, and I'm just like, No, but we have to do this, so that works. Greg, do you have a name that you call? Is it spirit? Is the universe God? God? So do you consider your relationship with God different than your relationship with yourself? Well,

Greg Kelly 24:21

sure, I am not God, so I'm not against the idea that we are. We have divinity in us, right? We have this, like divine spark within us. And so if that's sort of where your head is, I totally get that. And I think that that's actually non trivially true, right? But I think we also are these, like autonomous consciousnesses, right? And so we, I am, you sure I am different, thankfully, God is not me. So, right? So, yeah, I mean, yes, I think it was very different.

Andrea Enright 24:55

I asked, How does on the questionnaire, how does having a relationship with. With God, help you find peace amidst the suffering in the world. You had said on a good day, I can remember that I'm not God, and I am not called to fix the world, only to play my part. So can you say more about that, or what your part is?

Greg Kelly 25:16

So I definitely think through my experience and a lot of people who've gone down this pathway that you quickly become, feel like you sort of take on the burdens of the whole world, right? And you think I've got to, like, change so much about what is going on out there, right? But my job is just to work with the tiny corner of the universe that I come into contact with, right? And do a decent job with that. To me, it is a tremendous sense of relief to remember that, like, I'm not expected to fix everything. I'm not expected to change the whole world. Like that actually is God's job. Like, I think there's a balance right between doing your part and not giving a shit enough, right? And I think there's a great parable in the Gospel is called the parable of the talents. There's like, a guy going away for a period, and I think he gives his son or his servants, like, he gives, like, one of them five coins, one of them 10 coins, and one of them one coin. And is like, work with this. I'll be back in, you know, a generation or a decade or whatever. And then the guy who got 10, like, invested well, has another 10. The guy who got five, another five, and the guy who got one buried it in the ground because he didn't want to lose it. And so when the guy came back, he was like, you know, the guy who made a lot of money with it worked his talents. He gave him more and same thing to the to the guy in the middle, but the guy at the end, who didn't do anything with what he had been given that was taken from him, right? And I think there is this expectation that we do something with what we are given. Right? That being said, we're not God. We're just supposed to work with what we've been given. We're not supposed to bury it. We're not supposed to, you know, pretend that we have no obligation. Right? That, to me, there's this great tension between that and grace, right? Because, on one hand, I think Grace is the super powerful concept of unmerited blessings.

Andrea Enright 27:04

Yeah, Greg, how do you define grace?

Greg Kelly 27:06

So Grace are the unmerited blessings of God. It's that help when you maybe you don't expect it, but you certainly don't deserve it, and it really just changes everything. I mean, if you've seen Les Mis, like the opening scene of Les Mis, where, you know, the guy has left the house and he's robbed the bishop, and the bishop, when he's brought back, he's given two more candlesticks. That is grace, right? He certainly didn't deserve two candlesticks to the you know, but he got them, and then he made should happen with that, right? So that it's not only this that it's a whole story, right? It's, it's grace as a springboard for transformation, right? There that is the story of Les Mis, or one of the stories that goes on in Les Mis, right? And it's grace as the springboard. And so I think that there's this tremendous tension between making sure we balance grace with helping people actually do what they can right. Everything can't be grace. Everything can't be grace, because then it becomes this crutch that people end up not producing anything out of their lives with, right?

Andrea Enright 28:18

You're talking about hard work, yeah, if you want things to work, you have to

Greg Kelly 28:21

do the work. Yeah, right. I mean, in Salt Lake City, we have this uncontrolled homeless problem, uncontrolled homeless and drug situation out here, hard drugs and it is unbelievable. I mean, it is, it is staggering, right? So, just Utah last year, lost more people to drug overdoses than Americans were killed on 911 just Utah, just last year. I mean, it is mind blowing. And you know, we have this tremendous tension in the community of, how do we deal with this, right? Do we just build more shelter beds? Do we only build more shelter beds and more soup kitchens, which, to my mind, have not fixed the problem and have not gotten these people the help that they need, right? But it is an important element of grace that they not starve on the street. But how do we help them actually move out of these cycles, right?

Janelle Orion 29:13

Greg, I'm getting this sense, one, I feel like you just gave us our podcast title for this episode, which is grace as a springboard for transformation. But I'm also getting the sense that everything you're describing is how you live your life every day, all the time, right? This is the lens of which you're looking at the world.

Greg Kelly 29:31

Sure, a try. I mean, yeah, it

Andrea Enright 29:34

feels like Grace shows up in your life a lot by you and for you

Greg Kelly 29:39

it has for me. Yeah, you once

Andrea Enright 29:43

sent me an article, maybe a year ago, and then we had a discussion about making space for God. And this really struck me. We discussed how a lot of people go to the woods and go to nature because they feel like they're feeling spirit. Or feeling God there. But in essence, God can be felt anywhere as long as we make space. Can you say more about that? And if how that plays into your life on a like, on a daily basis,

Greg Kelly 30:10

I think God very much wants to have a relationship with us, and I think we generally don't make time to create this relationship with God, right? And so we just live in this world like we, you know, most people who are even religious go to church for an hour a week, and that's pretty much it, right? And that, for the most part, follows wrote, sort of a call and respond sort of format. It's very little about actually creating a relationship with God, I would say that to me, is like ceremony, and that's fine, and I'm not here to rip on ceremony. And this can be a great part of a relationship with God, but it, to me, does not form the foundation for one. I mean, I personally find that the silence of the morning is the time when I'm most able to have a conversation with God, because nothing else is going on. There's no other distractions. I've been fortunate enough to live in places where I have a view of something, and so like when I lived in Boston, it would go up on my roof deck for the sunrise. And it was amazing, even, you know, in the winter, to see the sun come up over downtown the Atlantic, and then now, here in Salt Lake City, I can see the sun come up over the Wasatch Front from my place. And it's, I don't know if you guys are familiar with this artist, NF, so he only appeared on my radar screen because he played the delta center at some point last year or the year before. And I thought, oh, I should anyone who fills the delta center. You. I feel like I would like to know what they're doing. He's essentially like a white rapper in the style of, who's that guy out of Detroit? Eminem, sort of like Eminem, very much like Eminem, but with a vague Christian, a vague Christian undertone. It's like vague enough that you could listen to a lot of it and not notice, right? But he's got the great line on one of the songs that says something like, everyone always thinks you're not like working in the world, but no one is taking the time to ever talk to you or something like that, right? And it's this idea that, like, you can engage with God, and you should engage with God, and that's actually what really matters. Like, I think we dramatically as a culture, we have gotten rid of religion. And in getting rid of religion, we got rid of our individual connections with God, and it was a tremendous disaster so far right? And I think we that is something that people can bring back. You can pick a faith, you can pick a tradition, whatever. You can also just start talking to God. Is

Andrea Enright 32:41

that how you would suggest, like, if someone, you know, if someone wanted to find their deepest belief or build a relationship with spirit, just start talking.

Greg Kelly 32:48

Just start talking. Hey, God, yeah. And like, this is again where things get close to, like, mental illness, right? Do it in a room with nobody else. But, yeah, I think that. I think it is always surprising to me how responsive God can be when we engage with God. And I don't know how much of that is just the universe reordering itself around our interest, and how much of it is a is God's hand in motion in the world, but it's easy to look at like stuff that doesn't go right and go there's no God, but on an individual, personal basis, when people engage, I think God engages. And so, yeah, I think like, prayer is nothing more than Conversations with God. And I think that in spite of the fact that God may know you well, like you pouring yourself out to God is the relationship that God

Janelle Orion 33:39

wants. I have a have a client that I just had a conversation with yesterday, and she was like, Oh, I'm feeling just kind of stuck, and I'm just like, I'm like, stagnant and kind of waiting. And I was like, Oh, well, what are you waiting for? And she's like, a sign. And I was like, well, you're asking. You're waiting basically for God to call you, and so what if you pick up the phone first and say, Hey, I have an idea, or there's something I'd like. I'd like a sign. Or, like, just, like, pick up the phone first and that's and so I completely agree with you that it is, like, it's, and I know Andrew, you call it two way prayer, but that it can look any number of different ways. It can be through a journal. It can be through out loud. It could but like, what I believe that when we say what we want and, like, say it out into the universe, that it's actually very, very close to us. It might not look anything like we think it's supposed to look, but if we've gotten to the point of saying our desire and asking God about it, then it's probably very close at hand. But it's also important to, like, make the offering right, to be like, I'm not just, I'm not just waiting for you to do everything. Like, I'm gonna make it, I'm gonna make a gesture. Yeah, you go first. Yeah, yeah, Greg, you're so amazing and so insightful. I knew that you'd be awesome on this podcast. Like, thanks for all your passion around this like you are living this life is so clear. Really woven into every decision you make and how you're interacting with the world, which is just really beautiful. I try. Can you receive? What do you mean? Something that I'm always working with, and I work with my clients on is like, sometimes it's hard to receive. You know, we can give and give and give and give, but like, Thank you. You know, from a compliment to a stash of money to a house, whatever that someone's giving, you being open to receive. It's just a big lesson I'm always working on.

Greg Kelly 35:35

It is probably more in my DNA to be giving or to be working like the receiving is not as like normal, and I have to make more time to, like, recharge, recharge, and all the things that energize me, everything can't always be a push day. Shall we say? Oh my gosh, yeah,

Andrea Enright 35:57

Greg, you're such. I mean, you that's, that's your energy, though, fast, push, get done shit. Oh, my God, like you just, you go, you have a lot of energy and a lot of ideas, and you know, it's part of what makes you special. But absolutely, I think, you know, that's good awareness that, yeah, little more transition, little more downtime, if it rejuvenates you. No, I agree, Greg. I understand that you are in contact with a witch, and she provides insights for your work.

Greg Kelly 36:26

So we should be clear, I would call that, that statement true, but she would not consider herself a witch. She considers herself a spiritual advisor or spiritual consultant based in Salem, Massachusetts, so I consider her a good witch, like, right? I mean, right. She's phenomenal. Her name is Kristen bredimus. I would say, along this journey, there have been a number of people who've been very helpful in a number of different ways. And she's certainly at the top of that

Andrea Enright 36:55

list. Yeah, that's what I was curious about. How she's enhanced your relationship with God,

Greg Kelly 37:00

I'll tell you one thing we did. So I went to her because she was a friend of an acupuncturist that I had when all of this stuff started going down. And, you know, like, I mean, I was pretty open. There was a church in Boston. I became friends with a priest. Became friends with multiple priests. I went on multiple like, Jesuit retreats. Let's just say I engage a lot of people in a lot of different spiritual directions to sort of figure out what was going on here, right? Which was great in sort of understanding energy. It's a story that if you told me, I would not believe, right? I would simply not interested. It's too insane. This woman is, like, amazing. We did a lot of, like, interesting energy work. She clears houses of, like, energetic energy. And she does it for, like, mostly for realtors if they can't sell a place. And she did amazing stuff. I mean, my downstairs neighbor in Boston was a realtor couldn't sell a place forever. She goes in, she's like, oh, somebody got killed here. And clears it. The next person who comes through, bang, sold right? Did it for someone else. He walks into his cold banker office like, you'll never believe this. This other lady's, like, I got the same thing. She clears the space. Bang. Next person through makes an offer. So I said to her, Hey, let's just, like, clear my place. I'd be curious. I had the time, owned half of an old like a 19th century brownstone. And I don't know, sometimes Chewie would sort of bark at nothing that seemed to it was nothing that seemed to move. And so I was just sort of curious. I don't know I had, didn't have a strong view that my place was haunted, but I didn't think it wasn't haunted. So she comes in, and at this point we had, like, she had been teaching me certain meditations to sort of access, you know, she would say, sort of spiritual realms and blah, blah, blah. So we do this together, and we sit down in my living room, and we go through this meditation, and we open up, and she says, you know, how many spirits you think we have here? And I was like, I was like, I don't know, maybe five or six. She sort of agrees. I don't know why I even thought that. And then she sort of was like, she would say she opened this sort of Portal. By the way, the back story would be she would tell you that when you die, you have three days to go to the light and move on. And after that point, the portal closes. And then if you haven't moved on for any number of reasons, you're stuck here until someone creates this opportunity again for you to move through. And so ostensibly, she creates this portal. And I have no I have no consciousness of this. But she said, Oh, okay, yeah, a bunch of spirits are going and then I felt on this shoulder, this very skin and bone shoulder, I felt something squeeze it, and I immediately knew that this was a spirit who wasn't leaving just, I just, I'm so out of my mind, I can't even speak. And then she says, Oh, one of them doesn't want to leave. And I'm thinking, I know that, because it's already squeezing my shoulder. It, and somehow I know at this time, just to tell it that it is loved unconditionally, and everything is going to be fine, and it's loved and it's loved, and then, no, then it starts squeezing harder. And then the witch says to me, it's family is here, but it doesn't want to go with them. I know because it's squeezing harder. Everything was happening to me a second or two before she's narrating it, and I'm like, just sort of trying to keep my shit together and tell her to tell this thing, it's okay. It is loved unconditionally. Everything is fine. And then all of a sudden, the pressure releases entirely. And then she says, Jesus is here, Jesus in my living room in Boston, right? And I'm like, Oh my God, but it just literally a second before she says this, let's go. And then she's like, it's going with Jesus. And that was that. And now I've never been the same since, right? Because, and I, by the way, I still struggle with faith, in spite of the fact that Jesus was in my living room and a guy, a ghost was holding on to my shoulder, right? And so, of course, we all struggle with faith. To come back to your earlier question, right? But yeah, so the witch was great for me in a lot of ways, in just understanding energy and understanding I can show you a fascinating party trick. Have you ever seen when the medallion swings. You ever seen this? Yes. So, I mean, you know, like she helped me learn a lot of these things, but then she also sort of validated there were a handful of situations like that where, again, I don't actually have the receipts for that to share with you. I don't have a video, I don't have I don't have hard data, but I have an experience that tells me how real this is, right? And so to know that this is a real thing, even though, time and time again, you go through this process of seeing how real it is, it's that stuff like that was very helpful.

Janelle Orion 41:50

Yeah, wow. Thanks for telling the story. Yeah,

Greg Kelly 41:53

sure, it's crazy.

Janelle Orion 41:55

What I'm also hearing is that, right, you were also witnessed in that, right? Like you were not alone in this moment of revelation.

Greg Kelly 42:02

That's right. That's right. So it would be one thing if I just thought this myself, the fact that there was this constant like action to happening to me, followed by a narration from her boom, bang, back and forth every time I was like, holy shit. I mean, it was just Yes, I was not alone. She's great. Kristen, Breda, Miss is her name, if anyone's interested.

Janelle Orion 42:24

Okay, that was some intense shit. But you know, man hearts often laugh. This is like, so good. This is like the stand up comedy, like witchy, like faith led grace, led relationship with God. Episode, yeah, yes. Thanks for bringing that energy. Greg Kelly, thank you. Okay. Thank you for listening, brave hearts. We love you and we'll see you on the next episode in Season Five, how to build a relationship with God. Bye.

Janelle Orion 43:06

Hey, Bravehearts, looking for permission. Work with us. Andrea offers permission coaching, and Janelle offers erotic wellness sessions. Follow us on Instagram, meet us in real life at permission to be human workshops in Denver. Subscribe to our newsletter, do all this and more at our website, permission to be human. Dot live. You.