 It's been a long, long day, I got a lot to say It feels like I'm carrying a two ton weight I go to see a new friend Hello, I'm Monsignor Patrick Winslow And I am Father Matthew Cowth And we are speaking from the Rooftop A podcast brought to you by 10 Books In which we invite you to join our conversation Out here in the open air Where we look out upon the world around us From the rooftop of the church And share with you what we see Hello there Good morning So most people probably don't realize That during the course of the beginning of the week I think about things And put them in the back of my head and say I gotta talk to Father Cowth about that Do you do the same thing? I do, especially now that we're doing these podcasts Because I think to myself I'm going to have an opportunity To discuss something Unfortunately, my card catalog The back of my head has massive holes In the bottom of it So I put a card in there and it falls on the floor somewhere Trying to remember the things I want to talk about I can barely remember one thing to the next But the reality is The types of things that make it Into my little card catalog for you They're not trivial They really aren't, they're meaningful They're substantial It may seem like It was triggered by a trivial thought Or a trivial consideration But the reality is there's a lot there to unpack And so, you know, one of the things I think That we try to do in our conversations is To bring that light of faith And what we know by virtue of our faith As well as philosophical underpinnings And apply them and do it in such a way That we learn more and we gain more So for me, I want to check in with you Because I'm seeing something Or I don't understand something And I know that you have the philosophical And theological underpinnings I know that I have certain philosophical Theological underpinnings That we can draw upon and to see With a greater light So although sometimes it may seem like We're talking about what others May refer to as trivialities The reality is, I mean, we are trying To learn from everyday experience From the things right in front of us And not merely the abstract Look at life and begin to comment on it A subsurface, as it were And the fact is almost everything That's worth looking at And most things in the world, of course, are Are worth therefore considering It's interesting that the word speculative life Or contemplative life That word speculative means To see something as in a mirror Because when St. Paul says of course That in the future we're going to see God as he is Right now we see him as it were in a mirror And that kind of shadowy reflection In the way in which of course ancient Mirrors weren't as perfect as the ones We have now are And you don't see things as clearly As you would with the naked eye And so part of our attempts and tasks Here with you is to Look at something acutely And to learn And to learn from it I know that it's For the average rank and file person It can be difficult, right? You have a lot of tasks You have a lot of obligations Whether you have employment Or whether you're working at home Directly with your family and your children There's a thousand things on your mind To take care of Do you have time to think? Absolutely, and that's This is part of the difficulty of the unexamined life As Socrates would say, right? That most of the knowledge that we Attempt to gain And to glean Has to do with doing things Or making things, right? As St. Thomas would call it The arts As opposed to practical intellect As opposed to speculative That we do have time to think In the sense that To take something in from the outside world And begin to turn it around To consider it, etc That's what we're trying to do It's the only way you can evolve It really is the only way you can evolve In your own formation In your own education In your own understanding I'll tell you One of those little cards I put in the back of my mind Recently I've derived from a few experiences I've had recently Mainly encountering Unpleasant people Or people Who were caught In an unpleasant mood And I had to interact with them Unpleasant people So I don't want to I'm going to say unpleasant people As a short end because it's just easier to say I recognize that they are not Ontologically unpleasant people They're being unpleasant It's a bad moment they were in It's transient, I get that I know For a fact I can be unpleasant too So I'm just going to say unpleasant people Understanding the fact that it's Like weather, right? It moves through all of us But there seem to be some people who like that Weather They live in The cloud of unpleasantness And when you interact with them Your sunny day Just got a dose of rain And so I've been conscientious of it In large part, it's a bit of a confession I had An interaction with someone where I was tired And just kind of off my game And this individual Received Me with a great deal Of unpleasantness And I thought disrespect And My reaction Immediately reflexively Was to match her Was to reply In kind And I found myself Going from 0 to 60 In tension And contending with this person By engaging them in the way that they She had engaged me And it just kind of escalated It was not a proud moment In fact, I went back and apologized Because My conscience bothered me But that said As I reflected upon it What happened there? And I was sucked in to the unpleasantness I was not rooted In my own disposition I was kind of off-guard And the moment I encountered her orbit It was like I was pulled into her Vacuum of unpleasantness And it was really difficult to escape So, you know, I know As a moral theologian, you probably have 100 things you can say on the matter But just on the Superficial level It matters to me That people try To engage respectfully And pleasantly It does not mean you can't be an inherent pessimist It does not mean You have to be a bubbly, sanguine personality It just Means you need to be respectful Of another person It used to be called Just being polite Right Or as they say, the Italians have a great way Of saying That someone is disagreeable That they're maleducato That they're Literally poorly educated That's true, yes Because there's something about The interactions we have With human persons that demand The same kind of Respect that we would Show to our friends So we can't be friends with everyone Very few friends in the course of a lifetime Any meaningful friendships Even though you have all sorts of pleasurable And useful friendships, etc But the way in which one gets Trained to treat the person that you meet At the grocery store, at the post office Or anywhere else for that matter Is extending to them The kind of way in which you would treat One with whom you are friends The person that I always think of And I have the most Interesting sort of success with in this level Is traveling There's no one that receives More As it were, cloud of unpleasantness Than the person who works at the ticket office Delivering bad news a lot Everyone hates them Because they're stressed out Everyone walks, if you've ever watched people At an airport, they walk really quickly As if everyone's going to be late As if the entire system Of airplane travel Is up for grabs all of a sudden And so people are tense In those sorts of situations And the poor person Who has absolutely no control Over the airline Is just sitting there taking your bags Is the person that receives Massive clouds of unpleasantness all the time The reason I bring it up is because Your statement made me Realize how many times I've approached That ticket counter With perhaps A bit of anxiety or demands Or things of that nature that I wanted to get across And every time I've checked myself And tried to break through What they have They have Incubated by virtue of everyone else's Difficult situation By noon, they're all upset too Because they've entered into that cloud As you put it And to try to bring a little bit of sunshine To there, it's amazing when they finally break And they're like, oh my gosh You're not going to treat me poorly You're not going to make my life Even more miserable Even though I have no idea who you are Well, it's funny that you mentioned the traveling Because recently I traveled And I was thinking about this That other incident happened before I traveled You know, you gotta I'm not saying under my skin, but it got in my mind Like, how do I avoid that again, right? I don't want To do that again Even should somebody foist a dark cloud In my direction I don't want to engage So I've developed a principle Actually two, one Underreact So as a way forward I'm going to choose An underreaction An overreaction Which will, I think, incline me toward Being a bit more dignified And generous Because I don't want to match the energy That's being thrown at me Which is the temptation When I say underreact I mean underreact to the negative energy That's coming at me Go underneath it, don't try to equal it And certainly don't try to pounce back harder And then the other is I have concluded I generally don't like People who don't Try to be pleasant I don't know how to say that But to me It's a sign of Respecting the inherent dignity Of another person And people can be Pulled They can feel justified By being unpleasant Or in their unpleasantness Because so and so is wrong Then therefore I can be decidedly unpleasant That it's somehow A due response And Sometimes I find this No offense Because I know you belong to this community Of cholerics I can find among cholerics I was just going to admit it But now you're calling me out You're being very unpleasant No, I said it very pleasantly The listeners will know how politely I said that So for those who don't know About choleric The tendencies or the temperaments Do you want to offer a brief explanation? The medieval's believed That there were four different kinds of temperaments And they were based upon different kind of Humors in the blood And whereas they might be Incorrect or inaccurate relative to The cause of it, they are quite accurate Relative to the kinds of persons that there are Most people fall into A predominant temperament And then sort of a secondary temperament And so the names for them were relative To the humors in the blood As I mentioned, so a sanguine person Is someone as Father said is very bubbly And optimistic And kind of the life of the party But not always a deep Precarious often We would call them now A bit more of an extrovert And they can recharge by being with people etc And you need all these kinds of people around Each temperament has its own good And difficulty So the sanguine There is the phlegmatic Which that slow moving river That languid river They never get too worked up about anything And are not usually the persons that give you initiative But they're also the persons that can roll with the punches The melancholic Which literally means sort of black bile Is the person who can Often times a very deep thinker But can be corrosive in their thinking Because they brood on things They think about situations That happen to them externally And they take it inside and don't react Whereas the choleric reacts immediately The choleric is usually the guy That walks around with his His podium and sets it up And begins to preach to everyone Because he has a strong, really strong sense of justice And when he has A disordered self love Everyone who doesn't have the same love That he has for himself is therefore unjust And so they receive from him A massive amount of ranker and anger Because they're not following In line That undue Self love In the form of a choleric Looks like a finger wagger Somebody who just walks around wagging a finger And we all know them For first of all My father shares In the community of cholerics As you do As well as A lot of my friends actually It's true I'm surrounded by cholers Well, we have a few notable exceptions But cholers get things done But they can also Create a lot of damage They tend to be good teachers They tend to be good teachers The image I have for myself And one of the things I've attempted to work on Is that it's true I can plow through a field And get to the end of whatever Needs to happen But then I look back And I see all these sort of Damaged Fields that I went through There's a lot of collateral damage Oftentimes to the choleric It gets to the end that he's seeking But other people and persons And certainly their feelings are oftentimes Are just collateral damage Since we've entered into the realm Of the medieval temperaments They're very unlikely To be Unpleasant They're just not going to be that way That's not how they're disposed Then If we were to look at the phlegmatic The phlegmatic could be unpleasant If they don't want to be bothered Right, so They usually roll with a punch as well But if you force them To have to manage something That they find bothers them That would be an irritant That could be Probably not in the way You're using unpleasant You probably ran into a choleric It's unpleasant in so far as The person manifests their certain indifference To something that you're excited about But it's not unpleasant in that sort of Abrasive What energy am I picking up on here Right I guess the bottom line is that there are different temperaments And different temperaments are going to Be different from the temptation To project unpleasantness More than others, right Yes, yes, to be sure I think the color is Certainly the most unpleasant If they don't keep it in check Although I do keep my father in check Very well, you know Let's go ahead And then sort of define what we mean By unpleasantness Because there's a certain amount Of desire that is natural And good to want to be pleasing To someone, right Everyone enjoys the fact that When they're growing up Their parents put their coloring page Up on the refrigerator Or you've got a good job from a teacher Or a coach, etc We do look to The larger community To realize whether or not We are actually acting well And so Part of the response we get from other persons Is just that It's good that you exist It's good that you are You have done well if you have And yet we're extending that Sort of courtesy to persons that we don't know When we're just being pleasant Maybe there's another Aspect to this That you want to tease out Relative to sort of definition But I think about the nature of the word grace itself Right? Giving a nom of definition Meaning a definition that just has to do With where the name was derived It means to be in someone's favor To be pleasing to someone Literally, right? So that when God Looks at us, is he pleased with us What's different than the way In which I might be pleased with you Or you might be pleased with me His look actually makes us pleasing So it's the gift that makes the other person pleasing So it's a power It's a capacity But proceeding from that The same sort of thing happens with us On a different level It doesn't give us the power to be good But it does help When we encounter someone And they're affable and they smile at us We are encouraged, literally To be able to do something well And I think that what we're getting at Is when someone is unpleasant They're saying to us immediately That we are not in their favor And it feels as a diminishment Of our own being It's a message It's not good that you are here Whether you intend it or not There is something being communicated And the message is being received There's no doubt about it As you were talking I had like five things go off And now I'm going to say Those cards just dropped in my head Just to give an example I mean It's kind of sanguine melancholic Which is the most impossible temperament To have together But typically you are very Pleasant With people You don't easily get roused And when you do I know that it's something significant Because it's just not your go-to Whereas if you see me get roused It's like, okay, Cal, we'll be over it In 30 seconds and hope he doesn't blow something up In the meantime But it's true So you feel it I go 100 degrees Out of character If I get roused And it can be striking It certainly can be striking Because it's not my normal People don't expect it And I try to keep that in mind But I think that People Interacting with other people Out there on the road In the grocery store At work Or in their neighborhoods If we were a bit more conscientious About the messages that we're sending Relative to being Pleasant or unpleasant I mean, it's one thing to be pensive Sure, sure, sure Everyone knows you're just somewhere else But when we are Entering into situations That are interacting with others I think we should be A bit more conscientious About just being pleasant enough As affording A certain respect to the other I remember hearing A story when I was in grad school I had a TA I was a TA And I had some students Who tell me about a trip they made up to New York City And they were southern Yeah, New York is unpleasant By The social conditioning Of defining what's pleasant and unpleasant So they go up to New York City And they were southern With a southern accent and a southern style And I must say That in the south That southern hospitality Are a regard for pleasantness But of course you can run into People who don't have southern hospitality But for those that For those who do have That marvelous tradition Of southern hospitality Well they went up And drove up to New York City A concert and as they approached One of the tolls At the base of the bridge Which by the way is always chaos They proceeded To ask the toll man Big mistake How to get to The concert center Which was at the garden Something garden, whatever that thing is And The guy looked at them Like they had 18 heads And he said to them I kid you not What do I look like Beep beep beep Tour guide And they were stunned And of course they moved right through And when they came back and told me the story I said of course I would have expected quite honestly Nothing less than that reaction You don't understand the social condition there You're being rude by holding everyone else Behind you up And you're asking this guy to give you directions When it's not the right time or place And it's a complete disruption in the system And in New York You don't disrupt the system Yeah The colorful response Was I think Undo A certain New York grit and charm I suppose It's like doing the zoo and seeing animals Yeah But But that said That kind of reminded me when you were saying something about the cultural Conditioning of what's considered to be pleasant or unpleasant There are different circumstances And there are different cultures Where they're going to project different values And one of them in New York certainly Is don't interrupt me Like don't impede my flow Like if you're Standing when everyone is walking In this pathway And everyone knows you walk in this pathway And you're standing there because you don't Know that They're going to feel like you're Offending them And they will meet What they regard as unpleasantness And reply in an unpleasant Way Like get the heck out of my way Well you used to term As you know we work in seminar Information and you used to Term once with the men That is kind of stuck And that is Social lubrication Which I think is a great term Because not in every situation Do you need to get down into the depths Of someone's soul, right When you're meeting people And you're going to the checkout line And they say to you obligatorily Did you find everything you need It's really not the time To say as a matter of fact no And go through that right there Or when they say Are you having a good day Or hello, how are you It's true that We don't expect an answer From those things But sometimes I actually get one If you attempt to have just A moment of encounter with someone To say you're not a cog And I'm going to treat you as a person And you just remind yourself of that Into an encounter And they may not respond But I have had more often than not Someone just sort of pauses and looks at me And they'll just Give me a real response And I had one yesterday Which was very simple And it was a checkout At the grocery store And she just said Well so far so good But I have to say I just got on And here's what I'm looking forward to later on And then we got into A couple more sentences worth of Text and context About our days, whatever else And then we moved on Small thing but it was an actual encounter That was pleasant, that was good That made her life not be mechanical And especially now that we're taking over As many jobs as we can With machines as opposed to persons To make them Have an encounter I think it's a fantastic thing Because I'm dressed in a collar People are expected Of a reaction of any sort It would be creepy But I find those Those little vignettes and moments in life To be Making something that I have to do That's a seriously menial, silly task Of getting the groceries again I find it to be life That's part of life And encountering people Any matters You never meet an ordinary person One of those great quotes he has You meet someone Whose eternal destiny is such That should you see them In their glorified state You'd be tempted to worship them Or you see someone who will be an everlasting horror And whatever you do in that moment Encounter that you'll probably never have Again with that person That's the only time you get to see that person In your entire existence On this earth Did you assist them? Wait to put it I had that last part It is the last part I was glossing I affirm you So let's recap One, we both agree That people have a certain Obligation If not out of justice But at least in charity To Project For the dignity of others In what we're calling A modicum of pleasantness In interaction We're both agreeing That should you walk into Someone else's unpleasantness That We would recommend Not matching it Or exceeding it You enter into the realm of a sin against justice It's an undue response Even trying to match it though Usually just escalates It doesn't You don't really ever just match and stay there You escalate And now I think It leads people down a bad path I've been there We've all been there I'm the DEF CON 5 guys So My general advice is To try to come in with an underreaction So To In a certain sense I think it'll put them off their footing Take them off their Their unpleasantness for a moment Because I would imagine That most of their responses Are going to be met With unpleasantness Or doubling down and coming back harder Absolutely One of the images I use with the guys Is a very simple one But it helps me Every time I encounter someone On their own little emotional roller coaster Some people don't have Super highs and lows And twisty corkscrew roller coasters But some do And my only point is that I have not bought a ticket To ride your roller coaster So I'm happy to engage you Happy to be pleasant But I'm not getting on the roller coaster They kind of want to get you in that That's why you go, you escalate Exactly, you draw as you went That We can have bad days Well, you can Since I'm sorry When you encounter somebody being unpleasant Maybe give them a little extra space Because if you're not having a bad day I guess it's really top of them Both of you are having a bad day But if the person is having a bad day Just assume they may be having a bad day You have no idea what's going on in their life You have no idea what's going on So that underreaction Or even more charitable reaction And reply Might be warranted Out of charity for the other person So that can help I guess taking that view of it Might help you not to match In kind the negativity That's coming at you By just saying maybe you're having a bad day Or maybe a lot of people have foisted on them A lot of negativity And then I would say We both agree That There are general dispositions That can lend themselves More toward unpleasantness Than others and those people Who have those dispositions Like a choleric Have to be a bit more careful I'm kind of wondering during this entire discussion Since we never prepare anything I'm really wondering whether or not he encountered me And just changed the pronoun to she Well, you know you won't And we have a way of disguising Even getting mapped to the very first Moment of this discussion Coming full circle We were talking about Looking at things Taking a pausing for a minute And looking at life, bringing to bare faith In our life with God on particulars And this is another example You just mentioned that maybe this person Is going through X, Y, or Z Or maybe stepping back and not escalating Not matching but coming under To do that you can't react like an animal You can't have a You can't have a match pitch With the person across from you In a sort of reflective manner Reflective manner, you have to be On the contrary, reflective And stop and say, alright I'm going to Volitionally react as opposed to Just simply emotionally react And that's a different thing That requires an interior life So you can see what we did As we took an ordinary situation Ordinary circumstances We brought to bare philosophical, theological Even interesting Medieval thoughts And we Picked it apart, dissected it a bit And we kind of walked away I think having better for having Had this conversation because It helps me to keep in the Four of my mind when I'm walking into Somebody else's bad weather For lack of a better expression To have a bit of a strategy going into it Alright, so before we go Your first one Alright, so here's the deal I had no idea, what is that love about Living in Italy is that They don't really believe in Eating any kind of food at any given time They're still very much tied to the seasons And things that come about In that particular season So I was learning about growing garlic Recently and a friend of mine Was sort of showing me The wonders of growing garlic But there's a two week period in which Something comes out of a garlic called a scape Have you heard of it? It's fantastic How does it come out? Like an onion when those little things are Just like an onion, right? So you have these massive leaves That come out of the bulb that's in the ground As you would in any vegetable Like that and for two weeks You have this central Tendril that comes out of the middle It's cylindrical And it's got this little bulb Top on it and then it begins to curl around And I would have thought this thing was just an odd Looking appendage But you pull those off and you make a pesto Out of it and it's unbelievable You don't add a stitch of garlic Because of course it's growing out of the bulb Right So you kind of use it like a chive Which you mash it up As you would in any pesto But you don't add garlic It is under How long does it take to get long enough This whole process Last two weeks Kind of like the onion And then when it's gone When it's done past its prime It begins to uncurl And shrivel up and get And you can't use it anymore So you only get Two weeks you can do this Make your pesto and it's unbelievable You can't buy the But you can't buy the Garlic head of garlic And bring it home and let it sprout Honestly I have about 50 heads of garlic Now that are drying in my bed But all I do You don't mean your garden bed Garden bed I'm very festive So it definitely wouldn't be my bed You just take one Speak you What do you call it? You take a clove and you put it there That's it And that will produce a new head That's your entire process of growing garlic It's so easy that even I can do it But it's a lot of fun So it's the part that comes out of the ground that you use Or are you saying you just let it sit in your kitchen And let the things sprout like an onion No no you planted You planted And then it will grow that And it will grow the normal foliage That comes out as You just put it out there for a long time And you have to keep watching Because out of the center of that foliage Will sprout just one Symmetrical tendril Just one And you harvest that So if you got 50 heads of garlic You're going to get 50 scapes How many does it take for one of these It depends on what you want to make But I had enough for I would say sufficient amounts Of pesto out of that 50 scapes I probably had about 42 I let some others grow And then I was too late to get them afterwards Did you save some for me? I did Fantastic Before we go I got a text The other day from my sister So my sister and her family They live up in Washington So they live up in Washington So her husband was working But she took the kids to the nationals game And so My nephew Who I can barely believe is 14 years old Was at the game And they panned the big camera Over in the direction where they were seated Well somehow or another They brought over him a coke and a hat As a way to recognize him All on this big jumbotron And so he proceeds To smile and ham it up with the camera And he drinks some of the soda And then pours it over his head So now this thing has been tweeted out By the nationals team And is on their Instagram page And the whole thing is going There's like 80 to 90 Or 100 comments on it already There's like nearly 20,000 views It's hysterical And as my sister said I have no idea why He thought to pour the soda Over his head You said that he's 14 We don't develop reason as men But look at me He's hysterical He's all smiles He's wearing his gnats jersey He's got his hat They just gave him And then he proceeds the part of his Now if it were my nieces All they'd have to do to get the same reaction And probably twice the amount of views Would be just to smile into the camera Because they're adorable But listen here The young boy He has to make a fool of himself With a young girl She has to give a little twinkle and a smile And the whole world melts Absolutely Well, God bless you all Have a great week We're talking with everybody Okay, ciao Thanks for listening to this episode Of From The Root Chop For updates about new episodes And exclusive deals for From The Root Chop listeners Sign up at rooftoppodcast.com And remember for more Great ways to deepen your faith Check out all the spiritual resources Available at tanbooks.com And we'll see you again next time From The Root Chop