Spiritual Surfing with a Bishop: David Nagler

In this thought-provoking episode, we have the honor of hosting David Nagler, a Lutheran Pastor with a rich background and a unique perspective on spirituality and love. Recently elected as bishop of the Pacifica Synod of the ELCA, David brings a wealth of experience and a deep understanding of community.

Throughout his journey, David has served in various pastoral roles, fostering connections and creating meaningful impact. From his missionary work in Madagascar to leading congregations and ministries in California and Oregon, he has dedicated his life to spreading compassion and empowering others.

Join us as we explore David's profound insights into spirituality, the importance of community, and the transformative power of love. Prepare to be inspired as we delve into his unique perspective and discover the universal truths that lie at the intersection of faith and humanity.

Find more David, and support his favorite causes below:
https://www.pacificasynod.org/
https://www.surfrider.org/
https://notorture.org/

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Transcript

[00:00:00] Intro: love what you love, and if you love something, just go ahead and trust that, that's your path.

Welcome to Everyday Masters, the show where we seek to understand mastery. People who have it, people who try for it, people who struggle with it, and how we all manifested in our own lives. Welcome to Everyday Masters.

[00:00:39] Maury: Hey, welcome to Everyday Masters. I'm Maury Sterling and I've been an actor for the last 30 years. You probably have no idea who I am.

[00:00:46] Craig: And I am Craig Diamond. I've been in marketing for 30 years. I've got a master's in psychology and for sure you don't know who I am. 

[00:00:53] Maury: We came up with the idea for this podcast because as an actor, one of my favorite things is getting to talk to the specialists they bring on, set all the people who come to set to help us actors, look like we know what we're doing.

[00:01:06] Craig: And for me, I've always considered myself to be a jack of all trades, but master of none. I'm pretty good at a decent amount of things, but not a master at any of them. I'm excited to learn how to become a master if that's possible. 

[00:01:20] Maury: The aim of the show is to absolutely talk to people who are obviously experts, but we also want to talk to the everyday master people who've been doing things in their lives for years with passion and discipline, and nobody may think of them that way, but they are absolutely masters. Now welcome to this episode of Everyday Masters

[00:01:43] Craig: Yo Maury, what is up? How are you? 

[00:01:48] Maury: Hi, Craig. I'm good. 

[00:01:50] Craig: I'm excited to see you this week. How has your week been? 

[00:01:53] Maury: It's been a good week. It's had lots of actual New Year's energy. There's always that like tendency to start the new year off and think you're supposed to do all this stuff, but actually this year it feels like some new energy. I'm into it and , the fact we're doing this is a huge part of it. 

[00:02:07] Craig: Good. I'm thrilled that we're doing this. I wanted to start off with something that, we're gonna talk about mastery on this podcast, but something. That I officially have not mastered, which is, the tape. You have to pack a box with, the tape that you get, at the FedEx store where you tape it, and then you can never find the end of the tape it again. Because we just came outta the holidays. I taped a million boxes. It's packing tape and then you pull it off, you place it on, and then it immediately is invisible again on the spool. This makes me insane. I can't handle this. I don't know what to do with how I'm feeling about this. 

[00:02:41] Maury: You gotta keep it on the thing. I mean, using the roller, the the hand device to help you pull it off.

[00:02:44] Craig: It has the plastic thing. But it flips back down every single time. The design. It's not Okay. 

[00:02:51] Maury: I think it's an indication that there's somebody out there who is gonna listen to this and, they're the master of packing tape. There's gonna be a move. That's our quest. , because there's like a tape move where you do a flip to flip and it keeps the tape on the thing

[00:03:02] Craig: I am fired up to introduce this week's guest. I moved to San Diego. We have this good friend. She introduces us to her boyfriend who becomes fiance, who now is husband meet this guy. Honestly, this guy feels like a guy you've known your entire life and if you said, Hey, this guy's a singer in a rock band. You'd be like, oh, that makes a ton of sense. I come to find out that this is who this guy is. I'm gonna start out with a quote from him.
My greatest space for true recreation is in the ocean. I try to paddle out five days a week. When I'm in the water, I'm part of an ecosystem that is vast. I can meditate on the power and beauty of creation while I surf. I practice a loving kindness meditation, which gets me beyond my ego self, and reconnects me to my community.
My buddy, the Reverend David Nagler was elected May 20th, 2022 to serve a six year term as bishop of the Pacifica Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. The ladies and gentlemen, my very good friend, David Nagler. Woo. How are you doing, my friend? 

[00:04:20] David: I'm doing well. What's up guys? 

[00:04:22] Craig: This is called Everyday Masters. And what we mean by everyday masters is we're on a, an exploration about mastery. What is mastery? And we're trying to find people that are extraordinary around us. You of course, came to mind. And so I'll kick things off by saying, when I asked you, Hey, we have a podcast called Everyday Masters, and I'd love you to come on, what went through your mind?

[00:04:45] David: First thing is I'm not a master of anything. , that was my first thought. The sec second thought was and it connected to your question was I think it's about passions, right? I am someone with passions. And so that keeps you pursuing something over a long period of time, which then after a while, you look back and you think, I'm actually getting better at this or understanding it more. To say you're a master to me implies that you have arrived. But for me, I would, I guess maybe it's look at more like the like the golf masters, it's like you've been passionate about this long enough to not suck so maybe that's the way I would see myself in terms of mastery.

[00:05:22] Craig: But you're a bishop. I mean that just sounds awesome. You're a bishop, right? So you have to have mastery in something to become a bishop. What do you have mastery in? 

[00:05:36] David: Yeah, couple things. I would say that I'm decent at. One is when it comes to communicating about. Either justice issues or what I would consider to be spiritual truths. Maybe you wanna go beyond the idea of just a religion, spiritual truth, the fact that we all, every single human being has an experience of, and a draw towards awe. A w e, right? That, that right there to me is something that is important and I've paid attention to that over time. And I like to point it out when I can, that this is something that is, I would say use your word God mystery universe, given to us as a way of drawing us deeper into what life's all about. So I like to communicate about that. But the other set thing that I mentioned is seeing where human beings especially are not good to each other and trying to point either point that out, not in a judgmenty way, but more a let's fix this way. And I'm also just, I've been always curious. That's that's why I've been bouncing around a lot too. Like when I was in Madagascar, I was doing Christian Muslim dialogue with people of different cultures and backgrounds and I love the idea. It wasn't like a typical missionary role where you're like out there converting people. Those are missionaries of. In my tradition, it's those of are years in the past. Now it's really more about how do we walk with people. And help them out. 

[00:07:04] Maury: To go back to that, because I think this podcast is gonna be fascinating. It may end up being more like an investigative journalist kind of thing than a lecturer. Because I think each time, you said, passion maybe that's a piece of this, what is passions, right? How do people sustain and do their passions? But more specifically I'm curious to ask you about what was it in those conversations in Madagascar where you're not trying to proselytize necessarily, but you're act right. Actually trying to, were you trying to shift a dynamic in a conversation? Where did you fail? Some of that stuff.

[00:07:36] David: It's an excellent way to frame it. I, for me relationships are part of the way in which we had any success at all. I got there and the old sort of patriarchal white supremacy system was still in place of you're the guy coming from America, the white dude. You're gonna be in charge. I get there. Literally I'm just learning the language and it's like, you're the program director for this whole thing, right? And this person here, they said, who's also a Lutheran pastor, who is, his name was Rap tafe. And he's Malagasy guy, so he knows the culture. He speaks Arabic and reads Arabic, which is gonna be really important, has a passion and has studied Islam. I've taken a month long course in Islam at this point, I like I know just enough to know basically the five pillars and which way Mecca is. That's what I got. And so I get there and I say to the people who are there, actually he should be the director and I'll be his assistant. And they said we can't do it that way. So I said how about if we're co-directors? And then we approached it that way, which was, that was the first relationship. And then every place we went, we tried to figure out how do we get together? There was no animosity per se, between the Christians and the Muslims, but they had completely separate lives, separate stores, separate places where they ate. They would live in amongst each other, but they would not interact at all. Wouldn't even really greet each other. And so we were trying to figure out how do you break that down? So we would, we'd create these opportunities to make the community better. I would get a, an NGO to pay for a new well or a new clinic, but we'd say, but we have to do it together, right? We have to have equal numbers of people coming from the mosque and the church to work on it. And when we did that over time, it started forming these great relationships. And to me, one of the highlights of my time there was I went to this one town. And there was a, an imam of the mosque living next door to the Lutheran pastor. And when we got there, I went to the pastor's house and he wasn't there, but his wife said, oh, he's next door. And I went over and these guys that had never even said hello to each other we're having tea. And they have tea every day. It's one of the things that they do is they get together and they have tea.. That to me is, a spike it in the end zone win. Touchdown. Sure. No one has to convert to nothing except love of each other. Craig knows my big thing is like the love dojo, right? That's what we're supposed to be trying to create are these studios, schools, places where we practice how to be more loving. That's if there's a passion for me that's definitely up there. 

[00:10:09] Craig: And just to jump in there, I think where the love dojo and the idea of being more loving really becomes real is when there's somebody that , You're not very happy with. Exactly. It's, yeah. Or somebody you don't get. It's easy to love people you love. Yeah. Yeah. It's hard to love people that Yeah. Are not top on your list. 

[00:10:29] David: Yeah. My, my boss is this Jewish guy who said, we have to love our enemies. 

[00:10:34] Craig: Oh, yeah. Yeah. You've heard of that guy? Yeah. Heard of that guy. Yeah's 

[00:10:36] Maury: crazy boss. Crazy idea. Yeah. 

[00:10:38] David: Standards are way up here.

[00:10:40] Craig: Yes. Jewish carpenters. No, I get it. 

[00:10:43] David: Yeah. , love people. Who defriend you on Facebook? Okay. Maybe I'd see that. But love your enemies. Like people who really wanna do you wrong. The first thing about that is you have to say it's not like you. It's not, and it's also not an emotion. You can't, what do you mean? It's not what do you mean you can't fakey make your way into it? I I'm gonna make myself feel like I like them. Okay. No, you can't really like someone who wants to hurt you. It's just impossible, right? But, and this is the weird part, but you can love 'em. And by that it's not having a feeling for them. It's about trying to make sure that your actions and words are going to give them a better life. I'm going to do things to make your life better. It's an act of love. I'm gonna actively seek to not hurt you even , in that sort of internal work of not tearing you down inside. And that's heavy lifting. Because especially right now in our culture, we are also hardwired with the polarized community we live in, are you with us or against us? We could just use a word and I can know which side of the political fence or anything you're on, and then we square off, right? So to go that opposite energy is super hard and we've talked about it. So I could see a time in which if it would be great if all places who are spiritually focused, churches, mosques, synagogues, but other places too. Where the focus is. You come in and you go, all right, I wasn't so great at being loving this last week. And that's confession. And then you learn and practice and you get some people who say, I had someone in my life who was like that and this is what helped me. To try and deal with that. Then you employ that and then hopefully we become better at being lovers in the world. That would be the goal. 

[00:12:26] Maury: Yeah, and I guess, and then that, that fires off the sort of umbrella of this journey. We're starting up of mastery, which I. Mastery includes, to me it's a sense of practice or a sense of oh, absolutely. It's a sense of a, if you're a quote master at something, you're good at doing that thing. 

[00:12:44] Craig: And by the way, Mau and I feel like we're masters at absolutely nothing. And we hope that if we interview enough, yeah. This is we'll figure out how to win the game of life, which is actually a destination and not a journey. You've got that wrong, Dave. 

[00:12:58] Maury: We are. Mastery Vampires . , aka. Mastery Soul suckers. 

[00:13:03] Craig: All this is a selfish and selfish endeavor to steal what you've done. What is it? And apply it. For ourselves so that we can be happy. Got it. Continue. 

[00:13:12] David: Is there a follow up thing in which you guys everyday masters is actually you guys going out and saying shit, I say as though it's your own.

[00:13:18] Craig: For a while. Until there are listeners, yes, for sure. 

[00:13:23] Maury: We put on your hat and I'll hold the surfboard, pretend and be like, Hey. Exactly. But you've spent a life to be a bishop. That's no joke. You're like, Do you feel closer to the big guy with the bishop? Bishop? 

[00:13:35] David: No, actually I think in some ways the higher you go in the church, the harder it is to sometimes. Really have time to access, you have to be more intentional, let's put it that way. 

[00:13:45] Maury: You have spent time doing this. . I grew up around lots of spiritual, religious people, many of whom were total frauds. One of the questions we came up sort of , in this asking masters , what about fake masters? What about people who have said, here's my title. Here's who I am. This makes, yeah, I have arrived. And so therefore, but then they're sleeping with their students or they're not practicing what they preach. You don't seem like a guy who's doing that, which means you have spent time really working on this idea of. How can you give a five, 10 step process of were you to really help somebody be in that place of love? What do you tell them to do? Or how do you see that work? Or what are examples of seeing somebody really shift? 

[00:14:32] David: I think, again, I'd say faith or. Development, it travels a relational bridge. I think it's more caught than taught. Someone once said a Christian is someone who met one as opposed to and that you change the religion, it still works. You, you really can't do it by just I looked at a book, I my memorize something, therefore I got, it's no, you have an encounter and that changes you over time. That's why I think we can't do this stuff as self-help, I don't think it works that way. I think you have to do it in community. That's why, you guys are launching a podcast. Podcasts have been this incredible gift cause Exactly. Of this. It's relational. People will listen to you because you guys care about each other. And they feel like they're sitting in a room and you're caring about them too. And that maybe, hopefully will make them be more caring when they get home right after they drive back from their work and whatever. 

[00:15:22] Craig: Let me go back to something that's, I think very topical in your life and in mind, which is you don't look like a bishop. I don't even know what a bishop actually looks like. Actually I do. Cuz I went to your inauguration and it looked like that. Yeah. But I've spent a lot of time with you. And you are a nons bishop, looking Bishop and I and I have a data point of one you, but I am saying there is something about you that is not Bishop e, but you're a bishop. What is going on? Some surfer dude, that's super cool. That plays guitar about that surfs. Like, why, how and why you right now? What is going on? I don't understand. 

[00:16:03] David: All my life I've been told that I don't look like a pastor or now a bishop. And I take it as a compliment, honestly, cuz I know what's in people's minds. If you think about, you're an actor, you think about portrayals of clergy 

[00:16:17] Craig: have you ever done that, Maury? Have you ever played.

[00:16:19] Maury: Yeah. I played a Lutheran priest in the Ibsen play. 

[00:16:23] David: . Most of the time there's rare exceptions. I hope that yours was one Maury where it's you're either. Completely a dottering fool, or you're a ous, conniving kind of person, right? Yeah. Yeah. Those are the places where clergy fit in our common view. The reaction of clergy has often been to be more milk toast in the way that they yeah. Are in the world. And so every once in a while there's at my installation service, you saw like the whole dress up day where everyone like wears all the. The regalia. I don't like that stuff myself. I think it's, it hearkens back to a time I think that the church got sideways when it got in bed with the the empire and all those trappings look like that. I think we should more or less just be ourselves, look like our community. At least that's what I've always felt. And hopefully it'll change over time. My funny story about it when I became a pastor when I was 27, which meant the next year was my 10 year high school reunion, and I showed up at the high school reunion and people were like, Dave, how you doing man? What's up? And I, what are you doing? I said, I'm a Lutheran pastor. And they'd be like, oh, shut up. What are you really doing? Twice that night, I had to pull out my little like card that says I am officially, because they were, they just would not believe it. 

[00:17:36] Craig: Why? What were you like in high school?

[00:17:38] David: Not a pastor. Why? 

[00:17:40] Craig: What does that mean? What were you like? 

[00:17:42] David: I was, the party boy ran with the party crowd. I. But I was fascinated by religion, by God, and by theology, I should say so. I'd read things, but I wasn't going to church very much. And I dropped out confirmation and it was reallyt until later in life that I decided I'm gonna, I just kept studying and felt more and more like a nudge. Just do this for a year, check it out. 

[00:18:02] Craig: When was the moment in your life? I don't think I know this. When you went from. Being a moron. To wanting to be a pastor. What's, what was the door? What was The Awakening 

[00:18:14] David: I'd see it more of a melding of moron with Pastor Moron's still very much alive and well. 

[00:18:19] Craig: Okay. Guy you haven't killed off. Moron. That's fine. 

[00:18:21] David: Moron shows up a lot. 

[00:18:23] Craig: How does a guy that was voted Yeah. Not likely to be a pastor. Become a pastor. What's the door in the middle? What happened? 

[00:18:31] David: There's a couple things that happened. So when I first went to seven, I was gonna go for one year. That was the plan. I was just gonna check it out. It's a four year program. I got there early September, October 1989 was the Loma Prita earthquake. Remember the the big earthquake up in the Bay Area? Yes, sir. It was during the, yeah, it was during the, A Giants world Series game. 

[00:18:51] Craig: I was at college, I remember.

[00:18:52] David: Yeah. And I was, Up at a church where I just got a job like two weeks before as a youth guy, and I saw , the freeway had fallen down like sandwich? Yeah. Like the upper deck down on the lower deck. And had trapped cars in there. And so I got back to seminary and some people from the county had put out a request that the seminarians come show up down there to provide. Caring support for the workers who were in there pulling out bodies and trying to deal with that horrific situation. They said, and it would be helpful if you guys all wore clerical collars so people could see you and know. I didn't have one, but I wanted to go help. So I talked to an upper class when I said, could I borrow a collar? And I put it on, and I remember looking in the mirror and thinking, you are so full of shit. Really? It's total imposter. Like total imposter. What are you doing, Uhhuh? But, so I, and I went down there and then the and most of the people who were doing the hard work we're all Latinos. And so this one guy comes over to me and he says Bless me, father, because cuz I had the clerical call and it looked like you Catholic priest. You're like, who me? I know. He comes over to me, he's yeah, re blessed me. And I saw his face change. It's gonna be okay this thing that I just did, it could see it like wash. Whoa. I could see it wash off him. Whoa. And I had this moment of realizing, It is both about you and so much not about you when you're in this role. It's, and so it was the first time I thought I, I might be able to actually do this now.

[00:20:23] Maury: Sorry. Has that changed over time? Yeah. Do you feel like the more you've been doing it, or does it always feel that way? Does always feel like not about you dance back and forth? 

[00:20:31] David: . Absolutely. Especially in this new one I've been a pastor for 30 years. So now putting on this role of Bishop, it's like another level of that. Sometimes you show up as the bishop and it really doesn't even matter who you are. It's that the bishop is here and people will refer to it that way. We needed this to happen. And then the bishop was here. 

[00:20:50] Craig: That's what I say at dinner parties, by the way. Yeah. Go on. 

[00:20:53] Maury: Is the bishop is coming.

[00:20:54] Craig: I always do. I'm like, what does the say? 

[00:20:56] David: The, I announce myself in the bedroom too, by the way. 

[00:20:58] Craig: That's fair. I would do that. I would do that for sure. Go on. Yeah. 

[00:21:02] David: Who wouldn't, right. Exactly. But I but but I also realized that the only way I've ever been successful is by being my authentic self. And that to me is a theological thing. I think in my tradition, we believe that in what we call the incarnation that God becomes a human being. And that incarnation continues in all of us, every single human is that there's something divine that is in there. And you have to trust that the way the divine is taken shape in you is as you. So if you're trying to be like what you think a divine person would look like or sound like, or say, you're actually gonna screw it up. You have to just be you. 

[00:21:41] Craig: Hey, Maury, can I start a new segment in our podcast where we pretend that we're in a different room and we ignore Dave for a sec. Maury, see, he's a master. See, he's a master. No, I think he a master. He's a part. Can you feel it? Can you feel it? I think we need to silence. Silence. Shit. Yeah. No, he can't hear us right now. He's talking shit that he's not a master. Can't you feel that he has mastery? Didn't say Sorry. What's that? 

[00:22:03] Maury: Didn't you say we weren't supposed to talk over each other too?

[00:22:06] Craig: Yeah, we gotta take turns. Okay. So anyhow, let's go back and talk to Dave, but I'm telling you, can you feel that he's a master? Yeah. That he's trying to, I think the part of his mastery is that he doesn't wanna talk about the mastery or something like that. But you can feel it, right? 

[00:22:21] Maury: Yeah. And no, you had this idea earlier when we were plotting the podcast. Yeah. He's not listening, right? No, we can't hear it. We should, we have a moment where we like decide, we like hold up. Yes. Master, not master. Yeah. Okay, cool. Can you feel it? What do we, the guy's a master, right? I think master. I think master. Okay. Me too. 

[00:22:34] Craig: Hey, back to you, Dave. Come on. Hey, Dave. Hey, Dave. What's up, buddy? Hey. Yeah, 

[00:22:37] David: what happened? I feel like I blacked out 

[00:22:40] Maury: glitch, Craig. No, you did. Screwed it up. 

[00:22:42] Craig: Dave. I have another question here for you Maury, and I think you're master whether you think you're one or not and it's now been proven. Maury, what? Take a stab at it. What does Dave have master in here?

[00:22:52] Maury: Here are the things I heard. I heard a lot of things. First thing you said was it's not a destination. This sort of idea of mastery implies an endpoint like you've arrived and the like. The first thing you said was, I'm not a master, cuz I don't know if there's an arrival place, but then you talked about a lifetime of. Conflict, like confusion, like party guy, but interested in God but being able to live in that, I heard imposter syndrome of what the hell am I doing going here as a young priest to help these people. But then seeing I just got goosebumps, but seeing the change on this man's face because you just did a thing that maybe you didn't even believe in. Which also then touches to the whole, this whole thing of,
I think Fred Fred Craig. Who's Fred? Who's Fred? He's my dog. Who the hell is Fred? My dog just peeked in the window. His name's Fred. Seriously, do I name serious? I've already been fired. This is the part where, who the hell is Fred? Fuck, shush Fred. It's my first dog. 
Anyways I think this episode is gonna be called The Love Dojo because I think it's leading up to what I really heard you talk about was love and how that may not be what we think it is, which is very much my experience. If love is the answer, especially in the last few years of my life, like realizing that love, it's an action, it's a choice. It's something you do that defies almost everything you think it might be. Leading up to this practice of being able to share that and actually deliver that to people with the result. As well. You talked a lot about the other, like it's transcended, it has to be almost like it has to have a realtime effect. On others, with others, to others that you see them having coffee. And the other thing I'll end with this too. Humility. I thought it was really interesting you talked about when Yeah, I agree. Went to Madagascar that you said he should lead. Not me. He should lead. There was a, there was an ability to there that you didn't need to be right for that thing to work. You got it. That you needed to step back or at least find a way. And I thought those were some components that in this mastery discussion all fall in there. 

[00:24:50] David: Good synopsis. Yeah, as far of like things that I care a lot about, but I appreciate that. Thanks. 

[00:24:56] Craig: If there's somebody out there that strives for mastery in anything. Could be the violin or better relationships or golf. What are the three ingredients of mastery in your opinion? 

[00:25:07] David: The first one I'd say is going back to passion. Howard Thurman, he's a fantastic African-American theologian, mystic. He said, don't ask what the world needs and go do that. Ask what makes you come alive and go do that. Because what the world needs is more people to come alive. Ok. Passion, right? So yeah. Even if your passion feels, like it's not welcome in whatever circles you're in or whatever. It's love what you love. And if you love something, just go ahead and trust that, that's your path. So that's gets to the next one. Which is you gotta have perseverance, right? If you're gonna become a master at things, you're going to do, like Thomas Edison said, and learn a thousand ways how not to make a light bulb, right? You're a lot of time and you gotta become really good with not doing it. Then the third one to me, which is key to life, which is just have people that you enjoy and have a good sense of humor about it. Cuz , you gotta be able to laugh. If you have some people to do that with. Again, it's that relational piece. It's just way better, especially when there's things I don't know quite how to approach it. I've found that the best thing to do is to get people together who I just enjoy and talk it out. Let people just kinda share it. Craig, you and I have had some of those times where we're just like, let's just. What's hard about being a stepparent, right? Let's talk about that. You love these people and you're trying to figure out how to do the right thing but sometimes there's pinch points.

[00:26:27] Maury: Are there any foundations you really like to support? Are there any ways we can support you or direct I'm hoping that people listen to this and not just, Get maybe inspiration in their lives and this kind of wrestle that I've always had, but also might go, huh, I wanna talk to that person. Is there a way to reach out to you or support foundations that, that you are into so we can all continue to help each other 

[00:26:50] David: for me, connecting to me personally you go to pacific as synod.org, that's our Synod website. You can find me and email me. That's easy. Two, I would say two things that I'm passionate about. One is Surf Rider Foundation. I think that they do great work. And the other one is right here in San Diego is an organization called Survivors of Torture. And they work with people who are refugees and specifically folks who've been in some of the most crazy, bad places in the world. And then they have a series of therapists and housing specialists and occupational help, and they just get people's lives back together, who've just been through hell.

[00:27:26] Craig: I have a question for you, Dave. Sure. Because mastery is not a destination and it's hard to wear the jacket of mastery. Like anybody we think What do you suck at? It's green, right? What do you suck at? It is green. What are you suck at? What are you working on? 

[00:27:39] David: I was saying, a lot of this job is administrative and I'm pretty good off the cuff. But I'll have had meetings and then someone will send me an email about something. I don't know what we're even talking about anymore. It's it's gone out outta my head, Uhhuh. So I should be better at that after 43 years of surfing. You'd think I'd be better at that, but I'm not. I do it more just cuz I love it. There's a lot of things You can't read my handwriting at all. Yeah, there's, yeah. 
[00:28:04] Craig: Yeah, work on that. I think you should work on that handwriting. 
[00:28:07] Maury: Dave, I cannot thank you enough for coming on for so many reasons, but mainly just what you had to say. And maybe if you're up for it, we'll have you back down the road a little bit once we've got a few more to the belt just to keep the conversation going and, check in again on where we are. But mostly just thanks. Thank you so much. 

[00:28:28] David: Absolutely man. It's good. It is super great to get to know you and I'll pretty much do whatever Craig asked me to do. So whatever. Whatever you want. 

[00:28:34] Craig: Yeah, and it's killer. I've got material now that I can say is mine for a week before people hear this, so that's awesome. Dave. I love you buddy. Thank you. Love you too buddy. So much for being on Everyday Masters. We will absolutely meet you soon. 
[00:28:48] Outro: And now it's time for the wrapper wrapper. 

[00:28:52] Craig: Wow. David Nagler super cool guy. I can't wait for you to meet him in person. Just an amazing dude and for me, again, being a Jewish guy, just something unexpected about the fact that he's a bishop and I know Bishop it's exciting and has always thrown me my, big rapper upper. Which I'm starting to feel like is emerging as a, not a trend, but something we, we hear in our interviews is around leaning into your passions. I think one of the things you and I have always been curious about is, can I be an, could I be a master in anything? Could I just decide I wanna be a master in this and then go do it? And I love Dave saying, a key to mastery is I. Is to find what you're passionate about and lean into that passion. Yeah. And trust that, that, that is your road, your doorway to mastery. To be very honest I love many things about you, Maury, my brother, but one of the things I really love about you is you had a passion to be an artist, to be an actor. And I had one too when I was young. And frankly, I didn't have the passion as much as I needed to, or maybe the courage and I see somebody like you that had the passion, the perseverance, and you have lived the life of an artist. And to me, I just think that's incredible. I think I have just so much respect and I just love that about you, that you get to live the life of an artist cuz I always deeply wanted to. So anyhow. To find one's passion, lean into it and live it being a key to mastery. I really feel that, and I think that is easier said than done. 
[00:30:38] Maury: Yes and yes. And thank you. I can't believe he's your friend. I've known you a long time and he is one cool dude. Craig, I would say the same about you in terms of your passions. We can have a longer conversation about, In terms of how we see ourselves, and I think that's something we all have to work on, is how we see ourselves, how we see others, comparing ourselves to others. You're one of the most passionate dudes I know. I think what my wrapper was with Dave, it really hit me his story about working in Model Gasey and being able to know his lane and let this. Other man take charge. Who knew the language, who was facile in the culture? Cuz I think that's an amazing skill to be able to keep your ego out of it, know what you're good at, see what other people are good at, elevate them and then the whole project or whatever it is going to go better. 

[00:31:33] Craig: If I were to ask you, for listeners at home and you were to distill that into something we can all do, Dave had the wherewithal or the mastery or the restraint or the humility or the what, that he was in a moment and rather than step forward and feel the glory of leading the project. Could see something different. How do you distill that for a listener or for yourself? What are you asking of yourself in a certain moment?

[00:32:00] Maury: What comes up for me is I think if in my life, and I certainly see it in society, there are all these, there are all these forces that are driving us, that are telling us we need to do X, Y, and z. I feel them personally, and I think those can be very blinding and I think there's a lot of momentum that gets created behind them, which then may. We may make bad choices because of momentum instead of having the ability to be present. It's a lot of the language we all hear out there. Get quiet. Be present, be paying attention to what's what is in front of you. And then it's a more effective energy to bring to any situation. 

[00:32:35] Craig: I think there's something incredibly admirable about somebody who is willing to give the credit to somebody else. Absolutely. To give the moment to somebody else. Absolutely. We like to say be of service to others. And not jump into the spotlight, but feel joy and a genuine sense of. What's right by letting somebody else do that. And I think that's hard to do. It's hard to do hard, it's hard to do well anyhow uh, in this wrapper, I think you've been in the spotlight more than me, which I find offensive. And uh, my ego does not like it. So, um, I'm gonna wrap up the whole episode. It wa that was, try to get more, try to get more attention back on me. On you off of Maury. I wanna say thank you to all the listeners for tuning in to this episode of Everyday Masters. We love you and we will see you next time.

[00:33:26] Maury: That was a good job, Craig.