About Shawn McCraney

Shawn: Post mission pre ministry. Post mission. Got engaged to mom the night I got home.

Delaney: Yeah, but you’d known Mom…

Shawn: I’ve known her for a few years and I remember I was on the break from my freshman year.

Delaney: The timeline is and adding up in the way that I thought it did right.

Shawn: Out of high school, came home for a break at Christmas, met mom, went back, got arrested, came back. Mom came back after her sophomore year. We knew each other, got myself ready, went on the mission. She never wrote me once and I had other girls who were writing and stuff and then I just. I think I wrote my mission journal.

Shawn: I know I’m going to marry her mom. Really? I think I wrote that.

Delaney: And but that was when you’re steeped in Mormonism. Yeah. And you’re thinking you could will yourself into…

Shawn: Right.

Delaney: A relationship with God. And the night you got back, right. I said you knew it was, but you also proposed.

Shawn: Yeah. It’s like, it’s like I met with mom and I knew she would be the right kind of. But I was seen through a glass darkly. I wasn’t making that decision entirely on my own. I knew there were factors contributing, but it was the best decision I’ve ever made. Okay. Best. Yeah.

Delaney: And why? Like, okay, so how did how would you describe that decision? Like, what were the factors for you at that time?

Shawn: She was beautiful, physically attractive. She wasn’t necessarily my exact type, but she had that going for her. And then she she was accomplished. She knew how to play the piano. She was a good daughter to her parents. She was personable and she wasn’t a bad, you know, woman. I’d been with different bad women. Not all of them are bad, but she wasn’t a bad woman.

Shawn: And so I just knew somehow I just knew it was a really smart decision to make for a man who wants to have a family and ostensibly grow up in the church. So I was kind of a prick, though, you know, with the elders quorum presidencies and different things that would come along. I would I was playing that role and it was just so.

Delaney: Okay. So you so still were, like you you felt like you got back to Huntington, your immediately back into what that brought. But you kept playing.

Shawn: Yeah. Yeah. And I kept trying to do that the best I could. All the while my personal failures and were there growing. Okay. Yeah.

Delaney: And, but it’s different. Like you had willpower on the mission. Yeah, but maybe that’s because it. Would you say it’s because it was like, isolated.

Shawn: Like isolated. Controlled. Yeah. Regimented. Yeah. I was a free spirit.

Delaney: And do you think that’s common for most missionaries? They feel like they are in touch with something because it’s such a controlled environment.

Shawn: Well, I think that’s common for a missionary like me who prior to the mission was wild, that it’s just like my friend Michael Banks. He can’t function in society, but maybe he does now. But he couldn’t. He didn’t used to. But when you go to prison, he could function great. And it was kind of a similar thing for me.

Shawn: Yeah. So I was thinking, Mary, we’re going to go forward and we’re going to raise 12 kids and we’re going to be a mormon couple and I’m going to lead the ward. And she was proud of that. And we embarked on that vision.

Delaney: And she yeah, she was under that same impression when.

Shawn: She was under the impression.

Delaney: That you guys were going.

Shawn: To And she will say now, she prided herself looking around, you know, she’s you know, she’s married, she’s got a husband, and we’re doing things. And I’m like a dreamer, you know? So I’m speaking these great lofty ideas, and she’s buying into them. And and we’re going forward in life. And then we return to BYU and I decide to study fashion, you know, And that’s when I’m going to do.

Shawn: A fashion line. And I’m taking jobs in the ward. Elders quorum president. She’s the Relief Society president. We go to the temple and they call us to be the couple. They always have a couple who goes to the altar back and forth to represent everybody. We would all and we would go we’d feel so special because we would be called as the couple.

Shawn: And and but it was all fig leaves. It was all pretense. In the meantime, I am starting to have wandering eyes for other people. And now we have a problem.

Delaney: Are your kids involved yet? No, you. This is. How long were you married before having Mallory?

Shawn: Two years. Two years maybe?

Delaney: Seems like that. Yeah. And you were in college. You were doing college fashion?

Shawn: Yeah.

Delaney: Doing work. Heavy Mormon stuff. Yeah, as a couple. Okay.

Shawn: And so all you got to do is do the math. You know, I came from what I came from. Fashion was brought to me by Andrea, women, fashion. And so I got into trouble pretty quick. And once I did that, I entered into a life of, Wow, I am really screwed up. yeah. Because I have broken the temple.

Shawn: Things that I said I would do. My dear wife, who doesn’t know the difference, she wants us to have this perfect marriage, all of these things. And then we have a baby come in. Now, I’ve done that. So I’m totally conflicted. And we enter into our life as a married couple, having brought our Mallory and me struggling and trying to find myself.

Shawn: And so that was the life.

Delaney: And you would say, I’m actually kind of surprised. We haven’t really talked about this era of your life. Yeah.

Shawn: I don’t remember talking about it.

Delaney: Yeah. And like you, like the first I didn’t expect you to just now say that brought, like, whatever, like sadness to you. It wasn’t. I thought you were kind of, like, thriving. Like you thought like you were happy to be kind of getting away with stuff. Maybe, like, I don’t know.

Shawn: I was not happy with that. Primarily, it wasn’t because of God. I figured I was screwed with him. I see. It was because of what I did to Mom and her expectations. But she’s living with me and I’m pretending that more now I’m in full pretend. Yeah. And that my whole life is pretend.

Delaney: And pretend is in the church too? Like, were you showing the church that you were like. You were pretending with the church.

Shawn: Pretended with the church for years. Accepting roles now, members of the Mormon Church say, well, there you go. You had sin in your life, Shawn. And yeah, well, yeah, because I couldn’t stop that.

Delaney: Yeah. Which one of you doesn’t?

Shawn: But I didn’t realize that then. I thought everybody had control of it, but I was the defective one. I had gone to the temple. I had said, Yes, I’ll do these things. I didn’t realize then that nobody can do it. Yeah, right. But I took it seriously. I’m passionate. I wanted it to be real and it wasn’t. And so when I screwed the pooch, so to speak, on that, that effed me up in my way as a dad and a husband for about 17 years.

Delaney: And how would how would you articulate what what was effed up? What was wrong in your self with that?

Shawn: I was inauthentic. And I said this in the first show we did for Full circle. I was not an authentic punk. I wasn’t an authentic Mormon. I wasn’t an authentic husband. Yeah, I wasn’t an authentic artist. To me, I wasn’t authentic anything. And so I had to live a life of duplicity, which is anathema to my person.

Shawn: So that led me to starting to overeat like mad and self-medicate to cope with the idea of being a faithful husband in a faithful Mormon position with children looking up to me while I hated my whole existence and everything about it. Okay.

Delaney: Okay. I knew you were okay, and that was for a while. Like you have Mallory…

Shawn: Yeah.

Delaney: And how did you approach parenting with Mallory at the start? Like what? What was it like to have a child the first time and, like, what went through your head?

Shawn: It was. It was like the same thing as getting married, the same thing as going on a mission. It was just things I did because I thought I should do it.

Delaney: Okay. Yeah. Did you feel some sort of attachment to Mallory at all, or was it kind of intellectual?

Shawn: It’s funny because this is where the sociopathy thing comes in, is I have trouble seeing myself as daddy, like literally father to Mallory. I see myself more as a fellow human being who’s here to help her. Yeah, I don’t take any like I have a right. I’m your dad. I don’t expect to be treated with respect for my children because I’m their dad.

Shawn: I expect them to treat me with respect because they love me. So the title doesn’t mean anything to me. So I didn’t. Mom always has related to you guys as a mother. Yeah, but I’ve always been kind of orbiting in there somehow. So I loved Mallory and I wanted to do the best, but it was all pro forma.

Shawn: I just did what I was thought I was supposed to do. All the while. That’s when I really started reading. That was. And that’s when I started to really read and start to seek to find out.

Delaney: Yeah, okay. And so, Mallory, the approach you took with Mallory from what I’ve heard, is like authoritative.

Shawn: Pretty strict. Yeah.

Delaney: Like you in the same way as your mission. Like you wanted to relate to her as a person. Yeah, the way you do with the world.

Shawn: Yeah.

Delaney: But, like, you took what you thought what you heard was supposed to happen and did that.

Shawn: Did that instead. Yeah.

Delaney: Okay. And then Cassidy and you start reading when Mallory is born.

Shawn: I start reading as soon as I fake graduate from BYU. By the way, I faked graduated from high school as well.

Delaney: How did that how did both of those happen.

Shawn: In high school? I didn’t have enough credits, so I had to go through this thing called ROP or something like that at the time where you could get credits by your job. Wow. Yeah, for high school. And so I’ve created a job that I picked up paper on Huntington State Beach, pick up trash, and I filled out everything by the supervisor.

Shawn: And because I was the one is like Mark Hoffman, like because was the one who filled that out originally. And I signed it. That signature of whoever I use, Bruce Williamson was always the same. So they gave me high school credits and I walked. Wow. When I knew I had cheated my way through it into BYU. I mean, honestly, Mom went and took a computer science course for me in my name and ID and the testing center.

Shawn: I never took it. And then I did everything I could to manipulate it so that I could go and my parents could show up and see me get my thing. When reality later, a month later, when the school goes through and looks in, they said, you didn’t graduate.

Delaney: my gosh. Wow.

Shawn: Yeah. All of it was a pretense. All of it was. So that was the beginning of me starting to do things that were not authentic. And when I started to do that, I started to become of a phony. So I became far more troubled. Okay. Yeah.

Delaney: Okay. And so reading Who did you start reading? Why did you start reading?

Shawn: I think Who did I? I started reading Mormon. Mormon history. That was forbidden because my life was in disarray. The mission didn’t fix me. So what’s this church about That? You know, things aren’t right here. There’s something wrong here. Because it didn’t do for me what I thought it did. And I found out all about Mormon history. Wow.

Shawn: And that was in our college years. Yeah, I knew all about it then. When I found out that no one cared about that at all, that’s when I started to go into, I think it was French literature, and I think that’s when I first read Les Miserables, the unabridged version. And then I started to read Camus and Kant.

Shawn: And and then I went into Kant and philosophy, a lot of existentialist stuff. And I just and then I went into Marx, I was into the Marx era when we lived in Park City. So you were alive then? And I was really big into communism, while ironically, paradoxically, totally and authentically, I’m serving as an investment officer at a bank.

Shawn: Right. None of this makes sense. I am the bumblebee. I’m. I’m doing these. I shouldn’t be flying. There’s something wrong. And then at the same time, I’m trying to retain some semblance of my of my who I am, really. And that’s coming out through different things, like the clothes I wear as an investment officer. People are starting to do you know what’s going on and stuff like that starting to manifest.

Shawn: Yeah, and that’s what that’s what I did. I started studying all that.

Delaney: This is good! Don’t stop yourself.

Shawn: So I really love Hermann Hesse. He affected me greatly. I think he’s one of the best writers ever, and of course, not a Christian. He transformed my world view of how things go. That’s probably led me… Hermann Hesse is is the most magical writer. He doesn’t. I read Magister Ludi Ludi or The Glass Beads Game and it’s all ephemeral, all concepts, a make believe world of.

Shawn: It’s not science fiction, it’s all psychological. And and that’s when I started to learn to really love that kind of thinking. I realized that’s more along the line and I started to dabble in art and actually create pieces of art. But they weren’t really coming through right? I think I was too messed up for anything real or good to come through.

Shawn: It’s like I was a barometer and nothing could come out that was good until I got other things fixed. But I tried. Yeah.

Delaney: I mean, you couldn’t be authentic. No, That’s what makes your art now so good. It makes it better. Yeah. I like or any ones are really stupid if it’s not.

Shawn: Which hearkens back to the punk theme of you do it yourself. You do it honestly, and you do it with integrity. Well, if you’re doing art from a from a person that is not right with themselves, you’re not doing that authentically. So it doesn’t fit.

Delaney: What sort of art were you doing?

Shawn: I was doing like massive paintings and murals, and actually I was doing that the when we first got married all the way up through the Park City years, I was trying to do different pieces of art. I tried writing scripts, you know, and I wrote a couple of scripts. I actually got them looked at by Hollywood people and and I tried my hand at some nonfiction stuff, but nothing was clicking.

Shawn: Nothing could work. And then I wasn’t really clicking in my job. So it’s like it was like the way I see it now, God was like, I’m going to let you spinning your wheels everywhere until you discover that these things aren’t going to work. That’s literally what happened to me in my life. But it wasn’t that didn’t try.

Delaney: Yeah. You were trying. Yeah, it was evident. You were trying.

Shawn: Yeah, seeking. Trying. Also, the punk thing of self-harm started to become more involved in my life, so I started to burn myself and I started to cut myself, which kind of harkened back to the punk days in the clubs when everyone was doing that was this kind of, I don’t know why we did it, but now it was more emotional.

Shawn: Now I could find release. So I went to a psychologist. Why am I doing that? Because you’re frustrated, You have anxiety, you don’t know what to do with it. So I started to learn about that stuff. And all the while I’m becoming more and more distant in my relationship to real God. The Mormon Church, mom, my children, my jobs, the only saving grace.

Shawn: Where were you girls That I did love you in a way that I’d never loved anybody before. And I knew that you loved me in a way that was unconditional. I took advantage of that, but I did know it was there. And so when you experience that kind of love, because my parents love was never unconditional. It’s always predicated on what you do, how you do it.

Shawn: So when you experience that, that opens you up to something. Yeah. So you start to learn, right? All these processes of learning how to be and making those choices of what to keep and what to get rid of. Yeah. Yeah.

Delaney: Okay. What was… so where you are right now that all that stuff was building up until like even I was.

Shawn: Little.

Delaney: Little… which is like…

Shawn: Park City.

Delaney: Ten years. 17 years you said. Yeah. It’s really until the roadside experiences happening.

Shawn: Until Yeah.

Delaney: Up until that. Okay so and then work wise you were, you left like what’s happening logistically with all this.

Shawn: I worked in a retail store in South Coast Plaza managing it.

Delaney: Right out of your way. Right?

Shawn: Right out of college.

Delaney: Okay.

Shawn: My feigned graduation, I took over managing a retail store. I started reading a lot of Ayn rand during that time. And. And then I started to become more and more bummed out at life. And that’s when I hated my job. And Mom’s dad offered me a chance to train to become a stockbroker.

Delaney: I didn’t know it was through him.

Shawn: Yeah. Wow. So he’s working at Huntington Beach on Edinger. He’s managing Dean Witter at the time. And I entered their training program, and it was literally the first academic thing I ever had to do where I had to pass a test. Wow. Yeah. And I passed it. I was. And it includes a lot of difficult strategies and margins and options and stuff.

Shawn: So I realized, yeah, yeah, you’re right. You can do things if you have to or you’re interested in it. Yeah, yeah.

Delaney: The hardest freakin stock, it’s like the most difficult thing for me to understand.

Shawn: So I became a stockbroker and all that is, is a glorified sales position. You’re like, selling used cars, okay? And you’re on the phone and you’re meeting people. So that despair led me into reading more. All I did was sit there and read.

Delaney: During the job.

Shawn: Yeah, during that. And then what happens is you develop a certain amount of money that you’re over. So you go to another place and they say, How much, how many assets do you have under control? And you say, I have 10 million. And they say, We’ll pay you this much if you bring your clients over and come with us.

Shawn: Okay, So you keep moving. As an ineffective, nonproductive stockbroker who all I did was I used that time to read and study, and those were the years when I was really crunching in on heavy stuff to understand.

Delaney: And did you have like a base of clients that you’re bringing around with you?

Shawn: Yeah, that dwindled over time. By the time I got to my fourth or fifth place, they were gone. So when that happened, we moved to Park City where I couldn’t take my base with me, but I could now start gleaning more clients in that location. Okay. The problem was the night we moved there, my brother died. Yeah, My older brother.

Shawn: And so that threw me our whole family into disarray. When a functional family has a death, it’s difficult. When a dysfunctional family has a debt, people are going apeshit.

Delaney: Yeah, and I Really. Strange and loaded death.

Shawn: Yes.

Delaney: Not Normal, incomprehensibly weird.

Shawn: Difficult death, of which I was a part because I played a role of silence in it. That was difficult, too. And so and we just moved to Park City. I have a new job and it’s just all of it’s fallen apart internally. So.

Delaney: So you were okay. So that was 2001, right?

Shawn: 2000, 2001.

Delaney: So from 19 whatever, 90 to 2001 and 85. Like when did you… I’m trying to time this.

Shawn: 88 from 1988 to 1997. Those were the years I was a stockbroker.

Delaney: 88 to 97. Until 2000, when we moved up to Park City. You were still doing that?

Shawn: yeah. Yeah. 2000 more.

Delaney: Okay. And okay.

Shawn: And just to let you know, when your grandfather is now deceased, offered me the job to train to be a stockbroker. Yeah, I moved to New York for more than a month. I lived across from Madison Square Garden, and I was trained on the 131st 121st floor of the World Trade Center. And I was there and and I was miserable because I had all this and all stuff.

Shawn: And I was trying to fit into a new world. And I was surrounded by a bunch of guys who wanted to be stockbrokers. Yeah. So can you imagine taking an artistic soul who is trying to be part of what you watch on Wall Street? So I’m failing that, too. okay.

Delaney: I have to. Really strange that in 2001, those came down.

Shawn: Yeah.

Delaney: With your brother.

Shawn: Yeah. yeah.

Delaney: Okay. And so this is. I mean, we’re just going through that whole era. Yeah, Like what? You had children. You loved them. You were really inauthentic in other places. You were hurt from a lot of things, and it makes sense. I think if there’s any trouble that, you know, we don’t deal with at all anymore, but that your kids may have dealt with back then, was was that that you related to us as people…

Delaney: I don’t I feel like I don’t know. I think that’s what’s going to happen with me, too. Not because of this, but just we’re all sort like that for some reason.

Shawn: Yeah, you got to process. Process through things to see what you’re really about.

Delaney: Yeah, That sort of natural thing that Mom has is like she’s a mother. Yeah, it’s a very strange.

Shawn: It’s. They try to say it’s normal that that’s the way we’re supposed to… but I have never related to that.

Delaney: Well it maybe it is normal, but there are people that don’t relate to that. And so what do you do? So you’re like, what? How would you have characterized how would you now characterize what it was like as a father in those years? You have now you have three of us, you know, were what did you do with us?

Delaney: Like, were you involved mentally or were you, like, not thinking about it really?

Shawn: I said to mom constantly was probably was so hard for her to hear. I’m not connected to anything, okay? I don’t feel like I’m part of anything.

Delaney: That seems really correct given all the other stuff happening.

Shawn: And there’s a lot of psychological stuff going on. Yeah. So. Yeah. And so I would play pretty, pretty princess and I’d be the fun dad and stuff. I’d take you guys to the beach. I would act. But after that time was done, then I would either get smoked on vodka or overeat and just keep escaping reality to escape myself.

Delaney: Okay. And it was. What was your relationship with your own family, your nuclear family, your parents and siblings?

Shawn: It was combative. It was back and forth it was a lot of what my family’s really good at. And that’s being nit picky at family family gatherings. And Jeff was still before he died. He was still a jerk to me. And and, you know, just different things. I was always the black sheep. And so I just continued we just continued in this awkward sort of Sunday dinners at mom’s, and you do it and you’re miserable, but you’re trying.

Shawn: And I started to take pain meds because Jeff was using them a lot and he introduced me to them. The older ones, you know, talking to the younger ones. And so I started to use those secretly and they were amazing in helping escape from reality. Of course, they don’t lend you to being doing accomplishing anything.

Delaney: So yeah, what was the pattern of like substances and stuff? Like when did that start?

Shawn: It started when I became a stockbroker. I mean, I used I drank and stuff in high school.

Delaney: No, we.

Shawn: Used cocaine in high school, different things. But the the first substance introduction post mission was when I joined Morgan Stanley. Dean where I went to join Dean Witter with your granddaddy. And it was Christmas time. And they had these chocolates that were filled with alcohol. And I thought, I wonder what that? And I ate one and I got so feeling so good and I called Mom and told her that wouldn’t have happened.

Shawn: That’s, you know, she’s in Mormon mode. So instead of hearing me that and that was the beginning of secret medicating because it felt so great to escape from that stuff. Yeah.

Delaney: Okay. and then, like, clearly your siblings were doing the same, but Jeff.

Shawn: I can’t get it out now. I’m going to get a cold. Jeff was secretly using painkillers because he had kidney stones when he was really young and he got addicted to them. Jeff was also drinking. Jeff introduced me to drinking to after the mess, introduced me to it, but brought me back into it. And and there’s just that stuff.

Shawn: Shannon, I think was she was trying to be a lawyer. I don’t know what she was. Her life was a mess. Kathy, I think, stayed away from all of that her whole life. Bridget Beau stayed away from all of that. Okay. Yeah.

Delaney: And then yeah. Anything else about that?

Shawn: The only thing was, is I was at the World Trade Center when they announced that I was going to be a dad again with Cassidy. And I was pissed because Mom didn’t call me Merit Mom’s dad. They called that guy who’s training and had him tell him, and I just didn’t like that. The whole class learned it at the same time I did.

Shawn: Yeah. I was really mad at Mom for doing that. wow. Yeah.

Delaney: And orchestrated that.

Shawn: Well, I think they thought it would be really fun because I’m there. I think mom had a lot of hopes that this was going to be my saving grace. I’m going to come back and, you know, and now we’re going have a new baby and all this. And she meant well, but I just did. And that whole thing was really, really weird.

Shawn: Yeah. Yeah. So came back, worked as a stockbroker, moved around and. Yeah.

Delaney: What in that time did you feel some sort of, like, when did it become I don’t know how to ask this Like you’re you talk so much about marriage and family now and children and parenthood and and you, you find it so valuable. Yeah. Like when did was that always present for you or did you, like, have a realization that that was really important?

Delaney: Or how did you.

Shawn: The true value of family came to me only in my later years as I understand the Scripture more and more and see the wisdom of people being married, being faithful and sticking together once children are involved. I can’t. And it’s only been really my saving grace aside from God, was that stability that Mom brought in my good decision to marry her.

Shawn: And then you, you little three wide eyed girls, you know, expecting Dad to be around. I mean, that stuff is important. It’s important to society.

Delaney: Okay. So then your Jeff dies. Yeah. Do you want to talk about that?

Shawn: Sure. I mean, it’s full of so much stuff. Gosh, so much stuff. But my older brother, he essentially was trying to kick getting off drugs. He checked into a hotel in San Clemente, California, with a good friend, an older man, and he began to detox. And over the period of a number of days, he became more and more disassociated from the world to the point where he checked out, took all his clothes off, covered himself in shaving cream, ran through the streets, jumped off a bridge, and died. There is a debate in our family as to whether it was suicide.

Shawn: My dad said Jeff said, always told him, I’m going to do it and no one’s going to catch me and and and everyone else to say, no, it was an accident. I can’t say. But he died. And that opened me up to a whole bunch of metaphysical weirdness that that Jungian stuff that really still trips me out today, like other worldly, spiritual type machinations.

Shawn: And I mean, there’s some there’s some things that are so weird with that whole deal and continue to be. And that’s what kind of messes with me when it comes to the unseen world and the world of the Spirit and God, they start to get mixed in. And so we had just moved into Park City and he died that night that we moved in and slept on the floor.

Shawn: And I will I got up, went to my office, and that’s when I got the call from a good family friend who said, Your brother’s dead. And I called my parents. And you’ll never forget that when you hear your parents react to one of their children being dead. So that messed me up. I was still active. I was still in it.

Shawn: And from that, that’s when I think I started to get involved with another woman up there and as a means to just escape more going all the way back to everything. And then Mom wanted to be in California. We wanted you girls to do junior guards. Junior lifeguards in Huntington Beach. So we moved there and I was going to sell the house, and that’s when things just started coming apart.

Shawn: You know, Mom found out about all of the stuff and she had found out about other women before. But this was like the icing on the cake. You guys are then being drug through the wringer. And it was I had already experienced the 97 rebirth, which is what made Mom throw it in my face. yeah. She’s like, Yeah, you’re a Christian.

Shawn: Yeah, that really was real. But and I make this point and this part of the idea just because you come to faith doesn’t mean you’re going to be good. Yeah. And I wish people could understand it. It takes time. I wasn’t good yet, but I learned from that. I need to do something here. So I asked to be excommunicated and moved back to the apartment with you and Mom and your sisters.

Shawn: And then I took. I left all of that former stuff and I left reading all of that. And I said, I’ve had an experience in 1997 on the road. I am going to start investigating that more. And so that’s when I started to read the Bible and I started to write that first book called Born Again Mormon.

Delaney: Okay, You had the experience in 97.

Shawn: Yeah.

Delaney: Did you have a chance to talk about that with Jeff?

Shawn: I did, and he didn’t. He just thought it was another Hermann Hesse talk. It was something else. Yeah.

Delaney: okay. And, yeah. faith is, like, just so much bigger.

Shawn: Oh yeah. Faith has nothing to do with our worthiness.

Delaney: It has nothing to do with it. It just makes so much sense. It’s it. It’s a change in perspective.

Shawn: That’s all it is.

Delaney: It just changes your perspective, and then it takes a long time to implement.

Shawn: Right.

Delaney: In your life. Right. The conviction, the new conviction you have, you have old ways. Yeah. It’s so simple.

Shawn: It is actually. People miss it. It’s so simple. And it’s that’s why I another reason. Hate religion. Yeah. Yeah. By the way, I was really into Marx, and I had a dream vision that shut me down on Marx. And I really think I went into his apartment in London.

Delaney: In the dream.

Shawn: Yeah. And I seriously believed that I was there. I was starting to hold him up. And his wife, Jenny Von Westphalen as you know, similar to Joseph Smith and Emma Smith, And I started to hold them up and I had a dream that I was in there. I was able to go into their place and it was filthy and it was it was the couches.

Shawn: I remember the couches had holes and stains and I could hear a baby screaming and they had children who died from poverty. They they just lived to drink and to construct his theory. And I sense such darkness in that place. And I woke up in Park City and I went to the window and I opened the drapes and out on the hills, all through the back of the property were all these people in rags wandering around.

Shawn: And I knew they are the product of Marxism. And I woke up and I said, I’m done. Yeah. So these metaphysical things, I saw the dead lady, that thing I had. I’ve had visitors come dark visitors at night that speak and people talk about that. So I believe in these Jungian ideas of the psyche, but it doesn’t bode well for the faith.

Shawn: So you have to figure out how to manage that well.

Delaney: A Yeah, I think there’s just a lot of we all do this. I do this too, but you’re quick and you’re intense with how you do things and you know you want, you want to relate. Yeah, like you just want to relate. Yeah. And you care. Yeah. And you just take things and it’s a heart and so you want to take all those books seriously.

Delaney: And I relate to that.

Shawn: Yeah. And just to point out the idea of authenticity and not trying to impress anybody, to admit those things, those metaphysical experiences and there’s been many more with you is a definite death knell to leading people in the Christian faith. did you hear he’s he’s talking. We had remember at Ratio Christi, one kid said, do you have experiences with the devil?

Shawn: You know? Because we want to take these things that happen and we want to make them dark devil or God. It’s not that clear. Yeah, it’s just personal.

Delaney: It’s just personal.

Shawn: It’s our mind.

Delaney: You’re not saying, like, listen to me, you person, listen to me. Because I had this dream, right?

Shawn: No, no. It’s subjective.

Delaney: We all have dreams. Yes. And they affect how we see things.

Shawn: They do.

Delaney: This. I feel like as we’ve been doing this, I’ve been thinking maybe we shouldn’t be doing this. I don’t know. But now I feel like it’s so useful to see the place you were in that led up to what you’re doing. Like, you know, you’ll talk about that, but it’s abstract and this is like really painting the picture.

Delaney: There’s so many factors coming from your childhood, so much stuff, and we all go through that and you happen to be going through it with children around, which makes I feel like it makes it a lot harder.

Shawn: I think this is important.

Delaney: But, it makes sense. Yeah, yeah, it makes so much sense and it’s just meaningful.

Shawn: So one more thing about moving back to the apartment. Yeah. The day I started the job down at Crystal Cove State Park, and that’s where I started to research. And write the book and read the Bible and become.

Delaney: Wait, describe that. So we left Park City.

Shawn: You and Mom and the sisters went and they moved to that apartment that you had your bodybuilder friend and yeah.

Delaney: WWE fighters daughter, my best friend. We left. We moved to Park City. Jeff died the night there so it like wasn’t going to last. So are us, the girls and my mom moved back down here. I saw the house.

Shawn: Yeah, the.

Delaney: You’re looking for companionship at that time. You have?

Shawn: Yeah, that and yeah, I’m looking for anything. Yeah. And I’m starting to get drunk and I bought pot. I’m getting high when I go into work. I hadn’t done that until pre til high school years. I got high on pot. I was like out of my mind. That’s why I say it was all unraveling.

Delaney: Okay. And that’s as a stockbroker.

Shawn: Yeah. Up there in Park City.

Delaney: Okay. And. And you have this Marx dream. Yeah, things like that. And so we’re down in California, so now you’re saying you moved back down?

Shawn: We lost the house. I couldn’t sell it. You know, yeah we lost the house. Yeah. Couldn’t sell it. It had that steep 35 degree driveway. It was a beautiful house, but it was, it was house poor, stupid. Trying to play the game. Yeah. No, that’s why when we went back of a hotel, I mean that hotel, apartment living.

Shawn: We’re not going to do this anymore. All right? So I come back and I get a job down at Crystal Cove taking parking fees.

Delaney: Because you could write there.

Shawn: Because I could, right? That’s the whole reason I did it. Okay. And remember, for the 17 years prior, I had been spending all my time as a stockbroker and not in fast food places reading. So I’ve been doing this for a long lot of insights, which a lot of people don’t realize. They think I’m whatever. I’m not formally educated, but I have trained myself.

Shawn: That’s the punk way I’m driving down Beach Boulevard, Delaney. First day of work, I have my new uniform. I went and got it. I’m ready to go I get to Beach Boulevard and PCH and I go over and I fall over to my left side and I get immediate nauseous and I. I try to open the door, but I can’t.

Shawn: I don’t throw up. I’m going to. And I couldn’t function. And I say, God, please, this is a restart on our life. I’m starting over. I, I have to have this job. Please heal me. Do not let me have a stroke or whatever hap. I literally Mom can attest to this and it took about two or 3 minutes and I came back and I drove and I went to work and the nausea left me and it’s never happened again.

Shawn: But it let me know. My life is not in my hands. I knew it then that your life is because he literally took me from a full, crippling place of not being able to even drive. I pull over at Beach Boulevard and Pacific Coast Highway, almost drooling, begging him, and I got healed. True story. So insane. Yeah. So I drive down and that’s when I start to write this book.

Shawn: Yeah. And all those years. So I don’t know if you remember. I know you were old enough then me wearing the uniform, the shorts, the jacket and all that. Yeah. Yeah, that is insane. Yeah.

Delaney: Oh my gosh.

Delaney: Yeah, I remember that as, like, a hard time, because. Yeah, it was just hard. It was hard in a way that was out word like everything was out. Now, the fact that you were dealing with these things was like public and like Mom was having to go through it now. But I think before, like, we didn’t know what was going on.

Delaney: You’re struggling inside. She know. We don’t know. But now we all know you’re struggling. But like, that allows you to get better now because it’s out in the open. You pare down, living in apartment?

Shawn: Yeah.

Delaney: Working the kiosk and now writing. And you wrote Born Again Mormon. And what? I don’t I don’t like. Did you just feel a need to write down what was happening? What was it.

Shawn: Yeah, I had to just record my experience up to that time. So people understood what it means to be reborn. And and I was doing that in 2000 whenever it was two, three, four or five and six writing that book. This was well after I had the experience on the roadside in 97 and during those years working there, I also went back and became a lifeguard for a short time for one summer, because to make more money, I also drove the FedEx shuttle during the O.J. Simpson trial and would pick up packages in the early morning for FedEx to make extra money.

Shawn: And and then I heard on the radio that there was a school of ministry that you could attend, and it was through Calvary Chapel. And so I said, okay, why not? So I applied and I got accepted. And that’s when I started to learn the Bible, literally by hearing Chuck Smith teach it through twice on recordings and then taking tests on those recordings.

Delaney: Did you say that before you did the school ministry twice?

Shawn: No, I did the school ministry once, but I did the mandatory go through the Bible and the recordings twice. I imposed the second time on myself so that I could take seriously what this whole thing was about, as I did, I started to change. That’s when the inner faith that I had experienced in 97 started to foment into me as a man.

Shawn: And I started to be better. And then I wasn’t pretending anymore. I could still be who I was, but I really wanted to be better. And it was authentic and it was real. And it brought me back into this reality of God made me this way. You can be who you are, Shawn, You just have to get rid of this other stuff.

Delaney: Yeah. What is the other stuff? What is it? That’s who you are. That’s being preserved in that moment. And what is the other stuff to you?

Shawn: The stuff that I was negatively preserving.

Delaney: Yeah. Like when you say I. You were and you were learning how to shed the.

Shawn: Negative self, I was still attracted to women, indescribably so, because of everything. That didn’t leave me immediately after Park City was discovered. That’s been actually a lifelong process and I still will go into it. But I’m at, I think I’m at this point now where it’s not very difficult because one, I know what it’s about. I know how phony it is.

Shawn: And two, I’m older, so I have to admit the age does that. But I also had to escape through a lot of substances and I was violent as hell. Still, I would fight on the roadside on the way to school of ministry. That hasn’t left me, even driving. Today, I still have trouble, so those things in my flesh will always be.

Shawn: And you can mitigate them and you can overcome them through the spirit. But it takes a miracle of God to remove them from you. And if He doesn’t remove them from you, they serve to keep you humble and seeking for him and walking with him. Which is why another reason we don’t focus on the sin. We focus on him.

Shawn: So all of those things were still present in me. I was I was mean to Mom in ways and just short tempered. I could still be that way with her, and just just kind of a jerk. But more and more I’ve learned that’s not what he wants.

Delaney: It was more like, like personality. Like, what is it that is what that you recognize in that time that you wanted to preserve, that he allowed you to still be you.

Shawn: I won’t.

Delaney: That Mormonism didn’t.

Shawn: I wanted to bring out what Mormonism would not allow in the sense of just of a subtext. I wanted to be a full person artist out there in the parking lot doing my thing. Okay. I wanted to get tattoos, but I wasn’t able to do it. I wanted to do this. I wanted to be what I was. Naturally, instead of regimenting something that doesn’t matter in this life, what you look like, right?

Shawn: I did. I want. And that’s what started to I was able to retain that.

Delaney: Oh good.

Shawn: And part of that happened from being a ticket taker at the parking lot. Yeah. Yeah. Because you are the lowest of low. Yeah. Yeah.

Delaney: When you came from being.

Shawn: You know, a phony.

Delaney: Probably smarter than all the people that I, I think.

Shawn: I don’t know.

Delaney: You’re intelligent is what I’m trying to say. You’re intelligent. You were capable. You were working hard like you were providing, too. It’s not like.

Shawn: We went bankrupt a couple of times. Yeah. We extended credit cards like mad. I played the system. I knew how to game the system.

Delaney: Yeah, I was because it wasn’t out of desperation. I feel like the things you do are out of action and purposeful. You were. You were providing for your family like you could have just left everybody. That’s the other thing is you could have left really easily.

Shawn: And Mom could have left me.

Delaney: Yeah, she could have. She could have. It’s funny because I think I think I could confidently say I don’t have one memory of you before the school of ministry.

Shawn: Wow.

Delaney: Like I don’t remember you at all.

Shawn: Wow.

Delaney: I remember one instance of our family having a discussion about, you know, when you sat us down and we learned about the affair happening, like that was a thing that happened in Park City. What I meant, like, everything came out in the open, but I don’t remember you at all like, I think that’s an indicator of you changing. Is that like, you developed a relationship with me and you became.

Shawn: Yeah.

Delaney: We probably wouldn’t have a relationship.

Shawn: No, you would have probably hated me. Yeah. And I would have I would have fed off that hatred and caused you to hate me more because that’s my natural fleshly way. And I was so damaged that I… this is why people don’t get my devotion to God, because God, I mean, he literally changed me and he gave me blessings in life.

Shawn: I don’t deserve I deserve to be homeless. I deserve to be a divorcee. I deserve to have children angry at me and never produce anything with my life. And and and I get criticized for my ways. But people don’t know I am so sincere in my allegiance to a creator who’s unseen because he took something so fucked up.

Shawn: So fucked up, still fucked up if I let it, you know, if I don’t let him reign. And the guys who criticize me, like on RFM show and John Dehlin and everybody says there’s other things, they just don’t have any idea. Yeah. And, and so they it’s like Jesus said, those who are forgiven much love much. Yeah yeah I have forgiven of so much that and the miracle that you and I have a relationship and are you even doing what we’re doing now and what I’m surrounded with in my life,

Shawn: blows my mind, right? But no one can understand that unless they go through this, you know.

Delaney: Yeah, well they, I like, us having this conversation, I’m learning a lot of stuff I didn’t really know or haven’t pieced together. And the openness like you say, I would have hated you. And that was out of a not a lack of knowledge I would have judged it. But what I’m finding now is I’m like, so similar like that, the openness allows me to see how similar I am.

Delaney: And like we we come off very differently, but we’re actually really similar. A lot of the things you’ve gone through and like that’s why the people that are criticizing when like they not only don’t understand, but they’re so condescending, they’re like, stay with that faith that’s always their, like “Oh, please…”

Shawn: We don’t need a crutch

Delaney: “We don’t need a murderer on the street.” And it’s like, no, what what’s really needed is they like if people actually got honest, if they like if they are honest with themselves, they would understand what they’re capable of. I don’t buy that people aren’t capable of. They maybe there’s like a random person that’s not as inclined. But I would say I come off as the person that’s less inclined to do a harmful things.

Delaney: And I can I could kill someone. I think if I had the…

Shawn: It’s good you admit it.

Delaney: Yeah. And I that that comes from an openness and like a lack of judgment that I’m given here to say that or to like, Yeah, looking in the mirror. And I think anyone that’s saying please say I agree. It’s like you clearly just haven’t looked in the mirror about what you’re capable of.

Shawn: And if you want to work backward to the principles of that, it’s very, very easy to see God as light. He opens through open He heals. Yeah. Darkness hides, obscures pretends feigns is not authentic. So when you take just those principles, you can see why the healthier way is to let human beings be what they are and help them shine that light, accept them.

Shawn: And that’s why I just don’t like this religious sense of trying to mortify people for their sin. It doesn’t make sense.

Delaney: Yeah, it doesn’t make any sense. It and it’s clear as day now that like when things were in the darkness with you, yeah, it was at your worst. And when things are out in the light it fell at it’s worst for the rest of us because that’s when we were learning about it. But that was when you were progressing.

Delaney: That’s right. And that’s good for people, everyone around you to you.

Shawn: Because then I can come up and be a better dad. Yeah. To the girls who have been harmed by what I did. Now, I would have preferred to have entered into this life and been a good guy the whole way and have one of those cohesive families where nobody has these traumas. But that’s not the case. But at least in the in the response, we have a better thing now.

Delaney: Yeah, it’s like that’s what it’s like fully better.

Shawn: Fully better. Mallory’s better. Yeah, yeah, Cassidy’s better. You’re better. Mom’s better.

Delaney: We’re all better. You’re way better. You are a different person, literally, like you’re saying.

Shawn: And that brings freedom. Yeah.

Delaney: And your person’s different. That’s the other thing is, like, the the condescending, like, stay with your crutch thing they’re saying that from the perspective of… Where I’m saying they need to face themselves. They’re saying they have faced themselves and they have gotten past themselves in the fight. And it’s like, that’s what I don’t buy at all.

Delaney: Like, they have not. They’ve gotten past themselves by narrowing, which is how we started they’ve narrowed. They’ve figured out this thing. If they were introduced to any of the shit that you introduce voluntarily, put yourself into who they would also have the intolerable people that are around you all the time or, you know, the the provocation that you mean from your person you expand.

Delaney: So like, yeah, they’re narrow and they’ve learned how to in a controlled setting.

Shawn: So my presentation is, what happens is, when all of that game playing that people choose to do because they’re not willing to be authentic and be exposed, is exposed to the light, they will run to the shadows. And so so that’s why the scripture seems to teach. If you come to a correct understanding of who he is, meaning bright, consuming, fire, light, love, justice, the only response we have to what we are, if we’re being honest, is brokenness, humility.

Shawn: And it’s that that allowed me to overcome the selfishness and to become a better person in our family and in the community. But you can’t get there if you’re not transparent, cannot do it. Yeah, yeah.

Delaney: Okay. So you mentioned the school ministry. You left being a stockbroker. You went to the PR ask. You’re working on Born again Mormon now or writing or what? What became a born again Mormon. So let’s start from there and go through your ministry work.