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Featured Guest:
Reverend Joe Iadanza Owner, Long Island Wedding Officiants Spiritual Counselor and Teacher Singer/Songwriter Published August 18, 2025 In this engaging conversation, Jackie Morreale interviews Reverend Joe Iadanza, a contemporary spiritual teacher and wedding officiant owner of Long Island Wedding Officiants. Joe shares his journey from a musician to a reverend, emphasizing the importance of forgiveness in his life and work. He discusses memorable weddings, the impact of his family heritage, and the significance of the Hidden Treasure Program in his spiritual growth. Joe also highlights the role of yoga in community healing and offers advice for couples on communication and forgiveness. The conversation concludes with Joe's aspirations for future creative projects, including a book and new music. Listen to/watch the full podcast recording, or read the transcript below: |
Full Interview with Rev. Joe Iadanza:
"My passion is forgiveness. That is hands down my passion in life. It is my mission in life. It's the vehicle through which my whole world exists." - Rev. Joe Iadanza (Wisdom for Wannabes episode 18, 02:15)
Great quotes from the interview with Rev. Joe Iadanza:
(More great quotes throughout the transcript in blue below.)
- "My passion is forgiveness."
- "Yoga can be healing for trauma."
- "I need a retreat."
(More great quotes throughout the transcript in blue below.)
Rev. Joe Iadanza
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Key Takeaways:
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Interview Transcript:
Jackie Morreale (00:00): Hello, my name is Jackie Morreale and I am the host of Wisdom for Wannabes, a new podcast series that seeks wise words in business, beauty and betterment. I am joined today by a very special guest, Reverend Joe Iadanza.
Joe Iadanza is a contemporary spiritual teacher, counselor, interfaith minister and musician. His mission is to provide a supportive and empowering environment where people can find time for reflection and engage in deep inner work. Joe leads individuals and groups through their own self-inquiry and the study of spiritual texts, specifically A Course in Miracles, which he worked on since 2005. In addition to being a graduate of and former teacher in the three-year Transformation Hidden Treasure Program in Van Etten, New York, he was a founding board member of United We Om, a nonprofit that has shared yoga and meditation with over 15,000 people in trauma impacted communities and provided hundreds of micro grants to community builders since 2015. Joe currently owns and manages Long Island Wedding Officiants, a team of amazing celebrants recommended by Long Island's most beautiful wedding venues.
So welcome Joe, thank you so much for joining us. I really appreciate it. Let's get to know you a little bit better in terms of your background.
Joe Iadanza (01:15): Thanks! It's my pleasure to be here! Thank you!
Jackie Morreale (01:26): Let's start with the basics. Please tell us your full name, your hometown, and where you currently call home.
Joe Iadanza (01:32): I'm Joe Iadanza, or Rev. Joe as some of my clients like to call me. I'm from Long Island, I live in Old Bethpage now. I grew up in New Hyde Park, which is not far from where I am now, Nassau County, middle of the island, post-war kind of communities.
Jackie Morreale (01:45): I’m a Nassau County raised girl, too. Love that. Hence the Long Island Wedding Officiants. That's your neck of the woods. In a few words, what do you do and what is your passion?
Joe Iadanza (01:52): Exactly. I have a team of folks. I kind of walked into this business a few years ago unexpectedly and it has become a beautiful part of my life. Is it my passion? I love my work, but if I were to say that, what is my passion? My passion exists regardless of what kind of work I'm doing. My passion is forgiveness. That is hands down my passion in life. It is my mission in life. It's the vehicle through which my whole world exists.
Jackie Morreale (02:20): Wow, Reverend Joe Iadanza, could there possibly be a better human on earth than you? So you marry people, you're there for people on their most important day of their life, and your passion is forgiveness, amazing. How many years have you been doing this?
Joe Iadanza (02:27): I started doing weddings in 2018. I had gone to an interfaith seminary years prior, something I had done for myself, for my own edification, but also because I was already working with people.
Over the last 20 years, I've been doing my own self-study and my own healing for myself and yoga and meditation and self-inquiry. I was starting to lead workshops and to do more work with people. I wanted to create a legal container for the work that I was doing with people as a spiritual counselor. I went to an interfaith seminary to get that credential. Part of that work was doing ceremonies. It was part of the training.
I never planned on doing ceremonies. It was not ever in the cards. It was not something I wanted to do really. Then in 2018, my daughter was going to college and I was like, maybe it's time to think about making some extra money. I got in touch with someone I knew and I started to do a few ceremonies. I did four ceremonies in 2018, did eight ceremonies in 2019. At that time, I was still working a lot as a musician. I was a singer-songwriter and a guitar player. I was doing some ceremonies. Then in 2019, I was getting ready to go on the road. I had been recently divorced and was starting my life. I was an empty nester. I was on my own. I was getting ready to go on the road and go play music again full time.
Then... March 13th, 2020, New York shut down. Suddenly, my Southern swing tour and my European tour were canceled. I was like, what am going to do? I have got to pivot. I was sitting home all by myself doing nothing. This woman who was giving me a few ceremonies invited me to do many more ceremonies, because people needed to get married some even for just legal reasons and health reasons and things like that. Suddenly I did 40 weddings that summer.
Then I just took on from there and before I knew it, she was asking me if I wanted to take over the business.
Jackie Morreale (04:26): The timeline of that would be from 2017 to now.
Joe Iadanza (04:30): Yeah, roughly, to now. The last eight years have been me moving more and more away from things I was doing before, like music, and completely immersing myself in this business right now.
Jackie Morreale (04:39): Wow, you are living the dream my friend. Most people just have one, maybe a few, in their lifetime, and you're living the dream every day.
Joe Iadanza (04:43): God, I've done so many things that I've loved over the years. I'm not someone who can stay in one thing forever, I'm sure that there will be a time when I even move on from this. I like to get my hands into things.
Jackie Morreale (04:59): I'm so excited for you. Do you know what the total number of weddings that you have officiated is?
Joe Iadanza (05:03): I do. I crossed the thousand threshold this year. Those first two years, I only did a total of 12. So it's been just steadily ramping up. I do about 200-ish weddings a year.
Jackie Morreale (05:17): You are a machine. What is your favorite part of this job?
Joe Iadanza (05:20): I still get teary-eyed when the bride comes down the aisle. Almost every time. Especially when the dad is walking them down. It's just something. This speaks to why I love doing it overall. My favorite wedding I've done overall is this couple, two men. Yanni and Stephen. They're both Greek Orthodox, but Yanni especially loved his Greek heritage, and he loved his church, but they refused to marry him. He wanted a traditional Greek inspired ceremony. They found me, and I created an abridged Greek Orthodox ceremony for them.
To see them wanting their faith represented and even the tears in their eyes to see that. In Greek weddings, they do a crowning, which is a beautiful thing. There are all these symbolism elements that go into a Greek ceremony. So we picked some of the most important ones. To see how that hit him and how sacred that felt for him. To be able to give a gift of that in a world where really we should not be not letting people who love each other love each other, marry and commit themselves to each other in any way that they want to do that. That's why I love doing what I do, because I can bring not only a sacred moment for them, especially in a place that maybe they didn't expect that they could have that, but I can really get to know them in a way that shines a light on why they're so perfect for each other, and help everyone who's there to celebrate them to feel more connected to them too.
Jackie Morreale (06:18): I completely agree. Yanni and Steven, you said, was this couple? Did you stay for the reception? Did you get to twirl some napkins? That sounds like the most fun reception ever.
Joe Iadanza (06:41): No, I don't usually stay. I know, right? It's fun.
Jackie Morreale (07:04): Next time. I want to circle back to weddings for sure because this just sounds like the best line of work ever. But to get to know you, Joe Iadanza, a little bit better, let's do some quick-fire questions and see if we can figure out your favorite things. Okay, so what is your favorite food?
Joe Iadanza (07:05): Pizza. Even though I'm gluten-free and I can't really eat it much anymore, but pizza, 100%.
Jackie Morreale (07:21): Gotcha. Do you speak Italian, Joe?
Joe Iadanza (07:24): My daughter is fluent and I can like get by like to save my life, but I can't really speak of that.
Jackie Morreale (07:25): Amazing. Okay, but you have that Italian American love for pizza.
Joe Iadanza (07:32): Oh yeah, my dad's off the boat, my dad came when he was 16.
Jackie Morreale (07:36): Love it, very cool. What is your favorite book?
Joe Iadanza (07:38): A Course in Miracles, hands down. Yeah, 1,000%.
Jackie Morreale (07:41): Is A Course in Miracles a book that we can all access?
Joe Iadanza (07:44): Yes. A Course in Miracles started in the ‘60s and came into be in the ‘70s. It's a self-study program that uses forgiveness as the vehicle for undoing the belief that we are separate from each other and ultimately from God and restores the perception of oneness, on the way to a full awakening and the letting go of a belief in a dualistic world that you live in. That's a clunky way of explaining it.
Jackie Morreale (08:10): There's so much history behind this. Let's keep it quick fire for now. I'll go back to the questions. What is your favorite yoga pose?
Joe Iadanza (08:13): Trikonasana, triangle, hands down.
Jackie Morreale (08:20): What is your favorite place?
Joe Iadanza (08:21): Any empty church, theater, arena, stadium, like an empty big, vast, place, any place like that is my favorite place.
(Continued below)
Joe Iadanza is a contemporary spiritual teacher, counselor, interfaith minister and musician. His mission is to provide a supportive and empowering environment where people can find time for reflection and engage in deep inner work. Joe leads individuals and groups through their own self-inquiry and the study of spiritual texts, specifically A Course in Miracles, which he worked on since 2005. In addition to being a graduate of and former teacher in the three-year Transformation Hidden Treasure Program in Van Etten, New York, he was a founding board member of United We Om, a nonprofit that has shared yoga and meditation with over 15,000 people in trauma impacted communities and provided hundreds of micro grants to community builders since 2015. Joe currently owns and manages Long Island Wedding Officiants, a team of amazing celebrants recommended by Long Island's most beautiful wedding venues.
So welcome Joe, thank you so much for joining us. I really appreciate it. Let's get to know you a little bit better in terms of your background.
Joe Iadanza (01:15): Thanks! It's my pleasure to be here! Thank you!
Jackie Morreale (01:26): Let's start with the basics. Please tell us your full name, your hometown, and where you currently call home.
Joe Iadanza (01:32): I'm Joe Iadanza, or Rev. Joe as some of my clients like to call me. I'm from Long Island, I live in Old Bethpage now. I grew up in New Hyde Park, which is not far from where I am now, Nassau County, middle of the island, post-war kind of communities.
Jackie Morreale (01:45): I’m a Nassau County raised girl, too. Love that. Hence the Long Island Wedding Officiants. That's your neck of the woods. In a few words, what do you do and what is your passion?
Joe Iadanza (01:52): Exactly. I have a team of folks. I kind of walked into this business a few years ago unexpectedly and it has become a beautiful part of my life. Is it my passion? I love my work, but if I were to say that, what is my passion? My passion exists regardless of what kind of work I'm doing. My passion is forgiveness. That is hands down my passion in life. It is my mission in life. It's the vehicle through which my whole world exists.
Jackie Morreale (02:20): Wow, Reverend Joe Iadanza, could there possibly be a better human on earth than you? So you marry people, you're there for people on their most important day of their life, and your passion is forgiveness, amazing. How many years have you been doing this?
Joe Iadanza (02:27): I started doing weddings in 2018. I had gone to an interfaith seminary years prior, something I had done for myself, for my own edification, but also because I was already working with people.
Over the last 20 years, I've been doing my own self-study and my own healing for myself and yoga and meditation and self-inquiry. I was starting to lead workshops and to do more work with people. I wanted to create a legal container for the work that I was doing with people as a spiritual counselor. I went to an interfaith seminary to get that credential. Part of that work was doing ceremonies. It was part of the training.
I never planned on doing ceremonies. It was not ever in the cards. It was not something I wanted to do really. Then in 2018, my daughter was going to college and I was like, maybe it's time to think about making some extra money. I got in touch with someone I knew and I started to do a few ceremonies. I did four ceremonies in 2018, did eight ceremonies in 2019. At that time, I was still working a lot as a musician. I was a singer-songwriter and a guitar player. I was doing some ceremonies. Then in 2019, I was getting ready to go on the road. I had been recently divorced and was starting my life. I was an empty nester. I was on my own. I was getting ready to go on the road and go play music again full time.
Then... March 13th, 2020, New York shut down. Suddenly, my Southern swing tour and my European tour were canceled. I was like, what am going to do? I have got to pivot. I was sitting home all by myself doing nothing. This woman who was giving me a few ceremonies invited me to do many more ceremonies, because people needed to get married some even for just legal reasons and health reasons and things like that. Suddenly I did 40 weddings that summer.
Then I just took on from there and before I knew it, she was asking me if I wanted to take over the business.
Jackie Morreale (04:26): The timeline of that would be from 2017 to now.
Joe Iadanza (04:30): Yeah, roughly, to now. The last eight years have been me moving more and more away from things I was doing before, like music, and completely immersing myself in this business right now.
Jackie Morreale (04:39): Wow, you are living the dream my friend. Most people just have one, maybe a few, in their lifetime, and you're living the dream every day.
Joe Iadanza (04:43): God, I've done so many things that I've loved over the years. I'm not someone who can stay in one thing forever, I'm sure that there will be a time when I even move on from this. I like to get my hands into things.
Jackie Morreale (04:59): I'm so excited for you. Do you know what the total number of weddings that you have officiated is?
Joe Iadanza (05:03): I do. I crossed the thousand threshold this year. Those first two years, I only did a total of 12. So it's been just steadily ramping up. I do about 200-ish weddings a year.
Jackie Morreale (05:17): You are a machine. What is your favorite part of this job?
Joe Iadanza (05:20): I still get teary-eyed when the bride comes down the aisle. Almost every time. Especially when the dad is walking them down. It's just something. This speaks to why I love doing it overall. My favorite wedding I've done overall is this couple, two men. Yanni and Stephen. They're both Greek Orthodox, but Yanni especially loved his Greek heritage, and he loved his church, but they refused to marry him. He wanted a traditional Greek inspired ceremony. They found me, and I created an abridged Greek Orthodox ceremony for them.
To see them wanting their faith represented and even the tears in their eyes to see that. In Greek weddings, they do a crowning, which is a beautiful thing. There are all these symbolism elements that go into a Greek ceremony. So we picked some of the most important ones. To see how that hit him and how sacred that felt for him. To be able to give a gift of that in a world where really we should not be not letting people who love each other love each other, marry and commit themselves to each other in any way that they want to do that. That's why I love doing what I do, because I can bring not only a sacred moment for them, especially in a place that maybe they didn't expect that they could have that, but I can really get to know them in a way that shines a light on why they're so perfect for each other, and help everyone who's there to celebrate them to feel more connected to them too.
Jackie Morreale (06:18): I completely agree. Yanni and Steven, you said, was this couple? Did you stay for the reception? Did you get to twirl some napkins? That sounds like the most fun reception ever.
Joe Iadanza (06:41): No, I don't usually stay. I know, right? It's fun.
Jackie Morreale (07:04): Next time. I want to circle back to weddings for sure because this just sounds like the best line of work ever. But to get to know you, Joe Iadanza, a little bit better, let's do some quick-fire questions and see if we can figure out your favorite things. Okay, so what is your favorite food?
Joe Iadanza (07:05): Pizza. Even though I'm gluten-free and I can't really eat it much anymore, but pizza, 100%.
Jackie Morreale (07:21): Gotcha. Do you speak Italian, Joe?
Joe Iadanza (07:24): My daughter is fluent and I can like get by like to save my life, but I can't really speak of that.
Jackie Morreale (07:25): Amazing. Okay, but you have that Italian American love for pizza.
Joe Iadanza (07:32): Oh yeah, my dad's off the boat, my dad came when he was 16.
Jackie Morreale (07:36): Love it, very cool. What is your favorite book?
Joe Iadanza (07:38): A Course in Miracles, hands down. Yeah, 1,000%.
Jackie Morreale (07:41): Is A Course in Miracles a book that we can all access?
Joe Iadanza (07:44): Yes. A Course in Miracles started in the ‘60s and came into be in the ‘70s. It's a self-study program that uses forgiveness as the vehicle for undoing the belief that we are separate from each other and ultimately from God and restores the perception of oneness, on the way to a full awakening and the letting go of a belief in a dualistic world that you live in. That's a clunky way of explaining it.
Jackie Morreale (08:10): There's so much history behind this. Let's keep it quick fire for now. I'll go back to the questions. What is your favorite yoga pose?
Joe Iadanza (08:13): Trikonasana, triangle, hands down.
Jackie Morreale (08:20): What is your favorite place?
Joe Iadanza (08:21): Any empty church, theater, arena, stadium, like an empty big, vast, place, any place like that is my favorite place.
(Continued below)
(Continued)
Jackie Morreale (08:30): Is it an energy thing?
Joe Iadanza (08:32): It's an expansive thing. I think it just feels so expansive. I think sometimes the world can feel so closed in and I think when we are kind of wrapped into our ego minds, heaven feels so far away, it feels so distant, God. When you're in a room like that, suddenly you feel the call of heaven.
Jackie Morreale (08:34): Amazing. What is your favorite song? It can be one that you wrote.
Joe Iadanza (08:54): Oh no, my favorite song is definitely not one I wrote. It's kind of like, what's my favorite song at any given moment? That changes depending on mood.
My favorite song in 1993 was totally different than my song from six months ago. My favorite song right now actually is kind of funny, it's almost too funny. It's: Shot in the Dark by Ozzy Osbourne. That's my favorite song right now because like he died, and I've been listening to Ozzy a lot.
Jackie Morreale (08:56): Is it while he was still alive or just seeing his name, and his face?
Joe Iadanza (09:19): It was actually before. I'm not clairvoyant, but in the month or so before he passed, and maybe because they were talking about that big concert that came up that he did. I was like, God, I love this song. I had a playlist on and it kept coming up. I've kept repeating it. I've been listening to that song on and on over and over again in my car for a long time.
Jackie Morreale (09:28): It's so interesting to me that you as a reverend, your favorite song right now is from the Prince of Darkness.
Joe Iadanza (09:42): It's so funny. If you really listen to a lot of that music, even metal and stuff, like Metallica, a lot of times they're singing about the effects of so many bad choices. For sure, we don't know you're at that moment. Sometimes it's a dark place.
Jackie Morreale (09:52): It’s about the journey, right?
I have read some of your reviews as a singer-songwriter, and I've seen and heard that people say that you have a similar tone and quality to your voice that Cat Stevens had.
Joe Iadanza (10:08): Yeah, that's what I get the most for sure.
Jackie Morreale (10:10): I agree, so I'm really interested that you appreciate Ozzy Osbourne. It’s a different genre of music, singing from the heart in his own way, and I love that.
Joe Iadanza (10:20): Yeah, picking up an acoustic guitar and singing like that 70s singer-songwriter vibe like James Taylor, Cat Stevens, Harry Chapin. That was much later for me.
I grew up in the ‘80s. I am a child of hair metal. You got pictures of me in ‘94. My hair was down to here. I was all about hair metal and then Pearl Jam and those guys when it switched over.
Jackie Morreale (10:42): What was your favorite song in 1993? Now I need to know. Was it Pearl Jam?
Joe Iadanza (10:45): Oh, probably Even Flow, that was a great song, or Jeremy, again, a dark song. That's so funny. I was listening to Red Hot Chili Peppers but also Sting. Sting put out some great records then, I was listening to that stuff as well back then, like Brand New Day and like some of those records, some cool stuff back then.
Jackie Morreale (10:49): Exactly. It was an era. They're still amazing.
Let's talk about your favorite musician. It can also be you if you like, or if you have a favorite now or from the ‘90s. So, is it Ozzy?
Joe Iadanza (11:10): Bruce Springsteen. Hands down forever. Springsteen.
Jackie Morreale (11:15): The Boss. Nice. Do you have a hidden talent? (You have so many talents, right?)
Joe Iadanza (11:35): It's hidden. I can't say it because… it's hidden. I'm just kidding.
I went to culinary school in 1999, so I am a professional chef. I don't work like that anymore and my skills are not anywhere near, like even close to what they were, but I do all the cooking basically. Yeah, yeah, that's like, so yeah. I used to work in kitchens back until my daughter was young and then I shifted out of that. It was just too much to be out like that.
Jackie Morreale (11:41): We're going to add cooking to your repertoire of things that you know how to do well. Good for you. That was one hidden talent that I do not share unfortunately. Wish I did.
Random question. Do you have any famous relatives by chance?
Joe Iadanza (11:56): You know the answer to that question. This question was planted. Yeah, I do. My second cousin, twice removed, is Padre Pio, St. Padre Pio. My great-grandmother, Filomena Forgione, and Padre Pio's father were first cousins. Padre Pio and my grandfather are second cousins, and then my dad is once removed, and I'm twice removed.
Look, not everyone in my family is a spiritual person, although we do have a fairly decent deep spirituality in my family, almost more because of my grandfather, not even because of Padre Pio. My mom's dad was an incredibly spiritual person. Like a living householder monk, the way he worked. His influence, and also that history of having Padre Pio in our lives. He wasn't a saint when we were kids. He became a saint in the eighties. So to have that always there, that's something that has always pulled me towards wanting to understand what is it that these elders in my family were always trying to impart, pray, hope, don't worry, talk to God, talk to Jesus, all these things to try and coax you back away from the things that keep you hidden from God, and that reveal you again to that experience.
Jackie Morreale (13:07): Amazing. I don't know what that family connection to a saint like Padre Pio would do, but he’s so important in the Italian community, Italian-American community, in the world, in sainthood, in the Catholic Church, beyond in Christianity.
I don't know what that tie-in is. Just love that you have it on both sides and that it's meaningful to you and that you've chosen to share the gospel in so many different ways in your life. I'm very inspired by you. I had to plant that question because it's random bit of trivia that's so interesting, Joe!
Joe Iadanza (13:26): I hate to say this because in work, it does help at work because a lot of Italian Catholics, younger kids don't want to get married in church nowadays or the church makes it difficult, even just like the timing, like a 10 a.m. ceremony, but a 7 p.m. reception. When the grandmas who are annoyed that they're not getting married in church find out that I have this connection, then they're like, well, okay, well maybe..
Jackie Morreale (14:03): Nobody's going to cross the guy who's related to Padre Pio!
Joe Iadanza (14:03): And they'll grab me. Sometimes those grandmas will come up there. Once I get to the ceremony, they'll grab my arm and they'll be like...go do the ceremony now, and go kiss you know.
Jackie Morreale (14:15): He was of our lifetime and from Naples area, Italy.
Joe Iadanza (14:20): Yeah, he’s from Pietrelcina, which is in Campania, so Naples region.
Jackie Morreale (14:26): Exactly. And he was able to perform miracles in his lifetime, this is just a powerful force. Love the Padre Pio memorial in Pennsylvania, too.
Joe Iadanza (14:33): That place in Pennsylvania is beautiful. It's cool. If you've been to Pietrelcina where Padre Pio was born, the building on that property is designed to look a lot like where his home is. It's like in the city of Pietrelcina. If you haven't been there, you wouldn't notice it, but as soon you see it, my God, a piece of it looks just like his home where he grew up.
Jackie Morreale (14:51): What a beautiful tie-in, from Italy, right from his hometown to us here in the U.S.
Let's talk more about your career as a reverend and as a wedding officiant. I admire that you're there for people, on their special day all the time. In terms of you becoming a reverend, what was it like to go to seminary?
Joe Iadanza (15:06): I'll be honest, the seminary program that I went to, I didn't love it. There were things that were nice because there was a community of people that became friends and we got to know each other. The people who ran it, their hearts were in the right place, but the program could have been a little stronger. In fact, I joined the board of the seminary at one point to try and help bring that about. In the end, that actual seminary kind of fell apart. But what drove me to it and is still something that kind of fuels me to this day, was trying to understand where all of these different faiths collide, where they all meet. I grew up Catholic, but I also grew up Catholic in a way that a lot of Catholics who became disillusioned with the church grew up. I was in that same kind of boat, even with the influences I had in my family, was still taken back by the hypocritical nature of a lot of the rule following punishment and reward aspects that the structure of the church put in place but which ultimately are not really part of the true teachings of Christ.
I moved away from the church for a time and seminary was a way for me to start to look at all the different aspects of how faiths come to awakening, enlightenment, redemption, atonement, whatever those words are and how you look at them. What I found was, yes, all paths lead ultimately to the same place. So that's that. What I discovered even more was that as much as I appreciated that, there still was something in me that really related to the symbolism of Catholicism.
The Trinity, the cross, Mary, the Holy Spirit, all of these symbols really still spoke to me in my DNA. During seminary, I was really still reinforcing that I was trying to deepen my connection to the faith that I was given in a way that felt more healed. That ultimately led me through to A Course in Miracles.
Jackie Morreale (17:00): You started with it wasn't that great of an experience but then everything that you described it with sounded like it was a great experience that you had two really driven people who were running the place and you had this really great community and you became part of the board to try to shape the future of it and it deepened your own faith by having this interfaith background that you were able to connect with the symbolism and Catholicism.
Joe Iadanza (17:13): Absolutely. In that regard, everything is an opportunity for using that for your growth, for sure. Yeah, for sure.
Jackie Morreale (17:30): Yes, for growth, right? I've never been to seminary. So looking back, are there any key learnings that you can impart on those of us who have not been to seminary about how this impacted your journey?
Joe Iadanza (17:43): Seminary itself gave me one thing, it was: patience. To be patient with the process. That program, as much as I did get out of it, a lot of that was retrospective. At the time, I was frustrated with the process. It taught me to realize that I found my way into this place, something called me to be here, be patient with it and it will reveal itself.
The most transformational learning for me, in the whole journey was in Hidden Treasure, which was much earlier than that, from 2003 to 2006. I was in my early 30s. That program, which was a three-year program, is designed to help you learn to look at your defenses, the walls that you've put up, the masks that you wear.
Step by step, weekend by weekend, over 15 weekends spread over three years with a group of people that were all with you that whole time. That program taught me to question everything. That taught me to look at the world through a much different lens than I had been looking at it for the first half of my life, which was very much about the world out there is something I have to fight against constantly, that that world out there is at fault and it's all their problem. Like perfect classic Italian firstborn son kind of stuff.
But ultimately going through that program taught me that there's nothing that's happening outside of me. Everything that I'm perceiving is an extension of my own programming, and you have to dig in to overcome it, to heal it and soften it.
(Continued below)
Jackie Morreale (08:30): Is it an energy thing?
Joe Iadanza (08:32): It's an expansive thing. I think it just feels so expansive. I think sometimes the world can feel so closed in and I think when we are kind of wrapped into our ego minds, heaven feels so far away, it feels so distant, God. When you're in a room like that, suddenly you feel the call of heaven.
Jackie Morreale (08:34): Amazing. What is your favorite song? It can be one that you wrote.
Joe Iadanza (08:54): Oh no, my favorite song is definitely not one I wrote. It's kind of like, what's my favorite song at any given moment? That changes depending on mood.
My favorite song in 1993 was totally different than my song from six months ago. My favorite song right now actually is kind of funny, it's almost too funny. It's: Shot in the Dark by Ozzy Osbourne. That's my favorite song right now because like he died, and I've been listening to Ozzy a lot.
Jackie Morreale (08:56): Is it while he was still alive or just seeing his name, and his face?
Joe Iadanza (09:19): It was actually before. I'm not clairvoyant, but in the month or so before he passed, and maybe because they were talking about that big concert that came up that he did. I was like, God, I love this song. I had a playlist on and it kept coming up. I've kept repeating it. I've been listening to that song on and on over and over again in my car for a long time.
Jackie Morreale (09:28): It's so interesting to me that you as a reverend, your favorite song right now is from the Prince of Darkness.
Joe Iadanza (09:42): It's so funny. If you really listen to a lot of that music, even metal and stuff, like Metallica, a lot of times they're singing about the effects of so many bad choices. For sure, we don't know you're at that moment. Sometimes it's a dark place.
Jackie Morreale (09:52): It’s about the journey, right?
I have read some of your reviews as a singer-songwriter, and I've seen and heard that people say that you have a similar tone and quality to your voice that Cat Stevens had.
Joe Iadanza (10:08): Yeah, that's what I get the most for sure.
Jackie Morreale (10:10): I agree, so I'm really interested that you appreciate Ozzy Osbourne. It’s a different genre of music, singing from the heart in his own way, and I love that.
Joe Iadanza (10:20): Yeah, picking up an acoustic guitar and singing like that 70s singer-songwriter vibe like James Taylor, Cat Stevens, Harry Chapin. That was much later for me.
I grew up in the ‘80s. I am a child of hair metal. You got pictures of me in ‘94. My hair was down to here. I was all about hair metal and then Pearl Jam and those guys when it switched over.
Jackie Morreale (10:42): What was your favorite song in 1993? Now I need to know. Was it Pearl Jam?
Joe Iadanza (10:45): Oh, probably Even Flow, that was a great song, or Jeremy, again, a dark song. That's so funny. I was listening to Red Hot Chili Peppers but also Sting. Sting put out some great records then, I was listening to that stuff as well back then, like Brand New Day and like some of those records, some cool stuff back then.
Jackie Morreale (10:49): Exactly. It was an era. They're still amazing.
Let's talk about your favorite musician. It can also be you if you like, or if you have a favorite now or from the ‘90s. So, is it Ozzy?
Joe Iadanza (11:10): Bruce Springsteen. Hands down forever. Springsteen.
Jackie Morreale (11:15): The Boss. Nice. Do you have a hidden talent? (You have so many talents, right?)
Joe Iadanza (11:35): It's hidden. I can't say it because… it's hidden. I'm just kidding.
I went to culinary school in 1999, so I am a professional chef. I don't work like that anymore and my skills are not anywhere near, like even close to what they were, but I do all the cooking basically. Yeah, yeah, that's like, so yeah. I used to work in kitchens back until my daughter was young and then I shifted out of that. It was just too much to be out like that.
Jackie Morreale (11:41): We're going to add cooking to your repertoire of things that you know how to do well. Good for you. That was one hidden talent that I do not share unfortunately. Wish I did.
Random question. Do you have any famous relatives by chance?
Joe Iadanza (11:56): You know the answer to that question. This question was planted. Yeah, I do. My second cousin, twice removed, is Padre Pio, St. Padre Pio. My great-grandmother, Filomena Forgione, and Padre Pio's father were first cousins. Padre Pio and my grandfather are second cousins, and then my dad is once removed, and I'm twice removed.
Look, not everyone in my family is a spiritual person, although we do have a fairly decent deep spirituality in my family, almost more because of my grandfather, not even because of Padre Pio. My mom's dad was an incredibly spiritual person. Like a living householder monk, the way he worked. His influence, and also that history of having Padre Pio in our lives. He wasn't a saint when we were kids. He became a saint in the eighties. So to have that always there, that's something that has always pulled me towards wanting to understand what is it that these elders in my family were always trying to impart, pray, hope, don't worry, talk to God, talk to Jesus, all these things to try and coax you back away from the things that keep you hidden from God, and that reveal you again to that experience.
Jackie Morreale (13:07): Amazing. I don't know what that family connection to a saint like Padre Pio would do, but he’s so important in the Italian community, Italian-American community, in the world, in sainthood, in the Catholic Church, beyond in Christianity.
I don't know what that tie-in is. Just love that you have it on both sides and that it's meaningful to you and that you've chosen to share the gospel in so many different ways in your life. I'm very inspired by you. I had to plant that question because it's random bit of trivia that's so interesting, Joe!
Joe Iadanza (13:26): I hate to say this because in work, it does help at work because a lot of Italian Catholics, younger kids don't want to get married in church nowadays or the church makes it difficult, even just like the timing, like a 10 a.m. ceremony, but a 7 p.m. reception. When the grandmas who are annoyed that they're not getting married in church find out that I have this connection, then they're like, well, okay, well maybe..
Jackie Morreale (14:03): Nobody's going to cross the guy who's related to Padre Pio!
Joe Iadanza (14:03): And they'll grab me. Sometimes those grandmas will come up there. Once I get to the ceremony, they'll grab my arm and they'll be like...go do the ceremony now, and go kiss you know.
Jackie Morreale (14:15): He was of our lifetime and from Naples area, Italy.
Joe Iadanza (14:20): Yeah, he’s from Pietrelcina, which is in Campania, so Naples region.
Jackie Morreale (14:26): Exactly. And he was able to perform miracles in his lifetime, this is just a powerful force. Love the Padre Pio memorial in Pennsylvania, too.
Joe Iadanza (14:33): That place in Pennsylvania is beautiful. It's cool. If you've been to Pietrelcina where Padre Pio was born, the building on that property is designed to look a lot like where his home is. It's like in the city of Pietrelcina. If you haven't been there, you wouldn't notice it, but as soon you see it, my God, a piece of it looks just like his home where he grew up.
Jackie Morreale (14:51): What a beautiful tie-in, from Italy, right from his hometown to us here in the U.S.
Let's talk more about your career as a reverend and as a wedding officiant. I admire that you're there for people, on their special day all the time. In terms of you becoming a reverend, what was it like to go to seminary?
Joe Iadanza (15:06): I'll be honest, the seminary program that I went to, I didn't love it. There were things that were nice because there was a community of people that became friends and we got to know each other. The people who ran it, their hearts were in the right place, but the program could have been a little stronger. In fact, I joined the board of the seminary at one point to try and help bring that about. In the end, that actual seminary kind of fell apart. But what drove me to it and is still something that kind of fuels me to this day, was trying to understand where all of these different faiths collide, where they all meet. I grew up Catholic, but I also grew up Catholic in a way that a lot of Catholics who became disillusioned with the church grew up. I was in that same kind of boat, even with the influences I had in my family, was still taken back by the hypocritical nature of a lot of the rule following punishment and reward aspects that the structure of the church put in place but which ultimately are not really part of the true teachings of Christ.
I moved away from the church for a time and seminary was a way for me to start to look at all the different aspects of how faiths come to awakening, enlightenment, redemption, atonement, whatever those words are and how you look at them. What I found was, yes, all paths lead ultimately to the same place. So that's that. What I discovered even more was that as much as I appreciated that, there still was something in me that really related to the symbolism of Catholicism.
The Trinity, the cross, Mary, the Holy Spirit, all of these symbols really still spoke to me in my DNA. During seminary, I was really still reinforcing that I was trying to deepen my connection to the faith that I was given in a way that felt more healed. That ultimately led me through to A Course in Miracles.
Jackie Morreale (17:00): You started with it wasn't that great of an experience but then everything that you described it with sounded like it was a great experience that you had two really driven people who were running the place and you had this really great community and you became part of the board to try to shape the future of it and it deepened your own faith by having this interfaith background that you were able to connect with the symbolism and Catholicism.
Joe Iadanza (17:13): Absolutely. In that regard, everything is an opportunity for using that for your growth, for sure. Yeah, for sure.
Jackie Morreale (17:30): Yes, for growth, right? I've never been to seminary. So looking back, are there any key learnings that you can impart on those of us who have not been to seminary about how this impacted your journey?
Joe Iadanza (17:43): Seminary itself gave me one thing, it was: patience. To be patient with the process. That program, as much as I did get out of it, a lot of that was retrospective. At the time, I was frustrated with the process. It taught me to realize that I found my way into this place, something called me to be here, be patient with it and it will reveal itself.
The most transformational learning for me, in the whole journey was in Hidden Treasure, which was much earlier than that, from 2003 to 2006. I was in my early 30s. That program, which was a three-year program, is designed to help you learn to look at your defenses, the walls that you've put up, the masks that you wear.
Step by step, weekend by weekend, over 15 weekends spread over three years with a group of people that were all with you that whole time. That program taught me to question everything. That taught me to look at the world through a much different lens than I had been looking at it for the first half of my life, which was very much about the world out there is something I have to fight against constantly, that that world out there is at fault and it's all their problem. Like perfect classic Italian firstborn son kind of stuff.
But ultimately going through that program taught me that there's nothing that's happening outside of me. Everything that I'm perceiving is an extension of my own programming, and you have to dig in to overcome it, to heal it and soften it.
(Continued below)
Singer/songwriter Joe Iadanza, playing guitar in 1994
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Joe's Favorite Song: Shot in the Dark, by Ozzy Ozbourne
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(Continued)
Jackie Morreale (19:02): I didn't know you back then, but I can imagine based on the interactions that we've had, you're so open and willing to talk about anything. There's nothing holding you back. You're this beacon of light. If the start of that was in A Course in Miracles or if this was, something you were born with, that's great. I'm so glad whatever you've done to get to this place that you're at now has taken you here. I think it's combination of all those different things.
Do you want to talk a little bit more to the Hidden Treasure Program?
Joe Iadanza (19:26): Appreciate that. It was founded by an amazing woman named Alice McDowell. She retired from it a few years ago. She still lives up there on the property at this retreat center called Light on the Hill. It's just beautiful. It's 260 acres, overlooking this gorge that was way off into the Pennsylvania Valley from the edge of New York State. It's literally on a hill.
There are places for you to take personal retreats on the property, but there's also a main lodge where you can do group work and that kind of stuff. The retreat center and Hidden Treasure were both created by Alice and her husband. Alice was a professor of mine at Ithaca College from '89 to '93. She was a professor I took in a minor course that I was taking called Religion and Depth Psychology and also Mysticism, two classes that were in a minor that I was doing for philosophy of religion.
I just loved her class. She was just so open and interesting and having me think about things I never imagined.
I ended up doing a small retreat at the end of my senior year of college at her new retreat center that had just opened. Then I graduated and I forgot all about it. I moved to Boston first and then ultimately ended up back on Long Island. I had gotten married, I had a little kid, and I had this part of my life that looked great on the surface.
But I had kind of let go of everything in myself that I believed in and that I thought made me unique. I was being the person I thought everyone needed me or wanted me to be. It created a major tension in me and I ended up having a total nervous breakdown. My work was falling apart. I was in debt. I was overweight, out of shape, ungrateful. I was just a mess in my early 30s.
This is the me that you don't see here, but it was there, it really was, and blaming the world for it. Laying there literally on the floor of my living room in 2003, looking at the ceiling, saying, God, please kill me now or fix this. Like really, really, and meaning it. I think the first time I ever really meant it. And I had a memory in my head, what about Alice? Like this retreat center that you went to 10 years ago that you had totally forgotten about.
I got on the phone and called Alice, called the retreat center, which was still there all those years later. She's like, Well, I don't remember you, but come up for retreat. She's honest, very honest.
Jackie Morreale (21:43): You're in this valley, in this lowest point of your life where everything's just coming into shambles and you have this calling from God in response to your prayer and this woman's head or face or name pops in your head and you call her up and she's like, I don't remember you.
Joe Iadanza (21:56): She was sweet, though. She was like, Well, it's nice that you remember me. I don't remember you, but come on up to her and greet her.
Jackie Morreale (22:05): Right, at least she was welcoming, right? So yeah,
I guess she had a lot of students. I'm sure that once you showed back up and once you had that reconnection, I'm sure that everything changed. You're very down-to-earth. I really appreciate you sharing that story.
Joe Iadanza (22:20): Alice kicked my ass, let me tell you. No, really, in that master student way. She really did. I did that retreat, that first retreat, and it was part of a bunch of synchronicities and things that happened all around that time that really started me on the journey, consciously.
I went on that retreat and then she said, I have this program, if you're interested, the new class starts in the fall. I joined Hidden Treasure, which was that class. And she kicked my ass. She really did because, I really believed my stuff didn't stink.
I was always and have been the kind of person that once I get a little bit of knowledge, I'm like Hermione Granger. Like, I know all this stuff.
Jackie Morreale (22:56): She's my favorite though, she really is. She knew every spell, every pronunciation, she's awesome so can't hate on her. Haha.
Joe Iadanza (23:06): By the end of that first year of Hidden Treasure, Alice looked me square in the eyes the very next time I raised my hand first to answer a question and said, you're going to speak last from now on. That's the kind of hard love she had. It forced you to stop. She would force you to stop and look at your stuff.
After I got over a moment like that where I was just so taken aback by someone saying, No, you're not going to talk anymore until you have something meaningful to say. First, I was pissed off and annoyed and embarrassed.
Then within a month, it opened, she's right. I do do this. Holy cow, I am a know-it-all. Holy cow, and some of these things still live with me to a softened degree.
Jackie Morreale (23:42): Is Alice McDowell still with us?
Joe Iadanza (23:43): Yes, she's around 80, 85 years old now. She just had a birthday.
She's retired. She lives there on the property with her husband. When she handed the property over to the foundation that runs the center, she'd be able to live out her days on the property. She's still writing. She's written a couple of beautiful books.
Jackie Morreale (23:49): Is she still doing her thing up in Van Etten with the center?
I'm just curious, when she was at Ithaca College teaching you, was she the same kind of professor that she then was in the Hidden Treasure program?
Joe Iadanza (24:12): It was different. In Ithaca College, she was spunky, probably in her late 40s, maybe early 50s. She was cool, hip, exploring all the fun stuff. She's the teacher who would like, OK, someone's going to stand up and put your arm up and imagine water flowing through it. I'm going to try and push your arm down and show you how the energy is keeping your arm up.
Jackie Morreale (24:27): I love it. I went to school in Ithaca too, and there's so many cool people up there, doing cool things, and arts, and music, and mysticism apparently, and there's so many great courses I wish I would have taken.
I'm not surprised to hear that Alice was doing this amazing stuff at Ithaca College because there's so many amazing people and the culture and the community is just very, very open and artsy. I'm glad she's still at the center and writing, and I look forward to reading more of her work.
So you did this Hidden Treasure program. It challenged you in new ways and you kind of, re-centered with yourself and find this new way of being and doing. Then you went to seminary. And how did you become a reverend at the Church of Ancient Ways?
Joe Iadanza (25:02): We have a big gap of time here. After I finished Hidden Treasure, that's like 2006. Then I went into my own self-study. I took the tools that I had there, and it was around that time that I found A Course in Miracles. I think that was the transitioning from the stuff, the tools and the skills I learned in Hidden Treasure. And then the new learning that I was deepening in A Course in Miracles kind of led me through what would be really the next eight years or so of just kind of doing my own thing and going on retreats myself and taking workshops and continuing my own learning along the way, reading every book I can get my hands on. Trying to understand what this thing was that was trying to be born within me again.
A lot of things happened in sync. In 2013, I was feeling this need to open a space, create a space to share this work with people. I went on a retreat and was sitting in this quiet meditation. It was the very end of the retreat. It a five-day silent retreat.
I was sitting there and at the end of the retreat, all of sudden, a woman whispered in my ear, literally as if an angel came right next to me and whispered my ear and said, pastor, just like that, one word, pastor.
I just jumped out of my meditation. It was almost like I saw in that flash four years, in my mind, just lay itself out right ahead of me. I came home from that retreat. I went to yoga at the studio the next morning after I got home, where I did my yoga, this cool studio I used to go to.
I'm sitting in class and at the end of class the teacher goes, Oh, by the way, the healing studio in the back is now available for rent because the person who is renting it doesn't want to be there is moving on.
It gets even more interesting. By the end of the day, I had the key to the space. I go into the space. On the wall in the space, there's still stuff in there for the person who is renting it. They were going to come clear it out over the weekend, but I went in because now it's mine. On the wall is a certificate from the Sanctuary of Peace and Harmony Seminary of, Pastor Jen something. I can't remember the woman's last name who was renting the space before. And as soon as she happened to walk in at that moment to get some of her stuff, I said, tell me about this seminary.
Literally in that moment, I got the space and the seminary in one shot.
Jackie Morreale (27:20): Wow, it was the previous tenant's name and certificate on the wall. It was her seminary.
Joe Iadanza (27:24): Yes, it was her certificate. It was her certificate of graduation from the seminary. I opened that space. It's called the living room. It was a little tiny meditation space and like place where I could teach a course in miracles and other things. And then I very quickly got in touch with the people who ran the seminary. By that next term, I was enrolled in that.
(Continued below)
Jackie Morreale (19:02): I didn't know you back then, but I can imagine based on the interactions that we've had, you're so open and willing to talk about anything. There's nothing holding you back. You're this beacon of light. If the start of that was in A Course in Miracles or if this was, something you were born with, that's great. I'm so glad whatever you've done to get to this place that you're at now has taken you here. I think it's combination of all those different things.
Do you want to talk a little bit more to the Hidden Treasure Program?
Joe Iadanza (19:26): Appreciate that. It was founded by an amazing woman named Alice McDowell. She retired from it a few years ago. She still lives up there on the property at this retreat center called Light on the Hill. It's just beautiful. It's 260 acres, overlooking this gorge that was way off into the Pennsylvania Valley from the edge of New York State. It's literally on a hill.
There are places for you to take personal retreats on the property, but there's also a main lodge where you can do group work and that kind of stuff. The retreat center and Hidden Treasure were both created by Alice and her husband. Alice was a professor of mine at Ithaca College from '89 to '93. She was a professor I took in a minor course that I was taking called Religion and Depth Psychology and also Mysticism, two classes that were in a minor that I was doing for philosophy of religion.
I just loved her class. She was just so open and interesting and having me think about things I never imagined.
I ended up doing a small retreat at the end of my senior year of college at her new retreat center that had just opened. Then I graduated and I forgot all about it. I moved to Boston first and then ultimately ended up back on Long Island. I had gotten married, I had a little kid, and I had this part of my life that looked great on the surface.
But I had kind of let go of everything in myself that I believed in and that I thought made me unique. I was being the person I thought everyone needed me or wanted me to be. It created a major tension in me and I ended up having a total nervous breakdown. My work was falling apart. I was in debt. I was overweight, out of shape, ungrateful. I was just a mess in my early 30s.
This is the me that you don't see here, but it was there, it really was, and blaming the world for it. Laying there literally on the floor of my living room in 2003, looking at the ceiling, saying, God, please kill me now or fix this. Like really, really, and meaning it. I think the first time I ever really meant it. And I had a memory in my head, what about Alice? Like this retreat center that you went to 10 years ago that you had totally forgotten about.
I got on the phone and called Alice, called the retreat center, which was still there all those years later. She's like, Well, I don't remember you, but come up for retreat. She's honest, very honest.
Jackie Morreale (21:43): You're in this valley, in this lowest point of your life where everything's just coming into shambles and you have this calling from God in response to your prayer and this woman's head or face or name pops in your head and you call her up and she's like, I don't remember you.
Joe Iadanza (21:56): She was sweet, though. She was like, Well, it's nice that you remember me. I don't remember you, but come on up to her and greet her.
Jackie Morreale (22:05): Right, at least she was welcoming, right? So yeah,
I guess she had a lot of students. I'm sure that once you showed back up and once you had that reconnection, I'm sure that everything changed. You're very down-to-earth. I really appreciate you sharing that story.
Joe Iadanza (22:20): Alice kicked my ass, let me tell you. No, really, in that master student way. She really did. I did that retreat, that first retreat, and it was part of a bunch of synchronicities and things that happened all around that time that really started me on the journey, consciously.
I went on that retreat and then she said, I have this program, if you're interested, the new class starts in the fall. I joined Hidden Treasure, which was that class. And she kicked my ass. She really did because, I really believed my stuff didn't stink.
I was always and have been the kind of person that once I get a little bit of knowledge, I'm like Hermione Granger. Like, I know all this stuff.
Jackie Morreale (22:56): She's my favorite though, she really is. She knew every spell, every pronunciation, she's awesome so can't hate on her. Haha.
Joe Iadanza (23:06): By the end of that first year of Hidden Treasure, Alice looked me square in the eyes the very next time I raised my hand first to answer a question and said, you're going to speak last from now on. That's the kind of hard love she had. It forced you to stop. She would force you to stop and look at your stuff.
After I got over a moment like that where I was just so taken aback by someone saying, No, you're not going to talk anymore until you have something meaningful to say. First, I was pissed off and annoyed and embarrassed.
Then within a month, it opened, she's right. I do do this. Holy cow, I am a know-it-all. Holy cow, and some of these things still live with me to a softened degree.
Jackie Morreale (23:42): Is Alice McDowell still with us?
Joe Iadanza (23:43): Yes, she's around 80, 85 years old now. She just had a birthday.
She's retired. She lives there on the property with her husband. When she handed the property over to the foundation that runs the center, she'd be able to live out her days on the property. She's still writing. She's written a couple of beautiful books.
Jackie Morreale (23:49): Is she still doing her thing up in Van Etten with the center?
I'm just curious, when she was at Ithaca College teaching you, was she the same kind of professor that she then was in the Hidden Treasure program?
Joe Iadanza (24:12): It was different. In Ithaca College, she was spunky, probably in her late 40s, maybe early 50s. She was cool, hip, exploring all the fun stuff. She's the teacher who would like, OK, someone's going to stand up and put your arm up and imagine water flowing through it. I'm going to try and push your arm down and show you how the energy is keeping your arm up.
Jackie Morreale (24:27): I love it. I went to school in Ithaca too, and there's so many cool people up there, doing cool things, and arts, and music, and mysticism apparently, and there's so many great courses I wish I would have taken.
I'm not surprised to hear that Alice was doing this amazing stuff at Ithaca College because there's so many amazing people and the culture and the community is just very, very open and artsy. I'm glad she's still at the center and writing, and I look forward to reading more of her work.
So you did this Hidden Treasure program. It challenged you in new ways and you kind of, re-centered with yourself and find this new way of being and doing. Then you went to seminary. And how did you become a reverend at the Church of Ancient Ways?
Joe Iadanza (25:02): We have a big gap of time here. After I finished Hidden Treasure, that's like 2006. Then I went into my own self-study. I took the tools that I had there, and it was around that time that I found A Course in Miracles. I think that was the transitioning from the stuff, the tools and the skills I learned in Hidden Treasure. And then the new learning that I was deepening in A Course in Miracles kind of led me through what would be really the next eight years or so of just kind of doing my own thing and going on retreats myself and taking workshops and continuing my own learning along the way, reading every book I can get my hands on. Trying to understand what this thing was that was trying to be born within me again.
A lot of things happened in sync. In 2013, I was feeling this need to open a space, create a space to share this work with people. I went on a retreat and was sitting in this quiet meditation. It was the very end of the retreat. It a five-day silent retreat.
I was sitting there and at the end of the retreat, all of sudden, a woman whispered in my ear, literally as if an angel came right next to me and whispered my ear and said, pastor, just like that, one word, pastor.
I just jumped out of my meditation. It was almost like I saw in that flash four years, in my mind, just lay itself out right ahead of me. I came home from that retreat. I went to yoga at the studio the next morning after I got home, where I did my yoga, this cool studio I used to go to.
I'm sitting in class and at the end of class the teacher goes, Oh, by the way, the healing studio in the back is now available for rent because the person who is renting it doesn't want to be there is moving on.
It gets even more interesting. By the end of the day, I had the key to the space. I go into the space. On the wall in the space, there's still stuff in there for the person who is renting it. They were going to come clear it out over the weekend, but I went in because now it's mine. On the wall is a certificate from the Sanctuary of Peace and Harmony Seminary of, Pastor Jen something. I can't remember the woman's last name who was renting the space before. And as soon as she happened to walk in at that moment to get some of her stuff, I said, tell me about this seminary.
Literally in that moment, I got the space and the seminary in one shot.
Jackie Morreale (27:20): Wow, it was the previous tenant's name and certificate on the wall. It was her seminary.
Joe Iadanza (27:24): Yes, it was her certificate. It was her certificate of graduation from the seminary. I opened that space. It's called the living room. It was a little tiny meditation space and like place where I could teach a course in miracles and other things. And then I very quickly got in touch with the people who ran the seminary. By that next term, I was enrolled in that.
(Continued below)
(Continued)
Jackie Morreale (27:50): Seems like God is speaking to you very directly. You put yourself out there, and you said, What do you want me to do? And here are so many things lining up and so quickly, like a zipline directly to what you should be doing.
Joe Iadanza (27:52): I mean this sincerely. There are two voices right in our heads, there's the ego and then there's the Holy Spirit. This is how I look at my whole life. The more I get out of the way of the ego and I get into a place of quiet centeredness, the more I can truly hear the Holy Spirit. Not just as a voice or as an idea, but in witnessing how it works, how it's the inspiration of the Holy Spirit is helping me to find my way through a very twisted kind of place that we live in this world.
It's two forks in a road, like one's telling you go left, one's telling you go right. Whose voice are you listening to? That's the work that I do, I think more than anything is try to hear that voice.
Jackie Morreale (28:43): You have this meditation space and you're teaching A Course on Miracles to small groups. You go to seminary. How does this then morph into you being a Reverend and a pastor and a leader for this Church of Ancient Ways?
Joe Iadanza (28:50): Technically I became a Reverend as soon as I graduated from that seminary. When I started doing the weddings, the woman who ran the company, she had her church organization was Church of Ancient Ways. Even though I had an ordination through my seminary, she said, If you're going to come work with us, I'm also going to ordain you in our church.
She slapped an ordination on me through that. I started to do more weddings through that. It started, Church of Ancient Ways, 25 years ago or something. Actually, more now. It was 1997. It started as a spiritual book club. Pastor April who founded it, Pastor April Gismondi, comes from multiple spiritualities. She started with a group of friends and then some of those friends said, Well, you have a church, you could create this. Church of Ancient Ways speaks to what it was, looking back on ancient mystical traditions.
Over the years, it developed into something that honestly became more about weddings. It became an organization that really holds our ordinations more so than as a spiritual center anymore. Especially after COVID. There's no building anymore. It's really a place that holds ordinations. We, each as ordained ministers, have our own ministries that we do in our own way. like, yeah.
Jackie Morreale (30:03): It sounds like it was all meant to be. Everything lined up and once you heard the call and were listening, everything lined up perfectly. Now you're the owner for Long Island Wedding Officiants and you've done over a thousand weddings.
How does it feel to be there as the reverend and officiant for so many couples most important day of their lives?
Joe Iadanza (30:27): It's beautiful, it is. I tell my couples, I want to not only be the easiest person you work with, I want you to be so happy to see me when I show up. I really do. Every wedding's different. Yes, there are some couples that just want someone to come marry them. It's not about something deeply personal.
The vast majority of the couples I work with are looking for someone to connect with, that's going to understand who they are and hear what their story is, what their love story is, and shine a light on it. In addition to that, make it be a very sacred and beautiful moment. I love it. I love asking, What do you love most about each other? I love hearing how they met, because it's funny. There are archetypes.
It happens in relationships too. You're going to see the high school sweethearts. There's going to be similarities. You're going to see the people who met online, the people who met at work, all the different ways that people come together. Yes, you're going to see similarities, but every single couple has something so unique to them that's just adorable.
Today, I wrote a ceremony. They said it was so natural that at one point when the groom to be, Bobby, was going, he said, I'm just going to go around and get us some food. They were still dating. The bride goes, Okay, that's great, I love you. It was the first time she realized that she had said, I love you, And then like, and the groom said, when he was explaining the moment, goes, It was like calling the teacher mom accidentally the first time. He said it was that kind of moment. That's a special little thing that's so unique to them. I've never heard anybody say that before. Little things like that.
Jackie Morreale (31:48): That's like a sitcom, right? I could just picture it, you just this meet-cute, that you accidentally blurt out, I love you, and here they are getting married! My gosh. Well, congratulations to them.
It sounds like you have this whole process that you like to meet the couple and you like to hear what their story is and you really customize it to their religion or whatever desires that they have. What is simple advice that you would give to a newly wedded couple?
Joe Iadanza (32:09): I think it's the same I would give to any couple. Forgive everything. Listen to each other. Talk it out. I jokingly say that the secret to a happy marriage is "Yes, dear". Especially for the groom, yes, dear. But I mean that in a different way than it sounds. What I mean is yes, dear. There's nothing that we're not going to figure out. Yes.
I had to learn this too because I definitely messed this up. I'm remarried. I blew it in my first marriage. I did. It's totally true. I was always right. I was until I figured out too late that I wasn't.
You can always figure it out. There's a place where you guys can always meet in this if you're willing to communicate and forgive, really forgive, like move on, it's okay.
Jackie Morreale (32:57): Thank you for sharing your own story. If you were to meet a couple who's been married for say a long time, what advice would you give to them? Would it be any different?
Joe Iadanza (33:06): I don't know that I give them advice. I'd be asking them, I'd probably be like, tell me how did this work? I do sometimes have to do renewals of vows. It's like, what has kept you guys going so beautifully for so long? I think without exception, I hear them say that they communicate without exception about everything.
Jackie Morreale (33:08): I think it's beautiful that forgiveness is part of your package deal. That that's just your virtue that you live by, right?
Joe Iadanza (33:30): It’s the cornerstone of everything for me.
Jackie Morreale (33:33): Let's talk a little bit more about your art. You're not only artistic when it comes to communication and how you connect with people but you also write and sing. Yoe write music and you performed for huge audiences and had all these tours going on across the country, across the world. When did you start singing and writing songs?
Joe Iadanza (33:47): I've been playing guitar since I was 15. I was in bands that wrote its own music but as a guitar player, not as a singer. Around age 28, 29, 30 I started to pick up an acoustic guitar and write songs. I did my first actual record in 2007. That was the first actual album I made called Traveling Salesman that was really a look at myself. All my songs are a look at me in some form or another. I think a singer-songwriter who's on the road is sort of a traveling salesman. That was the metaphor.
You because you are, you're hawking your wares, you're away from home. It's not something that everybody else loves or supports, but there's some reason that you just have to do it. In this case, it was an expression.
I had stopped playing music for many years. That was one of the things that kind of led to my breakdown of self, in that early thirties period, realizing that that was such an integral part of who I needed to be at that time, as I was awakening, that the music was my way of processing a lot of stuff that I was still having trouble processing. Those songs, especially by the second record, were starting to be much more about figuring out who I am and using the music as a way to express some of the frustration that was still hiding and some of the love too.
When I get into a place of inner tension, that's when music tends to want to burst out.
Jackie Morreale (35:06): I love thinking about the lows and what creative people will create during those periods because I think it's the most genuine, the most relatable, the most down-to-earth. It's interesting. Without knowing any of the background behind the music, it sounds beautiful. But to know you and to hear your story behind it what went into it and that it was so personal gives it a different depth for sure.
What is your favorite song to sing or play on your guitar?
Joe Iadanza (35:35): Anything by James Taylor, I love to play and sing. I think a lot of what I play took influence from that, especially as an acoustic guitar player. When James Taylor sings, it doesn't sound like it's coming from here. It sounds like it's coming from here. That's stuff that I love. Fire and Rain, I could sit and play that song all day long.
Jackie Morreale (35:56): I'm just curious, when you write, do you start with the music or the lyrics?
Joe Iadanza (36:04): It's a musical idea; I call it going fishing. I cast a chord out and I'm starting to reel it in. What starts to sound like phonetic ideas, the words will come in, but not as real words, almost like syllables and notes and things that don't have any real structure.
Then, all of a sudden, there's a word. Or one hook. The music comes first generally, because I was always a guitar player first. I think that's the natural place to noodle.
Jackie Morreale (36:28): So you have the chords. I love the fishing idea that you have the chords that you put out there and then you bring something back that's more, it's awesome.
Joe Iadanza (36:34): Then it'll start to come in. When I write a song, I will start right from the beginning. Maybe a course or idea will come in, but I'll usually go right from the beginning, and I'll just start writing. Then when I run out of ideas, I'll rip the page off and I'll start at the beginning again and keep building it. Then you build it like that and then rip the page off again and keep going until eventually it's all there.
Jackie Morreale (36:48): Is there anything that we can all do to bring more music and creativity to our lives?
Joe Iadanza (36:59): That's a good question. Yeah, get out of your own way. No, no, no, that's me, I'm kidding. It's tough because we have so many programs. Someone who's creative, inherently, everybody has a friend, know? Oh my God, they're so creative, you know?
Although they may be tormented because so many of us creative people are as well. There are so many other people too that won't sing in front of anybody or I don't do that. Because they've learned that that's not how they are. They've brought that programming with them. I think we learned so much when we're kids for better and for worse.
So many of us think that because we become adults that we don't have to change anymore, even though we've changed so much over those like first 20 or even 30 years. We are not even close to the same person we were at eight months old or eight years old or 18 years old. Yet for some reason we're supposed to be the same locked in thing now from 21, 25 years old on. Get that idea out of your head. I tell my daughter all the time, nobody knows what they're doing, none of us.
Some of us just look like we're making it up a little better than others as we go. It's like Buzz Lightyear said, "This is not flying, this is falling with style".
Get out of your head.
Nobody knows what we're doing.
No matter how successful they are, they’re all making it up as they go along.
So just go make up your own, go make it up, go do it.
Jackie Morreale (38:12): "This is falling with style". Love it. It really should be the one that goes above, "To infinity and beyond". That is my new favorite. That's an awesome quote. Do you have a life quote that really means something to you?
Joe Iadanza (38:25): It's in the Bible, from Gospel of Thomas, which is, "Before you attempt to remove the speck from your brother's eye, first remove the log that is in yours".
Jackie Morreale (38:32): Beautiful. Interesting. That says a lot about you, Joe Iadanza. You're so self-reflecting and you have done all this deep soul-searching work and now the person that you are on the outside really just shines. Thank you. Let's talk about the wellness component, the yoga.
You're a reverend, you've done all the soul searching, all these different ideas in terms of what spirituality is, and you have this United We Om group that you co-founded that's helping people who've been through trauma. What is yoga to you? Tell us more about this group and the meditation services and how you're helping other people.
Joe Iadanza (39:07): These two beautiful souls, Matt and Jenny Jared. When I had opened up my studio, it was attached to a yoga studio, so I was subletting a space that was part of a yoga studio.
I had started yoga as one of the first things when I was healing in that process after that first retreat. I was looking for something. I was so out of shape, just physically unhealthy, and I was like, Well, Sting does yoga. That was a big thing back then. Sting does yoga, I'll try yoga. That's cool.
Jackie Morreale (39:39): Agree. Madonna does yoga, too!
Joe Iadanza (39:42): I was doing yoga there and Jenny Jared was someone who was doing yoga in New York City. She had quite a following. She was one of those, early 2000, first generation yogis who was getting this huge kind of thing. She got married and had a baby and threw it all aside. She was like, I don't want to do this anymore. I want to something more proactive, more healing for the world. She was teaching some classes at the yoga studio, after she was done with her recovery from having her first baby.
One day, we chatted, her and her husband would come by and do yoga too. Then one day they walked into my studio and said, We're starting this new non-profit. Would you be interested in joining the board? I was like, Sure! I didn't even know much about it.
Their idea was that yoga was becoming something that was exclusive, elitist of sorts. Or it sometimes felt maybe isolating. Like if you didn't do our type of yoga versus this type of yoga. Yoga now has become, I think, a little more about exercise but at the time, there was a lot of battling to whose yoga was real yoga. Jenny didn't like any of that. For her it was about how she healed with yoga her own trauma. She saw that there were so many people that were going through trauma in their lives, some of whom they thought yoga could really be helpful for. So the non-profit was a way of looking and identifying. First of all, raising money that that could be used to pay teachers who had expertise in certain communities. Teaching classes to trauma impacted veterans so that we could hire an actual veteran with yoga experience to go and teach that class.
It’s not just sending somebody in to teach a yoga class, but someone who really knew them. Sending someone who was LGBTQ into a home with people who live together in some form that could help that environment. Sending a woman who was a survivor in an abusive relationship into a safe house to teach other women yoga and meditation and stuff.
They built this beautiful organization. I was on the board, they did it. I just got to be part of helping them. Come up with ideas and guiding them and even, delivering mats and stuff. Hands-on, whatever we could do.
Jackie Morreale (41:44): Takes a village, right?
Joe Iadanza (41:46): Yeah, and they did. They brought so much good. It lasted for a while. COVID changed things where they had to stop a lot of the main programming. What was really a hands-on in-person thing that we did, now has become more of a philanthropic organization.
Over the last couple of years, now they're focusing solely on giving grants to people who are doing yoga, but not necessarily yoga like yoga classes, asana classes, yoga in the form of bringing yoke, joining together as one. Some of the people who are there giving grants to are creating food banks. Some of the people they're giving money to are teaching yoga classes, but some are community building and healing, but they have nothing to do with movement necessarily. I love it. It's such a beautiful thing to have watched them grow and create it.
Jackie Morreale (42:29): It sounds like such an amazing organization to be involved with. And yet another thing that your studio, the meditation group, the studio grew out of this little place. It's kind of amazing how it all came together. You talked about Jenny and Matt Jared. There were so many people that we talked about who have been amazing in your life. Are there any shoutouts to people who have made it all possible along the way?
Joe Iadanza (42:55): There are so many. My fifth grade teacher, Mr. DeSantis, who is the one who told me, you really need to stop tattling on all your friends, because you're never going to have friends if you keep coming to me with everything everyone's doing wrong. It was my first life lesson.
Then Mr. Demaio in high school. I was in an arts program in high school and he was the one who really believed in me first, as a teacher, in a way that I recognized someone believing me. I wouldn't have ever ended up at Ithaca College if it wasn't for him showing me a path into the arts. I ended up studying film and photography and did a lot of video editing in high school. Mr. Demaio was incredible, and he's still someone we all know and keep in touch.
Then Alice McDowell in college, and then for so many years. In the spiritual world, she was my first real teacher.
Who else? My co-teacher, Elisa, at Hidden Treasure.
April Gismondi, who literally handed me the keys to her kingdom and said, It's yours. Take it. I just don't want it to go away. I want someone to take it.
So many people, people who don't even know that they affected me.
Bruce Springsteen huge spot.
Eckhart Tolle, power of now, life changing.
Paramahansa Yogananda, life changing.
Books that changed my whole way. Helen Schucman who wrote, scribed, A Course in Miracles.
For people who my life would not be the same had those even people just came into like the world. All of them, everybody. Every person I ever knew, every person who taught me something, everyone whose heart I broke and whose heart broke mine. All of this to get me to this moment.
Jackie Morreale (44:16): Amazing. Any new projects or opportunities that we can talk about? What is next for you, Joe Iadanza?
Joe Iadanza (44:36): Everyone has told me to write a book. I have three and a half chapters of what looks like could be the beginning of a book. But I think I need a retreat. I took a retreat every year for the last something years until COVID and I haven't had a really good retreat since then. I'm saying this publicly, I need a retreat and I think that'll help open the door.
Jackie Morreale (44:43): We collectively all need for you to go on that retreat and we need you to finish your book and we need you to write a new album and come up with the next wave of ideation.
Thank you for everything today Joe and for sharing and being so open. You've really had quite the journey and experience. I hope that anybody out there that we may or may not know from Long Island, if you're looking to get married, that you find Joe Iadanza and Long Island Wedding Officiants. I hope that they get to be part of your magic.
Joe Iadanza (45:19): I really appreciate it. Jackie. This is such a pleasure
Jackie Morreale (45:28): Absolutely. You too. Well, thank you so much for everything, Joe, and have a wonderful day!
Joe Iadanza (45:33): You too, God bless, take care.
Jackie Morreale (27:50): Seems like God is speaking to you very directly. You put yourself out there, and you said, What do you want me to do? And here are so many things lining up and so quickly, like a zipline directly to what you should be doing.
Joe Iadanza (27:52): I mean this sincerely. There are two voices right in our heads, there's the ego and then there's the Holy Spirit. This is how I look at my whole life. The more I get out of the way of the ego and I get into a place of quiet centeredness, the more I can truly hear the Holy Spirit. Not just as a voice or as an idea, but in witnessing how it works, how it's the inspiration of the Holy Spirit is helping me to find my way through a very twisted kind of place that we live in this world.
It's two forks in a road, like one's telling you go left, one's telling you go right. Whose voice are you listening to? That's the work that I do, I think more than anything is try to hear that voice.
Jackie Morreale (28:43): You have this meditation space and you're teaching A Course on Miracles to small groups. You go to seminary. How does this then morph into you being a Reverend and a pastor and a leader for this Church of Ancient Ways?
Joe Iadanza (28:50): Technically I became a Reverend as soon as I graduated from that seminary. When I started doing the weddings, the woman who ran the company, she had her church organization was Church of Ancient Ways. Even though I had an ordination through my seminary, she said, If you're going to come work with us, I'm also going to ordain you in our church.
She slapped an ordination on me through that. I started to do more weddings through that. It started, Church of Ancient Ways, 25 years ago or something. Actually, more now. It was 1997. It started as a spiritual book club. Pastor April who founded it, Pastor April Gismondi, comes from multiple spiritualities. She started with a group of friends and then some of those friends said, Well, you have a church, you could create this. Church of Ancient Ways speaks to what it was, looking back on ancient mystical traditions.
Over the years, it developed into something that honestly became more about weddings. It became an organization that really holds our ordinations more so than as a spiritual center anymore. Especially after COVID. There's no building anymore. It's really a place that holds ordinations. We, each as ordained ministers, have our own ministries that we do in our own way. like, yeah.
Jackie Morreale (30:03): It sounds like it was all meant to be. Everything lined up and once you heard the call and were listening, everything lined up perfectly. Now you're the owner for Long Island Wedding Officiants and you've done over a thousand weddings.
How does it feel to be there as the reverend and officiant for so many couples most important day of their lives?
Joe Iadanza (30:27): It's beautiful, it is. I tell my couples, I want to not only be the easiest person you work with, I want you to be so happy to see me when I show up. I really do. Every wedding's different. Yes, there are some couples that just want someone to come marry them. It's not about something deeply personal.
The vast majority of the couples I work with are looking for someone to connect with, that's going to understand who they are and hear what their story is, what their love story is, and shine a light on it. In addition to that, make it be a very sacred and beautiful moment. I love it. I love asking, What do you love most about each other? I love hearing how they met, because it's funny. There are archetypes.
It happens in relationships too. You're going to see the high school sweethearts. There's going to be similarities. You're going to see the people who met online, the people who met at work, all the different ways that people come together. Yes, you're going to see similarities, but every single couple has something so unique to them that's just adorable.
Today, I wrote a ceremony. They said it was so natural that at one point when the groom to be, Bobby, was going, he said, I'm just going to go around and get us some food. They were still dating. The bride goes, Okay, that's great, I love you. It was the first time she realized that she had said, I love you, And then like, and the groom said, when he was explaining the moment, goes, It was like calling the teacher mom accidentally the first time. He said it was that kind of moment. That's a special little thing that's so unique to them. I've never heard anybody say that before. Little things like that.
Jackie Morreale (31:48): That's like a sitcom, right? I could just picture it, you just this meet-cute, that you accidentally blurt out, I love you, and here they are getting married! My gosh. Well, congratulations to them.
It sounds like you have this whole process that you like to meet the couple and you like to hear what their story is and you really customize it to their religion or whatever desires that they have. What is simple advice that you would give to a newly wedded couple?
Joe Iadanza (32:09): I think it's the same I would give to any couple. Forgive everything. Listen to each other. Talk it out. I jokingly say that the secret to a happy marriage is "Yes, dear". Especially for the groom, yes, dear. But I mean that in a different way than it sounds. What I mean is yes, dear. There's nothing that we're not going to figure out. Yes.
I had to learn this too because I definitely messed this up. I'm remarried. I blew it in my first marriage. I did. It's totally true. I was always right. I was until I figured out too late that I wasn't.
You can always figure it out. There's a place where you guys can always meet in this if you're willing to communicate and forgive, really forgive, like move on, it's okay.
Jackie Morreale (32:57): Thank you for sharing your own story. If you were to meet a couple who's been married for say a long time, what advice would you give to them? Would it be any different?
Joe Iadanza (33:06): I don't know that I give them advice. I'd be asking them, I'd probably be like, tell me how did this work? I do sometimes have to do renewals of vows. It's like, what has kept you guys going so beautifully for so long? I think without exception, I hear them say that they communicate without exception about everything.
Jackie Morreale (33:08): I think it's beautiful that forgiveness is part of your package deal. That that's just your virtue that you live by, right?
Joe Iadanza (33:30): It’s the cornerstone of everything for me.
Jackie Morreale (33:33): Let's talk a little bit more about your art. You're not only artistic when it comes to communication and how you connect with people but you also write and sing. Yoe write music and you performed for huge audiences and had all these tours going on across the country, across the world. When did you start singing and writing songs?
Joe Iadanza (33:47): I've been playing guitar since I was 15. I was in bands that wrote its own music but as a guitar player, not as a singer. Around age 28, 29, 30 I started to pick up an acoustic guitar and write songs. I did my first actual record in 2007. That was the first actual album I made called Traveling Salesman that was really a look at myself. All my songs are a look at me in some form or another. I think a singer-songwriter who's on the road is sort of a traveling salesman. That was the metaphor.
You because you are, you're hawking your wares, you're away from home. It's not something that everybody else loves or supports, but there's some reason that you just have to do it. In this case, it was an expression.
I had stopped playing music for many years. That was one of the things that kind of led to my breakdown of self, in that early thirties period, realizing that that was such an integral part of who I needed to be at that time, as I was awakening, that the music was my way of processing a lot of stuff that I was still having trouble processing. Those songs, especially by the second record, were starting to be much more about figuring out who I am and using the music as a way to express some of the frustration that was still hiding and some of the love too.
When I get into a place of inner tension, that's when music tends to want to burst out.
Jackie Morreale (35:06): I love thinking about the lows and what creative people will create during those periods because I think it's the most genuine, the most relatable, the most down-to-earth. It's interesting. Without knowing any of the background behind the music, it sounds beautiful. But to know you and to hear your story behind it what went into it and that it was so personal gives it a different depth for sure.
What is your favorite song to sing or play on your guitar?
Joe Iadanza (35:35): Anything by James Taylor, I love to play and sing. I think a lot of what I play took influence from that, especially as an acoustic guitar player. When James Taylor sings, it doesn't sound like it's coming from here. It sounds like it's coming from here. That's stuff that I love. Fire and Rain, I could sit and play that song all day long.
Jackie Morreale (35:56): I'm just curious, when you write, do you start with the music or the lyrics?
Joe Iadanza (36:04): It's a musical idea; I call it going fishing. I cast a chord out and I'm starting to reel it in. What starts to sound like phonetic ideas, the words will come in, but not as real words, almost like syllables and notes and things that don't have any real structure.
Then, all of a sudden, there's a word. Or one hook. The music comes first generally, because I was always a guitar player first. I think that's the natural place to noodle.
Jackie Morreale (36:28): So you have the chords. I love the fishing idea that you have the chords that you put out there and then you bring something back that's more, it's awesome.
Joe Iadanza (36:34): Then it'll start to come in. When I write a song, I will start right from the beginning. Maybe a course or idea will come in, but I'll usually go right from the beginning, and I'll just start writing. Then when I run out of ideas, I'll rip the page off and I'll start at the beginning again and keep building it. Then you build it like that and then rip the page off again and keep going until eventually it's all there.
Jackie Morreale (36:48): Is there anything that we can all do to bring more music and creativity to our lives?
Joe Iadanza (36:59): That's a good question. Yeah, get out of your own way. No, no, no, that's me, I'm kidding. It's tough because we have so many programs. Someone who's creative, inherently, everybody has a friend, know? Oh my God, they're so creative, you know?
Although they may be tormented because so many of us creative people are as well. There are so many other people too that won't sing in front of anybody or I don't do that. Because they've learned that that's not how they are. They've brought that programming with them. I think we learned so much when we're kids for better and for worse.
So many of us think that because we become adults that we don't have to change anymore, even though we've changed so much over those like first 20 or even 30 years. We are not even close to the same person we were at eight months old or eight years old or 18 years old. Yet for some reason we're supposed to be the same locked in thing now from 21, 25 years old on. Get that idea out of your head. I tell my daughter all the time, nobody knows what they're doing, none of us.
Some of us just look like we're making it up a little better than others as we go. It's like Buzz Lightyear said, "This is not flying, this is falling with style".
Get out of your head.
Nobody knows what we're doing.
No matter how successful they are, they’re all making it up as they go along.
So just go make up your own, go make it up, go do it.
Jackie Morreale (38:12): "This is falling with style". Love it. It really should be the one that goes above, "To infinity and beyond". That is my new favorite. That's an awesome quote. Do you have a life quote that really means something to you?
Joe Iadanza (38:25): It's in the Bible, from Gospel of Thomas, which is, "Before you attempt to remove the speck from your brother's eye, first remove the log that is in yours".
Jackie Morreale (38:32): Beautiful. Interesting. That says a lot about you, Joe Iadanza. You're so self-reflecting and you have done all this deep soul-searching work and now the person that you are on the outside really just shines. Thank you. Let's talk about the wellness component, the yoga.
You're a reverend, you've done all the soul searching, all these different ideas in terms of what spirituality is, and you have this United We Om group that you co-founded that's helping people who've been through trauma. What is yoga to you? Tell us more about this group and the meditation services and how you're helping other people.
Joe Iadanza (39:07): These two beautiful souls, Matt and Jenny Jared. When I had opened up my studio, it was attached to a yoga studio, so I was subletting a space that was part of a yoga studio.
I had started yoga as one of the first things when I was healing in that process after that first retreat. I was looking for something. I was so out of shape, just physically unhealthy, and I was like, Well, Sting does yoga. That was a big thing back then. Sting does yoga, I'll try yoga. That's cool.
Jackie Morreale (39:39): Agree. Madonna does yoga, too!
Joe Iadanza (39:42): I was doing yoga there and Jenny Jared was someone who was doing yoga in New York City. She had quite a following. She was one of those, early 2000, first generation yogis who was getting this huge kind of thing. She got married and had a baby and threw it all aside. She was like, I don't want to do this anymore. I want to something more proactive, more healing for the world. She was teaching some classes at the yoga studio, after she was done with her recovery from having her first baby.
One day, we chatted, her and her husband would come by and do yoga too. Then one day they walked into my studio and said, We're starting this new non-profit. Would you be interested in joining the board? I was like, Sure! I didn't even know much about it.
Their idea was that yoga was becoming something that was exclusive, elitist of sorts. Or it sometimes felt maybe isolating. Like if you didn't do our type of yoga versus this type of yoga. Yoga now has become, I think, a little more about exercise but at the time, there was a lot of battling to whose yoga was real yoga. Jenny didn't like any of that. For her it was about how she healed with yoga her own trauma. She saw that there were so many people that were going through trauma in their lives, some of whom they thought yoga could really be helpful for. So the non-profit was a way of looking and identifying. First of all, raising money that that could be used to pay teachers who had expertise in certain communities. Teaching classes to trauma impacted veterans so that we could hire an actual veteran with yoga experience to go and teach that class.
It’s not just sending somebody in to teach a yoga class, but someone who really knew them. Sending someone who was LGBTQ into a home with people who live together in some form that could help that environment. Sending a woman who was a survivor in an abusive relationship into a safe house to teach other women yoga and meditation and stuff.
They built this beautiful organization. I was on the board, they did it. I just got to be part of helping them. Come up with ideas and guiding them and even, delivering mats and stuff. Hands-on, whatever we could do.
Jackie Morreale (41:44): Takes a village, right?
Joe Iadanza (41:46): Yeah, and they did. They brought so much good. It lasted for a while. COVID changed things where they had to stop a lot of the main programming. What was really a hands-on in-person thing that we did, now has become more of a philanthropic organization.
Over the last couple of years, now they're focusing solely on giving grants to people who are doing yoga, but not necessarily yoga like yoga classes, asana classes, yoga in the form of bringing yoke, joining together as one. Some of the people who are there giving grants to are creating food banks. Some of the people they're giving money to are teaching yoga classes, but some are community building and healing, but they have nothing to do with movement necessarily. I love it. It's such a beautiful thing to have watched them grow and create it.
Jackie Morreale (42:29): It sounds like such an amazing organization to be involved with. And yet another thing that your studio, the meditation group, the studio grew out of this little place. It's kind of amazing how it all came together. You talked about Jenny and Matt Jared. There were so many people that we talked about who have been amazing in your life. Are there any shoutouts to people who have made it all possible along the way?
Joe Iadanza (42:55): There are so many. My fifth grade teacher, Mr. DeSantis, who is the one who told me, you really need to stop tattling on all your friends, because you're never going to have friends if you keep coming to me with everything everyone's doing wrong. It was my first life lesson.
Then Mr. Demaio in high school. I was in an arts program in high school and he was the one who really believed in me first, as a teacher, in a way that I recognized someone believing me. I wouldn't have ever ended up at Ithaca College if it wasn't for him showing me a path into the arts. I ended up studying film and photography and did a lot of video editing in high school. Mr. Demaio was incredible, and he's still someone we all know and keep in touch.
Then Alice McDowell in college, and then for so many years. In the spiritual world, she was my first real teacher.
Who else? My co-teacher, Elisa, at Hidden Treasure.
April Gismondi, who literally handed me the keys to her kingdom and said, It's yours. Take it. I just don't want it to go away. I want someone to take it.
So many people, people who don't even know that they affected me.
Bruce Springsteen huge spot.
Eckhart Tolle, power of now, life changing.
Paramahansa Yogananda, life changing.
Books that changed my whole way. Helen Schucman who wrote, scribed, A Course in Miracles.
For people who my life would not be the same had those even people just came into like the world. All of them, everybody. Every person I ever knew, every person who taught me something, everyone whose heart I broke and whose heart broke mine. All of this to get me to this moment.
Jackie Morreale (44:16): Amazing. Any new projects or opportunities that we can talk about? What is next for you, Joe Iadanza?
Joe Iadanza (44:36): Everyone has told me to write a book. I have three and a half chapters of what looks like could be the beginning of a book. But I think I need a retreat. I took a retreat every year for the last something years until COVID and I haven't had a really good retreat since then. I'm saying this publicly, I need a retreat and I think that'll help open the door.
Jackie Morreale (44:43): We collectively all need for you to go on that retreat and we need you to finish your book and we need you to write a new album and come up with the next wave of ideation.
Thank you for everything today Joe and for sharing and being so open. You've really had quite the journey and experience. I hope that anybody out there that we may or may not know from Long Island, if you're looking to get married, that you find Joe Iadanza and Long Island Wedding Officiants. I hope that they get to be part of your magic.
Joe Iadanza (45:19): I really appreciate it. Jackie. This is such a pleasure
Jackie Morreale (45:28): Absolutely. You too. Well, thank you so much for everything, Joe, and have a wonderful day!
Joe Iadanza (45:33): You too, God bless, take care.
Continued reading recommended by Rev. Joe Iadanza, and more about Long Island Wedding Officiants:
A Course In Miracles, Helen Schucman, free online! Link to read.
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