1 00:00:06,310 --> 00:00:10,110 Once Upon a time, in the land of Pradane, a young man set out to 2 00:00:10,110 --> 00:00:13,710 discover his true calling. After many weeks of journeying, 3 00:00:13,870 --> 00:00:17,630 Taran of Care Dalben found himself at the forge of Hevid 4 00:00:17,630 --> 00:00:20,240 the Smith. Hevid was perhaps the greatest 5 00:00:20,240 --> 00:00:23,600 Smith in all pradane, renowned far and wide for his skill and 6 00:00:23,600 --> 00:00:26,240 craftsmanship. He was a barrel chested, leather 7 00:00:26,240 --> 00:00:29,120 aproned man with scorched eyelashes, a sooty face and 8 00:00:29,200 --> 00:00:32,360 burly shoulders, so used to the feel of sparks that he might 9 00:00:32,400 --> 00:00:34,240 almost have been part of his forage. 10 00:00:35,000 --> 00:00:38,400 Taran was eager to learn the noble art of sword making, and 11 00:00:38,400 --> 00:00:40,280 the master Smith was willing enough to teach him. 12 00:00:40,840 --> 00:00:44,040 Taran expected to be handed hammer and tongs and to be put 13 00:00:44,040 --> 00:00:47,400 to work shaping one of the bars of steel at the forge, but 14 00:00:47,400 --> 00:00:51,720 Heaven had no such intention. What start when the work is half 15 00:00:51,720 --> 00:00:52,720 done? He snorted. 16 00:00:52,840 --> 00:00:56,120 No, no my lad, you'll forge a sword from beginning to end. 17 00:00:56,880 --> 00:01:00,440 And so Taran found himself gathering fuel for the furnace 18 00:01:00,760 --> 00:01:04,519 all day long, feeding a roaring, flame tongued monster that could 19 00:01:04,519 --> 00:01:07,360 never eat it's fill. Then came shoveling a mountain 20 00:01:07,360 --> 00:01:10,160 of stones, smelting the metal they contained. 21 00:01:10,600 --> 00:01:13,880 By the time Taran was allowed to touch a blade, his hands were 22 00:01:13,880 --> 00:01:17,120 covered with more blisters than skin, his back ached, and his 23 00:01:17,120 --> 00:01:19,280 ears rang with the constant clatter. 24 00:01:20,280 --> 00:01:24,360 Eventually he left with a strong but plain sword in his scabbard 25 00:01:24,760 --> 00:01:29,000 to continue his quest. Soon after, he found shelter 26 00:01:29,000 --> 00:01:32,720 from a rainstorm in the home of an old woman whose long hair was 27 00:01:32,720 --> 00:01:34,760 as white as the wool hanging from her belt. 28 00:01:35,360 --> 00:01:38,280 A web of wrinkles covered her face, but for all her years she 29 00:01:38,280 --> 00:01:42,200 gave no signs of frailty, for time had seasoned her, and her 30 00:01:42,200 --> 00:01:45,040 Gray eyes were sharp and bright as a pair of new needles. 31 00:01:46,720 --> 00:01:50,360 I am Dwivak Weaver woman, she said, and I can see you've need 32 00:01:50,360 --> 00:01:53,600 of a new cloak. And so Taran found himself at 33 00:01:53,600 --> 00:01:56,960 her loom, hoping weaving might prove easier than smithing 34 00:01:57,520 --> 00:01:59,840 again. He expected to sit at the great 35 00:01:59,840 --> 00:02:04,000 loom to watch the shuttle dance between the threads, but instead 36 00:02:04,360 --> 00:02:07,400 Dwek led him to a chamber bursting with raw wool. 37 00:02:08,199 --> 00:02:11,600 Tease out the thorns, pick out the cockle burrs, she commanded. 38 00:02:12,280 --> 00:02:15,520 Comb it, card it carefully wander, or when your cloak is 39 00:02:15,520 --> 00:02:17,800 done you'll feel it's made of thistles instead of wool. 40 00:02:18,760 --> 00:02:22,680 Days of painstaking work followed, cleaning, spinning, 41 00:02:22,760 --> 00:02:26,480 dying, until Taran's eyes were bleary and his fingers raw. 42 00:02:27,040 --> 00:02:30,080 Only when he knew the feel of wool at every step, like the 43 00:02:30,080 --> 00:02:33,080 back of his hand, was he allowed to approach the loom. 44 00:02:33,840 --> 00:02:38,240 All things are done step by step and strand by strand, Dwivek 45 00:02:38,240 --> 00:02:41,080 told him. In the end, Taran left the 46 00:02:41,080 --> 00:02:43,800 weaver's cottage with a serviceable new cloak, but his 47 00:02:43,800 --> 00:02:46,080 longing had not found a rest at the loom. 48 00:02:47,640 --> 00:02:52,000 A few days later, Taran came upon an old man standing beside 49 00:02:52,000 --> 00:02:55,080 a pair of wooden buckets on a yoke at the edge of a shallow 50 00:02:55,080 --> 00:02:57,480 stream. Taran offered to carry his 51 00:02:57,480 --> 00:03:00,240 buckets and soon found himself gasping under their weight. 52 00:03:00,800 --> 00:03:04,120 Grinning, the man took the buckets back and briskly carried 53 00:03:04,120 --> 00:03:07,000 them back to his shed, where he poured the mud into a great 54 00:03:07,000 --> 00:03:11,160 wooden VAT. In the next room, Tarin saw 55 00:03:11,160 --> 00:03:14,680 shelves holding jars and bowls of all kinds whose craftsmanship 56 00:03:14,680 --> 00:03:17,800 made him catch his breath. If this is your work, he said. 57 00:03:17,920 --> 00:03:20,560 I know you. You are Enlaw clay shaper, 58 00:03:20,560 --> 00:03:22,800 Master Potter of the Free Comets. 59 00:03:23,560 --> 00:03:26,640 The man nodded. If you've seen my work, it may 60 00:03:26,640 --> 00:03:29,960 be that you indeed know me, for I am old at my craft and no 61 00:03:29,960 --> 00:03:33,200 longer sure where the clay ends and Anlaw begins. 62 00:03:34,560 --> 00:03:37,960 Anlaw agreed to teach Taran some of what he knew, and day after 63 00:03:37,960 --> 00:03:42,440 day he sent him to dig clay from the stream bank, to learn its 64 00:03:42,440 --> 00:03:46,080 weight and texture, to sift and mix and temper it until it 65 00:03:46,080 --> 00:03:49,760 almost became a part of him. Before you learn the craft, 66 00:03:50,160 --> 00:03:53,640 Anlaw explained, you must first learn the clay. 67 00:03:56,160 --> 00:03:59,160 In our age of endless productivity and constant 68 00:03:59,160 --> 00:04:02,920 motion, perhaps we've forgotten what these ancient Craftsman 69 00:04:02,920 --> 00:04:07,320 knew, And so we mistake busyness for purpose, distraction for 70 00:04:07,320 --> 00:04:11,440 engagement, and motion for life. But what if the masters were 71 00:04:11,440 --> 00:04:13,960 right? What if the path to true 72 00:04:13,960 --> 00:04:18,560 mastery, whether of craft or calling or simply being human, 73 00:04:18,839 --> 00:04:23,520 begins not with doing more, but with learning to be still, with 74 00:04:23,520 --> 00:04:27,080 learning to be present? What if our souls, like Taran's 75 00:04:27,080 --> 00:04:31,320 hands, need to be trained in being present before they can 76 00:04:31,320 --> 00:04:37,000 create anything worth keeping? Welcome to the Imagination 77 00:04:37,000 --> 00:04:41,320 Redeemed podcast where we follow the great stories further up and 78 00:04:41,320 --> 00:04:44,440 further in In Pursuit of the Life of Christ. 79 00:04:51,840 --> 00:04:55,280 Welcome friends, back to the Imagination Redeemed podcast. 80 00:04:55,280 --> 00:04:59,080 I'm Brian Brown, joined today by Sarah Howell, Matthew Clark and 81 00:04:59,080 --> 00:05:02,400 Christina Brown. And we've just read this story 82 00:05:02,400 --> 00:05:05,840 from Tar and Wanderer by Lloyd Alexander. 83 00:05:06,320 --> 00:05:09,400 If you do not know the Prideane Chronicles run, Do not walk. 84 00:05:09,720 --> 00:05:13,480 They're fantastic. And we want to get into this 85 00:05:13,960 --> 00:05:17,600 challenge and we want to challenge ourselves to do it not 86 00:05:17,600 --> 00:05:21,520 in a way that's simply on the one hand, telling us all things 87 00:05:21,520 --> 00:05:23,880 we already know about the problem, or on the other hand, 88 00:05:24,200 --> 00:05:27,080 simply saying try harder, stupid on the solution. 89 00:05:28,280 --> 00:05:33,600 In our recent episode, we talked about Encanto and how Mirabelle 90 00:05:33,600 --> 00:05:39,240 in that story pursued something that in the end was not herself 91 00:05:39,240 --> 00:05:42,680 in her quest to find a self that was meaningful. 92 00:05:43,000 --> 00:05:46,200 We want to kind of build on that conversation today and talk more 93 00:05:46,200 --> 00:05:50,080 about the doing of that. If if the last episode was more 94 00:05:50,080 --> 00:05:54,040 about the being of that, this is more about the doing of that. 95 00:05:54,600 --> 00:06:01,040 I think it's safe to say all of us know what it is like to go 96 00:06:01,040 --> 00:06:03,800 through a moment of life. This is probably not done with 97 00:06:03,800 --> 00:06:09,280 one thing so much as 10, but with 10 things that are 98 00:06:09,960 --> 00:06:16,440 constantly tugging at us. If only I can cross that 99 00:06:16,520 --> 00:06:20,240 threshold, then I can fill in the blank. 100 00:06:20,880 --> 00:06:23,320 Only that chronic pain would go away. 101 00:06:23,320 --> 00:06:26,800 If only I could learn that scale. 102 00:06:26,800 --> 00:06:28,800 If only I could have that object. 103 00:06:28,800 --> 00:06:33,000 If only I could make that money. If only I could my my ship could 104 00:06:33,000 --> 00:06:37,880 come in, in some sense or other. And if if that's not enough, 105 00:06:37,880 --> 00:06:42,280 we've got the, the more immediate temptations, the next 106 00:06:42,920 --> 00:06:46,200 task, the next distraction from the smartphone, whatever it 107 00:06:46,200 --> 00:06:50,080 might be. Matthew, Christina, Sarah, let's 108 00:06:50,080 --> 00:06:54,240 just start by sitting for a moment with that problem. 109 00:06:54,680 --> 00:06:58,080 Then we'll get into more of what, what is that problem? 110 00:06:58,080 --> 00:07:00,440 What are the things we're missing as far as where that 111 00:07:00,440 --> 00:07:04,360 problem is coming from? And then we'll get into what do 112 00:07:04,360 --> 00:07:06,880 we do about it? What do we make of it? 113 00:07:07,200 --> 00:07:08,680 First, let's just talk about this problem. 114 00:07:08,840 --> 00:07:10,360 What does it? What does it feel like? 115 00:07:10,440 --> 00:07:14,040 I think for me it's being stuck between two polars where I 116 00:07:14,160 --> 00:07:18,040 either feel like I'm under so many tasks. 117 00:07:18,400 --> 00:07:21,760 I don't feel like I've started the day, I feel like the tasks 118 00:07:21,760 --> 00:07:25,240 have started me. On the other hand, when I wake 119 00:07:25,240 --> 00:07:31,520 up so exhausted that I can barely even begin a task and I 120 00:07:31,520 --> 00:07:38,360 feel lethargic and almost under the weight and burden of the 121 00:07:38,360 --> 00:07:42,080 tasks not started. So that's the the kind of the 122 00:07:42,160 --> 00:07:46,600 the task driven sense of relating to the world. 123 00:07:47,080 --> 00:07:50,280 You know, 1 meme that I've seen about that is basically that 124 00:07:50,520 --> 00:07:54,160 being being an adult is just saying, but after this week, 125 00:07:54,160 --> 00:07:56,240 things will calm down every week until you're dead. 126 00:07:56,440 --> 00:07:58,320 So that's cheerful. What else? 127 00:07:58,320 --> 00:08:00,360 How have you, how how Matthew, Christina, how have you guys 128 00:08:00,360 --> 00:08:03,280 experienced this? Well I'm laughing that that you 129 00:08:03,280 --> 00:08:08,120 use the example of an illustration from a meme because 130 00:08:08,440 --> 00:08:11,880 it just kind of proves how much we are distracted by our 131 00:08:11,880 --> 00:08:16,240 devices. For me, when I have so much 132 00:08:16,480 --> 00:08:21,800 distracting me and so many tasks, but just so many things, 133 00:08:22,160 --> 00:08:27,560 my mind is cluttered and I can't really tell one thing from the 134 00:08:27,560 --> 00:08:30,000 next. And I'm constantly going back to 135 00:08:30,000 --> 00:08:33,480 A to do list, constantly looking at the calendar, what's today 136 00:08:33,520 --> 00:08:35,640 versus what's tomorrow versus what's next. 137 00:08:35,679 --> 00:08:37,960 Oh, that's next week. Like I have to keep going back 138 00:08:37,960 --> 00:08:41,559 to something that tells me, yeah, you got to do this today 139 00:08:41,559 --> 00:08:44,480 or else this is going to happen or yeah, you better pay 140 00:08:44,480 --> 00:08:46,320 attention to this because otherwise you're going to be 141 00:08:46,320 --> 00:08:49,680 sorry when this thing comes and this deadline comes and you're 142 00:08:49,680 --> 00:08:53,160 not ready or whatever it is. So honestly, I think that's when 143 00:08:53,160 --> 00:08:57,280 I feel like ADHD can sort of like really kick in and I don't 144 00:08:57,280 --> 00:09:01,640 know, up from down. So probably I would say that's 145 00:09:01,680 --> 00:09:04,560 that's a big one for me is just a cluttered mind. 146 00:09:04,960 --> 00:09:08,320 And then all they want to do is curl up and sleep because my 147 00:09:08,320 --> 00:09:10,840 mind doesn't know what to do. It's like it's like a literal 148 00:09:11,320 --> 00:09:17,120 response with my brain saying stop I need to process any rest. 149 00:09:18,000 --> 00:09:22,040 Yeah, sometimes to me it feels like a, a, a kind of fatigue as 150 00:09:22,040 --> 00:09:29,360 well, where there's there's so many things that need, that need 151 00:09:29,360 --> 00:09:33,920 decisions that need to be considered and, and the decision 152 00:09:33,920 --> 00:09:39,120 needs to be made about 10 things, 20 different things. 153 00:09:39,760 --> 00:09:42,080 Just this month I was like, I have so many because I'm about 154 00:09:42,080 --> 00:09:44,160 to go out of the country for a month. 155 00:09:44,680 --> 00:09:46,800 I was like, there's so many things I need to get done before 156 00:09:46,800 --> 00:09:50,560 I leave. And I wasn't able to sleep the 157 00:09:50,560 --> 00:09:52,800 other night because I was thinking about all these things. 158 00:09:53,400 --> 00:09:57,360 And then I just had to say, you know what, some of these things 159 00:09:57,360 --> 00:10:00,280 are not going to get done. I've just got to be OK with 160 00:10:00,280 --> 00:10:02,520 that. And so that's it's frustrating 161 00:10:02,680 --> 00:10:05,360 and it's fatiguing I think as well. 162 00:10:05,680 --> 00:10:06,880 I think that's a really good point. 163 00:10:06,880 --> 00:10:10,600 I actually had to make that call this morning, like what needs to 164 00:10:10,600 --> 00:10:16,880 be done versus what I want and, and sometimes what you want is 165 00:10:16,880 --> 00:10:22,040 good, but it's not necessary. And so we're using those things 166 00:10:22,640 --> 00:10:26,840 kind of yearning for them, but they're, they're adding to the 167 00:10:26,840 --> 00:10:29,600 pressures of us not being able to be present. 168 00:10:30,000 --> 00:10:32,120 So I think there's, there's that too for me, right? 169 00:10:32,160 --> 00:10:35,080 Just that desire to sort of control and contribute in the 170 00:10:35,080 --> 00:10:37,920 ways that I feel because I feel so cluttered everywhere else. 171 00:10:37,920 --> 00:10:40,760 I'm just like, well, I need to, I need to contribute this way 172 00:10:40,760 --> 00:10:44,640 because this is where I will feel like I have some agency, 173 00:10:44,720 --> 00:10:47,360 right? And you realize, well, you know, 174 00:10:47,480 --> 00:10:50,000 how much agency do we really have over our lives? 175 00:10:50,280 --> 00:10:54,080 Turns out, not so much. I think another aspect too, kind 176 00:10:54,080 --> 00:10:56,920 of playing off what you just said, is maybe you could call it 177 00:10:56,920 --> 00:11:00,960 grief, like the grief of coming to terms with my limitations. 178 00:11:01,840 --> 00:11:03,800 Yeah. Versus the thing I would, the 179 00:11:03,800 --> 00:11:06,960 way I would like to see myself or the things I would like to 180 00:11:07,240 --> 00:11:10,800 say like I can do all the, I can do all twenty of these things. 181 00:11:10,800 --> 00:11:15,400 And then realizing actually, maybe like 4 is more realistic 182 00:11:19,080 --> 00:11:20,240 and having to like kind of grief. 183 00:11:20,240 --> 00:11:24,000 And like you're saying, they're not, it's not like these things 184 00:11:24,000 --> 00:11:25,000 are bad. I shouldn't do them. 185 00:11:25,000 --> 00:11:26,840 It's like all twenty of these things are awesome. 186 00:11:26,840 --> 00:11:28,280 I, I would love to do all of them. 187 00:11:28,280 --> 00:11:30,200 I want to hang out with all of these people. 188 00:11:30,720 --> 00:11:33,600 I want to do all of these things, but I'm a limited 189 00:11:33,600 --> 00:11:34,960 person. I can't, I just can't do 190 00:11:34,960 --> 00:11:37,960 everything that I want to do or everything that is good. 191 00:11:38,200 --> 00:11:40,800 Maybe that's part of being built for eternity as well, you know? 192 00:11:41,240 --> 00:11:45,520 Yeah, between you, you Christina and Matthew, you have just, 193 00:11:45,600 --> 00:11:47,560 you've touched on two things I want to get to. 194 00:11:48,320 --> 00:11:52,400 One is the, the sort of more identity or kind of existential 195 00:11:52,720 --> 00:11:55,720 component because we all, we all started with more kind of minute 196 00:11:55,720 --> 00:11:59,920 to minute tactical things like, right, I just, I, I struggle to 197 00:11:59,920 --> 00:12:03,200 live the next 5 minutes because the next 5 minutes are owned by 198 00:12:04,200 --> 00:12:06,880 perceived necessity. And I think that's how we 199 00:12:06,880 --> 00:12:08,480 experience a lot of it minute to minute. 200 00:12:08,760 --> 00:12:10,920 And then underlying that, there's, there's something 201 00:12:10,920 --> 00:12:13,080 deeper that I want to circle back to in a few minutes. 202 00:12:13,080 --> 00:12:15,400 But I want to, I want to pull that thread that you just 203 00:12:15,400 --> 00:12:18,360 touched on, Matthew. On some level we can, we can 204 00:12:18,360 --> 00:12:20,760 kind of have mercy on ourselves a little bit, have grace with 205 00:12:20,760 --> 00:12:24,120 ourselves because a lot of this is the world that we're born 206 00:12:24,120 --> 00:12:26,400 into. I'm not qualified to judge the 207 00:12:27,440 --> 00:12:30,400 universality of it in terms of, Oh yes, this is humans have 208 00:12:30,400 --> 00:12:32,960 always done this. But I can say in our time, in 209 00:12:32,960 --> 00:12:37,200 our place in 21st century America, in our case there, 210 00:12:37,200 --> 00:12:38,920 there are unique things that make this hard. 211 00:12:39,520 --> 00:12:42,720 There are reasons that we have particular difficulty being 212 00:12:42,720 --> 00:12:46,760 still. We get trained out of the 213 00:12:46,760 --> 00:12:50,560 ability to be still, the ability to be still with ourselves, 214 00:12:51,280 --> 00:12:52,640 right? If if you've ever tried the 215 00:12:52,640 --> 00:12:56,920 exercise of not touching your phone for one hour when you're 216 00:12:56,920 --> 00:12:59,600 not doing something particular that would distract you from it, 217 00:12:59,920 --> 00:13:02,920 you start to notice how often you instinctively reach for it. 218 00:13:03,280 --> 00:13:07,560 If you just go into the middle of a a field or even a small 219 00:13:07,560 --> 00:13:10,760 yard and just stare up at the sky and try to do absolutely 220 00:13:10,760 --> 00:13:14,160 nothing, most people quickly realize how difficult that is. 221 00:13:14,880 --> 00:13:17,560 I agree on that. And I think a distinction that 222 00:13:17,560 --> 00:13:20,880 would be made is for that phone, right, Reaching for the phone 223 00:13:20,880 --> 00:13:24,760 for me, it's not even reaching it for, you know, doom scrolling 224 00:13:24,760 --> 00:13:27,240 for social media or anything. It's reaching for it because 225 00:13:27,680 --> 00:13:29,920 like, I'm like, oh, yeah, I should look that thing up on the 226 00:13:29,920 --> 00:13:31,200 Internet. Oh, yeah. 227 00:13:31,200 --> 00:13:35,200 I really wanted to remember how to do this or like even 228 00:13:35,200 --> 00:13:38,840 something so in my case, which is kind of ironic as a garden 229 00:13:38,840 --> 00:13:43,320 tender, even something like, oh, yeah, I wanted to check on this. 230 00:13:43,480 --> 00:13:47,560 Let me see what my resources and says about this thing. 231 00:13:47,560 --> 00:13:48,920 And I want to like, reach for the phone. 232 00:13:49,080 --> 00:13:52,560 Can you just go out and be? It's also just ingrained, like 233 00:13:52,560 --> 00:13:54,560 our phone is our answer for a lot of things. 234 00:13:54,560 --> 00:13:57,560 You know, even if we're thinking about someone we love because we 235 00:13:57,560 --> 00:13:59,240 want to text them and tell them I love them. 236 00:13:59,240 --> 00:14:01,120 Oh, but also that involves my phone. 237 00:14:01,440 --> 00:14:04,920 I think what you're pointing to, Christina, is something I would 238 00:14:04,920 --> 00:14:10,800 probably say we've had an ingrained habit of being 239 00:14:10,800 --> 00:14:18,040 disembodied, and when you allow yourself to leave your physical 240 00:14:18,200 --> 00:14:22,120 limitations, that doesn't mean that your capacities grow. 241 00:14:22,440 --> 00:14:25,400 Through our devices, we are connected to a world that is 242 00:14:25,400 --> 00:14:28,640 bigger than the one that our brains are capable of relating 243 00:14:28,640 --> 00:14:32,240 to. No matter how cool the 244 00:14:33,760 --> 00:14:40,040 networking tools or contacts app on my phone, I can't have a 245 00:14:40,040 --> 00:14:42,000 meaningful relationship with 1000 people. 246 00:14:42,360 --> 00:14:46,760 I can't carry the burden of all those people I need to reach out 247 00:14:46,800 --> 00:14:49,960 to, as opposed to just the people I encounter physically on 248 00:14:49,960 --> 00:14:54,240 a daily basis. I I can't carry the burdens of 249 00:14:54,240 --> 00:14:58,360 the the news feed, right? All of the things, all the 250 00:14:58,360 --> 00:15:02,080 disasters, tragedies, all the things I'm supposed to be sad 251 00:15:02,080 --> 00:15:06,920 about, anxious about, outraged about, all of which come from 252 00:15:07,360 --> 00:15:12,120 thousands of miles away. I'm constantly connected to all 253 00:15:12,120 --> 00:15:15,720 of that. And you're right, Sarah, that's 254 00:15:15,720 --> 00:15:19,280 fundamentally disembodied. Whatever the benefits are and 255 00:15:19,280 --> 00:15:22,120 the benefits of any new technology, the benefits always 256 00:15:22,120 --> 00:15:26,040 come first. We always notice the, oh, I 257 00:15:26,040 --> 00:15:27,880 could do this now and I couldn't do that before. 258 00:15:28,200 --> 00:15:32,080 And it's always the the downsides that we start to 259 00:15:32,080 --> 00:15:35,600 notice later, after we have unwittingly submitted ourselves 260 00:15:35,600 --> 00:15:38,760 to it for days, weeks, years, generations. 261 00:15:38,920 --> 00:15:44,280 The image that I always go back to with that truth, Brian, is 262 00:15:44,280 --> 00:15:48,280 the old tale of Icarus flying too close to the sun. 263 00:15:48,440 --> 00:15:53,920 What I didn't realize about that story until very recently was 264 00:15:54,240 --> 00:16:01,080 how Daedalus, his father, knew the risk of his invention, but 265 00:16:01,080 --> 00:16:07,720 his son, who didn't make the invention, wasn't aware of how 266 00:16:08,000 --> 00:16:13,120 the thing itself worked. And so I think I, I just think 267 00:16:13,120 --> 00:16:17,080 about that often with invention and with the ways that we try to 268 00:16:17,080 --> 00:16:20,880 make our lives convenient. How often do we see the 269 00:16:20,880 --> 00:16:23,640 convenience? How often do we see the power it 270 00:16:23,640 --> 00:16:26,400 gives us? Well, and we're, we're going to 271 00:16:26,400 --> 00:16:30,720 do an episode later this year on theology of, of tradition and 272 00:16:30,720 --> 00:16:34,080 how it's tied up in the idea of honoring your father and mother. 273 00:16:34,080 --> 00:16:37,480 And, and, and that story is such a, such a perfect one because 274 00:16:37,480 --> 00:16:42,160 it's always easy to see the, the faults, real or perceived of 275 00:16:42,360 --> 00:16:46,080 your ancestors and your specific specifically your parents. 276 00:16:46,600 --> 00:16:50,240 It's not always as easy to see when something we think is a 277 00:16:50,280 --> 00:16:55,000 fault is actually a virtue or or has the two bound up in each 278 00:16:55,000 --> 00:16:58,120 other. But I think it's sort of it's 279 00:16:58,120 --> 00:17:01,000 almost creepy. Like how how difficult it is for 280 00:17:01,000 --> 00:17:08,480 us to to lose our kind of 12 year old sneer at how backward 281 00:17:08,480 --> 00:17:12,960 our parents are. Very few of us grow up to the 282 00:17:12,960 --> 00:17:18,359 point where we don't have that instinctive curl of our lip when 283 00:17:18,359 --> 00:17:22,200 we think of how much more enlightened we are than our 284 00:17:22,200 --> 00:17:25,079 parents or our ancestors. And, and we can think about this 285 00:17:25,079 --> 00:17:28,840 with smartphones or AI or any number of whatever the current 286 00:17:28,840 --> 00:17:35,320 thing is, laugh at the people that are just old enough to be 287 00:17:35,320 --> 00:17:39,040 hesitant about jumping into the deep end so quickly. 288 00:17:40,360 --> 00:17:43,280 And I want to bring this back to, to Tarrant's story a little 289 00:17:43,280 --> 00:17:46,080 bit because we see both elements of what we've talked about in 290 00:17:46,080 --> 00:17:50,040 that story. You see first, the the desire to 291 00:17:50,360 --> 00:17:53,480 not just kind of jump in with both feet, but the desire to the 292 00:17:54,320 --> 00:17:58,800 desire to get busy quickly with the stuff that's way downstream, 293 00:17:58,800 --> 00:18:02,880 the stuff you're not ready for. And frankly, a lot of what we 294 00:18:02,880 --> 00:18:05,440 are busy with day-to-day probably falls into that 295 00:18:05,440 --> 00:18:07,040 category. The stuff that we're not ready 296 00:18:07,040 --> 00:18:08,440 for. Either we weren't emotionally 297 00:18:08,440 --> 00:18:11,000 ready to carry that burden, or we didn't have the capacity to 298 00:18:11,000 --> 00:18:12,680 be this busy or whatever it might be. 299 00:18:13,200 --> 00:18:18,040 But there's also a one of the reasons that Tarrant jumps in so 300 00:18:18,360 --> 00:18:23,560 excitedly and wants to skip straight to the end is because 301 00:18:23,560 --> 00:18:25,800 fundamentally, he's not learning how to. 302 00:18:26,040 --> 00:18:28,200 He's not looking to learn how to make a sword. 303 00:18:28,200 --> 00:18:29,880 He's not looking to learn how to make a cloak. 304 00:18:29,880 --> 00:18:32,640 He's not looking to learn how to make a piece of pottery. 305 00:18:32,760 --> 00:18:36,720 He's looking to find himself. The entire book, and I 306 00:18:36,720 --> 00:18:39,640 referenced this in the story, but it's the story of the entire 307 00:18:39,640 --> 00:18:41,920 book, of which this is literally just two chapters. 308 00:18:42,280 --> 00:18:44,360 He's trying to find himself. He's trying to figure out who he 309 00:18:44,360 --> 00:18:46,760 is. And the book starts with Taran's 310 00:18:46,760 --> 00:18:49,320 discontentment. He knows his name. 311 00:18:49,720 --> 00:18:55,840 He has a good circle of friends and peers and mentors around him 312 00:18:55,840 --> 00:18:59,520 who can tell him pretty definitively who they see him to 313 00:18:59,520 --> 00:19:01,960 be what what character they've seen from him. 314 00:19:02,480 --> 00:19:05,120 And he's been through enough to have seen a lot of it himself. 315 00:19:05,120 --> 00:19:10,400 But he's not content I he. He wants to know something about 316 00:19:11,200 --> 00:19:13,520 his Initially it's his parentage. 317 00:19:14,440 --> 00:19:17,440 It kind of morphs into more of his inheritance. 318 00:19:17,440 --> 00:19:18,920 Then it's the skills that he can learn. 319 00:19:18,920 --> 00:19:26,800 He's trying to find who he is through the busyness, through 320 00:19:26,920 --> 00:19:30,920 the effort to push into that next thing. 321 00:19:31,080 --> 00:19:36,360 There is a leisurelessness about Taran that wants to kind of this 322 00:19:36,360 --> 00:19:38,840 wanderlust. He wants to charge off to the 323 00:19:38,840 --> 00:19:41,280 next thing. He's afraid to look himself in 324 00:19:41,280 --> 00:19:45,520 the mirror. And I keep going back in this to 325 00:19:46,000 --> 00:19:50,600 Joseph Peeper. We've a couple of us are are big 326 00:19:52,040 --> 00:19:54,960 Peeper fans and and his his particularly his book leisure. 327 00:19:54,960 --> 00:19:58,960 The basis of culture talks a lot about the relationship between 328 00:19:59,160 --> 00:20:03,200 not laziness and hard work, which is often how we tend to 329 00:20:03,200 --> 00:20:07,960 understand the two options, but the relationship between total 330 00:20:07,960 --> 00:20:13,240 work, which can include actually both laziness and busyness, but 331 00:20:13,240 --> 00:20:19,960 which involves seeking your identity in total work in, 332 00:20:19,960 --> 00:20:23,240 busyness in. People recognizing your 333 00:20:23,240 --> 00:20:25,200 accomplishments, whatever, whatever it might be, throwing 334 00:20:25,200 --> 00:20:28,000 yourself all the way into it to the point where you've been 335 00:20:28,000 --> 00:20:34,480 trained by these rhythms that you have accepted to the point 336 00:20:34,480 --> 00:20:38,240 where you actually don't know how to be still anymore. 337 00:20:38,840 --> 00:20:43,760 Really, what these processes, the the fabric making or the 338 00:20:43,760 --> 00:20:48,480 sword making or or the pottery, these really are processes where 339 00:20:48,480 --> 00:20:50,360 he's trying to find out who he is. 340 00:20:50,360 --> 00:20:55,000 He's on a quest in these outer processes to really reach this 341 00:20:55,000 --> 00:20:59,040 sort of inner reality, which actually I love that because 342 00:20:59,720 --> 00:21:03,080 I've very much come to believe that creative processes really 343 00:21:03,080 --> 00:21:05,720 do that. That as you enter into creative 344 00:21:05,720 --> 00:21:09,800 processes that the arts have this incredible ability to draw 345 00:21:10,560 --> 00:21:16,040 us into internal processes to. And the phrase that I've I've 346 00:21:16,040 --> 00:21:17,920 thought of as the making makes us. 347 00:21:18,120 --> 00:21:22,040 The making makes us as we make we're, we're on that, on that 348 00:21:22,040 --> 00:21:23,920 journey and that is actually happening. 349 00:21:24,040 --> 00:21:26,760 So it's interesting. I like that he chose that to 350 00:21:26,760 --> 00:21:31,520 frame Taran's story, but then also thinking of it in terms of 351 00:21:31,680 --> 00:21:35,840 what are the expectations that have been formed in us by living 352 00:21:35,840 --> 00:21:40,080 in such a heavily mechanical technological culture. 353 00:21:40,080 --> 00:21:44,520 I think we have machine expectations on ourselves that 354 00:21:45,560 --> 00:21:50,320 that give us this sense of we ought to be able to figure out 355 00:21:50,320 --> 00:21:52,640 these shortcuts. We ought to be able to get there 356 00:21:53,360 --> 00:21:56,800 in some way that is actually unnatural to personhood. 357 00:21:57,280 --> 00:22:00,440 That's not native to personhood. It might be native to mechanism, 358 00:22:00,440 --> 00:22:03,080 but we're not we're not computers. 359 00:22:03,800 --> 00:22:06,280 We're people and people are stories. 360 00:22:06,280 --> 00:22:11,240 People are relational processes. People are in that Ephesians 361 00:22:11,240 --> 00:22:14,800 thing about us being the the play of God, being the 362 00:22:14,800 --> 00:22:19,200 masterpiece, this thing that is being shaped and crafted slowly 363 00:22:19,200 --> 00:22:22,240 through participation in the life of God. 364 00:22:22,800 --> 00:22:25,640 That's the kind of thing we are, which means we should have 365 00:22:25,640 --> 00:22:28,680 different kinds of expectations for the way we would hope to 366 00:22:28,680 --> 00:22:35,160 reach maturity or beauty or joy. And it made me think of a song I 367 00:22:35,160 --> 00:22:37,360 wrote some years ago. It's on an album called 368 00:22:37,360 --> 00:22:40,520 Beautiful Secret Life, and it was really inspired by Henry 369 00:22:40,520 --> 00:22:43,920 Nowen. It's called No Shortcut to the 370 00:22:43,920 --> 00:22:47,320 Heart. And one of the verses says all 371 00:22:47,320 --> 00:22:51,560 these paintings line the showroom and they look out upon 372 00:22:51,560 --> 00:22:55,160 the people and they speak of the many deaths it took to make a 373 00:22:55,160 --> 00:22:59,160 masterpiece. Henry, Henry now And Henry told 374 00:22:59,160 --> 00:23:03,320 me it takes time, more than a lifetime to learn how to come 375 00:23:03,320 --> 00:23:06,120 home. We are each of us apprenticed as 376 00:23:06,120 --> 00:23:08,720 the master draws the image out of us. 377 00:23:09,400 --> 00:23:11,040 There is no shortcut to the heart. 378 00:23:11,880 --> 00:23:16,880 And so like that song for me was kind of a way of making 379 00:23:16,880 --> 00:23:20,160 something, making a song, because I was trying, I was on 380 00:23:20,160 --> 00:23:23,920 that similar journey of trying to learn that about my own life 381 00:23:23,920 --> 00:23:28,040 and about life in general. CS Lewis talks about the the 382 00:23:28,040 --> 00:23:32,480 three major temptations, the the flesh, the devil and the world. 383 00:23:32,480 --> 00:23:37,240 And as he warns some young adults about what the world has 384 00:23:37,240 --> 00:23:41,360 to offer them, he basically argues that the desire to be 385 00:23:41,360 --> 00:23:48,360 accepted into that in crowd in the world, if you don't work to 386 00:23:48,400 --> 00:23:51,880 prevent that desire, they will control you. 387 00:23:51,920 --> 00:23:56,920 They will run you that desire to be accepted and that can take 388 00:23:56,920 --> 00:24:00,400 many different forms, especially when it comes to our work. 389 00:24:00,760 --> 00:24:05,160 But what you've said, Matthew, prompts me to wonder whether or 390 00:24:05,160 --> 00:24:11,160 not we have kind of bought hook, line and sinker into accepting 391 00:24:12,720 --> 00:24:17,840 humanity as tools and as computers. 392 00:24:18,760 --> 00:24:21,280 Yeah, yeah. Our imagination has been so 393 00:24:21,280 --> 00:24:22,640 shaped by that. Yeah. 394 00:24:23,320 --> 00:24:29,080 I mean, I mean so many of our metaphors for describing how our 395 00:24:29,520 --> 00:24:33,480 brains work, our our computer metaphors or released machine 396 00:24:33,720 --> 00:24:36,200 metaphors, right. Just need to process that for a 397 00:24:36,200 --> 00:24:37,840 minute. Maybe I'm wired that way. 398 00:24:38,360 --> 00:24:41,120 There's a good essay that I read once that oh, try to make sure 399 00:24:41,120 --> 00:24:46,160 we put in the the show notes just listed all like dozens of 400 00:24:46,760 --> 00:24:49,040 metaphors. We don't even think about about 401 00:24:49,240 --> 00:24:52,480 how our brains take in information, how we develop an 402 00:24:52,480 --> 00:24:55,440 identity, how it how they store information. 403 00:24:55,840 --> 00:25:00,840 And none of it is how our brains actually work. 404 00:25:01,200 --> 00:25:05,160 And it's not just that we have a, a limited hard drive in the 405 00:25:05,160 --> 00:25:09,360 sense of capacity. It's also that the way that our 406 00:25:09,360 --> 00:25:12,520 brains work is contextual and it's narrative driven. 407 00:25:12,520 --> 00:25:15,840 And it's that we were, we were made to have a perhaps a bit of 408 00:25:15,840 --> 00:25:20,640 a smaller number of things that are deeply intertwined with each 409 00:25:20,640 --> 00:25:23,720 other so that they make sense. It's not just, oh, I need some 410 00:25:23,720 --> 00:25:26,520 more storage folders. I'm overwhelmed. 411 00:25:26,840 --> 00:25:29,960 We, we learn these things in through, through repetition and 412 00:25:29,960 --> 00:25:34,040 layers and relationship. And and that's what these 413 00:25:34,040 --> 00:25:36,240 masters are trying to do with with Taran. 414 00:25:36,240 --> 00:25:37,480 They're saying, oh, you want to make a sword. 415 00:25:37,480 --> 00:25:40,240 Oh, you want to make a cloak? Oh, you want to make a, a piece 416 00:25:40,240 --> 00:25:42,400 of pottery. Great. 417 00:25:42,400 --> 00:25:47,080 Start with the raw materials. Stop trying to skip three steps 418 00:25:47,080 --> 00:25:50,200 ahead to I just want the end result. 419 00:25:50,600 --> 00:25:53,800 You have to actually submit yourself to the raw material, 420 00:25:53,800 --> 00:25:55,880 the physical object in their case. 421 00:25:55,880 --> 00:25:59,560 But we can also think about it in terms of the the present 422 00:25:59,560 --> 00:26:02,560 moment as opposed to the future moment, or the present task as 423 00:26:02,560 --> 00:26:05,240 opposed to the thing I'd rather be doing, or or whatever it 424 00:26:05,240 --> 00:26:07,040 might be. You have to submit yourself to 425 00:26:07,040 --> 00:26:12,720 what's right in front of you and allow it to work on you. 426 00:26:12,920 --> 00:26:15,840 This was a convicting example Lewis had in this essay. 427 00:26:15,840 --> 00:26:19,240 It's called the inner ring. But he basically argues how 428 00:26:19,240 --> 00:26:23,240 often do we fill our lives with thing after thing in his words, 429 00:26:23,240 --> 00:26:27,640 because it is tiring and unhealthy to lose your Saturday 430 00:26:27,640 --> 00:26:32,000 afternoons, but to have them free because you don't matter, 431 00:26:32,480 --> 00:26:36,640 that is much worse. And I think if you have a 432 00:26:36,640 --> 00:26:42,760 scarcity view of the world, of your participation in it, you 433 00:26:42,840 --> 00:26:47,680 either are doing or you're not doing, then you haven't been 434 00:26:47,680 --> 00:26:50,600 accepted into the abundance of what creation is. 435 00:26:50,880 --> 00:26:55,240 Because, Brian, what you said makes me automatically want to 436 00:26:55,360 --> 00:26:58,600 jump out of my seat and say the raw materials are beautiful, 437 00:26:58,600 --> 00:27:01,520 they are important, they are where you should start, that 438 00:27:01,800 --> 00:27:05,480 they're lovely. And it's from the love of that 439 00:27:05,480 --> 00:27:10,680 raw material that we, we can do great things because we're, as I 440 00:27:10,680 --> 00:27:14,560 think Tolkien says, we're, we're diving in and exploring the 441 00:27:14,560 --> 00:27:18,880 latent powers of that material and bringing them forth. 442 00:27:19,160 --> 00:27:22,640 And as we reveal those latent powers, that's glorification to 443 00:27:22,640 --> 00:27:26,200 the Lord because it's his work. And so ultimately it has to 444 00:27:26,200 --> 00:27:28,360 start in that abundance. It has to start in some 445 00:27:28,360 --> 00:27:31,760 acceptance. And if you dive really deep into 446 00:27:31,760 --> 00:27:35,000 why we've been taken up into the world's categories of 447 00:27:35,000 --> 00:27:38,920 computational productivity, I think you'll see that our 448 00:27:39,440 --> 00:27:42,880 relentless work is fueled by what Lewis calls your longing to 449 00:27:42,880 --> 00:27:46,920 enter, your anguish when you are excluded, and the kind of 450 00:27:46,920 --> 00:27:49,200 pleasure you feel when you get in. 451 00:27:49,480 --> 00:27:53,200 Whereas in John 10, Jesus says I am the great shepherd of the 452 00:27:53,200 --> 00:27:56,480 Good Shepherd. Enter in, He says. 453 00:27:57,280 --> 00:28:00,160 I know you. Those longings have been 454 00:28:00,160 --> 00:28:02,720 fulfilled. And so out of abundance, I think 455 00:28:03,120 --> 00:28:07,360 that's really what Sabbath is, is to revel and enjoy abundance, 456 00:28:07,360 --> 00:28:12,960 and from that posture engage the work that God has given us on 457 00:28:12,960 --> 00:28:14,600 this earth. I agree. 458 00:28:17,920 --> 00:28:21,120 Yeah, I love you talked about the inner ring and the desire to 459 00:28:21,120 --> 00:28:23,400 be on the inside. And he's like, that's a real 460 00:28:23,400 --> 00:28:29,160 desire, but that is actually what we've been invited to by by 461 00:28:29,160 --> 00:28:31,640 the Trinity. We've been invited inside. 462 00:28:31,640 --> 00:28:35,080 We've been our telos. Our destiny is to be married 463 00:28:35,080 --> 00:28:40,200 into the the Trinity and to share that life, to participate 464 00:28:40,200 --> 00:28:43,840 in the divine nature. So just this week I was reading 465 00:28:44,080 --> 00:28:48,600 Pope Benedict second part in the Jesus of Nazareth trilogy. 466 00:28:48,960 --> 00:28:53,360 And one of the things he talked about was what this world is, is 467 00:28:53,360 --> 00:28:59,880 this world is a space that God has created to be a habitat 468 00:29:00,400 --> 00:29:05,640 where he has carefully crafted this whole world so that it is 469 00:29:05,640 --> 00:29:11,600 conducive to foster us getting to know each other, us, and for 470 00:29:11,600 --> 00:29:16,000 the two of us, for God and his, his creatures to, to learn who 471 00:29:16,000 --> 00:29:19,200 each other is and, and to learn how to participate with one 472 00:29:19,200 --> 00:29:21,080 another. He's like, that's what the world 473 00:29:21,080 --> 00:29:23,680 is, that's what the whole cosmos is. 474 00:29:23,840 --> 00:29:28,400 It's this meeting place that God has set up, but we need to be 475 00:29:28,400 --> 00:29:31,600 like slowly acclimated to God because it's kind of a lot like 476 00:29:31,600 --> 00:29:34,400 if we were just to be dropped right in front of his face, you 477 00:29:34,400 --> 00:29:36,960 know, it'd be a bit much. So we've got to work our way up 478 00:29:36,960 --> 00:29:39,240 to that. And he's made this world for 479 00:29:39,240 --> 00:29:42,280 that reason and that purpose, which means that the net, the 480 00:29:42,280 --> 00:29:45,960 materials themselves, the things he's made are these points of 481 00:29:45,960 --> 00:29:48,280 contact. They are the ways that we enter 482 00:29:48,280 --> 00:29:52,040 in these normal things. That's where the invitation is 483 00:29:52,040 --> 00:29:54,920 situated. I like the way that peeper puts 484 00:29:54,920 --> 00:29:57,520 it. He's talking about how when we 485 00:29:57,520 --> 00:30:00,440 think of Sabbath, we tend to think of not doing things. 486 00:30:00,440 --> 00:30:04,120 Just like when we tend to think about how busy we are, we tend 487 00:30:04,120 --> 00:30:06,280 to think of, Oh yeah, they feel guilty because we're doing so 488 00:30:06,280 --> 00:30:08,040 many things. Or we feel guilty because we are 489 00:30:08,040 --> 00:30:11,320 not doing more things. Or we have some vague sense that 490 00:30:12,440 --> 00:30:15,360 the the good life involves much less busyness than we are 491 00:30:15,360 --> 00:30:18,200 currently at the mercy of, but don't really know how to carve 492 00:30:18,200 --> 00:30:20,600 our way out of it. And people pushes back again 493 00:30:20,600 --> 00:30:23,880 kind of against all that and echoes this idea that you 494 00:30:23,880 --> 00:30:27,200 mentioned from Pope Benedict the 16th that Sabbath is the goal of 495 00:30:27,200 --> 00:30:29,680 creation. It's what creation is for. 496 00:30:30,440 --> 00:30:35,800 It's this place of delighting in God and relationship with God 497 00:30:35,800 --> 00:30:37,680 and in what? And then a good, the good things 498 00:30:37,680 --> 00:30:40,320 that God has made and the good things that God has given us. 499 00:30:40,600 --> 00:30:45,160 And Peeper, writing before Pope Benedict the 16 said that says 500 00:30:45,160 --> 00:30:48,880 there's there's no such thing as a feast that does not ultimately 501 00:30:48,880 --> 00:30:53,320 derive its life from divine worship. 502 00:30:54,080 --> 00:30:59,480 He points out this relationship between delight and worship. 503 00:31:00,080 --> 00:31:01,800 It really makes you stop and think. 504 00:31:02,960 --> 00:31:05,960 So what does this all look like in practice then? 505 00:31:05,960 --> 00:31:09,320 Because it's just like Taran learned, it's not a matter of 506 00:31:09,320 --> 00:31:11,360 skipping to the end. Oh, there's all this stuff that 507 00:31:11,360 --> 00:31:14,640 I sort of feel bad about that I'm doing wrong and I want to do 508 00:31:14,640 --> 00:31:16,760 it better. Let me flip that switch. 509 00:31:16,760 --> 00:31:19,880 Give me the 10 step plan or give me the whatever. 510 00:31:20,640 --> 00:31:25,760 And we ultimately can't say no to plenty of things that are not 511 00:31:26,160 --> 00:31:28,960 our highest priority spiritually. 512 00:31:28,960 --> 00:31:32,640 Floor still has to be swept. Kids still have to be driven 513 00:31:32,640 --> 00:31:34,240 somewhere, these sorts of things. 514 00:31:34,880 --> 00:31:39,360 And while yes, you can step back and look at the big picture of 515 00:31:39,360 --> 00:31:41,920 all that and ask where your priorities lie and what things 516 00:31:41,920 --> 00:31:45,240 you might want to rethink that, that's a very healthy thing to 517 00:31:45,240 --> 00:31:48,960 do from time to time. What about the right now? 518 00:31:49,600 --> 00:31:53,800 How shall we then live in, in light of all this? 519 00:31:53,800 --> 00:31:57,640 Where do we start if we want to live a life that is more fully 520 00:31:57,640 --> 00:32:03,760 present to getting our hands dirty with the mud of the raw 521 00:32:03,760 --> 00:32:06,440 materials that God has put before us, and ultimately, 522 00:32:06,440 --> 00:32:11,240 through that pushing toward a life that is more oriented 523 00:32:11,240 --> 00:32:14,360 toward delight in the goodness of God than in the pressure and 524 00:32:14,360 --> 00:32:17,480 stress and busyness that tends to overtake us? 525 00:32:17,880 --> 00:32:24,320 When we talk about what it looks like, I think defining sort of 526 00:32:25,320 --> 00:32:29,520 presence is kind of important. And I think about the word 527 00:32:29,520 --> 00:32:32,680 quietude, and I don't think it's quite the same as silence. 528 00:32:32,680 --> 00:32:35,880 I think we all crave silence in so many ways in this 529 00:32:35,880 --> 00:32:39,920 distractible world, but I don't know that it's the same thing as 530 00:32:39,920 --> 00:32:42,880 quiet. And I was reading Sarah 531 00:32:42,880 --> 00:32:47,480 Clarkson's wonderful book Reclaiming Quiet, and she talks 532 00:32:47,480 --> 00:32:52,840 about how even in a harried, hurried life there, there are 533 00:32:52,840 --> 00:32:56,600 ways to sort of reclaim that quiet. 534 00:32:57,520 --> 00:33:02,400 Sarah says that she's convinced that our capacity as humans to 535 00:33:02,400 --> 00:33:07,000 be quiet actually will shape the entire way that we come to love 536 00:33:07,000 --> 00:33:10,680 and trust the living God and to have a lively faith at all. 537 00:33:10,680 --> 00:33:12,920 Because I'm going to actually read her quote here, she says. 538 00:33:13,200 --> 00:33:17,680 I think that we in the modern world increasingly struggle to 539 00:33:17,680 --> 00:33:21,200 hear the voice of God, and sometimes we forget to even 540 00:33:21,200 --> 00:33:26,360 desire it because our minds and ears are so crammed with the 541 00:33:26,360 --> 00:33:32,560 voices online of the Internet, headlines, social media, in news 542 00:33:32,560 --> 00:33:36,000 feeds. But I believe our greatest loss 543 00:33:36,040 --> 00:33:40,760 is spiritual, because our disquiet leads us to a certain 544 00:33:40,760 --> 00:33:44,480 kind of life. It shapes the whole of the way 545 00:33:44,480 --> 00:33:47,200 we interact with each other and the world around us. 546 00:33:48,200 --> 00:33:52,800 Too often, though, we hear the word quiet as something negative 547 00:33:52,800 --> 00:33:57,240 and abstract, a subtraction of activity or even a relationship 548 00:33:57,240 --> 00:33:59,520 available only to the Mystics and Saints. 549 00:33:59,960 --> 00:34:03,240 That's personally something I've thought about so much, Like, 550 00:34:03,240 --> 00:34:06,400 well, Dang it, sometimes I just want to be a monk. 551 00:34:07,120 --> 00:34:09,880 But she says too often we think of it as merely A discipline we 552 00:34:09,880 --> 00:34:14,080 cannot manage, another hard thing that only the very holy or 553 00:34:14,080 --> 00:34:18,440 the rigid can attain. But every Christian is called to 554 00:34:18,440 --> 00:34:23,280 be a person capable of hearing the voice of the Holy Spirit, of 555 00:34:23,320 --> 00:34:27,360 practicing God's presence in the midst of the everyday. 556 00:34:28,000 --> 00:34:31,480 Quiet is not a special state reserved for introverts or 557 00:34:31,480 --> 00:34:34,040 particularly pious people or the lonely. 558 00:34:34,560 --> 00:34:39,239 Every Christian is called to cultivate an interior world, to 559 00:34:39,239 --> 00:34:44,000 make mind and heart a space of expectant silence as we wait for 560 00:34:44,000 --> 00:34:49,000 God to speak His Word into our darkness and to sing us back to 561 00:34:49,000 --> 00:34:53,159 life. Classic Sarah, you got to stop 562 00:34:53,159 --> 00:35:00,880 and meditate on it for a good while in honor of how good it 563 00:35:00,880 --> 00:35:03,200 is. It's very true. 564 00:35:03,360 --> 00:35:07,320 And I think, you know, but I think defining the quiet versus 565 00:35:07,320 --> 00:35:09,920 the silence was important because, you know, she's writing 566 00:35:09,920 --> 00:35:13,560 as a mother of four and, you know, the wife of a vicar and, 567 00:35:14,160 --> 00:35:17,520 and, but I think and as a writer herself and, you know, we all 568 00:35:17,520 --> 00:35:20,160 know we who pursue our artistic pursuits. 569 00:35:20,400 --> 00:35:24,280 It's hard work, as Taryn Wanderer found out, and it 570 00:35:24,280 --> 00:35:28,160 requires discipline and fortitude and all that. 571 00:35:28,160 --> 00:35:32,720 But I think where where I wanted to sort of mention the what this 572 00:35:32,720 --> 00:35:38,400 looks like was your question, Brian, was something that Sarah 573 00:35:38,600 --> 00:35:43,720 said about what it means to have that space. 574 00:35:44,160 --> 00:35:49,560 And she says, I don't think quiet is really about great 575 00:35:49,560 --> 00:35:54,080 feats so much as it is about small faithfulness. 576 00:35:54,880 --> 00:35:59,280 And that is a work available to every believer alive. 577 00:35:59,760 --> 00:36:03,760 Yeah, there's something similar to that that's been helpful to 578 00:36:03,760 --> 00:36:06,320 me. There are, there are sort of 579 00:36:06,320 --> 00:36:09,760 macro things that you can do like if, if you've never tried 580 00:36:09,760 --> 00:36:13,280 putting together a rule of life, Google that, that's, that's a 581 00:36:13,280 --> 00:36:16,360 fairly easy way to just sort of take a step back and go, what 582 00:36:16,360 --> 00:36:20,880 are, what are the top 235 priorities in my life ranked? 583 00:36:21,320 --> 00:36:23,320 How is that aligned or misaligned with how I'm spending 584 00:36:23,320 --> 00:36:25,560 my time? And, and what might I do 585 00:36:25,720 --> 00:36:27,520 differently in response to this insight? 586 00:36:27,920 --> 00:36:30,760 But even on a just a more micro level, a more minute to minute 587 00:36:30,760 --> 00:36:35,520 level, Matthew and I, for example, both read a bit of 588 00:36:36,240 --> 00:36:40,280 recent cognitive science and different people's insights on 589 00:36:40,280 --> 00:36:42,200 how our brains actually work. And you know, one of the things 590 00:36:42,200 --> 00:36:44,800 I've noticed is that multitasking is not a thing. 591 00:36:45,800 --> 00:36:48,440 I know some of our listeners are proud multitaskers. 592 00:36:48,440 --> 00:36:52,080 It's not a thing. You're multitasking is doing two 593 00:36:52,080 --> 00:36:55,000 things half as well. Your brain is not capable of 594 00:36:55,000 --> 00:36:59,600 actually giving anything remotely close to full attention 595 00:36:59,600 --> 00:37:03,040 to more than one thing at once or one primary thing and some 596 00:37:03,040 --> 00:37:06,360 secondary things. And if you are distracted from 597 00:37:06,680 --> 00:37:10,880 one thing, it takes your brain a good 15 minutes to get back into 598 00:37:11,360 --> 00:37:13,080 where it was. So there's no such thing as a 5 599 00:37:13,080 --> 00:37:16,080 minute distraction. So one of the things that I've 600 00:37:16,080 --> 00:37:20,040 done in response to this in, in, in my life is just to think a 601 00:37:20,040 --> 00:37:24,120 bit more about what it looks like to be fully present to 602 00:37:24,120 --> 00:37:26,880 those high priorities. And some of that is work. 603 00:37:26,880 --> 00:37:29,520 Some of that is not remotely fun work. 604 00:37:29,920 --> 00:37:33,400 But what does it look like to be fully present to it to in, in a 605 00:37:33,400 --> 00:37:36,680 way that allows it to work on me the way the, the the clay and 606 00:37:36,680 --> 00:37:44,080 the bristles work on Taran. But then turning from that to my 607 00:37:44,080 --> 00:37:49,000 wife or my children. And, yeah, the phone's not at 608 00:37:49,000 --> 00:37:52,000 the center of my attention or I'm not at the mercy of the next 609 00:37:52,000 --> 00:37:54,480 thing when, you know, when my son asks me a question, am I 610 00:37:54,480 --> 00:37:56,880 looking him in the eye, maybe getting down on my knees? 611 00:37:56,880 --> 00:37:58,480 And there you have my full attention right now. 612 00:37:59,400 --> 00:38:03,440 I that I got a long way to go on that one, terms of growth and 613 00:38:03,440 --> 00:38:06,960 learning. But even even trying to do that 614 00:38:07,040 --> 00:38:11,960 has pretty dramatically shaped the way I experienced reality. 615 00:38:12,200 --> 00:38:16,840 It reminds me a little bit of the luck, the liquid luck potion 616 00:38:16,840 --> 00:38:20,440 in one of the later Harry Potter books. 617 00:38:20,440 --> 00:38:23,840 I think it's the 6th 1 where he just takes this potion and for 618 00:38:23,840 --> 00:38:28,040 the next hour or something he just sort of at the mercy of his 619 00:38:28,120 --> 00:38:30,600 his whim, but his whim is guided somehow. 620 00:38:31,400 --> 00:38:33,720 I've had moments like that where, you know, it wasn't a 621 00:38:33,720 --> 00:38:36,280 lick a luck potion, but it felt like the Holy Spirit. 622 00:38:36,280 --> 00:38:39,640 It was just, oh, this is not what I was planning on. 623 00:38:40,080 --> 00:38:44,280 This is not the busyness I was invested in, but this is the 624 00:38:44,280 --> 00:38:48,120 thing that's been put before me. I'm going to pivot and be fully 625 00:38:48,120 --> 00:38:53,760 present to it, especially when that thing is, is a person or 626 00:38:53,760 --> 00:38:56,800 something of real intrinsic worth as opposed to something 627 00:38:56,800 --> 00:38:59,160 that is of artificial value because it happened to be on my 628 00:38:59,160 --> 00:39:01,600 schedule or something. So all kinds of ways we can go 629 00:39:01,720 --> 00:39:03,440 wrong with that. We can turn into total flakes 630 00:39:03,440 --> 00:39:06,080 who always abandoned their commitments and things like 631 00:39:06,080 --> 00:39:09,320 that. But on on an anecdotal level, 632 00:39:10,360 --> 00:39:13,960 that's been a real a real blessing to me more than once. 633 00:39:14,320 --> 00:39:17,760 Yeah, I think that's where presents kind of like you were 634 00:39:17,760 --> 00:39:21,240 saying, Brian, being present on your knees with your son, who 635 00:39:21,240 --> 00:39:24,880 also happens to be my son. So I get what you're saying is, 636 00:39:24,880 --> 00:39:28,680 is that faithfulness that that Sarah was referencing? 637 00:39:28,840 --> 00:39:31,680 I think sometimes it's those great acts of faithfulness that 638 00:39:32,120 --> 00:39:35,880 in those in those mundanities in the changing of your daughter's 639 00:39:35,880 --> 00:39:40,520 diaper, Sarah, that give us that presence and allow us to be 640 00:39:40,520 --> 00:39:46,080 quiet from all of those those schedule things and all the 641 00:39:46,080 --> 00:39:48,720 things that we feel like. And that is just the 642 00:39:48,720 --> 00:39:52,160 faithfulness that brings us that that sense of God's presence, 643 00:39:52,960 --> 00:39:56,080 God's voice. I have recently been reading 644 00:39:56,080 --> 00:40:00,200 Dallas Willard's The Spirit of the Disciplines, and he makes a 645 00:40:00,200 --> 00:40:04,440 a very large claim that the focal point of human existence 646 00:40:04,880 --> 00:40:08,960 is the human body. Because Jesus Christ, God 647 00:40:08,960 --> 00:40:13,240 Incarnate, is a human too. He has a body, just as we do. 648 00:40:13,560 --> 00:40:18,040 And he spends the whole book unpacking what that claim, what 649 00:40:18,040 --> 00:40:22,720 that argument means, to how then we should live. 650 00:40:23,800 --> 00:40:26,040 And it, it's a fascinating argument. 651 00:40:26,040 --> 00:40:29,080 And I think that has helped me even in the last couple of 652 00:40:29,080 --> 00:40:34,040 weeks, like you've talked about Brian, kind of a refocusing, 653 00:40:34,440 --> 00:40:39,480 having something tangible and literally of my senses, my body 654 00:40:40,160 --> 00:40:45,400 be something that I continue to go back to and ask and listen to 655 00:40:45,400 --> 00:40:49,920 where it is and what it needs. Has been a very intuitive and 656 00:40:49,920 --> 00:40:55,920 practical way for me to slow myself down, to recognize when I 657 00:40:55,920 --> 00:41:00,160 am in the clutter and the clatter of the mind, as 658 00:41:00,160 --> 00:41:04,400 Christina was saying before, because it is so ingrained in my 659 00:41:04,400 --> 00:41:06,280 habit. It is so often for me. 660 00:41:06,560 --> 00:41:09,720 It is so normal for me to not consider my body, not consider 661 00:41:09,720 --> 00:41:15,800 my limitations that just even stopping and listening to what 662 00:41:15,840 --> 00:41:21,120 it might need at the moment. Drink a sit down where I'm 663 00:41:21,120 --> 00:41:25,000 stiff, where I'm holding a lot of tension in that moment. 664 00:41:25,360 --> 00:41:28,960 Those are all examples of bringing me back into the 665 00:41:28,960 --> 00:41:34,200 moment, helping me notice who I am as a human being with a 666 00:41:34,200 --> 00:41:41,520 physical body, and meeting Christ there because He has one 667 00:41:41,520 --> 00:41:43,800 too, and He cares about that too. 668 00:41:44,040 --> 00:41:50,120 Going back to my acceptance, He has accepted and loves that too. 669 00:41:50,560 --> 00:41:53,800 That's my encouragement for how my life has changed even the 670 00:41:53,800 --> 00:41:57,120 last couple of weeks, doing that as a practice. 671 00:41:57,400 --> 00:41:59,200 Yeah. And if you talk to people at at 672 00:41:59,240 --> 00:42:02,080 older than you at five year intervals, you'll hear 673 00:42:02,080 --> 00:42:08,080 increasingly loud stories of how the body, it asserts itself in 674 00:42:08,080 --> 00:42:10,280 those ways louder and louder as you get older. 675 00:42:10,280 --> 00:42:15,760 And, and those are hard in their own ways, but they're also new 676 00:42:15,760 --> 00:42:19,040 opportunities to have God's strength meet you in your 677 00:42:19,040 --> 00:42:21,000 weakness more and more and more as you grow. 678 00:42:21,120 --> 00:42:25,080 I was sitting with some guys the other day and one of them is in 679 00:42:25,080 --> 00:42:29,640 a recovery situation and, and he made this comment, he said. 680 00:42:30,600 --> 00:42:34,080 It's so frustrating to have to be deliberate about this. 681 00:42:34,680 --> 00:42:38,880 It's so frustrating that I have to make plans to protect my 682 00:42:38,880 --> 00:42:42,440 sobriety in his case, you know, and I feel like we're all in a 683 00:42:42,440 --> 00:42:47,320 situation like that where I wish I didn't have to think about how 684 00:42:47,320 --> 00:42:50,880 do I need to protect myself from my cell phone or how do I need 685 00:42:51,200 --> 00:42:54,880 to protect myself from all this information barrage and the 686 00:42:54,920 --> 00:42:57,360 tragedy barrage. It's like, but I do this. 687 00:42:57,360 --> 00:43:03,000 That is the world I live in. And so that is one of the things 688 00:43:03,000 --> 00:43:06,680 I think is like recognizing it's not going to fix itself. 689 00:43:07,760 --> 00:43:12,200 So like, maybe I need to have to leave my phone in another room 690 00:43:12,200 --> 00:43:16,000 at night so that I don't stay up scrolling, dim scrolling. 691 00:43:16,720 --> 00:43:18,240 So all these like deliberate things. 692 00:43:18,960 --> 00:43:21,480 That's one thing. Another thing I thought of is, 693 00:43:22,120 --> 00:43:27,880 and this is I hate saying this, but I might have to actually ask 694 00:43:27,880 --> 00:43:31,320 other people to help me. I might have to actually. 695 00:43:32,840 --> 00:43:34,080 Yeah. Doesn't that suck? 696 00:43:34,080 --> 00:43:35,520 You can't. Maybe you can't do it by 697 00:43:35,520 --> 00:43:38,920 yourself. Maybe you actually somebody else 698 00:43:38,920 --> 00:43:43,680 in your vicinity to like take something off of you and because 699 00:43:43,680 --> 00:43:46,880 really that you maybe it's more than you ought to be doing. 700 00:43:47,400 --> 00:43:50,960 Or maybe you need them to bring something into your space that 701 00:43:50,960 --> 00:43:54,440 you can't reach, but they can. Maybe there's some way that you 702 00:43:54,440 --> 00:43:58,240 actually need to ask for other people to enter into this 703 00:43:58,240 --> 00:44:00,200 problem with you and help you bear it. 704 00:44:00,800 --> 00:44:03,200 And then you mentioned the embodiment piece. 705 00:44:03,920 --> 00:44:09,840 And one really practical thing is feeling so disconnected from 706 00:44:09,840 --> 00:44:15,120 the body, but then realizing like this is something Jesus has 707 00:44:15,120 --> 00:44:19,800 shown incredible honor for by by by a taking of up into the 708 00:44:19,800 --> 00:44:24,240 Godhead, the human body. And this is where we're headed. 709 00:44:24,240 --> 00:44:26,680 We're going to be embodied forever because that's what a 710 00:44:26,680 --> 00:44:31,120 human is. And so even in little ways, and 711 00:44:31,120 --> 00:44:36,000 maybe this sounds corny, but you know, like, boy, a hot shower 712 00:44:36,000 --> 00:44:39,000 feels great, doesn't it? Maybe that's the affection of 713 00:44:39,000 --> 00:44:41,160 God. Maybe you're actually 714 00:44:41,160 --> 00:44:44,960 experiencing God's affection in your body. 715 00:44:45,280 --> 00:44:49,000 Oh, I'm sitting on the porch and a little bit of breeze blows 716 00:44:49,000 --> 00:44:52,520 across the hairs on my arm. Doesn't that feel good? 717 00:44:52,520 --> 00:44:56,040 Maybe that's God's affection. Oh, this thing smells good or 718 00:44:56,040 --> 00:44:59,120 tastes good or well, I sure am comforting, comfortable in my 719 00:44:59,120 --> 00:45:00,240 bed. And I don't want to get out of 720 00:45:00,240 --> 00:45:02,200 it this morning because it's so cozy. 721 00:45:02,200 --> 00:45:04,760 Like all of these things, I think, are ways that God has 722 00:45:04,760 --> 00:45:09,720 made a world where we actually can experience his goodness. 723 00:45:09,720 --> 00:45:11,440 And those things are not excluded. 724 00:45:12,040 --> 00:45:16,160 Those things count. Those things are part of him 725 00:45:16,160 --> 00:45:19,760 telling us what he's like and what it's like to be with him. 726 00:45:20,040 --> 00:45:23,080 Even those little things. That flower is pretty. 727 00:45:23,080 --> 00:45:25,360 I'd like to pick it and put it on my table and look at it. 728 00:45:26,240 --> 00:45:30,640 So I think just actually noticing that and, and giving it 729 00:45:30,640 --> 00:45:33,800 credit or acknowledging what it or recognizing it. 730 00:45:34,120 --> 00:45:36,800 The idea of recognition is another big idea in, in 731 00:45:38,040 --> 00:45:42,800 Benedict's writing that he says we've forgotten who we are and 732 00:45:42,800 --> 00:45:46,120 where we're from and who God is. And this world is a place where 733 00:45:46,120 --> 00:45:50,240 we have a chance to say, wait a minute, I I think I know who you 734 00:45:50,240 --> 00:45:51,560 are. I think I know where that came 735 00:45:51,560 --> 00:45:53,000 from. That came from God. 736 00:45:53,280 --> 00:45:59,160 And we're recognizing, we're remembering our origin and the 737 00:45:59,240 --> 00:46:01,600 the love that spoke us into being so. 738 00:46:03,000 --> 00:46:05,920 But those are those sound esoteric, but really they're 739 00:46:05,920 --> 00:46:08,560 like little real things that are all over the place around us, 740 00:46:08,560 --> 00:46:10,920 you know? It's perfect for piggybacking 741 00:46:10,920 --> 00:46:14,040 off of exactly what Matthew said, which is and, and Sarah, 742 00:46:14,440 --> 00:46:20,920 which is the embodiment and the recognition of what's around us. 743 00:46:21,840 --> 00:46:26,200 It's a poem that's called Praying by Mary Oliver, and it's 744 00:46:26,200 --> 00:46:29,920 very brief, but you'll see why it's so significant. 745 00:46:29,920 --> 00:46:33,160 As I read it, this is what she says. 746 00:46:34,840 --> 00:46:37,960 It doesn't have to be the blue iris. 747 00:46:38,600 --> 00:46:44,120 It could be weeds in a vacant lot or a few small stones. 748 00:46:45,000 --> 00:46:50,800 Just pay attention, then patch a few words together and don't try 749 00:46:50,800 --> 00:46:55,440 to make them elaborate. This isn't a contest, but the 750 00:46:55,440 --> 00:47:00,320 doorway into thanks and a silence in which another voice 751 00:47:00,560 --> 00:47:04,200 may speak. Excellent, great choice. 752 00:47:04,760 --> 00:47:08,680 OK, That is an absolutely perfect note to end on because I 753 00:47:08,680 --> 00:47:11,320 know we have in some ways created more questions than 754 00:47:11,320 --> 00:47:14,360 we've answered as far as the practicalities of this and 755 00:47:14,360 --> 00:47:17,240 knowing this. Our next episode in a couple of 756 00:47:17,240 --> 00:47:21,680 weeks, Matthew and I are going to sit down with Malcolm Gite 757 00:47:21,720 --> 00:47:24,200 and talk about this. We're going to talk about 758 00:47:24,200 --> 00:47:26,440 poetry. We're going to talk about pipe 759 00:47:26,440 --> 00:47:34,400 smoking notably and extensively as not simply a hobby that 760 00:47:35,240 --> 00:47:41,000 someone might take up, but as a kind of a case study in how to 761 00:47:41,360 --> 00:47:44,880 learn to be fully present, how to be learned to be still as 762 00:47:44,880 --> 00:47:47,720 well. Come check out our next episode 763 00:47:47,720 --> 00:47:51,640 in a couple weeks on pipe smoking with Malcolm Geit. 764 00:47:52,360 --> 00:47:56,280 We definitely recommend Sarah's book, Reclaiming Quiet Sarah 765 00:47:56,280 --> 00:47:59,440 Clarkson, and we definitely recommend Joseph Peeper's books. 766 00:47:59,440 --> 00:48:03,680 That's Pi EPER. Well, pretty much anything he's 767 00:48:03,680 --> 00:48:06,360 written, but particularly leisure, the basis of culture. 768 00:48:06,720 --> 00:48:10,440 So that's more of a sort of a theological meditation on the 769 00:48:10,440 --> 00:48:12,800 nature of stillness and quiet and being fully present. 770 00:48:12,800 --> 00:48:17,360 And Sarah's is more OK, and how do I actually carve this out? 771 00:48:17,960 --> 00:48:23,160 Finally, you should all mark September 20th weekend on your 772 00:48:23,160 --> 00:48:28,200 calendars because that's going to be the Anselm Society's fall 773 00:48:28,440 --> 00:48:31,840 event. All of us are going to be there 774 00:48:32,120 --> 00:48:34,920 for the great Middle Earth Feast. 775 00:48:35,040 --> 00:48:37,200 We are going to have an artist's retreat. 776 00:48:37,200 --> 00:48:39,880 We're going to have some workshops and retreats for 777 00:48:39,880 --> 00:48:42,360 people who don't consider themselves artists but love 778 00:48:42,360 --> 00:48:44,160 having the kinds of conversations we have on this 779 00:48:44,160 --> 00:48:46,840 podcast. We are going to have all kinds 780 00:48:46,840 --> 00:48:50,760 of more low key afternoon activities like going on hikes 781 00:48:50,760 --> 00:48:54,360 with Anselm Society people, hanging out at some of the 782 00:48:54,360 --> 00:48:56,440 coffee shops. We talk about all the time. 783 00:48:56,640 --> 00:48:58,520 We're just having long conversations. 784 00:48:58,920 --> 00:49:03,840 And in the evening on Saturday we will have one of our famous 785 00:49:03,840 --> 00:49:08,840 pub nights where we will be doing stories, songs, poems and 786 00:49:08,840 --> 00:49:13,040 food from Lord of the Rings all evening long. 787 00:49:13,240 --> 00:49:15,400 We're going to have that up on our website. 788 00:49:15,400 --> 00:49:18,400 If we don't, by the time this episode airs, it'll be up there 789 00:49:18,400 --> 00:49:21,840 in seconds. And tickets for that will go on 790 00:49:21,840 --> 00:49:24,160 sale soon. It's going to be a great chance 791 00:49:24,160 --> 00:49:27,240 for Colorado Springs locals to have a great time together and 792 00:49:27,240 --> 00:49:30,320 for those of you who are not local to Colorado Springs to 793 00:49:30,320 --> 00:49:33,800 come and hang out with us. So September 20th weekend, mark 794 00:49:33,800 --> 00:49:37,320 it on your calendars. Thank you for joining us, 795 00:49:37,320 --> 00:49:39,320 Christina. Sarah, Matthew, thank you for 796 00:49:39,320 --> 00:49:44,040 sharing your insights. We will see you listeners next 797 00:49:44,040 --> 00:49:46,960 time when we talk to Malcolm Gite and I will see different 798 00:49:46,960 --> 00:49:50,800 combinations of all of you and other future episodes. 799 00:49:51,520 --> 00:49:54,720 The Imagination Redeemed podcast is a production of the Anselm 800 00:49:54,720 --> 00:49:57,000 Society. It's easy to see this world as 801 00:49:57,000 --> 00:49:59,440 disenchanted and to give up hope that there's more. 802 00:49:59,720 --> 00:50:03,440 But you were made to see the world with the eyes of heaven, 803 00:50:04,160 --> 00:50:08,440 to experience a joyful Sabbath and experience the world as a 804 00:50:08,480 --> 00:50:12,960 place to meet God and live a bountiful life that participates 805 00:50:12,960 --> 00:50:16,120 in the life of God. Like in the great stories, the 806 00:50:16,120 --> 00:50:19,960 Ansam Society is a place where you can come in and experience 807 00:50:19,960 --> 00:50:23,360 beauty, joyful celebration, and ancient wisdom and go out 808 00:50:23,400 --> 00:50:27,040 renewed, bringing that life to your vocation, home, and church. 809 00:50:27,240 --> 00:50:30,600 Join us next time as we pursue a renaissance of the Christian 810 00:50:30,600 --> 00:50:32,320 imagination together.