In the autumn, the trees turn golden in preparation for
emptiness. The air gets crisp, ready to be
cold. The light begins to fade into
Gray. Crops that have been growing all
year are harvested before they die, and many of us already
begin to feel wistfulness for the life that is disappearing
before our eyes. But of course, before the chill
Gray truly moves in, there are fall glories, apple picking,
favorite films, harvest festivals and celebrations,
annual culinary favorites, and yes, pumpkin spice lattes.
A harvest feast takes things that are dying and in a way,
marks them for eternity in the form of unforgettable flavors
and memories. In fact, in the waning days of
the long green season before Advent, the church has long
celebrated All Hallow Tide, 3 days of feasting that connect
our gratitude for the past with our hope for the future.
The world around us is quick to dismiss the past, and we
Christians have sometimes been too quick to join our neighbors
in writing things off that don't last.
But autumn is an opportunity to do something different, to
recognize that our timeless God works in things that appear to
be fleeting, and to consecrate the moment for eternity.
Welcome to the Imagination Redeemed podcast, everyone.
I'm Sarah Howell, and I'm joined today by Brian Brown and our
special guest today, Caroline Williams.
Caroline is our associate editor and outreach coordinator here at
the Anselm Society. And while you think you probably
haven't heard her voice before, I would argue you have.
She's behind the scenes, but her voice is very much present and
all that you read and see from us.
And so it's great to have your literal voice on the show today,
Caroline. And thank you for reading our
introduction story as well. Thank you, I'm so happy to be
here. So today is a new kind of
episode. We are kicking off our quarterly
episode in which we are going to discuss the new quarter seasonal
theme. We're going to talk about what
drew us to the theme, why it seems timely and we're going to
also offer up a little preview of what's to head.
But before we do so, I wanted to kind of set the scene.
Why are we doing a kick off episode?
I like to think about this kick off episode as setting the table
because it reminds me of the story, the short story, but
that's Feast. That story in and of itself
deserves its own podcast episode.
So I I won't belabor on the the summary too much, but if you can
imagine these Puritan like community villagers who live in
the north North Atlantic seashores where there's really
nothing to eat but fish. They live a very ascetic
lifestyle, like a true life of simplicity.
But at the climax of the story, of course, there's a thief.
And when I first came across the story, I watched a film
adaptation of it. And it just struck me that at
the feast I didn't. I didn't expect that the
villagers would have no idea what they were eating.
But why would they? They were all like 12 year olds
trying to eat caviar for the first time, kind of disgusted
but but trying to understand why this would be an important or or
good thing. But the author does something
really interesting. He puts this wildly out of place
character right at the feast with them, this general who
really understands high French cuisine, and he freaks out every
time a new dish is presented. He just starts giggling, almost
in delight at certain points. And the villagers begin to
understand what they're eating. And as they kind of loosen up
and enjoy the way that the general is enjoying, they begin
to actually feast. And so I think this is a
profound idea, just a beautiful image that if I can relate it to
our own lives, I would argue that we're all those villagers
in some way, shape and form, and that the Father of this world
sits down with us and delights over his creation.
And it really does us all good to see what God has set before
us. And in this context, what we're
attempting to do is take a theme and set our table, so to speak,
for what we prayerfully think are some of the rhythms God is
set before us in the autumn season.
And so let's dive into those rhythms.
I want to start with you, Brian. I want to ask you what drew you
to this theme for the fall that we are planning?
Well, I've been itching to do something with feasting and food
for a while. Because if you, if your only
connection to the Anson Society is the podcast, you may not know
what some of the folks who are local do, which is that we love
to feast. We love to not just the eating
piece of it, but the the warm, communal piece of it.
And often singing and storytelling, feasting is, we'll
get into this in other episodes, but it's, there's so much more
to it than that. And, and, and autumn in
particular is one of those seasons that a lot of us, I
think have kind of an aesthetic pull towards.
A lot of people will say fall is their favorite season.
And, and you know, there's memes and jokes about it, right?
Like Mr. or misses Autumn with her pumpkin spice latte and her
thick sweater and her trips to Target and all the things.
And, and I'm totally guilty of most of that, except for the
trips to Target. But the the autumn piece in
particular was something that I thought was really important for
us to work in because contemporary Christianity in the
United States is very good contemporary.
Pretty much no matter what kind of church you go to, chances are
your day-to-day faith is very much present driven.
That's our natural inclination as humans anyway.
And a lot of kind of post second grade awakening Christian
influences in the United States make it even even more that way.
And when you're locked in the present, it's much harder to
wrestle with these questions of how to relate to eternity.
How does my grief relate to eternity?
How does my joy relate to eternity?
How does that thing from my past that has shaped who I am relate
to eternity? In other words, how do I enter
into the life of God and feasting in Jennifer Eternal and
Autumn in particular, give us a chance to wrestle with a lot of
different things that have to do with marking the present and and
a lot of things to do with how to wrestle with the past so that
they're all wrapped up in one thing that we're entering into
the life of God with I. Like that, Brian, that's
exciting. I, I'm excited about thinking
about time. I don't know if it's my place in
life, if it's how I've been raised, but to me, I see the
beginning of the year so much more in the fall than on the
arbitrary January 1st, just with the start of school.
There's something about the death all around and that
wistfulness that makes me feel connected to what happened last
year at this time, what happened the year before that.
There's a, a timeless nature as I see the season kind of
shifting where I, I begin to think about those questions of,
oh, am I the same person as, as, as change around me is
happening, Am I changing with it?
And so that idea of new beginnings change time and, and
I guess perhaps for me, there's also just a, a reflective nature
that happens in the fall because things do start to slow down.
Things do start to get a little quieter in terms of the seasonal
time and the nights getting longer and the days getting
shorter. But that's me Caroline.
When you think about the autumn and this idea of redeeming time,
what comes to mind from your own experience?
Well, I relate to a lot of what both of you are saying and I
will say to you, I was the most excited for this theme when we
first came up with the idea last September because I love a
pumpkin spice latte as much as the next girl.
But my feelings have always been very conflicted around this
season. Spring and summer are very easy
to celebrate. Time kind of stretches very long
and liquid in the summer. And once autumn rolls around and
the school year starts, time can start feeling very rushed and
there are a lot of demands on it, especially as a mom.
And even though Christmas is in December, a lot of the
preparation, a lot of the scheduling and planning starts
happening as soon as October. And so I think I my excitement
around exploring this this topic more this season comes from a
realization that I really have a lot of answers I need to find
for myself in terms of how I approach my time without a
cynical, stressed, rushed approach.
Also, my birthday is in November so I think I I tend to face my
own mortality and the passing of time a little bit more in the
season maybe than most people. We'll dedicate the November
kickoff episode to your birthday.
Just theme it around mortality and.
Right. Caroline though I appreciate you
saying that because even in your response, you can see the two
different kinds of personalities and mine and then yours that
enter into the fall. I think that it's the slow,
wonderful time of thinking about death.
And and I, I, I, I am such a romantic in the traditional
sense of the word, where I, I love the wistfulness and the
kind of more mortality of the change of seasons.
And rightly so. You're you're calling to the
other kind of person who I'm absolutely ridiculous.
I love that about you. Yeah, the, the, it's, it's that
back and forth. Like one minute you're, you're
sort of reveling in and, and not everyone's like this, but
clearly the three of us are. One day you're sort of reveling
in it and you've got your, your coffee or your tea in your
toasty sweater and you're looking at, you're looking at
the fall leaves and it's also perfect.
And then, yeah, the next minute you're, you're absorbing the
Gray and you're contemplating your mortality or you're
depressed because you're thinking that winter's coming
or, or yeah, you have there's, there's those pangs of looking
back toward the past. Why do we do that?
Why does pretty much everybody who loves fall do that?
The back and forth between the really deep, rich positives and
the the really deep rich negatives.
And at the same time as those practical themes, there are
theological themes that we want to weave in there because there
is a reason for this. There's a reason, frankly, that
a lot of us spend a great deal of time either trying to avoid
our past, personal or collective, or going to therapy
to try to wrestle with them. Then let's dive in.
Brian, can you give us a little bit of a false preview of what
is ahead, what we want to try to wrestle with we.
Want to talk about this idea of redeeming the time?
Saint Paul says that I think twice in his letters and TS
Eliot thought that the it's it's the default posture of the
Christian. But it's so hard.
Like we are supposed to do this thing called redeeming the time.
What is that? So we want to get into that
because it sounds hopeful. It's a beautiful little phrase,
but it it needs some some unpacking.
Why is there in the 10 commandments?
Why is there a command to honor your father and mother that it's
different from children? Obey your parents.
They're different. They're different commands.
And, and Christians have historically had a very honoring
posture toward the past and a very grateful posture toward the
past. How does that add up to a
healthy rather than an unhealthy theology of tradition?
Even something as simple as as Halloween, right?
Christians have all kinds of fights every year about whether
they should celebrate Halloween and how they should celebrate
Halloween, and we want to dive into that.
There's a lot of thought that we can do with this.
One thing that I that I will say a lot in when I, when I'm
teaching is that the Christian imagination is a corporate
imagination. I think in a lot of ways the
contemporary American evangelical imagination is an
individualistic imagination. It's about my relationship with
God, my conversion at its worst, my, my happiness.
It's not that there's no corporate element to it, but
it's easy to fall into the trap of thinking it's kind of me and
Jesus. But the Christian imagination
is, is corporate. It connects us not only
vertically to God, but horizontally to the people on on
either side of us and around the world.
But it also connects us to to the cloud of witnesses, to past
and future. So it's one thing to say that as
rhetoric, but how does it work? And to get in our most
classically and Selmish place, what do stories and songs have
to do with building this imagination in US?
I'm really excited about recording and not necessarily
one specific episode that I think this this little strand
that I I hope we follow through the season of understanding how
wistfulness and death help us understand the gift of life.
I think that the the biblical themes of a seed dying so that
life can be born feels very close to the heart of the fall
in in my experience. Obviously you plant seeds in the
spring, but the fruit comes in the fall.
And one thing that I know we're excited to talk about is the way
in which a feast is taking that life off the vine right before
it's, it dies. And as it's decaying, to offer
it back, to offer it back to the Lord, offer it to the community.
And that from that death there is born great life, great life
of community, of worship, of, of sacrifice.
So whether it be a food like I just described or in seeds, I
think at the heart of that the the wistfulness that comes about
and harnessing that in a healthy way is what I am particularly
curious to see how how we explore that concept.
And Caroline, from a list of the center standpoint, so you in
addition to being involved in all of our podcast planning, you
also run our sub stack. So you see the comments that
come back, you are dialoguing a lot on both social media and sub
stack, more specifically with our listeners.
What do you think is is is going to be particularly resonant with
our listeners? What do you think they're going
to be most excited about? I'm really excited to dive into
feasting, and I really think that that's something that
people tend to resonate. We even saw that in our Bombadil
reading group and I think these episodes that explore food and
feasting and something a concept that can be so wildly
misunderstood in our society, especially on different groups
of people. I just, I'm really, really
excited to revisit that and I think our our readers and
listeners will too. Earlier I mentioned that I tend
to vacillate a lot between a lot of highs and lows in the fall of
enjoying the season so much and then also falling into it's so
silly. But the the line from the Disney
remake of Beauty and the Beast where the beast is cursing the
fading of the light. I find myself cursing the fading
of the light in the fall. And I think the things that our
listeners heard on the podcast in the summer about pipe smoking
with Malcolm Guy and being present and slowing down, that
all sounds really wonderful when school is out.
But the rubber definitely meets the road in the fall when your
time becomes so scarce. And I think there's a lot of
potential for these concepts to really be brought home in what
it looks like to find that merriment and that joy while
your time is the days are getting shorter, so.
Yeah, for sure. Caroline I like that because the
summer does feel like this really nice, simple training
ground, right? And training grounds are meant
to be a kind of an easy plane that you get to make the
obstacles that you want them to be right.
You get to decide where you're going to go and what you're
going to work on. But the terrain of life that
happens in the fall, like you're saying, when like kind of hits
you and you have to kind of start again.
You have to learn all the rhythms of school routine for
either yourself or your kids or what it's like to not have a
school routine if that's something you're used to.
I I like that because I think at the time of fall, when the light
is fading, when the training wheels come off and you're set
off into actual terrain, we get to defiantly come together as a
community. And I think that's something
that's really important about the concepts of feasting and
honoring the past that we're going to focus on this season.
That that we're not doing that alone.
That while we're maybe out of the training ground of ordinary
time, we get to come together and and make those defiant
decisions too slow, or those defiant decisions to revel in
abundance when all we see is a scarcity of light.
Yeah, well said. So yeah, Brian, do you want to
go through and, and kind of just give us a, a quick fire drill of
what episodes we'll be focusing on at in what part of the
season? Yeah.
And and yeah, we'll give you the give you all the the quick
rundown, saving all the good stuff for the episodes
themselves, of course. But but you guys jump in with if
they're, you know, important things I'm missing or things
you're particularly excited about or things you want to get
on the record as we got to talk about this.
So that then if if we fail, fail, it's it's our fault
because it's set in stone. It's on the air.
All right, so we will start in September with an episode on Why
We Feast and that's going to double as a session for the
rabbit Rooms house moot event. If you guys are not familiar
with the house moot thing that the rabbit Room does, if you
listen to this podcast, you're probably already familiar with
the rabbit room. If not, you can Google them, but
they do a cool thing for those of you who can't make it to
their October conference. They do an an at home thing with
special sessions just for. People to listen to and discuss
together and we will be part of that.
And so why we feast. We're going to look at feasting
as reconciliation and how feasting can get into healing
the divisions that the fallen world creates.
And I will get to get over excited about theology of food,
which always gets me excited. So that's number one for
September. But we can't just stop there.
We have to do more feasting. So then we're going to do an
episode on the three feasts of Lord of the Rings, which will be
a conversation with our very own Amy Lee.
She gave a talk at the Weight Center at Wheaton about new
catastrophe and hospitality and mental health.
And she touched a little bit on this idea that there are three
key feasts in the Lord of the Rings that that represents an
exploration of past, present and future.
And we really liked that. And we said, Yep, you got to do
more with that. So we're going to have a
conversation with her about that.
But she's also giving a talk on that at our long expected feast
fall event, which will be right around the same time in in late
September. So by the time you're listening
to this, it might already be sold out, but we will do our
best to squeeze as many people in as we can and sell some
online tickets if we can. And then we'll hit October.
And this is just something that Christians, I think Christians
don't talk about enough. And that is, what are we to do
with the past? So we're going to do an episode
getting us ready for Halloween, or more specifically All Hallow
Tide, the three day period that includes what is now called
Halloween and was originally a Christian holiday.
And we're going to get into this idea of honor your father and
mother and what that means, what that has meant in historic
Christian theology. What does it mean for a theology
of tradition that isn't just if it's old, it's good, but also
doesn't leave us sort of rootless, making everything up
as we go? I'm so excited about this one.
I have zero place in, in my historic past of understanding
what the heck to do with October 30th, 31st.
And, and I, I, I so resonate, Brian, with that concept that,
you know, a lot of modern American Christianity is, is
kind of making up what we could do next.
It's it's always trying to address the present from the
present. And yet, tradition for
tradition's sake literally makes my bones ache if I have to do
something just because I automatically want to do
everything I can to foil that plan.
Oh, and we will talk about that. I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll never
forget one of our earliest standstone lectures.
We had the poet Scott Cairns. And Scott is Eastern Orthodox,
and he was talking about that instinct in US.
And it's to some extent it's, you know, maybe sort of a
artist's instinct to creative's instinct.
But it's also, it's also to some extent, just a rebel's instinct.
You know, you can't tell me what to do.
And, and, and as Americans, we also have this instinct towards
innovation. Some of my earliest jobs when I
was in my 20s, I couldn't help notice everyone my age lost
their ability to influence corporate culture in the these
workplaces really quickly because they charged and saw
something that didn't make sense to them and tried to change it.
They have this immediate instinct.
If it doesn't make sense to me, it can't possibly make sense,
which essentially theologically speaking makes you just your own
private Pope. If it doesn't make sense to me
right now, in this moment as a 22 year old, it can't possibly
make sense, right? And Scott said when it comes to
tradition, especially something like ritual, something that's
repetitive, you have to let it work on you before you try to
work on it. I can see the tie to the next
episode in October being what you're calling the songs, Brian,
because songs have to be learned and embodied and and sung,
right? Like you have to become one with
the song in order for you to learn it, like know it.
And so it works on you before you get to work on it.
And to think about doing that on a corporate level.
You know, songs that aren't just about I, but it's about us.
It's about we. And not only songs that are
about us, but that we actually sing together.
It's not just one voice, but there's something special that
happens when a bunch of mediocre or beautiful voices come
together and start singing together.
It takes on a whole new thing. It it's, it's not just your
voice anymore. In fact, your voice is kind of
taken up and transposed into this this new instrument called
us. Yeah, well said.
Yeah. And that episode and I, I
started using that, that term we songs and, and we stories for
that matter, to, to describe songs that are specifically
written out of a corporate imagination, out of a sense of
memory. There's an us that was here
before I got here and will be here after.
And songs and stories that are oriented toward word uniting us
with that us, uniting us together and pushing us together
toward God. A lot of the contemporary music
of all sorts, not just Christian that we deal with is, is
individual. It's me singing about my
thoughts and my feelings and my relationships and my you know
what not. But most of the most powerful
songs, even when they're written from an individual perspective,
connect us to other things as part of the reason Taylor Swift
is so powerful, right? She sings things and her target
audience goes, I've been there. We songs are songs that are
written that way intentionally to to communicate not just the
feeling of the moment, but the permanent realities that are
that are universal to humans and that have shaped us over time.
So we've we've had some good episodes in the past about
singing like, like you guys should go back and listen to our
episodes with Amber Salad and they're wonderful.
These ones are specifically going to be about what happens
when we prioritize old songs that are oriented towards this
kind of corporate imagination and write new ones.
This is also why we should join our local community choirs too.
Nice. We should definitely give a good
pitch for why every person can sing.
And Brian, would you say that that's something that Amber has
already done a good job with making a case for?
Well, yeah, Amber. So Amber is the the director of
a a church, Well, actually a bunch of choirs, but she's also
the music director at her church in Manhattan.
And she's on the board of the CS Lewis Foundation.
And she goes so far as to say the idea that you Can't Sing
and, and especially you Can't Sing to God and you should shut
up because nobody wants to hear you sing is a lie from the pit
of hell. And I agree with that.
Like if, if, and this is true of singing, but it's true of
singing as a metaphor for everything else too.
That that if I were the enemy, I would very much want you to
think that all of the flaws and insecurities and defects and
just idiosyncrasies that you bring to the table disqualify
you from speaking to God and lending your voice, literal and
metaphorical, to the body of Christ.
So we're going to dismantle that lie and try to rebuild back up
something better poured, something that we're going to
get into in November, which is there.
There's a story in, I don't remember which of Chesterton's
writings it's from, but he talks about how Christianity is in
some ways, yes, it's ancient and it yes, it's eternal, but it's
also the sort of eternally young religion.
Because God himself has the ability to look at something
good and true and beautiful. And in this case that he has
made like a sunrise and never get tired of it and sort of clap
his hands and say do it again every time.
That's something that we struggle with.
I remember having a conversation with a friend once who had the
exact same pizza from the exact same restaurant next to his
workplace every single day. And I and I remember saying
that's quite aside from any health concerns that that crazy
like, don't you get tired of it? And he said, well, no, because
if something is good, it's good every time.
No. I'm not advocating his point of
view, but we've all sort of had the opposite experience.
We're familiarity breeds contempt.
You get tired of stuff, and there's so much about fall that
has to do with nostalgia and wistfulness, on the other hand,
but also just things dying around Kanju, the reminder that
things are fleeting. How can we move from this
wistfulness to a recognition of abundance with both the past and
the present? Yeah.
I'm really excited about that episode because it's very easy
to look at the past in a general sense and romanticize things
like antique furniture, you know?
But even just looking back at your own life and past versions
of yourself and it can be a real struggle to find compassion
towards those you know, you and the past, and finding that
eternal approach to yourself and your own life amidst that woods
fullness. So I'm excited about that
episode. Yeah.
And then most likely after that, our, our current plan with, with
all of this, we, we reserve the right to move things around if,
if things happen. Sometimes we find ourselves in
possession of a great idea that we want to record right now or
an audio recording for something.
And, and, but right now we're, we're keeping the, the 2nd
November slot free for one session of audio from the
retreat at our, our, our fall gathering.
And that'll get us up to December, which kicks off our
winter season. So that's our current plan for
the fall. Ladies, thank you for everything
that you've put into making it what it is.
And for you listeners, this is your chance to sort of jump in
any, if you're using an app like Spotify or YouTube that allows
comments or you're seeing this post on social media, this is
this is your chance to jump in and say, I'm particularly
excited about such and such an episode.
Would you please tackle this topic along the way because we
have not recorded any of the episodes yet.
So this is your, this is your chance to ask your questions on
the front end. Absolutely.
And an invitation to all the listeners out there, including
Caroline and Brian, is there are two questions that I'm going to
try really hard to consider for myself as we go through as we go
through the season. I confess that I mean, if
anyone's listened to the podcast for more than two seconds,
they're like, duh, Sarah. But I confess to nonetheless,
that I love to stay up in the clouds.
I love to think about these beautiful big topics and how
they relate to the rest of the world.
And, and I love to spend this little amount of time thinking
about my own personal life and, and what happened yesterday and
what's going to happen tomorrow. With that being said, though,
that's where the that's where these big ideas get tied down.
And beauty happens, right? If beauty doesn't happen in the
clouds, it happens in, in the, the milieu of all the different
organisms on earth bumping into each other.
And so the two questions I have in my mind are, first, what fall
traditions in my own life can be seen through the lens of
redeeming the time? And so that's really going to
force me to start asking myself when I put on that sweater and I
start wanting to go outside to crunch the leaves, that crunch
the leaves tradition. But I revel in so much.
What about that is helping me redeem the time?
And then the second question is, how might my Thanksgiving
celebration, specifically this year, embody some of these
things? I think that Thanksgiving is
oftentimes wrapped around the axle of particular personalities
coming together and the social dynamics.
Or for some people, it's the intensity of how much they care
or despise certain ingredients that will be on the table.
But to, to bring all of life, right, right.
Like the the past and all that we are to the table to bring
honor to one another in a more global sense to to bring the the
cloud of witnesses to the table with us as we're having
Thanksgiving and as well to understand, like, why does it
matter? How can I be excited about just
eating food together or feasting?
Those are things that I hope to bring into preparation for my
Thanksgiving celebration as we kind of dwell and think about
these ideas. So those are my 2, my 2 pitches
to you too, and to our listeners to think about your own fall
traditions in the lens of redeeming the time and to start
thinking about Thanksgiving. We spend a long time preparing
ourselves for Christmas, and I feel like Thanksgiving happens
and I give it about maybe a week's notice in my head.
Well, Caroline, Brian, thank you guys so much for this
conversation. I'm really looking forward to
the season, and I pray that God prepares our hearts as well as
our minds to dive into these beautiful stories that we get to
explore as we look at feasting and redeeming the time through
not only our food, but also in the way that we honor the past.
The Imagination Redeemed podcast is a production of the Anselm
Society. It is easy to see this world as
disenchanted and to give up hope that there's more.
But you were made to see the world with the eyes of heaven
and to live a bountiful life that participates in the life of
God. Like in the great stories, the
Anselm Society is a place where you can come in and experience
that beautiful, joyful celebration in ancient.
Go out renewed, bringing that life to your location.
Home enters. Join us next time as we pursue a
renaissance for the Christian imagination together.