At 6:30 on the 21st of June 1922, when Count Alexander Ilyas
Rostov was escorted through the gates of the Kremlin onto Red
Square, it was glorious and cool.
Drawing his shoulders back without breaking stride, the
Count inhaled the air like 1 fresh from a swim.
The sky was the very blue that the cupolas of Saint Basils have
been painted for. Their pinks, greens and golds
shimmered as if it were the sole purpose of a religion to cheer
its divinity. As he strode from the square
into the lobby of the Hotel Metropole, the Count gave a wide
wave with which to simultaneously greet the
unflappable Arcady, who was manning the front desk, and
sweet Valentina who was dusting A statuette.
Though the Count had greeted them in this manner 100 times
before, both responded with a wide eyed stare.
It was the sort of reception one might have expected when
arriving for a dinner party. Having forgotten to Don one's
pants, he stirred up the stairs until he reached the third
floor. Then he walked down the red
carpeted hallway toward his suite, an interconnected
bedroom, bath, dining room, and grand salon with eight foot
windows overlooking the lindens of Theater Square.
And there the rudeness of the day awaited, for before the
flung open doors of his rooms stood a captain of the guards,
with Pasha and Petya, the hotel's bellhops.
The two young men met the count's gaze with looks of
embarrassment, having clearly been conscripted into some duty
they found distasteful. The count addressed to the
officer. What is the meaning of this
captain? The captain, who seemed mildly
surprised by the question, had the good training to maintain
the evenness of his effect. As you have been sentenced for
the crime of being an aristocrats, to live out your
days within the walls of this hotel, I am here to show you to
our quarters. These are my quarters.
Betraying the slightest suggestion of a smile, the
captain replied. No longer, I'm afraid.
Leaving Pasha and Pasha behind, the captain led the count and
his escort to a utility stair hidden behind an inconspicuous
door at the core of the hotel. Up they wound 3 flights to where
a door opened on a narrow corridor servicing a bathroom
and six closets reminiscent of monastic cells.
Earlier that day. The room closest to the
stairwell, a tiny one with a slanted ceiling, had been
cleared of all but a cast iron bed, A3 legged Bureau and a
decade of dust. The good captain explained that
he had summoned the bellhops to help the Count move what few
belongings his new quarters would accommodate, and the rest
becomes the property of the people.
So this is their game, thought the Count.
Very well. He skipped back down the belfry,
marched along the third floor hallway, and re entered his
suite, where the two bellhops looked up with woeful
expressions. It's all right, fellows, the
Count assured, and then began pointing.
This, that, those, all the books.
Among the furnishings destined for his new quarters, the Count
chose 2 high back chairs, his grandmother's Oriental coffee
table, and a favorite set of her porcelain plates.
He chose the two table lamps fashioned from Ebony elephants
and the portrait of his sister Helena, which Sarov had painted
during a brief stay at Eidelauer in 19 O 8.
He did not forget the leather case that had been fashioned
specially for him by Asprey in London, and which his good
friend Mishka had so appropriately christened the
ambassador. Noting that the guards were
eyeing the 2 bottles of Brandy on the console, the Counts
tossed them in as well, and once the trunk had been carried
upstairs, he finally pointed to the desk.
The two bellhops, their bright blue uniforms already smudged
from their efforts to cold it by the corners.
But it weighs a ton, said one to the other.
A king fortifies himself with a castle, observed the Count, A
gentleman with a desk. Then the Count began his
farewell walk. First, he admired the salon's
grand dimensions and his two chandeliers.
He admired the painted panels of the little dining room and the
elaborate brass mechanisms that allowed one to secure the double
doors of the bedroom. In short, he reviewed the
interior much as would a potential buyer who was seeing
the rooms for the very first time.
Once in the bedroom, the Count paused before the marble tucked
table on which lay an assortment of curious.
Just a funny thing reflected the Count as he stood ready to
abandon his suite. From the earliest age we must
learn to say goodbye to friends and family.
But experience is less likely to teach us how to bid our dearest
possessions of you. And if it were you, we wouldn't
welcome the education. But of course, that thing is
just a thing. And so, slipping only his
sister's scissors into his pocket, the Count looked once
more at what heirlooms remained and then expunged them from his
heartache forever. One hour later, the Count
bounced twice on his new mattress to identify the key of
the bed springs. C#.
Then he took a moment to arrange his few remaining possessions, a
photograph, the 2 bottles of Brandy, and so on.
A pigeon landed outside on the copper stripping of the ledge.
Why, hello, said the Count. How kind of you to stop by.
The pigeon looked back with a decidedly proprietary air,
nodding once to the pigeon to indicate they would resume their
discussion. Anon the Count rebuttoned his
jacket and turned to find that three members of the hotel's
staff were crowded in the doorway.
There was Andre, the Major D, with his perfect poise and long,
judicious hands. Vasily, the hotel's inimitable
concierge, and Marina, the shy delights with the wandering eye
who had recently been promoted from chambermaid to seamstress.
The three of them exhibited the same bewildered gaze that the
Count had noticed on the faces of Arcadia and Valentina a few
hours before. And finally it struck him.
When he had been carted off to trial that morning, they had all
assumed that he would never return.
He had emerged from behind the walls of the Kremlin like an
aviator from the wreckage of a crash.
My dear friends, said the Count, no doubt you are curious as to
the day's events. As you may know, I was invited
to the Kremlin for a tete a tete.
There, several duly goateed officers of the current regime
determined that for the crime of being born an aristocrat, I
should be sentenced to spend the rest of my days in this hotel.
In response to the cheers, the Count shook hands with his
guests, 1 by 1, expressing to each his appreciation for their
fellowship and heartfelt thanks. Come in, come in, he said.
Together, the three staff members squeezed their way
between the towers of furniture, teetering.
If you would be so kind, said Count, handing Andre one of the
bottles of Brandy, and he kneeled before the ambassador
through the class and opened it like a giant book.
From this he drew 4 Brandy glasses and passed them around
as Andre, having plucked the cork from the bottle, performs
the honors. Once his guests set their Brandy
in hand, the Count raised his own on high.
To the metropole. He said.
To the metropole they replied. The Count was something of a
natural born host, and in the hour that ensued A surprising
amount of laughter was present. On this of all nights, the Count
deeply appreciated the staff's good cheer.
At 10:00, the Count walked his guests to the belfry and bid
them goodnight with the same sense of ceremony that he would
have exhibited at the door of his family's residence in Saint
Petersburg. Returning to his quarters, he
opened the window, though it was only the size of a postage
stamp. Poured the last.
Of the Brandy and took a seat at the desk.
If a man does not master his circumstances, he reflected
philosophically, then he is bound to be mastered by them.
Welcome to the Imagination Redeemed podcast where we follow
the great stories further up and further in In Pursuit of the
Life of Christ. Welcome back to Imagination
Redeemed, everyone. I'm Brian Brown, joined today by
Jeremiah England, Sarah Howell and Christina Brown.
And if you are not familiar with the story that I just read, it
is part of the opening of the book A Gentleman in Moscow by
Amor. Toles which is one of my.
Favorite books by a living author?
You may remember if you've listened to our last couple of
episodes that this. Winter we've been exploring.
Limits and constrictions on our embodied lives.
We talked about joviality as the key to magnanimous joy in the
face of limits that come against joy.
We talked about the limits of time and and season.
In that context, we talked in our last episode about
magnanimity itself as the key to practicing generosity within the
limits of means. In this episode, we're going to
talk about how the limits of space can grow our character,
our virtue, and our closeness with God.
If we let them. We will not be revealing huge
book spoilers in case you haven't read it.
And I want to call out right away that anytime somebody's
doing an episode about a book, people who have read the book
can kind of flock to it and go, oh, I want to, I want to hear
this conversation. And people who haven't read the
book A might worry about spoilers and B might just sort
of check out. So I want to make sure that all
of our listeners understand we're talking about something
that we all struggle with. We are in winter and we're stuck
inside a lot, and a lot of limits come with that
constricted space now, a monotony, potentially bad habits
and patterns, friction or noise from other people.
And we're kind of conditioned to view limits as confining in
general, even if we pay lip service to the value of limits.
Oh yes, limits can create this or that positive benefit.
As soon as we experience a new limit, right?
We typically respond with frustration, rebellion, grief,
whatever. So we're going to be drawing
some wisdom from this book in the course of that.
But we will we'll kind of signal what what we're doing along the
way. So we won't, we hopefully won't
run into situations where if you haven't read this particular
story, heard this particular anecdote, it has no value to
you. So I'll sort of kick this off
with this quote from Dostoevsky, which is appropriate since it's
this is all Russian themed literature.
And then I'll toss it out to you guys with an initial question in
The Brothers Karamazov, Elder Zosima says.
The world says you have desires. Satisfy them, expand your
desires and demand more. This is the worldly doctrine of
today and they believe that this is freedom.
The results for the rich is isolation and suicide.
For the poor envy and murder. As I was preparing for this
episode, as I was throwing notes around to you guys as we were
talking about it, I was noticing certainly a lot of patterns in
Christian writers, whether it's novelists like Dostoevsky or
whether it's ancient Mystics. There's they're very, very
different perspectives on limits and particularly limits on space
of various kinds. And it definitely had me walking
away going. This.
This novel is not unique in raising the the notion that
there's a way to learn to be the kind of person who is sharpened
and grown and even set free by limits.
So perhaps guys, we could start by just jumping into that story
that we opened with. I kept most of what was in the
book when I was adapting it for for reading because there's a
lot of detail in there that's I think is worth our conversation.
So maybe just as a softball to start us off, I would just love
to know from each of you what strikes you and listeners, you
can think about this too, what strikes you about Count Rostov's
immediate response to his new situation.
This is brand new to him. Like 5 minutes ago, he was told.
You came this. Goes to being executed.
Now you are going to be under house arrest in this hotel.
Can't leave the hotel for literally the rest of your life
and oh by the way, we're taking away your room within the hotel
and most of your stuff. What's your response to or what?
Strikes you about his response. One of the things I like in the
book that he talks about later is he kind of makes a comparison
of himself to Robinson Caruso. And he says, you know, like is
is kind of his way of responding to life that he tries to
achieve. Is being Anglican washed ashore
like Caruso and fashion a life out of your difficult
circumstances. And it is almost like that, you
know, Robinson Caruso is trapped on this island.
Everything he's known and loved is taken away from him.
And yet he's able to build a life such that I think he even
mentions the book. And after Crusoe gets off the
island, like three years later, he's like, I got to find my
island and get back there again, you know, because that's where
his life is. But, you know, I think there's,
there's something to that, like almost hardcore practicality of
being the master of your circumstances so that your
circumstances don't master you. And his approach to that I think
is, is very much so He's like, OK, I'm washed ashore.
It's time to salvage what I can and start rebuilding.
And I think that's throughout the book.
As a side note, I loved it. It, it sounded to me like when
you said Robertson Crusoe, it sounded like you were saying
Robinson Caruso. And I just have this image of
CSI Miami like Robinson. Yeah, sorry.
What else? Well, just to Jeremiah's point,
I think of, you know, just saying that Swiss Family
Robinson same same concept, right, Only they have like a
family, right? Like it's AI guess husband, wife
and three boys or something like that and same concept, you know,
like we're either going to die or we're going to build a life
and they turn it into this grand adventure.
And I remember as a kid reading that I was just like.
Wow. This is what people can do with
stuff like this. The.
Point about family is really important when we think about
the count because even though he is alone, so he is like
Robinson, he brings along with him the items from his past and
from his family. I'd love to have a little bit of
a conversation about how he brings the bottles of Brandy
almost because he noticed the soldiers escorting him wanted
them. Bit of rebellion.
There. Yeah, yeah.
Speaking of the Brandy, Sarah, if I remember right and correct
me if I'm wrong, but he takes those bottles of Brandy to
eventually give to the guards, you know, as you know, somewhat
of a bribery and to Curry favor. And I think it's excellent
foreshadowing for kind of his whole character arc in the rest
of the book. Because I know one of the things
that we wanted to talk a little bit about is the juxtaposition
of this is being a very winter book where I I definitely, as I
was reading it, always had the the feeling that like the winter
outside was omnipresent. Like it there were no other
seasons for this kind of other than just the the coldest
merciless Russian winter ever. And yet what's interesting about
the book is he's able to find such a deep sense of warmth
throughout the whole book. And in my notes I wrote, warmth
is a deep, delighted consideration of others.
And I think that's kind of like how he lives his life.
And so even in this very, very beginning thing, as he's getting
out all of his possessions, you know, he might be, I'm just
thinking about the horrible situation I had or the fact that
I had a near death experience and you know, what's my life
going to be like? You know, he even in that moment
was considering the guards and going, oh, what is it that they
that they want? You know, and, you know, maybe
he did it selfishly as a way to Curry favor later.
But I think it just kind of speaks to the fact that
throughout the book, he always has a consideration of other
people and what their goals are and what it is that they need at
the moment. And that's what ends up, you
know, really blossoming him as a person inside this prison.
Yeah, I love the fact that he gets up to this attic and the
hotel staff, the people who were essentially his servants 5
minutes ago. His his first reaction is, is
hospitality. And in in general, you see this
in his, his selection of some of the items.
A gentleman fortifies himself with the desk.
All the books. The hospitality element you can.
Tell he is a very his character is very disciplined already.
He has a lot of good habits already and his his first
response within this tragedy is not even to you know what I'm
just going to give myself a day to grieve before I wrestle with
what to do here. Not that that would be
illegitimate. His first reaction is just to
keep being himself, to keep living out the same habits and
like you said, Jeremiah 2 to project that that warmth toward
toward those around him. He doesn't, he doesn't let
himself stop being, you know, a lover of the good, the true and
the beautiful and so on for for a moment.
Which is really striking to me. I also noticed the interpersonal
relationship that he had clearly built with the people of the
hotel, kind of like you said, Brian, they were his servants,
but noticed that when he told them what was going on, they
cheered like they were like. Oh my gosh, our.
Friend did her Yeah. And they when he offered them
Brandy, I noticed too that the guy didn't you know, I don't
remember his name. Andre or something did did not
hesitate. He's like, yeah, I'll pop it.
You know, like he just clearly knew that Count Rostov, like
considered him an equal. And clearly that was a very a
very normal thing and they were just all ready to be there with
him. And that just, I think
immediately setting that up as a part of the book, that says a
lot about his character. And I think Kristina, you were
the 1 mentioning this before we started recording.
But I, I was struck in the opening story today how much
this story is framed from not the count losing everything and
getting shoved into this closet, but actually this count going
from death to life, right? Like he should have died.
They all thought he wasn't going to come back.
And so there's this kind of gratitude and celebration in the
midst of all of the loss. And I think that that's kind of
a really nice pattern for this character in his not only in in
like what we see play out, but also in like the kind of habits
he has shaped in himself and the kind of literal character
formation he has. I death to life, perhaps I I do
wonder how much I mean, because we talk about like how we need
limitations to kind of give us the kind of freedom that we
crave. But there's there seems to be
and how that can kind of form our character.
But there seems to be already when the story starts, a kind of
character that he already has formed.
So he didn't come into this circumstance kind of as a a
ne'er do Well, Rich, you know, guy who's used to getting his
own way. He came in clearly already with
some kind of understanding of what really mattered in life,
And I think that's worth noting and I think because of that.
He had some kind of, I would say maybe like, I guess as a
Christian, we might say it like a gratitude.
And as far as etymology of gratitude, it's, it's, it's like
goes way back. Some say goes to Sanskrit and
never hell pronounce that. But as far as Latin, it's, it's
pleasing and pleasant and then of course, full, so full of
pleasure and pleasing and, and pleasants.
And I think when we as Christians, we don't always know
what grateful really means. But I think it also means really
recognizing the beauty around us and letting that fill us.
And then that becomes a sense of blessing.
And then that becomes like it, it goes into the this gratitude
for life, for living. And again, like when he chose
the things, it was very intentional and he was mourning
the things on his dresser, but he did grab one thing and they
were his sister's scissors, you know, and you kind of in your
head, you're like, huh, that's interesting.
And you're kind of like, well, I wonder what else was there?
And and so. So yeah, so he has.
This connection to things, but there's also, as you can kind of
see, there is a the things that he chooses do have a higher
entire symbolism. There's something else there.
Things are just things. However, when he connects the
the bigger picture and the people and the things they
represent, sort of the gentleman has a desk.
Like there's an entire statement there to unpack even in why he
chose that desk, you know? So yeah, I kind of wonder where
where that kind of fits into the bigger picture of who he is.
Yeah. So, so we're talking about this,
this big picture about how his, his disciplines, his own
character formation prior to these unexpected constraints
prepared him for the unexpected constraints.
As we go on, I'll sort of just Telegraph this for you
listeners. I want to kind of progress
through how he responds to different phases of, of of the
constraints. So the first one is just the
initial one. And how is how does who he is,
how has that prepared him for this?
Next, I want us to get into how constraint can drive self
examination, how limits can help can force us to look at
ourselves in in ways that we might not have otherwise.
Third, I want to get into how constraints can drive
creativity. And 4th, how constraints can
clarify purpose because he goes through each of those phases.
So listeners, just just so you have a sense of where this is
going, I think what the the last couple things I've heard from
you are a good transition into and we can still talk about some
of the same topic. But getting into that second
one, how constraints can drive self examination.
Obviously when we're constrained by space, it doesn't always mean
solitude, right? It it does in his case, it could
mean the opposite. Winter, if you have kids, can
mean a lot of loud noise, but when limits do permit or even
require solitude, that solitude can force us to truly reckon
with ourselves. I am.
I would love to hear from you all what that what that looks
like. Either what you see in the story
or how we as as humans can allow the solitude to move our gaze
productively inward. Because obviously there's lots
of unhealthy ways we can get obsessed with ourselves.
But if we are, if we're forced by circumstances to kind of look
ourselves in the mirror, what does it look like to to do that?
Well, as far as responding to limits.
Yeah, I'm not even sure it's so much solitude, at least in this
book, because I can't really think of a whole lot of times
where he's really like by himself for very long before
he's either joined by someone or because, I mean, he really does
spend a lot of his time like focused on other people.
And I think, you know, the main thing is as he goes through,
like you said, great loss and great limitations.
And the the thing about it is like, it's almost like a triage
for him where he's able to cut out all of the, you know,
surface level stuff. And even, you know, he's forced
so hard that he has to even cut out all the mid level stuff.
And like Christine was saying, like, you know, he can take one
thing off his desk. And so I took the thing of his
sisters, right? And it's like that kind of
limitation and loss was able to give him focus on what actually
really, really, really mattered to him.
And, you know, he was able to form relationships with people
that probably would have just stayed at us as a surface level.
You know, his relationship with the cook and with the maitre-d'
at the restaurant and his relationship with the little
girl that he meets, you know, probably would have been very
kind of surface level relationships that he stated
account. But because he kind of lost
everything, he had to really, really focus on the things that
really mattered. And take them not only
relationships, but take all of life from that shallowness into
more depth. The image that's in my head a
lot right now is an illustration that Pascal, at least Pascal,
uses about being on board a ship to explain like the relative
external success that can kind of look well, well, when
everyone is at the same task on the boat busying themselves, the
boat is the ship is moving. And so he says, quote, when
everything is moving at the same place, nothing appears to be
moving. The one person who stops shows
up the haste of others, like a fixed point, the busying
activity of being on the same pace, being a count, doing the
things that counts do. We could say that when he gets
off that pace and he stops, there is opportunities that open
up for him to really start practicing what he preaches in a
lot of ways, right? If he's a gentleman, what does
it mean to be a gentleman? It might mean to show respect to
the person next to you, but what does it mean to really show
respect to the person next to you?
Especially if you are now not equal in status but now you're
serving them right? What does respect really look
like then? That's a second layer that goes
from the shallow public facing into like what's happening
inside of him in order to really show respect.
And I don't know if if I finally find found the loose ends of all
those strings and pulled them together.
But there is to me something about the count being a count
and caring about the values that he saw as noble and then
stopping the pace of what it means to be in the status of
count and yet still live them out.
And how that almost requires A deeper aspect of him in the
shallow public facing count. Yeah, yeah.
The, the it's, it's striking as as the count, as the story goes
on and the count interacts with different people.
I think this is more and more true as the story goes on
because he knows the, the the book follows a good chunk of his
life. And so he actually sees people
who come regularly to the hotel and he essentially watches them
grow up, watches them at different stages in their lives,
and it's striking. How the the?
Vast majority of interactions he has with people who are not the
hotel staff, people who are guests at the hotel, They're so
characterized by the way that the the current of the world is
kind of pulling them along, what they're thinking about, what
they're worrying about, where they're setting their
aspirations. So much of it is is driven by
these external Soviet Russia era developments.
And to the count those things. Yeah.
And to the reader, right, Because you're looking at it
from the Counts perspective. He, on the other hand, has this
posture of like, if the walls keep closing in and I keep
losing one thing after another that I think defines me, who am
I? And there are points in the
story where he struggles with that question, but overall he,
he, he hangs on to it from A at a very deep level because of
what you're talking about Sarah, because he's, he's kind of the
the still point who recognizes that no matter how small the
context might get, I still have the ability to be me.
I still have the ability to have a relationship with the people
around me and meaningful relationship.
I mean, and you Fast forward a few years, he's learned
needlework with Marina and he's learned, learned waitering and
hospitality with Andre and he's learned menu planning with Emil
the cook. And so in a weird way, yeah,
he's he's he's turned himself outward now in his quest for
self examination, essentially. Essentially he's learned to
discover himself by doing his duty.
I guess would be a way of framing it rather than by just
sort of navel gazing on the one hand or going with the current
of what's going on on the other. Yeah, I mean, I would say there
is something about and I don't know, I don't, I honestly don't
know how you get there. I mean, it might just be lots of
prayer and discipline and what not, but I think there's a point
and and I've definitely learned this the hard way in my own
life. But there's a point where you're
so tired of self pity and just hating your circumstances or
yourself for the things that you find you're in, find yourself
in. And there's a point where you
have to go out either into an outside world.
For me, it's literally stepping out into my backyard to look at
like life outside my, my 4 walls.
But anything in Count Rostov's case, it's, it's going to
people, right? Going to relationships, people.
He might not necessarily as count as a rich guy have truly
encountered to know the life of a seamstress, to know the life
of a cook, to know the life of a server.
And and there's something about allowing the things outside
ourselves, I think to fully enchant us.
And I think enchantment is kind of where a lot of this fullness
and living into ourselves comes from.
And I think we do have to let those small things.
Take hold of us. By emptying ourselves first,
there is a point where we have to sort of step outside
ourselves to let other things enchant us.
It's the looking at different things that the people around
us. Count Rostov, in his case, it
would be, you know, learning needlework, the life of a of a
seamstress. It's learning the life of a
server or the cook. And if he had been that rich,
you know, man, he probably would not have felt so deep into their
lives. And and I know that's something
that that's hard for a lot of us when we're.
Just so consumed. With ourselves.
And I think there's something about emptying ourselves and
letting enchantment fill us. And that's where we find our
true contentment. That's where we find the
pleasance of life. And so sometimes I think that
that contentment and gratitude even, you know, feeling full of
pleasure, right, as the etymology would suggest or
suggest, comes from a quietude, right?
It comes from a letting oneself be approached by the things of
this world or the beauties of this world that we wouldn't
necessarily open ourselves to. Yeah.
Well, that's, that's kind of bumping up against our Third
Point about the, the relationship between limits and
creativity. And then I suspect all of you
have thoughts on this one. But I think about there's a,
there's a point in the book where he's, he's befriended this
little girl and, and she has essentially a skeleton key to
the whole hotel. And the result of that before
getting the key, like he, he thought he knew the hotel.
He'd literally had lived there for years.
But all of a sudden when he has this key, he, he just, he
explores the underbelly of it all the back rooms and all the
secret passageways and the, the physical boundaries of the hotel
actually drive him into this place of creativity and
exploration sort of inward and downward rather than outward.
So rather than getting broader, he's getting deeper.
He has to work within these walls, but he discovers that
within the walls is much bigger than he thought he was.
What else have you guys noticed from the story or or elsewhere
about the relationship between limits and creativity?
To to tie what you just said, Brian, also to what I was
thinking about with where Christina took us, there's
something to me coming together here with the concept of
excellence. I see the count as being someone
who strives for excellence in all these things, But something
that that the whole building seems to be a maybe a symbol for
in that is that he puts his love of excellence into the things
that are inward or downward, as opposed to kind of the status of
authority or of, yeah, identity in the world.
He goes to the lower things, the humble things and the inward
workings of the the hotel that that isn't for the posh almost
right. And it's in those constraints
that I feel like the things that make him who he is, the, the,
the kind of character he came into the situation with like
flourish, right? It's like the humble work of the
service in excellence that allows, like you were saying,
Christina, allows for us to be filled with the beauty around us
and things of that nature. So I don't know your house.
I'm calling it a house. Your comments, Brian, about the
hotel kind of grounded that for me in a way that is abstract,
but that's a very concrete example of like inward and
downward. Yeah, I mean elephant in the
room. I, I, I when Christina and I
tried to go on a a vacation in 2021 in Europe and I tested
positive for COVID right after we landed.
And so our, our wonderful like 10th anniversary vacation turned
into 10 days mandatory quarantine by myself in a hotel
room that was like fairly better than prison, both in terms of
the food that was delivered and in terms of the actual amenities
of, of the box. It was bad, y'all, It was really
bad. And they put her in a separate
room, but she hadn't tested positive.
So she could at least kind of venture out, but we were
completely separated. 12 days. And I first of all, I did not
handle the initial shock at nearly as well as the count
handled his initial shock. But this story was really
inspiring to me in in that experience because Kyle Rostov
had been through essentially the same thing, only much worse for
much longer. And I was able to think about
how did he handle this? So like, one of my first
reactions was to kind of turn to the disciplines that I had
learned and in some cases sort of put them on on steroids.
How can I order my day in a way that is meaningful?
So I actually set limits on screen time and stuff like that.
How can I what, what books can I read?
Thankfully, I still had a Kindle at very slow but functional
Internet access. And what does this look like in
terms of staying in shape? And what does this look like in
terms of daily prayer? And it wasn't me trying to be
holy. That was me trying to reckon
with my circumstances. But but like the next place that
I turned was this direction of of.
Creativity. So there were books I was
reading I wasn't wouldn't have read otherwise.
They were sort of writing, doing things I wouldn't have done
otherwise, and I kept coming back.
You wouldn't otherwise have played lots of online Scrabble
with your wife. That's also true.
See Social reaching out to the people around you.
Probably one of your most memorable vacations and you
know, great story to tell too. Yeah.
But I mean it, it it's my story
was one thing that Count Ralston has that I didn't have other
than, yeah, digital interaction with Christina.
There's a great Wendell Berry quote that's he says our human
and earthly limits, properly understood, are not confinements
but rather inducements to fullness of relationship and
meaning. Creativity springs from limits
and, and I love that Ralston has that instinct, as we've noted he
does. He has conducted himself even as
an aristocrat in a way that has built relationships with these
people who on paper were his underlings.
And the result of his limitations is he just pours
himself into those relationships.
And the meaning in each relationship that was goes
deeper and deeper as do the skills that he develops along
the way. What are the other thoughts do
you guys have related to this creativity topic?
Well, I mean, so I've, I think you can really see this a lot if
you study any kind of filmmaking, because time and
time and time again, you'll hear directors and writers and film
makers basically say, you know, it was actually so much easier
to make something when I had a lower budget, you know, or when
I had, you know, no actor. And so I had to like, you know,
come up with something on the fly.
And I think that, you know, when you're when you're creating
something, you want to create something new, right?
But human nature is like water, right?
It just goes the path of least resistance.
It's always going to just flow down the path of least
resistance like everything else, right?
And then when something blocks you, that's when you drift off
and cut new interesting paths. And I think any time that you're
trying to make something. You know, all of the limitations
and problems that you have are actually gifts.
They're gifts to get you to somewhere that's new and
interesting. It's also just very human.
We, we're not Count Rostov, but we all do have a life that is
confined to particularity. I do not live Brian's life and
Brian doesn't live mine, nor does Jeremiah, right.
And you guys have different families with different needs as
Dubai or someone who's single and the freedoms they have or
the limitations they have. I mean, if we think about the
the story, the the creation story in Genesis, God makes
everything and it's expansive and abundant.
And yet he gives us a little garden.
And I, I put the word little on it, but it's definitely not the
whole world, right? It's manageable and it's
something to begin with. And I think that if we all see
our lives as the garden God's given us and as the count sees
his little space as what has given to him, like you're
saying, Jeremiah, we stop thinking that we have these
endless possibilities with a big budget as a filmmaker.
And we just start working within the confines and seeing those as
opportunities because they're intentionally given to us by
God. Maybe because what others
intended for evil he will use for good, but they are still
given to us by God. You've got to the cutting out
all of the excess in your life is a painful thing because we
we, you know, love all of these things.
And you know, if you think about the count, like everything that
he lost, all of his wealth, his status, his, you know,
traveling, adventurous family, everything like that.
I mean, he lost some real things.
And, you know, a lot of times it is those things that, you know,
I, I guess it's just, it's never easy to get down to the nitty
gritty. We're all kind of like hoarders,
right? Where we've got, you know,
million things and we're like, Oh yeah, we got AI got to get
rid of all this stuff. I'm going to take this one thing
out. And then, you know, everything
should be better when you've got like just rooms full of all the
excess stuff that we collect. And so, you know, those those
times of loss and limitations are always really difficult
because all the stuff that we're losing are things that we we
love or like. But that's the only way to
really get down to what really matters.
You know, the famous was Hemingway quote writers like,
you know, you've got to Kill Your Darlings.
You got to cut your story in places that really hurt.
And that's the only way you're going to get down to actually
the really good part of the book, because you just collect
so many things that that you want.
I don't know. I really, I, I, I love that and
thinking of it in terms of the kenosis, right, the self
emptying. And I think there's actually a
couple quotes from, from church fathers and the Maximus the
confessor had a great point. He said that aesthetic
restraint, or I'm sorry, aesthetic constraints, kind of
like thinking of Count Rostov, right?
Going from that beautiful, beautiful room and salon and
dining room and bedroom to this tiny little room in the attic,
right? And getting rid of all the stuff
that he had to anyway. Aesthetic constraints clear away
attachments that clouds us up. He says.
They don't create virtue, but they reveal God's natural
goodness already present. And then John of the Cross, I
love his famous maxim here. He says to reach satisfaction in
all desire, its possession in nothing, to come to the
knowledge of all desire the knowledge of nothing, to come to
possess all desire, the possession of nothing, to arrive
at being all desire to be nothing.
Yeah, there's that consistent pattern in in the the ancient
writings of we had a good conversation about this actually
in the the Christian Imagination class that I'm teaching.
Several people were asking about this, why were some of the the
Mystics so extreme in their asceticism?
And we had a conversation about some of this, their specific
circumstances. But one of the things that's
that's pretty consistent in the actual teaching from those
people is not that I think it was Bonaventure who said that.
Like it's not an end in itself. Poverty, this limits of means
and space and whatever it is are not an end in itself.
But there, there are really good means of ensuring 2 essential
Christian virtues, the fundamental humility that every
Christian should have before God and the charity that is the
Christian life. Or this isn't an ancient quote,
but I think, I think I wrote this one down.
Yeah, Simone Weil, she said. I love this quote.
Grace fills empty spaces, but it can only enter where there is a
void to receive it. And it is grace he knows.
Which makes this void. That sounds like what Flannery
O'Connor must have tried to write in all of her short
stories over and over and over again.
And that void and cutting, that cutting into that space and
making room can be really painful.
And I think you mentioned this already in the beginning, Brian,
very early. Like we, we give lip service to
this concept, but when it happens inside of us, it's
painful. And Jeremiah, you just said like
for good reason, it is painful. You know, there's something
truly good that might be lost. And yet I'm, I'm kind of pulling
all this together for myself, Christina, The concept of
letting beauty fill that. And that's grace, you know,
that's, that's really, really comforting to me as someone who
grieves first and then can stay there.
It's kind of, I think extra interesting just in our current
kind of American culture too, because we really do have like
a, you know, lives of excess in a lot of ways, whether it's, you
know, our material possessions or just, even, you know, there's
a million things trying to get every second of our attention
and time with entertainment and activities and, and things like
that. And it's just, it's interesting
to see kind of the cultural backlash to that too.
And like what people are trying to do to to figure it out.
It's funny, as you were talking, I was like the real Christian
theological thing I'm thinking of is the movie Fight Club from
the 90s where the guy is like, you know, it starts out with him
just saying how much he just loves his apartment and all the
things he buys it and then he blows it up, you know, and it's
like pretending to be really sad.
But it's really because like, you know, as in her conscience
is like, you know, you, you work a job you hate to buy things you
don't need to impress people that you can't even respect.
And, you know, it's like you're just, I think we do feel like
we're trapped by everything, by the lives that we built around
ourselves and the only thing that's going to save us, as if
it all just completely explodes. And maybe that's why stories
like this resonate with us because, you know, in some way
we're like, man, you know, I wish I could get out of this.
And it's hard, You know, people that are hoarders, they need
someone else to come in and like tear everything out to let them
start fresh because it's really hard to do on your own.
If if we go to the fourth point though, about clarifying
purpose, the one thing that I do want to note too though, and
this was a conviction that I had this past weekend in terms of
what was happening in my life. And then I'll also, as I was
reflecting on these notes, I am the wife of someone in the Navy.
And so someone else very external from us, well,
sometimes on a whim, decide where we're going to be.
And, you know, there's a sort of ease to having really, really
intense constraints that are always new.
And there's a freedom there that I think goes well with the kind
of cultural mill you have grown up in.
What I realized is scary to me is being someone who lived in
the same town with the same people and I'm constrained by
the needs of my family, immediate or but I think it's
the commonplace and the mundane. Brian, you quoted where
Dostoevsky says the poor envy and and I think there's a
poorness in monotony, like we can be poor of new experiences
and the envious of something new.
So we might be sitting around feeling like, OK, Jeremiah, but
I don't have that much excess. I actually am very sad with how
little I have and how there's not opportunity coming my way.
And I think there's a difference between, like, the cutting of
things that are filling up our spaces, metaphorically or
figuratively. But then there's also the
reckoning of what do we do in what feels a little bit more
empty than it perhaps should be. So I don't know if I'm just
trying to get in another angle of something we've already said,
so I'm repeating it. But it did feel important to say
that like it's not just cutting off of the excess of, but it's
noticing the gaps and it's noticing the losses that are
present and asking God, what do you want with these spaces and
how can they be opportunities for you to work in my life?
Yeah. Oh yeah.
I mean, definitely loss isn't the the end all of it.
In fact, you know, to bring us back to Fight Club, you know, it
didn't end well for this guy. You know, he got rid of all the
excess junk in his life and then was left with, you know,
violence and depravity and and you know, it was not not good,
right, But you look at like the and I I think almost he maybe he
had more of an envious response, whereas, you know, all
throughout the book, I can't think of a single time that
count. I'll stop envied anyone.
And again, it was that exact opposite.
It was that that warmth. It was that he he was delighted
to consider other people. One of my favorite scenes in the
book just real quick is like, you know, he's at a dinner by
himself alone and there's a couple that's sitting next to
him. There's like a young man who's
trying to kind of impress his date, right.
And you know, I mean, if it was me, I'd probably be there like
I'm alone. I'm never going to find love.
I'm stuck in this hotel. But instead he's going, Oh man,
I bet he's having trouble figuring out the perfect wine
pairing. And I happen to know the perfect
wine pairing. And he's like rooting for him
the whole time. He's just like focused on
wanting this, this young man to succeed and then ends up
intervening and and, you know, basically like, you know, I can
save this whole date for this guy, you know, by sharing my
expertise with him and, and stepping in.
And it just, I think it really speaks to that, you know, even
though he's sitting there alone for the 900th time in the row,
eating the same thing at the same table, you know, he was
again focused on somebody else and and how he could bring
something delightful into their lives.
You know, this, this love that he had for fine wine.
It's perfect pairing. And, you know, it's not the most
expensive, but it's going to fit because of this.
And it's going to help your conversation, you know, this
type of thing. It's that.
Yeah. I mean, he had, he had a
delighted consideration of other people and that was the whole
difference. You know, that's why he was able
to lose everything and instead gain so much more.
I love that it's funny because it it actually reminds me of a
sort of a dual Bible quote here that they almost seem to
contradict each other, but not especially in context of that
story. Jeremiah And you know, it's,
it's when Jesus says it's, you know, it's harder for a rich man
to get into heaven than it is for a camel to go through the
eye of a needle. But he also says, you know what?
Father does not desire to give good gifts to his children.
And so there's this beautiful contrast of, yes, I do want to
give you good things. And you are supposed to want
them and desire them and love them.
You know, and, and you see here the count who has had this love
and you know, of fine wines still enjoys it.
He's he, but he's able to give it to someone else in this way
that he might not necessarily have have done before.
And so there is this. He does enjoy this good gift and
he has it, but he also is ready to give it away.
Partly because you know of, of his, his lack of, you know,
things. Yeah, yeah.
And, and, and I think this orientation that he has one of
my favorite sort of narrative turns in the book.
Every chapter in this book is just delightful by itself.
The prose is beautiful. There are so many great little
observations about human nature along the way.
First time I read this book, I read it really slowly because
sometimes I would read not even a chapter, I'd read like 2
pages. And those 2 pages were just so
full of beauty and richness that I would just close the book and
think about them for. A while I remember that and.
I would just pick up, pick it up again and repeat the So it took
me a while to get through it. But he has this, this, this
warmth toward others. But it's not it's not
obligation. I mean, it might be in a, in a
sort of an existential sense, but it's sort of like, like the
to like the couple on the day. That's kind of his choice,
right? He didn't have to intervene.
But as the book goes on, he starts to run into these
situations where unexpectedly, for someone who has no family
and is under house arrest the rest of his life, he starts to
encounter obligation. He learned some of these skills
with the hotel staff. And next thing you know, he's
actually helping run the hotel with staff.
He's responsible for the the tables all being perfect.
Before the guests come in for dinner.
There's a key moment in the book where something terrible's about
to happen. And what?
And the the thing that saves the whole situation is a total
stranger asks him to care for some honey bees.
And then the the last portion of the book, which I won't spoil,
is he's actually asked to care for another person, another
human soul who has to rely on him totally.
And there's a great quote about that where he says that he's
talking about parents in general and he's not a parent.
But he says in the end, a parent's responsibility could
not be more simple to bring its child safely into adulthood so
that she could have a chance to experience a life of purpose
and, God willing, contentment. If that's what, if that's what
parenting is, He has this opportunity and obligation, as
it turns out, to basically to pass on what he has learned to
someone else. And that ends up being the hinge
point that changes the whole story.
All right, we are wrapping up for the day because we can talk
about this book for hours and we're not going to.
But any parting, the thoughts on anything we've talked about
haven't talked about or the book itself that you want to leave
our listeners with? What you were saying, you know,
as far as parenting, I think at least for me in my life, this
was probably where I learned this lesson the most, just
because when I had kids, it, it was very difficult and there was
a lot of extenuating circumstances.
And, you know, I, I, I felt in that moment when I started
having children that I lost everything.
All the things that I really enjoyed about my life.
I lost, you know, whether it was with the way that I had a
relationship with my wife, all my different hobbies and
interests and dreams and passions and things I was going
to go do, you know, it just basically all got completely
derailed. And, you know, it was, I felt
kind of like the count where I was like trapped in this thing.
And, you know, it wasn't until years later that, you know, I
was able to then have the perspective and see like how
much, you know, I had gained that I could never think of.
And you know, that that transitional process where you
kind of lose all of your sort of favorite things to find newer,
greater, richer things. As you know, it's like kind of a
part of growing up and becoming a, a mature person.
And it's funny, I always tell any of my friends that have kids
this because I was like kind of the first of my friend group to
ever have children and stuff. And so I would basically like
tell my friends that, look, you know, everyone says having
children is like the best thing that will ever happen to you,
but they don't tell you is that having children is also the
worst thing that will ever happen to you.
You know, it costs you everything.
Your whole life is going to change.
You know, it's like buckle up, buddy type of thing.
Then once you have like the kind of longer experience, you know,
then you're able to see, you know, like, you know, every
parent for the most part, you know, says I would wouldn't
change having children for the world, you know, because we're
able to see that that great thing.
And I think it is because only because it costs us so much to
have children. And in the book, again, spoilers
and such, but, you know, he kind of goes through that same thing.
And there's that moment in the book when he's like, faced with
a choice of what he's going to do, where he's like, ah, man, I
can't sit in my favorite chair. And I like, you know, all of the
little pleasures that he had kind of regained in his hotel,
like he had to lose them all again, you know.
But then again, 10 years after that, you know, he looks back at
it going, man, this is so much better than I ever thought it
could be. Yeah, it's a beautiful picture
of self sacrifice for something else better.
Yeah. Yeah, parenting is such a great
way to practice self sacrifice, to be forced into it, you know?
Well, reading for this episode was so rich for for all of us,
but both the book itself and some of the theological writings
that we encountered around it. So I think it's appropriate to
leave with a a couple of good quotations.
Not from the book. That just didn't work into the
conversation yet, but I think they put a nice bow on this
conversation. The book is not told from an
explicitly Christian perspective, but we're
approaching it from that perspective for for obvious
reasons. So we're I think we're putting
11 little extra layer of spiritual meaning to some of
this. And so, all right, quote number
one, this is Francois Fennelon at a Roman Catholic French
Archbishop and poet from the 17th century.
He said it is when God appears to have abandoned us that we
must abandoned ourselves, most holy to God.
I need to write that one down somewhere because I keep
thinking of it in important moments and not being able to
quite remember it just right. But it's so Dang.
And I'll let Julian of Norwich. It's been about a year since we
did our episode on Julian of Norwich.
So it's appropriate, I think, to give her the last word.
She said, he said not thou shalt not be tempested.
Thou shalt not be travailed. Thou shalt not be diseased.
But he said thou shalt not be overcome.
Thanks for joining me, guys. Thanks for listening friends and
we will see you next time. The Imagination Redeemed podcast
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