This is Jonathan Peshel. Welcome to the Symbolic World. Hello everyone. I'm
happy to be back here with Timothy Petitsa. Many of you have seen him
on my channel once before, but most of you know him, uh,
you know, as a as an author and the Ethics of Beauty, especially
because it's a book that many people that have come to the Symbolic world and
many people even that are coming to Orthodoxy today are reading as part of their
path on the way to that to that world, and it offers such a
powerful vision, you know, of human engagement and what beauty can do for
us. And so, you know, Timothy started a new film company that
I just saw the first movie on on st Amphilochios of pat most wonderful film,
and so I thought it'd be a great opportunity to maybe talk a bit
about that, but then obviously continue to talk about beauty and it's important for
the for the meaning crisis. So Timothy, thanks for showing up. Thank
you, Jonathan. It's it's great to be here. And so, you
know, how do you go from you know, professor teacher at a at
a colled Deen at some point of the Hellenic College and now starting a film
company. What what was the impetus for this? Yeah, that's a good
question. I mean, I I like cinema. I certainly like I think
of film as you know, I think of it as well. I think
a lot about you know, how information has been recorded and transmitted over you
know, human the span of human existence, and this idea that you know,
long before there was writing, there were people sitting around campfires telling in
our fires at night, you know, telling stories, and it's so primordial
and it seems like such a good way to transmit information from generation to generation.
And and to me, the film on the big screen, it is
the story is in the fire. You know, you're in this, You're
in this, you're in the dark. The campfire or the fire is the
screen. That's the light, and the story is there too, And I
think that's just so powerful and such a beautiful experience. And any anything that
can be told in that way I think is worth trying to tell. Of
course, you know, followers of Plato will say, you know, we're
looking at the shadows on the on the wall of the cave, and that
it's it's really the worst way to tell information. But I think it's Christians
we don't. We don't also believe that we think Christ actually fills the cave
up. And so the idea that that Christ fills up the world with his
glory and all things are it's a different vision than from what Plato presented.
You know. It's like the images on the wall the cave and the Christian
vision have a reason for being there, and in some ways they're the ones
that would lead you up out of the cave if you were able to see
them as an anagogical ladder. And so I think that it's a it's I
think that's a more consistent vision with how reality functions than the simple than the
one Plato presents as just the as the illusions and then someone pulling you out
of the illusions into this this pure light. Did I did? I?
That's that's so well said. Did I ever tell you the story of meeting
the Patriarch of Antioch? No, it was it was it was a not
the current patriarch, but the previous one. I don't remember his name.
Maybe it was ignacious, But I was at a conference, a bioethics conference
in two thousand and eight in Bala Monde, and someone said the patriarch wants
to meet you a hundred people at this conference, Like, what's that about?
And we were summoned to a room and we waited. It was like,
you know, one of these sort of appointed rooms, and his beatitude
came in and we stood up and took his blessing. There was another guy
from Greece and the patriarchs sat down and he said, and he had this
very classic voice, as patriarchs tend to, and his was kind of like
a little like rough sandpaper type of voice, and I want to try to
impersonate it, but he said, the trouble with you Greeks is that you
are all dualists. And while while we were, you know, reeling from
that opening statement, the opening statement, Yeah you asked me to come here,
I'm reminded you invited me. You know, I'm just saying, and
his next statement was, even a rock has a soul, And that was
it. That was the whole meeting. That was the meeting. And and
of course you know I had it done Old Testament here at seminary, so
I knew that the Semitic view, you don't say I have a body,
you know, you speak much more in terms of I am a body I
am this unity, or at least my task is to make that integration even
more so. And but certainly people think of Plato, as you know,
as having introduced a kind of dualism into the West, although although left Cheestov
thought, you know, it just depend which depended which dialogue you were reading,
you know, whether whether Plato was the problem, you know, but
anyway, Platini's was good. Yeah, well Platina I definitely Platonis is I
mean, and there's such a connection between Christian and Platonis that you do find
some vision, a non dual vision that takes you out of this problem.
So tell us now why you started, why you started this film company,
because we haven't answered that question yet. I just saw the movie. I
just saw it last week. I was in bc at doing a parish retreat
and the and someone said the movie and for Enfilochio's Saint of pat Moses playing,
and so there you were. I could see you, and you were
part of you actually in the movie. I didn't know you were going to
be in the movie as well. Uh. And one of the things about
it that really astounded me was, you know, it was obviously the life
of the Saint the powerful testimony, but also not shying away from some stories
that were really out there, like that were really the story the old lady
saying how in the same when he was a baby would not suckle, you
know, on fasting days like that kind of really legendary type of way of
speaking about saints. It surprised me, and in some ways I thought,
like, of course him, he's gonna was not going to shy away from
those types of stories. But I thought it was wonderful. Yeah, So
what did you think of the film as a film though? Overall? I
mean, it's it's it's yeah, I won't, I won't. Is it
well done? I enjoyed it? Of course I enjoyed it, you know.
I mean it's it's a documentary, and it has all the tropes of
the documentary, you know, painting visions of the of the areas with voiceover.
You know. I thought it was very is very it was very well
done. It did what it had to, you know. And I'm also
I'm not curious to know why you chose that subject to as well, So
maybe you can tell us a bit about, you know, the birth of
this project. So one of my closest friends is Tamaida Hudanish, and she
was the director of Missions and Evangelism for the San Francisco Metropolis, So she
was on the West coast. I was here on the East coast, and
we would work together professionally or run into each other when she was in Boston
doing stuff. And we both had wanted to do something in film or television
that would help people experience pilgrimage. So I think both of us felt like
pilgrimage is just such a central aspect of renewal and of joy in Orthodox life
and in Christian life. And we've gone on to lots of pilgrimages, and
many times when we've been cool places, we've thought, if only I had
a good camera right here, I could just say something, even if it's
you know, thirty seconds or a minute. And so we were we were
looking in you know, in those terms. So we founded Beauty First Films,
and people want to know the film is called Amphilochios Saints of Potmos,
and he reposed in nineteen seventy. But we were looking for projects of what
to do and that would I mean for me as an educator, it's just
it's just a different way to educate. I don't mean that a film should
be didactic. I mean that, you know, because obviously, as a
beauty first person, I don't think you know, I don't think education is
you know, involves the whole soul and everything. But but we realized that
the first first ever feast day of this saint, Saint Amphilochio so Popmost,
was coming up in April of twenty nineteen, and we realized that it would
be like a very a very defined window that to tell the story of his
life in the words of people who knew him or were big devotees and happened
to come to the first feast day on the island of Popmost. I mean,
the story sort of already writes itself, right, And it's not like
a six month production or three year production. It's just four to five days
of interviewing everyone you can. So we knew it was a kind of a
manageable, bite sized chunk, and that was, you know, one reason
why we went with it. And then of course we love the saint.
Yeah, and so is your plan to do documentaries mostly? Are you also
would like to do some fiction? I well, we this was twenty nineteen,
so we went from we went from Popmost you know, through Athens straight
to Tel Aviv and we filmed all of Orthodox Holy Week that year of twenty
nineteen, which you know, may have been a kind of special moment in
time, the end of an era, you know, as it turned out.
So that is now in post production, So that'll be our next film
and we'll just we'll just take it from there. I mean, we would
certainly like to find, you know, more financial support that could get one
of us, not me, doing this full time, because I think we
can do a lot more. And I don't know if you've seen our Beauty
first films, liturgical seasons, calendar, so we've got creative ideas and tom
Aida has a beautiful eye, so she knows how to make things. Yeah,
you know, it's just you know, I mean, I think it's
a great it's a great project. It's a great idea. You know.
What what do you see because of course, you you know, you wrote
the Ethics of Beauty and sow you're involved in make beautiful things. What do
you see the role of beauty playing in the meaning crisis in general? Because
you know, we both are probably in a similar position in the words for
people that are coming at it and are learning about Orthodoxy. It seems like
beauty is also part of how they find a kind of solution to the meaning
crisis, which what would have seemed surprising to someone even fifty years ago it'd
say that one of the solutions denihilism is beauty. But if you want to
tell us a bit about how you see that functioning, I mean, there's
so many levels in whish to answer that, and I you know, there's
more philosophical, more theological. I mean, I'm just starting with basic biology,
which is that you know, most living things out there are are do
not have a cerebral cortex, and yet they're making decisions just fine, and
they're surviving and they're propagating, and they are they are able to discern in
the structure of the world, you know, to the extent they need to
and to respond appropriately. And so you know, how are they doing this.
They're doing this through sensation. And if you go down to you know,
the most basic cellular level, it's somehow at the level of chemistry that
you know, things are you know, the paramesium, the bacterial is out
there sensing and reacting. So to imagine that human beings, you know,
unless you are are an exceptional theist, I mean not even a theist,
but a gnostic. Then then to imagine that human beings can divorce feeling from
knowing, or divorce knowing from feeling and sensing is really ridiculous. I mean,
it's just nuts. Everything is out there making decision and flourishing without the
brain. I mean, just some things have brains. And then that's another
story, you know. And so why do you formulate it as beauty?
Because if you know, the way that I would formulate it originally is I
would I would talk about goodness, you know, in the in the way
that Dante talks about goodness, or in the idea of that which is desirable,
maybe even just that, like the idea of moving towards that which is
desirable, you know. And so why is it that you feel the need
to formulate it as beauty? Well, didn't Aristotle say that the beautiful is
the radiance of the good or something? So, so to survive we need
we need to remember again, you know, how to how to think visually,
how to think in terms of holes. We're we're trying to design a
new major right now at the college, and I can't say what it is.
But the thing that convinces me that it's worth doing is the beauty of
it. And and then the question, you know, has arisen, well,
is that a sufficient grounds It isn't maybe, but maybe it is,
because a feeling for beauty or for harmony is you know, it's it's the
fastest way often to discern the health of a situation, and the health,
you know, as a cipher for that underlying, underlying, you know,
good functioning. So we were not computers. We are you know, we're
we're biological beings and we're you know, we're just that's we have that capacity
and we don't have the possibility of thought without that capacity. Yeah, and
there's so yeah, I think that's right. And but there's a there's an
intuitive aspect to the way you're presenting it, which is that, you know,
our capacity to perceive health is it good? It's a it's a good
way to talk about beauty in a way that that might stretch people. You
know, when I look at someone, I perceive health very much so because
I'm so, I'm my whole being is there to detect that, to know
even in terms of like infection, even something like that or to understand in
the situation that I'm dealing with. And a lot of our markers for physical
beauty are really just health markers and and symmetry markers, you know, to
to to be able to tell, you know, how how aligned someone is
towards reality, and so we can then we can then uh understand that humans
have that capacity in general, not just towards people, but also towards situations.
You know, when you you enter a room and there's disorder, you
know, you know, if people are moving in ways that is not normal,
like you know, the thay you walked into a room where people have
just had a fight, and you will be able to detect that intuitively without
thinking yet, because there'll be things will be laid out in a manner,
and the movements of the people will be happening in a in a in a
disorderly way, and you'll catch that really fat even with before you're thinking.
And so, you know, I think that's an interesting way of talking about
a very very immediate manner in which beauty matters. There's so many aspects of
this, and one of them is, you know, I think you know,
the pivotal chapter for the twenty first century is chapter twenty two of the
Death and Life of Great American Cities, by Jane Jacob's mind friend and mentor,
and that's the chapter where she presents Warren Weaver's summation of the past three
hundred and sixty years of science, you know, science since we've had the
scientific method, and he says, although science is vast and does a lot
of things, in fact, there are three kinds of problems that we know
how to solve. Three three you know, as as a genus of problem,
there's only three, and and one of them is the problem in organized
complexity. And what Jane Jacobs does you know the problem with It's a living
system. It's an organism, and society is like that. The economies are
that, cities are that, families are that, institutions are that. You
know, companies are that. And and when you are in that realm,
Jane Jacobs gives you here are the tactics for Here are the tactics for understanding
those kind of systems. And in chapter eight of my book, I lay
this out, and I add several tactics of my own that are implied in
her work or that I've so but an eye for beauty train training and beauty
or training in grammar, because you know, for me, beauty, goodness,
truth is the trivium of grammar, logic, rhetoric. But training and
pattern is the best training for understanding living systems or just systems. And you'll
a person training they know in a flash, m all the all the and
and Jane James specifically says, this all the statistics that you can compile about
and in this case it was Boston's North End. Just you know, they
don't tell you the full story, but to go there and observe unaverage clues.
Now you said, well, we're better look for different statistics. Yeah,
yeah, I mean that's and I think the city example is a great
example in the sense that you know, and I mean everybody's had these experiences
like you're walking in a city that you don't know, all of a sudden,
you take a turn, and then all of a sudden you realize that
you've taken the wrong turn, and that now you know that you're not in
a place you probably should be, or that you're in a place where all
of a sudden the risk has gone up, you know, substantially, And
you can tell that even if there's no people there, Like, even if
there aren't people there that are suspicious or whatever, you can tell by by
by a myriad of signs that are that are coming together in a pattern.
You know, that is saying that to you, you know, and that
I think is a great example to understand and you can understand how sometimes you
know, the cliche of fixing a city by saying we don't want broken windows,
right, that kind of cliche where it's to say that if you actually
transform the pattern of the city itself, you can't even transform the culture that
people live in. Because if I if I'm walking through a dumb I know
that I can just toss something on the ground and it doesn't matter even if
you might even not do that. But if I'm walking through a place that
is cared for, in pristine and is full of care and attention, then
even and my worst, my worst habits might be rained in by the space
in which I'm in. I mean, that's a powerful testimony to beauty right
there. So so yeah, I think training in the liberal arts or the
fine arts, you know, is is vital for people to acquire wisdom or
to lead a big picture level, like you shouldn't trust leaders who don't have
a good aesthetic sensibility. And anyone, anyone could see that our approach to
farming this like highly centralized government subsidized the car gills and all this, and
the you know, the the erasure of the family farm and of rural culture,
and the chemicals and you know, of different kinds the fertilizers and the
pesticides and all this that compared to regenerative agriculture. Anyone with a with a
liberal arts degree will know one is sick and one is healthy. But people
with trained in the other kinds of science, reductive or statistical, will not
see that, and they will push us to the point of collapse. And
that brings us, eventually now or later to Ian McGilchrist, the Master and
his Emissary, because what he's doing in that book is saying, you know,
is basically saying that the brain hemispheres really are meant to unfold in a
beauty, goodness, truth sequence, and that we've lost that, We've lost
the right hemisphere, we've lost the feeling for holes, and we are reflexibly
repeating things you know that are good, that are driving us to exhaustion and
destruction. And so I mean It's interesting because I imagine when you wrote The
Ethics of Beauty, weren't aware of I mcgil Chris. So what as his
work? How does it transform your vision or how's it affected the way you
understand beauty. I think it just made me want to kind of just just
collapse, exhausted, like we don't need my book. We've got that,
Oh my goodness. I know. I think you know he he ought to
read the Ethics of Beauty and I ought to finish the master in his necessary
and then he's got this other one that's called The Matter with Things. Oh
my goodness, that book. It's it's like if I mcgrucus you've ever seen
this, that book. You're not allowed to write books like that anymore.
We're not in the seventeenth century. It's like, this is this is an
attack on us, this book. And so you know, I know people
that have bought it and they keep it on their table as as like daunting,
as a daunting thing. I'm not even there yet. One day I
will buy it, but then you'll stay on my table for like a year
before I even touch it. But I mean, you know, the thing,
the thing there with just what he shows you is that essentially you're meant
that the two atmospheres do everything together. But the quality of the kind of
attention that the right hemisphere, for right handed people, the right hemisphere brings
is it's concerned with holes and then the left hemisphere is concerned with parts and
the way thinking ought to proceed, he says, is this a sense of
context, handing off to the left brain for analysis, handing back to the
right brain for reintegration. So that's exactly what I lay out. I mean,
the Ethics of Beauty is you know, it's a book about cognition,
is a book about many things, but it's a you know, the structure
of what it means to know and as a human being, not as a
computer. So it's the same exact parallel. So so Noah, what does
that really add? I think just confirmation. For me, it's confirmation.
And then he has, you know, kind of a theory of history of
you know that civilizations start out with a balance between the hemispheres, and then
as they as they as they succeed, they get greedy, and as they
get greedy and gluttonous, they start to rely more and more on the left
hemisphere. They just want to they want more, and and then this coincides
with a decline and intelligence, like real intelligence, that global intelligence, and
so they exhaust themselves. They just drive themselves to destruction. Yeah, and
so how do you see that in like a you know, this is it
to me? Is it? There is a challenge. Let's say, I
would say to us leaving as an Orthodox Christian because you know, we have
at this point. It wasn't the case forever, but at this point we
have something that we could call a liturgical algorithm. Like we have a program.
We've got it all, We've got all the books and we've got it.
We've got all the all the canons and all the matins, and you
know, it's all there, and you could run it like you'd probably run
it, you know, on a computer. You could have a computer running
the services and the would just be all timely and you would have all the
right canons and the right the right different the different hymns that at the right
time and everything, you know. And I'm being I love Orthodoxy, I'm
Orthodox, I became Orthodox, and so I'm being playing devil's advocate here.
But you know, there it seems like from the outside there is an argument
to be made. That there's a danger of that fixity in the liturgical practice,
which is that you know, take the book out, read the book.
This is how it goes. To just follow the rubrics, you know,
that's how it works. Uh, And that that we've lost the flexibility,
you know that because we know the early liturgies had more improvisation in them
in the sense that then we knew the sections, but that there was probably
variation in different places in some aspects, although the liturgy was universal. I
don't know if you've thought about that in terms of like the use of written
prayer and all that. If it is an example of the danger of of
fix it right and of following the rules and the rubrics. I didn't know
I was going to go here, by the way, this is just just
came to me. No. I've been thinking about this because it seems to
me that to balance these two modes of awareness, this right hemisphere, left
hemisphere, or the you know, this wholeism and a more analysis, it's
helpful to have. You need some kind of a ritual that will help you.
The purpose of ritual and of liturgy is, you know, to bring
chaos into order. Right. It just it eats chaos, and it puts
out order on the other side. And but not just any order, it
produces cosmos. I think, you know, the liturgy is not enough.
You have people formed by the liturgy. You need liturgy at fractal scale.
You need people who are internally liturgical, who are deeply prayerful and deeply repentant,
and whose consciousness has been transformed. So the point of what McGilchrist is
worried is that the left hemisphere deals with a representation of reality, not reality
itself. And because that is easier to work with and it is more efficient
to work with it, it prefers it. Liturgy is supposed to be openness
to the radical unknown, and it's supposed to be openness to a God who
is so vast that you know, without a mediation of liturgy, the encounter
would crush us. And so hopefully it's the opposite of that. There's really
no way to ensure it. I mean, it's just the adventure of freedom.
But I think what happens practically, you know, like this our saints,
you know, in the movie santam Fillochios, the moment his spiritual life
started to get intense, he went straight to Saint Niktarios, Saint Nactaris was
seventy five eighty whatever he was, and I'm santam Philochius was nineteen eighteen years
old, and he would, you know, travel from one island, you
know, quite a ways to the other for that guidance. And what other
saints that I'm Philochios know well, he was the spiritual father of Carlistos,
where he was the person who tonsured Saint Gabrielea the asthetic of love. He
you know, those saints, they run to each other because beauty, goodness,
Truth is grammar, logic, rhetoric. Truth comes at this snatal level.
It comes in some kind of a communion where constantly it seemed good to
the Holy Spirit and to us. And hopefully liturgy is unleashing that sinidelity.
But I'm not worried about liturgy for the same reason the big Book of qualis
anonymous. Isn't worried about who Who's going to make sure an individual chapter of
AA sticks to the rules. I know because I said the disease and death
will take care of that. And if if people are faking liturgy, then
you know their spiritual lives will wander away to nothingness and the organization will dissipate.
Yeah. Yeah, that's a good point. That's a good point.
And I think that the way you describe it as being held by the lives
and the testimony and the the experience of the saints, you know, is
is I think that's the right way because obviously you know the fact that I
have to go to confession, you know, you know at some point if
I want to commune, that's that is not That's not a program, right,
It's not. I mean, you could probably do it as a program,
you know, he wanted to, but it definitely not running a program.
It is it is. It is always terrifying. It's always this kind
of internal eye, this kind of this you know this you know, and
so you know, and no matter how many times you do it, and
a matter of times, any times you repeat the same stupid sins over and
over, it's still, at least for me, is existentially uh, it
fills you with that kind of existential tear that does not have the cannot,
could not traffic and the kind of you know, limited certitude that I mean
Gil Chris talks about in terms of the left brain and and and just of
the of this kind of rational understanding. And so if that is what feeds
us through the liturgy, you know, then the liturgy becomes you know,
a dance playing out you know, those inner those inner struggles, and that
that that inner compunction. I mean, the reason I didn't, you know,
mention beauty at first, and I mentioned, you know, protozoa or
something is because you know, to the to the to missus, blowfish,
blowfish looks must look attractive. It's it isn't yes, beauty in symmetry,
beauty that is something real, but spiritually we are asked to look beyond that
or to you know, and we are. And there's other kinds of beauty
that we encounter and that you know, we see in the poor, or
in the in the person who is broken down by life, or the person
you know. It's not just it's not there's something sacred about, you know,
a beautiful face. There is, but you know, you start to
see other dimensions of beauty that are equally or more important. And yeah,
well I think I think that they're even even to argue it from a biological
point of view, you know, because life is costly, uh, And
that it seemed like it would make sense that at some point humans would be
able to recognize the value of those that are willing to make that pay that
price, you know, and so and so the idea of of of someone
a warrior coming back, that's mame, that scarred, that someone you know,
a woman who who gave herself into in childbirth and you know, is
affected physically, and and she has the marks of that transformation. It seems
like at at at the very basic level, of course, you know,
the beauty like you said, you know, but but at a at a
deeper level, and also over over time, it seems like it would be
necessary that people learn to recognize the beauty of those sacrifices, which is why
girls love scars too, Chicks digscars. It's sorry, sorry to take you
off that, No, No, I was, I was thinking of something.
Yeah, you know, yeah, I think that's this is true.
And certainly the aesthetic of the church, which has is not sweet or merely
externally perfect, but it has, you know, bears scars within it.
That joyful sorrow or whatever the word is, bright sadness. That's that's the
aesthetic of the church. And it's more like you know, blues or or
or blue grass or jazz than it is like maybe then like is like classical
music, although classical music, you know, depends on the composer balances joy
and sorrow, you know, and it's great compositions as well. But Christopher
Alexander talked about, you know that somehow that the building has to age to
be truly beautiful. It has to kind of you know, it has to
incorporate the passage of time, and that wear is makes it start to come
alive and glow with with a certain fire. I think, I think that's
right. I mean, our own experience of things that are supremely beautiful often,
you know, this is actually one of the this has been my thinking
about beauty, because you know, we tend to say the beauty is harmony,
and beauty is symmetry and all these things, and sure, but then
my experience of that was that it's just that's not true, Like it's not
completely true. It's partly true, but it seems like my perception of it,
it seems like what we find beautiful, even visually esthetically, is something
like symmetry adapted to a particular It seems to be something like that. It
seems to be something like balance that is well suited to a particular situation,
and therefore it has to encompass some type of play with its environment, whether
it is the dings and scratches of use, or whether it is a beautiful
church that is laid in the slope, or whether it is you know,
so there's this, there's always this se of of order, but that is
that is embedded in particular that is more chaotic or more uh. Yeah,
they can be a little that can be off even, you know, and
that that that seems to be part of how we experience beauty. It's you
know, it's because I mean, it's because in the canosis of the logos,
you know, which brings about the creation of the world, the canosis
is so complete that it's continually adapting to the creature or to the situation of
the creature. And and this is fractal order, right, that that that
infractals everything is exactly to its place. And and by the way, that's
the Plato's cave answer too, because within the cave is another kind of you
know, it's at every scale. And one of my former students, Georgia
Williams, you know, she said, I think that to write an article
about this somewhere. But she said, I think that what we call fractals
is what Dionysius called the hierarchies. And once you realize that the celestial hierarchies
and the ecclesiastical hierarchies are fractal shapes, then everything, you know, just
a lot more things make sense. And first of all, hierarchy is not
a dirty word anymore. It's just fractal structure. This is the way the
world has to be because what's being given is so infinite or beyond infinite,
and what's receiving it is so you know, we're so weak, and yeah,
we need and that's another reason why you know, go film, Look
not everything we can't I cannot be in liturgy twenty four to seven. So
what about you know, what fills the space fractally other things you know the
other times And yeah, that's I mean, I think that that's some of
the things that I've been talking about in terms of, you know, use
the family meal as an example of, you know, a type of liturgical
act which is not strictly liturgical but participates in the same in the same structure,
uh this, and and you could bring that all the way down to
having coffee with a friend or a conversation or breathing. Right, it's like
these these these structures of of of kind of moving in and out of the
mystery. Uh is there at every at every level. And you know,
the Jesus Prayer, for example, as like the basic liturgical structure for your
thoughts, you know, kind of expands and and and and you know,
and can be seen through all aspects of life and then into the grand cosmic
liturgy of the angels. Uh. And I think your perception about how are
it was fractal, obviously very akin to the things that I talk about.
But the idea that that's how that hierarchy is actually just the way the world
works, it's not, and it's not it actually is condescending. People always
think of hierarchy as something which separates, But hierarchy is also something with unites
because it adapts, it's glaring light to the particular situation. You know,
and sometimes you know, we we don't understand that even in our lives.
You don't understand that we're not ready for the vision of the divine logos.
You know, it's like you don't want that, actually, and so you
have to when you receive the little graces that you receive. This is this
is God loving you, right, even if it's the smallest grace, it's
God loving you because the reason why you receive the grace, the small graces,
where you receive them, is because that is your capacity to receive them.
They're the ones that can provide fruit. You know, if if the
if the the fawced was opened and the grace just fell on you, you'd
be, you'd burn, like you'd burn in hell. You would you would
be, you would be, you would be overwhelmed. And so that's why
I think hierarchy is so if we can help people understand how hierarchy what it
is actually and that it's not just like a you know, authority and power
coming down, but it is this condescension of of of authority down to the
level that's appropriate. You know, Sat Siloon, you know, he had
a vision of Christ when he was still a novice at Vesper's and he said
afterwards, if that vision had lasted even one more second, I would have
died. And so so that that is that we we and and I'm thinking
of a recent elder in Russia who a man came to him said I'm dying
of cancer. I've heard you. You know, you're a miracle worker.
Heal me. And he said, do you believe in God? He said
no. Then the priest said said, do you want to believe in God?
He said no, And so the priests, without really you know,
missing a beat, he said, well, do you want to live?
Do you love life? And the man said yes, And so the priests
healed them. And this is a true story from the nineties. And I
think, look, I know in the film, you know, some things
happen and are said that you know, are you know, like like that.
People like to mock the thing about babies that won't nurse on fast days.
But Mother Nactaria, my other great mentor you know, this was said
about some some elders that you know, we knew, and she went to
Cyprus and talked to like the women of the village and they didn't they just
said he it was. It was the darnedest thing. They really feel out
of it. But it still continues to happen that, you know, some
kids are just born with that much grace. But it's not something I think
about a lot, because that's not my reality. Yeah, well that's why
I loved it when you put it in there, because I think like a
more I think, like a more modern type of person, like a modern
type of filmmaker, would have not put that in because it's so counter the
way that our lives are, because our lives are so mundane to some extent.
But like you said, you know, the medieval world was full of
these stories, and to think that they're all made up is ridiculous. It's
just the world was just you know, some people live in the in the
world that is more like more of a dance than ours. And and in
the moments where you actually experience that dance, you should understand that maybe that
dance could be ten times more than the one that you're experiencing right now in
this these little moments. It is a thing, you know. But but
I think that the danger is, you know, to to you know,
like chase those things for themselves. Yeah. Yeah, I think it's you
know, the first the first commandment Christ gave us, you know, in
his incarnate ministry was repent and and sam Patio said, just pray for a
spirit of repentance. Don't ask for anything else, because you won't be able
to handle it when it comes and and that's the fact. And if we
can just pray for a spirit of repentance and then miracles can come and go.
Or you know, people can tell stories and sometimes you know, people
tell stories and they do seem kind of made up, and you know,
you let that go, and it's it's not it's not a huge thing.
That The point is, you know, to have your own, hopefully you
know, dynamically, a live relationship with Christ and to let that, you
know, hold these other things along, you know. And so so the
biggest, the biggest affront, at least on its face to beauty is the
cross, you know, because the cross is it is the most horrible thing.
You know, it's presented that way in scripture. It's it's presented that
way, and uh, you know, it's an object of torture, and
Christ is tortured. But nonetheless we have the intuition and we hear it in
the church and we that that in fact, the cross is beautiful. And
so how do you square that, like, how do you see that coming
together? Oh? I don't know. I mean, I certainly as the
ways as I don't know. I certainly find my cross is hard to bear.
But I find yours. Very beautiful I find, you know, meeting
someone who's willing to to risk their lives for me. You know, I
was in a fiery car crash on in twenty seventeen, and thank god the
car didn't tip, but you know, it was really on fire, and
you know, as I emerged out of the fire, there just happened to
be a fireman getting off duty. And you know when I when I thank
God that the car didn't flip, you know, because then that might have
just either been the end of me or I would be even uglier than I
am. No, just kidding, I would have you know, really been
you know, had all kinds of things going on, would be hard row
to hoe. And my faith is not infinite. But my main reason I'm
happy is that that poor guy, he was just coming home from work on
a Sunday morning, and would he have had to go into the flames for
me, that would be awful, I mean, but had he done it,
yeah, it's just beautiful that God put in there and that you know
that he was ready, seems ready so certainly, and when we encounter in
a relationship that the other person is unwilling or unable or psychologically unready to bear
even the smallest cross for us. That's really sad, you know, that's
really that's much harder, you know. Then and then then we realize,
well, we've got to up our game and we've got to carry a few
more crosses for the life of the world and stop trying to be so ready
and focus on being beautiful or on being good and then letting the beauty come
out of that. Mm hmm, yeah, because you know, it was
interesting. You know, I'd never had that experience before, but I was
on an ethos in. I mean, you actually helped organize my first trip
there by the way, thank you. I'll say that in public that was
wonderful. But I went back again, as you know, with Jordan Peterson,
you know, and we met the abbot of the of Xenophon monitor we
were and to me that was really something of an experience of the deep beauty
because he was a broken old man, you know, I mean, his
back was out, and you know, he had all the characteristics of a
very elderly person who's had a very full life. But you know, it
was impossible to stop looking at him like it was some there's something more than
just the just the the usual advertisement, you know, Hollywood aspects of what
we find to be beautiful, and it was a visual thing like it it
part of it was visual, that's visual. Part of it was visual is
that I really he was hypnotizing like there was there was It was difficult to
stop looking at his face because there was so much simple joy and you know,
and and the kind of presence that was exuding from it. Uh.
And so I think I did have like a little bit of a of a
vision of how the Cross can be beautiful. You know, although we know
when we make icons of the Cross, we were careful, you know,
we tried to make it in a way that won't attract to the to the
the kind of torture aspect of the of the cross. And I think it's
good that we do that, but we also know that that's what it was.
I mean, we know that Christ on the Cross visually did not look
the way that we represent him in a in an icon. Uh. You
know, we're trying to represent the inner aspect that that kind of transform aspect,
but the outer aspect would have been horrible. But I that was a
moment where I felt like I was able to see a surprising you know,
in someone who is you know, old and close to death and has had
this full life of sacrifice, that there was something shining. So anyways,
I'm sure other people have had experiences like that, but to me that was
helpful to help me understand what beauty is, you know, in in the
deepest way. Well somehow it's a society. And we had our kind of
Disneyland phase of beauty, and you know, we took that into our personal
lives somehow and expect you know, even our spouse or something to be like
that. But the the I mean, I think, you know McGilchrist's point
is that you know, we're in a societal crisis or a civilizational crisis,
you know, and somehow. The thing is, I don't think that he
can really All he can really do is point very dimly, you know,
to religion or to even philosophy something that to say that the brain, you
know, his functions functions in this way, doesn't really give you a program.
It just tells you that you might want to pay attention to people who
have the program. And I don't know, yeah, there there is I
mean, there is a a you know, I think that his Reacing book,
like I said, I haven't read it. I think his reacent book
is different, you know, in the set, I think that he is
trying to to give more of a of a of a vision of how to
live, because it's true that in the mass and is emissary. It's it's
like a it's a critique and saying to someone, you know, use your
right brain more. It doesn't mean anything. Right doesn't mean anything existentially.
It's not a it's not a phenomenological proposition. It's a it's a prop it's
an analytical proposition. It's a left brain way of talking talking about the problem.
When you say this it's a brain problem, like it's it's it's an
experienced problem, it's an engagement problem. It's it's not actually a problem with
the brain at the outset. And so I think in some ways he's a
bridge because he's actually using left brain way of talking about the world in order
to ex to show the problem, you know, and it helps people kind
of understand what it is. But honestly, like the brain has very little
to do with your experience, Like you do not experience your brain and your
brain, you know you you don't. Your brain is an abstraction in your
life. It's not something that you you don't experience things through your brain.
You don't, you know, I'm not saying, I mean, careful people
understand what I'm saying. I'm not saying the brain doesn't do what we say
it does. I'm saying that it's it's it's like the motor of your car,
right. You know, you drive the car, and you have a
steering wheel and you have the pedals. That's your experience of the car,
like you don't experience what happening inside the motor is second, very secondary to
your experience of driving. And that's that's also the I think one of the
issues with not the issues, but I think that that's in some ways where
McGill, chriss and the Master's Emissary kind of leaves us off with more this
kind of technical way of talking about it. But I never like, I
wouldn't use that, I wouldn't say right brain, left brain thinking, because
yeah, I think Chapter twenty two of Death and Life is better in the
sense that it just tells you that we have three modes of science, and
we prefer the first two because they give us, you know, the illusion
of control and the illusion that the universe is a dead thing, and the
other one is just a lot harder. But the fact is, see,
if I were a corporation, how would I just absorb all this and try
to stay unrepentant. I would just say, well, let's just get out
there and you know, fund some great liberal arts programs and then just hire
their graduates and we'll have them and the engineers, you know, balancing each
other like you would. You could just try to operation like that, like
we'll get your artists involved or just get the problem is that life is a
much harder form of art. And yeah, the liberal arts are indispensable,
but then you've got to have the way of the heart. You've got to
actually pursue the sacred and the holy, and you've got to do it well.
And you know, it's all that's it's it's education too. It's about
people. That's the you're gonna have to do. You can't make it into
a system. It really is the difference between a good teacher and a bad
teacher is the world, you know. And you know, we just send
our kids to high school and then we just don't know who their teachers are,
you know, and we just but the reality is that all the great
colleges were built on people. They're not built just on abstract knowledge. And
you know, I was, I don't know if you know about Ralston College.
I just came back from there. I did as an event there.
Migil Chris also, Yeah, and they're they're building it, I think in
the right way. The building it based on. You know, it's like
connections and people and understanding that you know, a valuable person is more than
a program that we need the program, but to have the right person in
the right place, you know, that has the right intentions. Uh,
connecting with the students is more valuable. And anyway it's been, it's pretty
it's pretty astounding what they're able to to do. It gives you hope,
you know, for for for liberal arts. For sure, you'd love to
learn more about it. Of course, of course, I think Hellenic College
has the edge right now of any liberal arts school in the nation, just
because the you know, the reason I became friends with Jane Jacobs is because
I noticed that she was describing cities as if they were really liturgies. And
and I think when you when you study living, you know, real real
organic life, it always has this you know that that breeding that you mentioned,
that that sign of liturgical living things are constituted liturgically, and it's and
to have to have that be part of your college experience. Now, if
some young person is listening to this and you know they can't come here necessarily,
we don't have an engineering program, but if you can put pilgrimage into
your life and get good at liturgy and understand what is the way of knowing
that's imparted. Of course we have this, we have them both here and
it's still a struggle. That's just life. I mean you just every day
is a struggle. And but yeah, in some sense we're the ideal college
at the moment, although thankfully not no one seems to realize that. Well
we handle thirty freshmen a year, but or whatever. Well I can't wait
because for people who don't know, I am going to be at Helenic College
in a few weeks on is it April seventeenth? It's seventeen. That's a
Thursday, right, Thursday night? Is that is that when the event is?
Because I have three days, but it's it's around there. It's like,
but you're coming on Wednesday and we're hanging out on Thursday, and it's
Thursday night. I think it's Thursday night, and there's and tickets are available
on event bright all right, so an event Bright I will be selling out
fast now the eighteenth, so get your ticket. I can't wait to see
the college because you know, I've never been there, and so I can't
I you know, and and I am definitely interested in the future of education
and also especially liberal arts education. So it's it's wonderful to see an Orthodox
based community trying to do liberal arts in the right way. I think it's
great. You know, liturgy has to have a component of long, being
long and boring. If it's if it's if everything is as an you know,
as a purpose function, and you remain mired in the left brain and
all you're really doing with your Christian faith is doubling down on, you know,
the mistake of the civilization, which is to not be beautyful, and
it's to be so entranced by, you know, the power of utility that
you know, you just are. You're just a danger to yourself and others.
I love I love you saying that, you know, your liturgical life
has to be long and boring. It has to weigh out yourself and your
own flighty mind and come to something deeper. Yeah, because I mean,
anybody who's been through a long liturgical service will notice that at some point your
thoughts just go crazy, Like your thoughts just kind of go all over the
place, And at first you don't notice it, but after you've been through
several services, you're like, wait a minute, I'm not here anymore.
Like I'm just not even here. I'm somewhere else. I'm thinking about,
especially your creative person like you, like me, who has plenty of things
to think about, plenty of stories to write, plenty of you know.
So it's so easy to write stories when you're during liturgy, right, It's
like, oh yeah, but it's it's a good exercise because it makes you
realize to what extent, you know, you're a slave of your thoughts,
and you of these you know, of these that kind of drop in.
So yeah, it's good to do that. I feel bad for mentioning Hellenic
And I'm not trying to hijack you know, the podcast, I mean,
but because the larger issue, though, you know, is, I mean,
I've been reading a lot of Wendell Berry this lent. I'm trying to
make that part of lent because you know, he's calling for some kind of
social repentance, and you can see how it really sinks with McGilchrist, and
there is repentance should lead to kind of social renewal. And and I think
we see very clearly now that our mental inability to comprehend beauty or its important
sort of give it the respect it's it's due, is something that is a
mental state that needs to be repented of. And that's what repentance is,
you know, it's changed to renew and transform the mind. I don't know,
I mean, we didn't get into something else, maybe for another time,
but it's it does seem like, you know, our civilization is is
a struggle between the nominalists and the realists. The only solution is is the
symbolic and that's you know, what you're trying to lead us back to.
So I mean, I think the things that I'm saying are kind of just
very small pieces of that. What your work is the main work that somehow
to recover the symbolic vision. That's where the nominal and the real are reconciled.
Yeah, yeah, but no, I think I think that we're both
of us are very much in parallel, which is why people when they read
your book, they feel like they're that we're cousins in thinking, you know,
like that, that that you're completing some of the things that I'm saying,
and I'm coming close to the things you're saying, and so I think
it's a wonderful. Oh, what's wonderful. Yeah, sorry, you're wonderful.
To know you're on my team, is what I was going to say,
or that I'm on your team, that we're on the same team.
Let's say it that way. You were saying something I'd never heard, I'd
never heard before, which which is the best thing ever. You said that
the word for the devil, right is the the avola to separate is the
exact opposite of simvalo symbol symbol, and that's the that's the best thing ever.
That really just puts it all right, there, doesn't it. But
but this war between nominalists and realists, and of course the Anglo American response
is to sit on the sidelines and through this faint, faint memory of their
Byzantine, you know, inheritance and the Celts too, to be skeptics of
both, you know. But but that Anglo American skepticism is kind of wearing
out. People want the thing itself, No, I think, I think
so. But you know, the thing is that nominalism is is going to
is going to end with a lot of is ending with blood. Like it's
the Enlightenment thinking, and that all of this is crashing, it's all,
it's all falling apart. It's happening rather fast. COVID was was like an
accelerant of all of the the aspects of you know that's a religious impulse and
and uh all and you know, all of that kind of crashing back in.
So, you know, I think that we it's time to deal with
this, you know, it really is time to be able to formulate and
to participate in meaning in ways that are fractal instead of you know, swaying
crazily between you know, chaos and tyranny, which is the tendency that we've
that we've embarked on, you know, I think since the beginning of the
Enlightenment. And so I think that being helping people to formulate, but not
not just formulate theoretically, but also engage in practice this fractal relationship between unity
and multiplicity at all the different levels. Uh, the music, right,
the music of the spheres really that that's that's and and the thing, the
great thing about it is that when people understand it and when people kind of
see it, it rings so true that at once you once you've seen down
that, once you've seen down that door, there's no turning back. It
might be difficult to do it and integrate it, it's difficult to live it
completely, but once you've seen this hierarchy of practical relationships, you can't go
back to the to the to the old way. I don't think so and
so so at least I think we have reality on our side, is what
I mean. You know, like liturgy, that the idea that the reality
is liturgy is just true. And so you know, as the more people
can perceive it and engage with it, it will win in the end,
no matter how crazy it becomes. You know, truth will will will rise.
There's no there's no other way, you know, because if you it's
like if things decompose, and then the seed, the fractal seed that came
from the tree that's planted in that decomposed, that's the one that's going to
grow. So I know it from because that's how it works, and that's
actually how it works in the world, and that's how it works at all
the scales, you know, and the stories tell us about the remnants that
are taken out and that are planted and grow again. And so I don't
see I don't see another another way. You know. In his letters to
the Soviet leaders, sol Janitsen, you know, is calling for a societal
social repentance for the for Russia because you know, he says it's time to
let the republics go and find their own way. One of his regrets is
that all the best minds were studying military electronics. You know, all the
young people were drawn to that, and they were neglecting their humanities. I
mean, it's such a sacred thing if a person can give themselves to the
study of literature and the classics, or literature and theology, literature and art,
you know so much the great you know, when we talk about education,
as you know, the great conversation, right this this beauty, goodness,
truth or grammar, logic, rhetoric, the rhetoric stage. It's blood
work, but it's there's a cynidelity. You've got to enter the Communion of
Saints you've got to engage with the other great writers and the great you know
everything or whatever you're doing, it's they are summoning you and do their company.
They I no longer call you disciples, I call you friends. They
are summoning you to that friendship. And it's just that life is so busy
and people don't have time to read. They don't feel at least with film
they're getting something. Yeah, but you know, audiobooks there's a solution.
Everyone likes the audiobooks. Yeah, that's the way to go. There's something
that are hard to read with audiobooks. But for sure, audiobooks have been
a life saver for me, especially as a dad with three kids, working
full time. You know, it's like and then doing all this other stuff,
the audiobook is wonderful. You know, then you want to drive,
like you actually want to drive your kids places because you get to listen to
the audiobook. Uh So, so that's been that's been wonderful. And it's
weird. It's a it's weird technological version of the you know, the monks
reading in the during dinner at the in the monastery. It's it's not completely
the same. It lack I mean obviously it's a it's a superficial version of
that. But I think that we're attuned to listening to things being told told
to us since we're children, you know, being read to, and so
I think there's something intuitively right about the audiobook that you can easily, you
know, kind of pay attention while you're doing other things and let it seep
into you. So so so more people need to More young men in the
Orthodox tradition need to come to the priesthood because if the if, if that's
the symbolic act is you know, the defeat of the disintegrative act, then
that's that's a different way to present this calling, this ministry because someone has
to stand like Moses, you know, with their arms up. So maybe
that is part of the answer, just that increasing but all of us participate
in that priesthood of the church, and that's I mean the problem is us,
right like, And that's that's the great thing you know about I think
all Christian faith, but Orthodoxy in particular. I mean what I know,
well, you know you are encouraged to realize that you know, you're the
issue. The problem, The problem is you. I think this is a
it's a great way to uh to to to end our conversation, the problem
is you, but the community of the Saints are calling you, and not
just the Saints, but the communion of all those that came before it,
the great thinkers, the great writers, those that have you know, showed
us what is what is beautiful, good and true. They are calling us
in to participate. So can I can I mention it dream I had recently
because it's so fun. I was meeting Lebron James for the first time and
it was such a spiritual dream. I was in tears. It was it
was like this, and I was I just said, you've You've given so
much effort to excellence, You've worked so hard to be excellent on what you
do, and it just brought me. I don't even I'm not really even
a basketball fan, but I just there's so many people out there giving their
all for for beauty in different ways. Yeah, you know, come in,
come into the dance, everybody. So Timothy, thank you for everything.
I can't wait to see you again at Holy Cross and at Hellenic College
in a few weeks. Yes, now, if we show all the best.
Luck also with with the the movie and the upcoming movie on on Holy
Week. You know I can't wait to see that as well, So thanks
Timothy. If you enjoyed these videos and podcasts, please go to this Symbolic
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