The last judgment is not just something that happens at the end, but it
is a perpetual reality. It is basically an image of how reality functions.
And it's not arbitrary to think that that would be the case, because it
is an image of the end, and you have to remember how the ancients
thought of the end of something. It's not just the moment when the time
runs out, but it is the moment that shows you the reason for everything
that came before. This is Jonathan Pezhew, Welcome to the Symbolic World.
I'm very glad that you've all decided to join us for what I know is
going to be a very special evening. And I want to make a few
introductory remarks about our speaker, though I know he's already well known to many
of you, mister Jonathan Pajoe, who has emerged as a truly powerful and
prophetic voice in the last years, speaking deeply to our cultures longing for meaning
and coherence, both at the individual level and at the level of our shared
corporate existence. He has been identified, i think not playfully, alongside of
Jordan Peterson, John Berbeiki, and Bishop Robert Baron as one of the four
horsemen of meaning, and I know that many of you have benefited from his
gifts as an interpreter. A couple of years ago I had the privilege of
sitting next to Jonathan in a seminar on Exodus with Jordan Peterson and other friends,
and that was an example for me of the kind of thing that Jonathan
does so very well, this opening up of the texts and the images,
of the symbols, of the structures of meaning and narrative of the past here
in the present. A few months ago, our students had the pleasure of
seeing Jonathan in Greece, where our program begins, and I had the great
pleasure of going to Meteora, that are the oldest sites of monastic sites in
the Orthodox world, where Jonathan gave a wonderful talk about how what monks do
is they look up and they show others the way of looking up. But
Jonathan Bijou is, of course not a monk, and I think it is
true to say that his own life and witness has been dedicated to teaching others
to look up. Though he's known broadly as a commentator his metier, you
might say his vocation is as a carver, as an artist as a carver
of icons in particular, and these are found in churches around the world.
Jonathan has spoken about how the icon works by compression. That is to say,
it draws together, at different times elements and ways of thinking and understanding
into a fundamental relationship such that all these can shine forth in this compressed form
kind of unfolds. I think something very similar to that is true of Donovan's
work as a commentator, that he draws diverse aspects of our world, our
culture, or history, everything from comic books, the movie scenes, to
postmodernism through to the images of the deep symbolic past, into relationship with one
another such that their meaning can shine forth for and in us this evening,
Jonathan will bring his considerable interpretive talents to bear upon the topic of the medievil
cosmos. Yet in speaking to us of the shape of the medieval world,
he is not only speaking of the past. With his iconographic sensibility, he
will help us to locate our present in this time and place Rolston College was
founded. You might say, on a kind of double conviction, if we're
going to speak about directionality, both of the need to look up and in
the conviction that in order to look forward, we need to look back.
By allowing our present moment to be illuminated by the past, we are better
able to understand who and what we are and what is the work we must
undertake. I can think of no better guide for us on this particular journey
than mister Pago, and I hope you will join me in giving him a
warm welcome. Now, so first off, I obviously want to thank Stephen,
thank Ralston. You know, as someone who went to university in a
very postmodern world, I studied fine art and so that the way of thinking
was very strong even in the nineties, this kind of very critical and cynical
approach to art, to the stories, you know, to the great stories
that make us who we are. You know. Encountering Ralston and the type
of work they do, and also the level of students that we've met at
Ralston has been inspiring for us and gives me personally hope for the future,
but hope for my own children who are coming close to that age where they
will also have to enter the world. And the type of vision that Rawlson
is able to give the students, this love of these ancient stories. But
like Stephen said, in his introduction, this is not about just analyzing past
in order to accumulate knowledge, but it really is finding the light in the
past, but shining towards the future. And so what I want to talk
about tonight is a specific image in the medieval world that is called the Last
Judgment. It is one of the most complicated images in the canon of iconography,
and I thought it'd be interesting to look at that image, especially in
the wake of the students having just read Dante's Comedia. And so of course
Dante goes down into Hell, ascends purgatory, ascends the heavens, all up
into the prime Mobile and into the presence of God. And you know,
of course Danti wasn't making up the things that he wrote. He was synthesizing.
He was bringing together a cosmological vision that the ancients had, that the
Medievals had in common. You know, That's why his poem was accepted so
readily, because he was able to just pull these things in together so beautifully.
And the icon of the Last Judgment does that also that it is a
kind of synthesis of Christian imagery, and it pulls everything together into one image.
This particular version of the Last Judgment is in a church near Venice on
an island called Torcello. Is the sixth century church, but the mosaics were
made in the twelfth century, and so they have this kind of high medieval
Byzantine Venice approached. Some of the images in Venice would have been in the
same style as well. Some of the images that you find in Sicily also,
for example, wouldn't be similar in style. And the thing about this
it is that I like particularly this one version of the Last Judgment is that
it contains three images, let's say, stuck together. So in the middle
tier you'll see it. On the left there is the image of the Last
Judgment itself you can see as the Crucifixion, and then below the crucifixion is
an image called the Anastasis or the descent into Hades. And these three images
are kind of stacked on top of each other. As we look at it,
I think there's a very particular reason why this is the case, and
those three together will help us understand what it is that this image, this
image of the Last Judgment, What can it tell us today? Right?
Is it just this very strange, weird images of people getting devoured by worms,
and everybody loves to look at the devils, especially, you know,
all these kind of strange figures of angels and demons, and you know,
what is going on in this or does it have something to tell us?
And I do believe that it does. I believe that the image of the
Last Judgment is actually a way to understand how identity formation functions. And I
would even go a little further, but looking at this image and kind of
understanding this image can help us understand how thought functions. It is, how
it is that we come to bring things together, and how it is that
they break apart right this problem of attention, how it is that we're capable
of having attention, and how it is that our attention dissipates is contained in
this in this structure and all the weird things about it. Once we understand
that, we can see how the Last Judgment is not just something that happens
at the end, but it is a perpetual reality. It is basically an
image of how reality functions. And it's not arbitrary to think that that would
be the case, because it is an image of the end. And you
have to remember how the ancients thought of the end. Of something is not
just the moment when the time runs out, but it is the moment that
shows you the reason for everything that came before. Right, we still use
that way of speaking today, Right, what is our end? That is,
what is the purpose? What is the reason why we're doing things?
And so the ancients would have understood the Last Judgment as being a culmination,
right, as a kind of say, enthesis of all things towards their purpose
you could say, towards their purpose, you could say, towards their identity,
towards what it is that they are, and how it is that we
discern what things are. Sounds very abstract at the outset, but we'll see
that once we get into it. It's not so difficult. Now. One
of the things to understand is that in church architecture in the Middle Ages,
the images were placed very deliberately. It wasn't accidental. The reason why we
put certain images in certain places, and in this case it's quite simple.
The church is in Basilica. It's a long church and in what we would
call the east side of the church. That when you enter into a church
you look towards the end, you see what's called the apse, which is
the place where the priest is, you know, and it has a little
half dome on top of it. And so in the apse is this image,
which is an image of the Virgin with the child in her arms.
And then on the western wall, which is the last part of the church,
is the last judgment. So it's it's quite simple, there's nothing subtle
about it. It's the beginning and the end. It's the child and the
fulfillment. It's the rising and setting of the sun. Right, there's this
saying that the sun of man will come like a lightning bolt from the east
to the west. And that's why churches are directed eastwards, is that there
is this movement. I mean it's a cosmic movement. I mean everything moves
from east to west, the stars, the sun, the moon, there's
this there's this motion that the ancients understood as defining the beginning and the end.
And so the way the church is structured is that you have this image
of the beginning, and that's the image from which revelation comes. Right.
The priest is there, the Eucharist is being celebrated there. That's the source
of identity. And especially in this particular church, which is a cathedral,
a cathedral means that it's the seat of the bishop. It's the most important
church in an area that is recognized as the cathedral, which is the throne
of the bishop. The throne of the bishop is underneath below here and is
down at the bottom there, and that is the source of authority, and
it moves west towards the end. So the whole church is structured in that
way, which brings you up and down the register. That what's interesting about
this image is that now the end is represented in three ways. It's represented
as the end of Christ, that is the end in the sense of the
crucifixion, right. It's represented as the end in a different way, which
is what we call the heroing of Hades, where Christ goes down into death
and saves the people that are caught there. And it's of course represented as
the last judgment itself, which is now the finality of all things. And
this is also a way to help understand how the medieval cosmos, or how
medieval people thought about the world. They all fit into each other. That
is, what's happening in one image is repeated in the other, and what's
happening in one image is contained in the other image. It's like a little
fractal bundle where things are just inserted into each other so that you get this
unfurling of reality in this way. A little example to start with, you'll
start to get used to it as we've moved into the image is that the
crucifixion is of course Christ dying on the cross, his mother on his right
side, Saint John the Evangelist on his left side, and then underneath him
there's this weird little image if you look at underneath his feet, so that's
a skull, and it's the skull of Adam. So you can see the
blood of Jesus is coming down his feet and coming down his and is dripping
down onto the skull of Atom. So there's a whole legendary mechanism to understand
why the skull of Atam was there, and everything that's not that important.
What's mostly the important is to understand the relationship that is happening there, which
is that Christ on the cross is redeeming Adam. He is the new Atom.
When we see the blood and water coming from his side, it's often
described as the new creation, as the birth of the Church. As Eve
taken from the side of Atam all of these analogies which are found in the
liturgical text. But what's going on down here, right, that is what
this image is about. And so the descent into hades is the secret of
what's happening on the cross. That's the way to understand it. So you
have the cross, you have the crucifixion, and then what's secretly happening on
the cross is represented in this image, which is Christ coming down into death.
And now the cross doesn't hold him. He holds the cross as a
standard, you know, almost like as a weapon, as this thing that
he's conquered. Actually, and he is going down into death and he is
grabbing Adam and Eve. That's who he's going to get. So the two
old people that you see are Adam and Eve, and then there are different
people represented in different ways, the kings, King David and King Solomon,
and then Saint John the Baptist who is pointing to him and who it was
just there before. And then what you see are the dead, right,
all these dead people in their tombs that are rising up right that they're coming
into this moment where Christ is bringing everybody out of death. But that,
like I said, is basically contained in this little image. So the anastasis
is contained in the crucifixion. Okay, we'll get back to these images later,
but I just want you to start to think the way that the Medievals
thought, and in a very similar manner, the whole Last Judgment is contained
in the other images as well. The Last Judgment is a very complicated image.
But let me point to you to a few things right at the outset,
just for you to understand how all of this comes together. Is that
right here, right this is again Adam and Eve. So Adam and Eve
are now in the Last Judgment, the skull of Adam is in. Is
that the Crucifixion. Adam and Eve are being taken out of death, and
now they're being brought to the final end, the end of all things,
where everything is being revealed and the Judgment is happening. All through these images
you have this same pattern where things enter into each other, where things kind
of fit into each other, and there's this reflection in different ways of the
images above and below. And so as we move forward, I'm gonna we're
gonna show you a few of these. But the first thing to understand is
what is the Last Judgment? What is going on in this image. And
so this is the first image that we know of of the Last Judgment.
This is the sixth century image from Ravenna. And so now we have Christ
in the center and he is has his hand out, he is pointing to
the sheep, and on his left hand you have the goats. And so
that is where the whole idea of the Last Judgment comes from. Is Christ
saying, on that day, on that final day, I will say to
the sheep, come enter into my kignom. And I will say to the
goats, leave away, far away from me right. And so that's the
way to understand the basic idea of what the Last Judgment is. It is
there are some things which are broad inside the sheep, and there are some
things that are excluded, which are the goats. And so on the right
hand of Christ, on his right hand, you have the sheep, and
on his left hand. That's what it said in the text. It says
He'll say to the sheep on his right enter, to the goats on his
left, go away. Obviously it's not the kind of thinking that we like
to have today. But what I'd like to propose to you is that that
is actually how all identity formation works. That is, anything that exists is
necessarily a judge. Anything that has identity, or anything, I mean anything
like a cup, a pencil, a baseball club, like, anything that
has identity is necessarily a judge because because it is a specific identity, it
necessarily has two things. It has it inside and it has an outside.
It has things that belong to it and has things that don't belong to it,
and there's sometimes there's a hierarchy of that type of participation. It's always
often not necessarily a clear demarcation, but there is a type of hierarchy of
participation in something, and then there is an outside. And so all things
that have identity necessarily function as judges. And that's why in the ancient world
you know, for example, a saint that I love very much. And
Maximus the Confessor he talks about the divine logos like in the Gospel, but
he says, all things have a logos, right, All things that exist
have a name, a reason, a purpose, and actually all of those
are the same. The name of something, the reason, the purpose for
it, it's the reason why you see it in the first place. Why
do I identify something as having identity as having been is because I can see
its purpose. And if it's unconscious, it didn't have to be conscious.
Right. It's like if I know that if I have a name for something,
it is because there's a reason why there's a name for it. I
know what a bottle is because I drink water out of it, and it's
a judge because and I participate in that judgment because I don't want to get
wet. It is. So if there's a hole in the bottle, it's
a bad water bottle, and I will exclude it it from its participation in
the identity of bottle. Right. And so this is just how things work,
and you just can't avoid it, Like this is just how reality functions.
Whether it's your family, whether it's the school, all of these things
all have this structure. And the last judgment, the way to understand it
is it's the most extreme version of that. It's the one that takes it
to the very limit of what you can almost tolerate in terms of understanding what
identity formation is. Think of it like it's a cosmic version of every time
I read recognize something as having identity, but it's this massive, massive version
of it so what do we have in the image? We have Christ in
glory at the center of the image. This is the son of Man,
right, this is the prophetic image of the perfect man. So if you're
not a Christian in some ways it doesn't totally matter for this conversation. Just
think of it like it's the ideal person. Right. As Christians we believe
that that's this person, but just as a structure. Think of it like
it's the ideal of a person. It's it's the human, the highest human
that you can imagine, the one that contains all that it was his human
in it. And that is basically the source of why we know that there's
humanity, and it's the culmination of all that is good about what human is.
Okay, and that's here, and that's the judge. And why is
it the judge? Because that is it? Right, That's how we understand
the good. It's like, if we know what a good person is,
then we inevitably know what aligns with it, what comes towards it, and
what is moving away from it. Right. You can think about it in
a sports team is always the easiest one because it's amoral, so it's doesn't
rub people wrong. You know, you know what a good player, but
good basketball player is, and that good basketball player becomes a standard at which
we measure other basketball players. It just happens. And if you have one
that rises up really high, then that standard gets higher, and all of
a sudden, the judgment becomes stronger. Right, if I go to a
basketball game for kids that are thirteen fourteen, or if I go to a
professional basketball game, I do not judge the same way because the standard of
the participation is not the same. If I go to a professional game,
those the standards I've been lifted so high that I'm like, well, that's
not Michael Jordan, Right. It's always there's always this, this judging,
and this is something that that happens inevitably. So imagine, so this is
the perfect man who is there, and now he is signifying that he is
judging the world. He is showing the right hand and the left hand,
and he is saying to those on the right, come in, and to
those on the left move away. Those that don't fit with the ideal or
aren't moving towards the ideal are pushed out, and those that fit with the
ideal or moving towards the ideal are gathered in. So the structure of the
image, this image of the heavenly man. And that's how to understand it.
Right, It's like, why is it a heavenly man. It's because
he's the ideal. He's just higher than us, and it's a it's a
metaphor, but it's not. And that's how we think of things that are
above us, that are more than us, that are higher than us,
and so they appear in heaven, they come down from above, and that's
how we recognize that they are the model at which we measure other things.
And it's a very practical thing. There's nothing it's not magical in any way.
You know, if I am here and I'm in front of you,
and I'm above you right now, then I am the one who gives the
standard of what is happening now right. I am the measure of this event
at this moment. And this's just how it works. If you have someone
who rises above even physically above everybody else, then everybody can see him,
but not all of you can see each other. And so I can judge
all of you, right, but you can't all judge each other. You
can judge me in this case though it's a little different. But it just
to understand that this idea of the heavenly Man, right, and so the
image is very is very ancient, from the very beginning of Christianity. We
have these images that represent this relationship between heaven and earth, and they're not
actually stories like this image you see above as the heavenly Man as the Son
of Man. And then you have the church which is below, and you
have two apostles, you have Saint Peter as Saint Paul that are like two
pillars of the church. That again is a very simple structure of reality.
Right. What is church? If you know what church means, it means
that the word church, but what it translates, it means ecclesia. It
means the gathering. Okay uh. And that's how that's how it works.
That's how a body works. Right. A body is a gathering of identities
that fit with a higher identity. It's a gathering of things that are brought
together into a higher participation. That's what a body is. Anybody like anybody
that you can imagine, whether it's a body of literary work or whether it's
a tire or whatever. Anything you can imagine as having identity. That's how
it works. So it gathers the things together into its head, right,
and then it has to align with what the head is offering for it to
be part of that body, right. And so anything you can imagine always
functions that way. So that's why we talk about the church as being a
body, as being a gathering things together that are then seen in light of
the reason why they exist. And of course now we're talking about a giant,
cosmic image. But that's just how things work. That's how that's how
all things work. It's a fractal idea. It's like, once you kind
of see the final judgment, the end of all things, in this image
of the last Judgment, right, you get a glimpse of how it reflects
in little ways in everything that we do, okay, And so there are
different ways of representing it. This is one way, and the ascension is
also another image that has the same structure as the Last Judgment, in part
because in the scripture when Christ goes up, the angel says the way that
he went up, he's going to return. But if you understand it that
this is what this basic image, it's a head something above an image reference
and then a gathering below of people that are looking up and that are pointing
at it. They're saying, Oh, it's that. That's the thing that
makes us together, right, that's the person, that's the principle, that's
the top that makes us understand that we are we are together. And then
the Virgin becomes an image of that body herself, because she is that for
Christ. She's the one who gathered his body in her woo. It's pretty
simple. She gathered the body in the room. She becomes an image for
the body itself. So different ways you can represent it. This is ascension.
Sometimes it's just an ontological relationship. It's actually not seen at all.
It's not representing anything. It's just the relationship between Christ above, the Virgin
below, and the disciples gathered together in the body. And it's analogous to
a person with the head and the body. The head is the place where
meaning comes from, right. The head is the place that we recognize somebody
by. I don't usually recognize somebody by their shoulder. I tend to recognize
them by their eyes, by their expression. So the head is the place
of meaning. It's the place of purpose, it's the place where we recognize
identity, and so it's normal to use that type of imagery together. Now,
the one thing I want to say, and it's important to say this
because it's already it's already kind of frightening to talk about the last judgment this
way, is that there is a way to understand the idea of the right
hand and the left hand of Christ as not just being good bad, because
that's how we tend to think about it. He's like, yep, that
which comes towards the inside is good, that which moves towards the out side
is bad. But in the very structure of this image, you'll see that
that is not the case, right, that that moving out from the identity
is not always bad, because obviously we're not. We don't believe in the
monad like we believe that multiplicity is necessary and that is good. And so
there's a sense in which that which appears on the left hand of Christ will
often represent a change, will represent uh, let's say, a kind of
wildness to it, or a kind of a difference, and that which is
on his right hand will represent unity, will represent identity, because it's that
which comes towards identity, right, So it's all not always negative, not
always positive. A good example is in this case here, this is an
image. It's a DeAsis, which is again the Son of Man in the
middle, and two people on the side. And now on his right hand
he has the Virgin and on his left side he has John the Baptist.
Now, comparing those two is useful to understand the difference between the right hand
and the left hand. One is secret, one is covered, one is
quiet, and it's kind of like this inner reality, this mystery of the
inside. And then the other one. He's out in the desert. He's
wearing animal skins, he's got crazy hair, and he's screaming to everybody to
repent. So that's a good, like a basic way to think of it.
If you look a little bit again to the right, you'll see Saint
Peter, who's here, and then you'll see Saint Paul, who is a
little bit further down. They are again the saying that are here, the
two pillars of the church, Saint Peter and Saint Paul. They are again
here, which is you have Saint Peter and Saint Paul. This is the
most interesting one because Saint Paul was not at the ascension, so Why is
he there? Why is he in the image of the ascension? Uh?
And it's because it's representing a structure of reality for you. It's not just
saying this is not just an event, this is like a pattern, but
this is like a it's a way for you to see reality through these images
rather than just a kind of didactic thing. And so who's Saint Peter?
Right? Saint Peter, He's the rock, He's the foundation. He's the
apostle to the inside. Right, he's the apostle to the Jews in that
case, And who's Saint Paul? St? Paul is the apostle to the
Gentiles. But he's not just that, he's also like the thirteenth Apostle,
like semi legitimate, like I'm a Christian and everything. But you know,
it's like he he kind of self justifies his existence as an apostle. Like
he's interesting if you look at him a thinking about him as a left hand
you could say of Christ. He talks about himself. He says that he
is a shape shifter. He says that I'm all things to all men.
So he actually says, I do not have a specific identity, right,
I am in some ways shifty in my existence. He calls himself the aborted
apostle, heses all these really strong term sities, a fool, I'm the
fool for Christ. Okay, So is the opposite of reason, he's the
opposite of He has that, and in this case, it's not bad at
all. It's actually wonderful, it's actually great. It actually is the fullness
of being. To understand that this movement towards the inside and this movement towards
the outside is this breathing in and breathing out of being. That is just
a normal part of how existence functions. Okay, And I think that's important
to say because we always sometimes get too caught up in the moral question and
thinking that it's just good bad. But clearly in this image of the Last
Judgment, that is not the case. And the importance of having Saint Peter
and Saint Paul, like I said, not just in the Last Judgment,
but in all these other Christian images, is there to help us see this
relationship. Right, And there's if you think about the two apostles, you'll
start to see interesting images of what it is that they represent. So what
is Saint Peter's sin, It's pride, right, what is pride. Pride
is excess of identity. That's what pride is. So you can see,
like and what is Saint Paul's sin, right, it's the thorn in the
flesh, okay. And so you can see in their character how they you
know, both in their good side and their bad side. They really represent
these true aspects of reality. This idea of gathering in the multiplicity, gathering
in the identities towards purpose, but also loosening the identity and kind of letting
things have their own particular existence, right, And that's necessary in everything we
do. It's necessary in any team, any family. You have to find
that balance between breathing in and breathing out. Right, you can't always be
moving towards unity, or else you cripple, and or else you become fragile.
And you can't obviously always be moving towards multiplicity because at some point your
identity stops to exist. That's called decomposition. And when things decomposed, then
they cease to be the thing that they were. The idea of the Last
Judge is that it is this moment where the ideal man is judging all of
humankind, is judging all of what it is that is good and bad about
humanity, and is showing the consequences of what that does, of what that
is. And he's calling everybody towards the resurrection. And you can understand the
resurrection again as this finality as this this is all that you are. So
you're a person, the resurrection is everything that you are is now gathered into
something. It's gathered into the ends, gathered into the finality, and that
includes body and includes your soul, includes all the aspects of you, but
now all of them kind of in this moment that is not chronological anymore.
That is like the end of time, and that the end of all things,
and so it shows what things are. And so what we see in
the image is you're seeing the angels calling all the dead out of their abode,
and so the animals are regurgitating the people, regurgitating their prey. And
on the other side then you have again the monsters, the sea monsters regurgitating
their prey. As the angels are calling, right, they're calling us all
to be gathered back into the unity. And so this is of course an
image of the movement of multiplicity into unity. Right, It is the movement
of that which is fragmented, that which is broken, and that which has
been eaten by animals. So for those that have read Dante will know that
the animals represent that which is not human. Sometimes it can represent aspects of
humanity, it can represent the passions. Often it represents an excess of an
aspect of us. And so those excesses, you could say, or those
broken aspects of humanity are being given up right, and they're being gathered back
together to form a single body, right to form a body again. And
that is represented in another way next to the angels calling the dead out of
the earth, as the angel that is scrolling all the stars back together,
right, he's scrolling the heavens. You can see he's got the scroll of
the stars and he is basically wrapping them back together into a single role.
There is gathering a multiplicity back into one. They're just different ways of representing
it. Represented as the bodies, represented as the stars. But this gathering
of all things back into their center, Okay, back into the one.
This is a very interesting image. So this image is so you can see,
I'll show you where it is in the image. It's down here right,
so here this is called the Hettemasia. I don't know if I'm pronouncing
it rather with a bunch of Greek speakers. Makes me feel a little uh
embarrassed, but that's how I say hit Temasia, and with the head Timassia
is it's the it's the prepared throne. It's a very interesting idea. It's
the idea that the throne is prepared for the return of the heavenly man.
And so the ideal is coming, right, the reason for things is coming.
But in order for it to connect, you have to get things ready.
You have to prepare the throne for the arrival of the king. And
now you see again Adam and Eve being brought to the foot of the throne.
You know, because in many ways they are the throne, right,
they are the body that is gathered. They're an image you can take.
You take the first man and the first woman. It's a good way to
get everybody in an image without having to make billions of people. It's a
good way to do it. Take the first ones, put them there and
say these, all of humanity is gathered together as the throw. You could
imagine it as a throne. You can imagine as a city, you can
imagine as a bride. That's often how it's represented in scripture. And this
union of heaven and earth, and of the head and the body, and
of the heaven and earth are represented as a sexual union. All of these
different images are appropriate to understand the idea of gathering things together so that that
which is above can come and encounter it. Right. It reproduces the text
in Genesis too, where God gathers the dust together and he blows air into
it. He takes heaven, puts it inside, like gathers a bunch of
stuff and then puts heaven inside. And that's how things exist. That's how
everything exists. Everything exists as a gathering of body that has purpose inside it.
You need a reason, or else you cannot recognize things as having identity.
They have to have something which brings multiplicity into one. Now one are
the aspects of the last Judgment, And you know you see it of course
here quite a bit is so now you have the devils that are here,
and you have the devils that are here, and you have the Angel that
is here, and and what are they doing. They're weighing the soul right,
and so they're actually deciding right. They're basically judging. They're participating in
the judgment. They're judging which side you're gonna go. Are you gonna go
on the side of the right hand, which is the one that gathers.
Are you gonna go on the side of the left hand, which is the
dispersal and the breakdown and the decomposition. And so this idea, right,
it's it's it's one which is so universal, it's everywhere in culture, and
so it's it's just this, it's exactly this, and everybody experiences this all
the time. Right, It's like there is something in you, a wild
part, you know, a part that is going to break everything or however
else you want to think of it. But there's a part in you that
is pulling you towards dissolution, and there's an aspect of you that is pulling
you towards one that's putting you towards unity, towards good things. Saint Gregor
Ivnissa, for example, you know, this's early Church father fourth century.
He said at birth, all men are given an angel and a demon.
And this is not just Homer Simpsons, this is very old, Like all
men are given an angel and a demon, and that's what we now call
come to call a guardian angel. But you know, we've forgotten about the
guardian demon. We don't like that one. But basically, think about it
as the aspect of you which is pulling you up, the best aspect of
you, because you can see it, right, everybody can see it inside
them. It's like Saint Paul would say, christ in me? What is
christ in me? It is that the aspect of me that I can recognize
as moving towards that which I know to be good and that I know to
be the truth, and that which gives light. But then there's also,
of course the flesh. That's the way Saint Paul talks about it, right,
that I do the things that I do not want to do, that
the flesh pulds me away from that. So you can understand it as above
and below is a good way to understand it, right, because it's a
very simple way to represent it because above are the patterns and the lights,
and you don't hurt yourself much with what is above. Although yeah, it's
true that there are storms. Let's say higher up from that, you have
the stars, you have the patterns, you have the patterns of reality,
you have the light which comes up and shines makes everything visible, and then
below you've got things that die in darkness and decompose. And so the idea
that hell is below is a very very intuitive reality, Like it's very simple.
You don't have to you don't have to actually work too hard to understand
that things decomposed down here, right, and the specific and the particular is
down here, and the universal and the one is up here. And you
can do it if you want, Like go into a field and put your
face on the ground, and you'll see that you've seen very few things,
right, you just see a bunch of grass and maybe a few bugs,
you know. But if you go up a mountain, then all of a
sudden, all that multiplicity gets gathered and gather and gathered into one until you
can see the pattern and you can kind of see the layout. Okay,
So this idea that heaven is above and and and that hell's below is very
reasonable. Everybody should believe that it's not a okay, So so below down
here, now you have the two like the two sides, which is,
you have the gathering here and then you have the dispersal here, and the
gathering is represented as paradise. Now Paradise is not heaven. It's really important
to understand the difference. Paradise is not up there. Paradise is the gathering
down here, right, it's the garden. Paradise is Eden. It's the
good which is manifested and gathered in the world. So what you have is
you have the image of the cherub that is on the door of the garden,
and it's usually I don't know if you can see it here, it's
holding a lance. Often it's holding a sword, like a flaming sword.
We see Saint Peter who's opening the door right to paradise. And then in
paradise there are three people, Abraham, the Virgin, and who can guess
who the third one is? This guy, so I'll tell you it's a
good thief, okay. But Abraham and the Virgin, they like, it's
really to understand, they're not metaphors for paradise. They are paradise, Okay.
When Christ talks about the vision of Lazarus and the rich Man, he
says, Lazarus is gathered into the bosom of Abraham. That is what paradise
is. It is to be gathered in the thing from which your multiplicity originates.
To be gathered to your father's is to return back to the place where
you were one with that which is around you. That's what the garden of
Eden is, the top of the mountain. It's the place where all multiple
tity comes together into one. And Abraham for the Jews is paradise because he
is the source of unity for their nation. He is the place where they
recognize each other as being one. Okay, that's important to understand. And
the Virgin is of course the same for us. She is that which gathered
the body together. She represents the gathering of the body. She represents the
throne, she represents the land. She is the mountain. She has all
that type of imagery around her because she gathered the logos into her womb.
The Thief is there to remind you what I told you at the beginning,
which is that all of these images go together, because what's happening in this
image is already happening in this image. It's all already in that image,
because we forget there isn't one cross. There are three crosses, right,
and there's Christ in the center, and there is one who recognizes him as
the source of value, as the source of virtue as a source of innocence,
and there is one who does not recognize him and mocks him and derides
him. And so the Last Judgment is already happening on the cross. It's
already it's all encapsulated into that one image. Not just that, but this
also, what is Christ's doing? Why are these characters there? He's saying,
this is your mother, this is your son. He's saying, this
is how you're together, this is why, this is your relationship. This
is what makes you not two but one is. I am giving you an
identity right now. So Christ on the Cross does everything that the image of
the Last Judgment does already. And that's why this image is so astounding,
Right, this image, it's like all of this is gathered together into that
one image at the top, and it's just this unfurling of the consequences of
one action. Now, why does it matter? Why? Why the cross?
What? You know? It's like, okay, so I can understand
this, right, I understand the idea of the ideal man, I understand
the idea of the top of the pyramid, you know, the head honcho,
the president, the top guy, the captain of the team. I
get that that's easy to understand. We all know we look up to these
characters that are heroic, that kind of have that brightness to them, and
they kind of gather us into their leadership. Right, So why this?
Why? Why this? Right? And that is that is the mystery of
identity is captured in that image. And that's what all of you that have
read Dante have discovered is that identity is not doesn't just hold together. That's
pride. That's no good. Identity is always self given. It always empties
itself necessarily, and there's there's nothing magical about it. Right. It's a
very it's almost technical description of how things work. So for my steering wheel
to have its identity, it has to offer itself to the car it has
to or else. Who cares about a steering wheel? If I just have
a fetishized steering wheel, you know, like hung on my wall, it's
irrelevant. All things give themselves to their higher participation. The world is made
of sacrifice. And this is what's so fascinating about understanding. And this is
also why you know, you hear all this talk about Christian nationalism, like
you've probably heard all this kind of rumble about it, but there's something about
Christian identity was very particular, which is understanding that which is understanding that identity
always gives itself, and it gives itself in two directions. It gives itself
up necessarily, like I said, the steering wheel has to give itself to
the car, and the car has to give itself to the fact of driving,
and the fact of driving has to give itself to the existence of towns
and of people living together. All of these things have to stack up,
all these goods to give themselves up always, and that's what you see in
Dante, is that ultimately that leads to something that is beyond, beyond the
world. But identity also has to give itself down, right, it has
to have compassion. The best way to understand it is that for there to
not just be one car, there has to be flexibility, and how car
exists, it has to give itself to some extent, has to loosen itself
so that you can recognize multiplicity as well. So identity always gives itself up,
but also always gives itself down. And that's what it's amazing about this
particular image of the last judge, and it's the only one that I know
that has this structure where they take the three these three images and stack them
together in a way that you see how they kind of fit into each other.
But that is what is so to me astounding about this particular structure.
So save the worst part for the last. So we have to talk about
hell obviously a little bit. The way to understand the bottom of the left
hand register, the way to understand hell is the is exactly the problem of
fragmentation and in some ways the problem of identities and love and desire that are
out of control. And what they do is they're not sufficient, right,
and so sin, that's what sin is. It's like the thing that you
aim towards. If it's the wrong thing, it's not sufficient. If it
doesn't give itself up towards other other identities, then it becomes insufficient. It
eats you, devours you, it burns you, right, it destroys you.
This is not something that happens at the end of the world. It's
something that you can experience every single day. Right. It's like if you
give yourself to something so exclusively, or if you let something take over your
life so exclusively and you don't let it open up and participate in the other
goods that are available to you, then it will eat you. Right,
It'll be like worms that are constantly eating your body. It'll be like fire
that is burning, or it'll be like the cold that freezes you and makes
you impossible, impossible for you to go forward. We know that it's easier
to see that with people that are addicted. When you find when you know
people that are addicted to something, you see it clearly. Right, it's
like this thing, this drug, this alcohol, this whatever, has now
taken over your life and is destroying you, but you persist in it and
is basically devouring you. But the truth is that that can be true anything
it's not. This can be true about work, right, It can be
true about the love of a person. Right. You can idolize someone and
love them so much that it will destroy you. And we've met people.
Everybody's met someone that has let that happen to them. So it's actually like
a coherent description of how reality works, which is that if you are captured
by things and you don't participate in these higher goods that lead up to the
heavenly man, then you will burn. Right, it'll it will, it
will happen inevitably. And so, but the one thing that I want to
show you that's actually I like about this particular image of Hell is that all
the people of Hell are all the elites. It's like monks and emperors and
bishops, you know. Regular people don't go to Hell, just important people.
I kind of like that. And this can be represented as an upside
down gathering, right as a fetishized gathering, like a like a parody of
the right hand, you could say. And so this is the Antichrist who
is on the lap of the devil as if he was Christ. He looks
like Jesus. Actually he's made to look exactly like the way that you would
represent the child Christ in the hands of the mother. That's exactly what I
tried to tell you. It's like if you are captured by something that completely
takes you. It's almost like an inverse. It's a parody of the right
hand. It's like this concentrate of identity in the wrong place that then devours
you. But what's beautiful about this is that you have these three So if
you look at you have the Antichrist on the devil's lap, and on the
other side you have probably Lazarus. It's not one hundred percent clear who it
is, but it's probably Lasus. It is a soul that is saved and
is in the bosom of Abraham. So think about it, like, show
you the full image again. Okay, So it's actually quite beautiful because down
here right you have Lazarus that is that is contained in the Abraham. Here
you have the Antichrist that is on the devil. And think of it that
across from that, if you were here and you turned around, then you
would see Christ on the version's lap. So this is what you would see.
So you have this beautiful kind of structure of meaning where all of the
things kind of come together in the beginning and the end. And so I
mean that is what I wanted to kind of help you see, is to
maybe look at these types of images again with fresh eyes. Understand that the
Medievals how they understood reality and the way that these image function as a kind
of map of reality, the same way the the the gospel stories, the
Bible stories, or the ancient mets function. And if we see them that
way, we get we can get quite a bit of insight into how how
the world works. So thank you for your attention. The question I have
for you is beautifully showed up showed in this image. How things stack up
from from the from the many to the one? How do we find our
way from division back to unity? I mean, start with yourself, you
know, that's probably the best thing to do. This whole image could be
described as an image of the soul, right, and so you could actually
understand that that you know this sometimes it's not there this one, but sometimes
there's actually a person here in between the devil and the angel that's being weighed
h and so inside you, right, you are all of us are made
of multiplicities, just like together we make multiplaces with others. And so the
best way to come back towards unity in the world is to come back towards
unity in yourself, you know. And so uh In Jordan Peterson talks about
cleaning a room, it's actually a great it's a great simple thing. It's
to say that if actually it can scale from the ground up, and that
a person that is transformed and that has you know that he's moving, you
know, in truth towards virtue and beauty will have reverberations around them, and
then the the world can start to clump again, you know, and I
and I and I think, like, for example, what Ralton's doing is
a great example, because they're saying, you know, we're not here to,
We're not going to this is not about policy, like we're not going
to change the entirety of America. What we're going to do is we're going
to create a paradise and we're going to pull in the people that are capable
and willing to enter into the right relationship with the vision. And that is
something which will then reverberate into the future in ways that is far more real
than if we just change the law, because when you change the law,
you don't change anybody's heart. Right. If people think that this whatever culture
war thing is going to be won by putting the right number of people on
the Supreme Court from whatever side you are, that's absolutely ridiculous. Like you'll
just increase polarity and division and fight. But transform people. That's real and
that is undeniable when you meet someone that is transformed. Stephen and I had
the chance to go to Mount Athos together and we were able to meet the
abbot of one of the monasteries, and the man was just I don't know
what to say. I mean, he was glowing, not physically glowing,
but he was clearly a transformed person, and it hushed everybody. You know,
It's like everybody was reduced to silence. And I think that, you
know, we don't often meet people like that, but we meet little versions
of it, where we encounter people that have that light and that that spark
and are glowing and we have to That's the way transformation happens. I believe
it. Some of what you said reminded me of Plato, both in terms
of especially in his metaphysics, but to a lesser extent the politics that he
describes in the Republic. Is that just a coincidence or is there any kind
of direct influence there? No, I mean, I think that Plato is
definitely part of the canon of the of the West and all of you know.
I'm very in line with Justin Martyr. That is that I believe that
all things that are good are from God. That is that, you know,
Justin Martyr talks about those that were Christian before Christ need it, and
he talked about the philosophers as being images of that, and that's the way
that I see it. I think that Plato, like all the ancient thinkers,
is someone that how can I say this that we have to kind of
go through with a certain amount of discernment and wisdom, But definitely is the
basic description of reality is quite is quite powerful. But I would say that
one of the things that I love about the image that I'm showing you is
there is this this aspect that you find, this kinotic aspect that you find
in Christian metaphysics, which I think is also very powerful. This idea of
this empty and the trinitarian language of like the person's emptying themselves into each other
is a very powerful way to avoid the problem of the tyrant, you know,
and of the empire in the negative sense, because sometimes Plato those ideas
can seem to lead to that. You talked about identity as this exclusion of
something and inclusion of something. It's a really interesting way to think about it.
And you mentioned pride as an excess of identity, right, do you
mean excluding more or including more? When you say excess You said you said
that pride is an excess of identity. It is it that inclusion or that
exclusion. It could be It can actually be both. It can be a
desire to make everything the different, the different than unity, and uniformity,
for example, is a good example. It's like unity is not uniformity,
and unity is actually a variation that comes together towards unity. So so pride
can be the desire to make all things uniform in a way that is absolute.
But pride can also be the desire to include things that that you think
you can include, but that you can't. That you thought you could,
but then it rips you apart, you know. So those are so like
you can be prideful and take on too much, right, and you can.
There are different ways, but it can be either. I think I
just had a question about the image there of Christ on the throne, and
I noticed there's two wheels below and his feet, and then there's something that
looks like a rope or a tail. Yeah, yeah, let me find
a bet. Sure now I guess to hell, yeah when it is,
yeah, so this is the image of the Son of Man. One of
the things that's trying to do is to gather in all the images that are
there in the Bible, and so in the Book of Ezekiel there is this
description of the heavenly figure, the heavenly man that descends onto a throne,
a chariot made of angels, okay, and so made of cherubs, and
so that is what you're seeing there. So you see you see the cherubs,
right, these two these angels with four wings, and then you see
these wheels that are described by Dkiel that have eyes all around them, right,
and this is what is being represented by the way. This is also
represented at the ascension. Okay, this one is even clear because you see
the wings have all these eyes on them, and you see the four the
four faces. Right, you see the four figures of the lion, the
man, the eagle, and the ok then you see the wheels. Next
it up and see what if you once you start to see it, you
start to see it everywhere. Right. Here are the four figures. Here
are the wheels. Okay. This is from Egypt. The other one is
from Syria. The other one is from Italy. This is a unit.
It's a kind of universal language. This that's coming from Christ's feet is the
river of fire. It's a river of fire that descends all the way into
into Gehanna. All right, so see it that that river, interestingly enough,
is an image that I insure you but it is interesting in Russian iconography
that river of fire becomes a snake, interestingly enough, and then the snake
he is this, so he bites that the heel of Adam, and then
the snake comes all the way down into hell. But that snake now is
both going up and going down. It's not just going down into hell.
It's like the ladder of ascent at the same time. This idea that there's
motion between between the different aspects, and so as you move up in the
virtues, you're you're moving up the snake, and as you go down with
the vices, then you're going down. It's like snakes and ladders. You
know that came it's like that in those images. How do you know that
it's Peter and Paul in various places Adam and Eve, well, Peter and
Paul. They're easy to recognize that Peter has a white beard and he often
has curly hair. Paul is bald and he's got a long kind of dark
beard, so he's actually easy to recognize. And also because in some versions,
although not in the East, for example, we actually write the names,
so you actually have the names written next to all the characters, so
it's a good way to know that that's the character. But we can still
transpose it into the West, where that tradition of marking the name was not
really maintained. But you can know that that's who it is because in the
older in other versions, it's literally written their name underneath them, underneath them.
When you mentioned that Jesus is the perfect man, and you say that
all of us are tending to him, is he then the man by whom
or by which all men shall be judged, Well, that's what the implication
of the image is, for sure. Clearly the implication of the image is
that that man who who sacri fis himself, is the one that judges all
things, and in some ways can judge all things because he did not take
glory for himself. That that's the that's the difference between just the emperor or
the judge in the simple sense, and this image of the man who has
given himself and therefore is allowed to be the heavenly man. So you said
something about Saint Paul on the on the left hand side or right hand and
it was a little confusing. I don't think you meant to say that he
was with those that go are cast into hell. No, I was trying
to show that the left hand has multiple aspects and it's not just good bad,
right, that that's important because we can tend to think that. And
it's okay in like a basic idea, the way Christ talks about the sheep
and the goats, but in the iconography and in the way that the language
started to develop, then the idea of the left hand of Christ having also
a useful positive side, you know, which is multiplication and division and and
difference that level where you have Peter on the on the right hand and then
Paul on the left. Would that then be like all the saints called with
Jesus to sit in judgments. Right, Okay, that's what it is,
and it is it is this idea, and you know, and it's I
think to me, this is actually a very useful you know, it's it's
a useful way to deal with the problem with Plato for example, right,
because this idea of the forms, you know, it's like, okay,
so where are these forms? You know, they they just exist completely independently
of man. And the Christian answer is no, the Christian answer is they
exist in Him, right, They exist in the one that is this this
is the source of reality. So, so I did get these weird things
in medieval iconography, which is that when they show the creation of the world,
they show Jesus Christ creating the world, which is kind of just okay,
well that's not possible, right because he comes two thousand years later.
But it's really understanding the idea that this is the world of meaning exists through
man, that you don't need to just posit forms outside of consciousness. But
it also doesn't mean that it's idiosyncratic and it's like anything goes, but that
that consciousness is a way by which the world exists. It is in some
ways the filter to which whatever the forms are are main subject to. And
so the idea of so it actually to me it solves a lot of problems,
like metaphysical problems, but also even in terms of science and a lot
of the questions we ask. Now, so the idea that now we all
of us are called to enter into that like we can become principalities, we
can become like the gods of the Greeks. Right, you can become gods
and you will sit in judgment with the heavenly man over reality. It's like
it sounds weird, but it's like it just it's it just means that you
can become a standard right which others live their life. Right. You can
become an image, you can become something a star by which other people judge
their own actions. Right. And that's actually just true. It's just how
it works. It's how humanity functions. Like we have things people that shine
for us, and that become the standard the judge. And so this is
this is a cosmic version of that, which is that you know, in
the end, all of this will be judged by by the heavily man and
his those that he has gathered in with him. You want to think about
it that way. But that's already why we have things like patron saints,
you know, we have all the why we name cities after people, that's
why we name that's women, named roads after people, because they are they
become like principalities that that give identities to things, and we want to live
in their example by remembering them and by giving and by putting their name into
the the landscape. Even I really enjoyed your talk, and I've been enjoying
following you on YouTube and stuff, and I'm kind of curious is there any
good resources or is it possible for to kind of discover a like a unity
from the symbolic way of talking and like the tomistic Aristotelian way of talking,
since Plato has come up twice at Aristotle, is it possible? I mean,
I'm not. It's it's complicated. I'm not. I'm I definitely.
I am an Eastern Orthodox person. I have my line, you know,
and the saints that I love. I don't know Thomas well enough, and
I don't know his work. And I also I'm careful because I know that
Thomas and the Thomas are not the same, and so I don't I try
to be to be careful, but I would I do believe that in some
ways Christianity is a is a synthesis between something like Plato and Aristotle, and
it's very right in the in the image of the incarnation, it kind of
plays that role, and it seems to play itself out in the story itself.
So I'd say probably yes, but I'd be careful myself to talk about
that. Thank you again for such a stirring talk and for guiding us through
this mysterious image. And I was particularly struck by the throne, and that
makes up the cathedral, that is this symbol of the giving of the self
to another. So either we have these these figures becoming as children sitting on
the laps of Mother Mary or Father Abraham, and then we have others becoming
as Father as Mother in giving of their own bodies for the glory of another.
And yet all throughout these images, and all throughout especially religious art and
iconography, we have these male and female symbols that make up the one that
represents and this sublime unity and this ideal. And I'm curious to hear your
thoughts on how we can translate the masculine and feminine symbols as we, as
males and females respectively, try to make sense of our own inner world to
order our own identities, which are of course multiplicities of both. So the
structure, like the basic structure, is there. It's there in Genesis one.
That's how the Bible starts. God makes heaven and earth, and this
heaven and earth, this duality, this original duality, then gets reproduced all
through the Genesis narrative and gets repeated all the way down to then man separating
separated into male and female and so it's like it is basically the structures.
It's just the structure all through the text of Genesis one, and it happens
all through and like you said, in the images that we find, we
find this relationship. I like this Coptic image a lot, right, this
basic structure right of the head or the masculine above in heaven and then the
mother below with the child as the hidden aspect of heaven in the world.
Right, the spark is kind of hidden in things, but also the one
that gathers together, right, that gathers together the multiplicity into herself. You
could say, you know, if you've ever seen this image, it's a
beautiful Catholic image. You see the Virgin in statues and she has her cape
open, and then in the cape you have all these people that are kind
of in her cape. That's a beautiful image of that, of that kind
of gathering. So the first thing to say that's important to say is that
we have to be careful not to reduce a person to their gender. That's
the first thing. That we're all people made in the image of God,
and that we are all called to be to be in the image of Christ
and to be like Christ, and that in Christ there is no male,
there's no female, there's no Greek, there's no Jew. Right that we
have this idea that in the unity, there's a way in which we can
all participate into the story. But there is also a manner in which we
do play those roles in society, because then there we do. Also we
all also are male and female, and that has a reality that we have
to account for. If we pretend like it doesn't exist, then the world
stops to exist. It's actually quite simple. If we pretend that male and
female aren't different, and that they don't have complimentary roles, then there's no
more generation. Basically things, the being ceases. It's pretty It's like,
that's why I describe that way in Genesis one, and that's just how the
world functions, and so we have to take that seriously. But there's also
a way in which we can all play the different roles in different perspectives,
right, And so that's also important to understand, is that there's a manner
in which we are all Let's say, as Christians, I am the bride
of Christ, like we are all the bride of Christ. We all have
a feminine aspect to us in which we we are called to to give ourselves
to higher purposes and to higher things. And there's also a way in which
we all of us, where there's male, female, whatever. Sometimes we
play leadership roles where we have to guide multiplicities towards purposes. And then we
play roles that are masculine, that are heavenly roles in that sense. And
so it's important to understand it fractally and to not ignore the different levels.
That's to me, that's the key is that there are moments in history where
we try to reduce the person to their gender and then everything becomes solidified,
you know, like that. Uh, And there are moments where we do
the opposite. Now we mostly do the opposite, where we just kind of
collapse everything. So I think that the way to understand it and the best
way to participate in it is to see it fractally. Is like, I
play this role in this context, and then there's this an understanding the difference
between that which guides and gives purpose and and and let's say gives direction,
and that which gathers and gives itself up to that purpose. So I one
final question, John that after your masterful explication of this image from the church,
and Torcello actually had the great privilege of going to that church. It's
just in the sort of it was the beginning really of the of the of
what we now call Venice. But they moved to what we now see is
the main town. Uh so you've got to take a boat to get over
there. And I had the great privilege of seeing this image and it was
very moving to me. But I have to I have to be honest.
When I was looking at this, I couldn't see a tenth of the things
that you have actually explicated for us. I don't have the knowledge of symbolism
of I called it iconography and so on. Uh. And so the question
I want to ask you is really, how do you learn to read?
And I mean, of course, you know, how do you learn to
get better at reading images? Our students are reading some very difficult books.
We're hoping to teach them something about how to read difficult literature and philosophy.
But that's not just a skill for this, but it's in a way a
way of learning to read reality. Analogy is the key in my perception is
that when you're interpreting images, for example, it's very dangerous to get caught
into the one image because one of the things that happens in language and in
iconography, for example, is that the images exist together, right. They
rhyme, they're like, they're kind of kind of a massive poetry. And
so if you can be able to look across from the different things that you're
learning, then you start to see the rhyming. And once you start to
see the rhyming, then first of all, there's a joy like just in
just kind of playing into that rhyme. But then there's also a kind of
coherence that appears that is wonderful because all of a sudden you have the capacity
to read something that you've never seen before because you know the patterns so well.
You know that this is how this is. These are the basic patterns
of of Christian iconography, for example. And so often I can see an
image that I've never seen in my life, and I know what it is
because I just know that if that image were represented, it would have to
have these elements in this in this structure, and if like if there's something
above or there's something below, you know, how are they interacting? What
what are what type of relationship you can see, and so I would say
that that can be true, you know, for image interpretation, but it
also has to be true for culture in general. This is also one of
the things that I think ralson what's doing is amazing, is that you need
a certain breath to some extent. These are a lot of the stories,
that's say, the ancient nests or the Bible stories or the fairy tales.
They used to be so part of people's lives that everybody just them, didn't
even remember how they knew them, they just did. But now we have
to be more deliberate about it because we're so assaulted with all kinds of insane,
you know, ridiculous stories that are trying to get our attention that we
have to be more deliberate about, you know, going back into the ancient
text, going back into the myths, into the into the stories, and
then starting to look across and to see the patterns and how they they relate
to each other. So that's at least that's the way that I read.
Well, I know I'm speaking for many of us. What I thank you,
Jonathan for the ways that you open up those patterns, open up the
horizon, open up our understanding both here tonight and in your work on your
podcast and beyond. Join me in thanking Jonathan for a wonderful day.