Speaker 1: I want to go to the biblical text and I
want to show in some ways the role of this
aspect of creation, what we could call the role of
the earth in the creation narrative. It's difficult to talk
about this, and the reason why it's difficult to talk
about is because negativity or absence or void is that
which should not be talked about. When we talk about
the void, when we talk about the emptiness, we run
into danger of moving into performative contradiction. And so please
take everything I say with a kind of quiet silence,
with a kind of waiting to know that we never
really talk about the void, and it's very dangerous to
do so. But sometimes we have to turn around it.
Sometimes we have to, let's say, hint at it in ways.
And so this is probably the time where I'm going
to talk about it the most clearly. This is Jonathan Pegel,
Welcome to the symbolic world. So when God created the
Earth and the heavens, it is described, of course that
the earth was empty and void, and that the spirit
of God, which is equivalent to heaven, was above the
surface of the deep. So we have these three images
emptiness and void of deep. This is of course related
to chaos ultimately, and usually, you know, I like to
talk about symbolism, and I like to talk about how
things come together and how things, you know, join together
towards unity. But it is always important to remember this
other aspect, this aspect of the earth. And recently, interestingly enough,
my daughter, who I love very much, has been, let's say,
preoccupied by this question and therefore has been reading a
lot of modern authors that emphasize the negativity of being,
the absence, alterity, difference. Of course, so many of the
postmodern writers, whether it's de Luce or Derrida, whether it's
earlier writers like Jeff Battai or you know, Emmanuel Emmanuel Levinas,
so many of the the influential kind of contemporary philosophers
have tried to deal with the question of negativity. You
could say, you know, I'm using a term, but the
questions of you know, the other aspects of being that
we often don't talk about, whether it is in terms
of emphasizing difference, whether it is in terms of emphasizing negativity,
emphasizing outside all of these kinds of questions. So I
thought it might be a good idea to look at this,
you know, hopefully to engage in a conversation with my
own daughter, but also with all of those that have
a nagging sense that this is an important question. And
it is an important question, and especially important because there
is a kind of political divide that is related to this.
It is of course related to the end of the
World War two consensus as well, because one of the
things that happened after World War Two is that the
authors that we considered we consider avante guard even the
ones that were there before World War Two, basically got
consolidated into a, let's say, a group or a movement
that we could call progressivism or the avant garde. And
it's very easy to understand that these authors, they tend
to emphasize disruption over continuity, they tend to emphasize difference
over sameness. And this for very important reasons, which is
because of the way the war ended, because the Axis
and what it tried to bring about was defeated by
the Allies. It is completely normal that these authors that
in some ways were emphasizing the question of disruption, whether
it is in terms of revolution, that is, even in
terms of Marxist or neo Marxist terms, whether it is
more esthetically, whathether it is more about difference and alterity
in all that would not necessarily have identified themselves as
as Marxists. But there is a kind of flavor, right,
There's a kind of smell in many of these thinkers
that help us see that they are related to this
need to understand difference, discontinuity and negativity. And so what
I'd like to do is I want to go to
the Biblical text and I want to show in some
ways the role of this aspect of creation, what we
could call the role of the earth in the creation narrative.
It's difficult to talk about this, and the reason why
it's difficult to talk about is because negativity or absence
or void is that which should not be talked about.
When we talk about the void, when we talk about
the emptiness, we run into danger of moving into performative contradiction.
And so please take everything I say with a kind
of quiet silence, with a kind of waiting to know
that we never really talk about the void, and it's
very dangerous to do so. But sometimes we have to
turn around it. Sometimes we have to, let's say, hint
at it in ways. And so this is probably the
time where I'm going to talk about it the most clearly,
and hopefully this will serve the good ultimately and not
simply mistake the void for the good. Let's say it
that way. And so it says in the beginning God
created heaven and earth again, and the earth was empty
and void. And a good way to think about this
is to really understand this as the primordial opposite. It
is the same as in every single culture, the yin
the yang that is represented as heaven and earth as
masculine feminine, whether it is you know, in the the
Greek Theogony, whether it is Uranos and Guaya, the Father
God and the Mother Earth. All of these are versions
of the same. So it really is a universal image.
It is not one which is defined only by the
Bible or by Christianity, but it is something that exists
in all cultures. But to understand this separation of heaven
and earth is really the most primordial separation, and a
way to talk about it so that it maybe is
leaves the mythological realm at the outset is a way
I like to talk about it as that and not that,
you know, it's a very simple way to talk about it,
one which people might say is too simple, But hopefully
as we talk about, as we kind of explore, you'll
start to understand the relationship between that and not that.
Speaker 2: Greeting's friends, cosmographers, fellow symbolists, this is Joshua from Eighth
Day Books, inviting you to join me and studying a
remarkable cosmic coincidence. Why is it that writers, philosophers, and
prophets from many times in places have all told us
that contemplating the night sky makes our own souls similarly
more beautiful and more ordered. Hebrew and Hindu, Greek and Chinese.
They've all told us that looking up is the same
as looking in, and that we are as much citizens
of the sky as we are of earth. In February,
we will be looking at Pythagorea and folk tales, biblical wisdom, literature,
and contemporary novelists to ask these questions. It'll be a
challenging course, but not technical. I teach medieval philosophy and
Renaissance literature, and I'm condensing a year's worth of information
into a few wonderfilled hours. Please join me for some Plato,
some poetry, and some practical skygazing, all to help us
pursue the art of imitating Heaven see you very soon.
Speaker 1: And so in the Bible, this separation between heaven and earth,
you could call it, you know, identity and difference. You know,
that is also a good way of understanding that and
not that and this not that is absolutely necessary for
the existence of the world, because what the earth produces
is variability, right, variability is difference. And so even when
God is creating the world, he is constantly engaging difference
and variability and not that into the equation. You have
to understand creation as a kind of dance between that
and not that, between identity and difference. And every time
that God, you know, separates and every time that God
kind of calls for variation in the creation narrative, you
have to understand it as this dance. Now, of course,
you know, in the Bible and in Christianity, we really
understand it as a complimentary, complementary relationship. That is, in fact,
both of them are needed for the existence of the world.
And of course, then not that has a particular characteristic
and we'll see why. In some ways it is always hushed, right,
it is always kind. It is not that which is
put forward because by its very nature it is emptiness
and void, and therefore it is always let's say, implied,
and it's always underneath reality. And that's why you'll rarely
find even theologians that will talk about it, you know,
especially the ancient fathers. And so people will say, well,
why Jonathan are you talking about it? Well, the reason
why I'm talking about it is because for the last
one hundred years at least and more in some regards,
people have been obsessed with understanding the problem of the negative, right,
the problem of the emptiness and the problem of the void. Now,
in order to kind of start to understand, you have
to see in the scripture what happens. And so when
God is creating the world, there are two examples where
you see this very beautifully. You know, God says to
the earth, he says, let the earth produce vegetation, vegetation
with seed inside it. And so it's really interesting because
we often think of God as creating things directly, but
in this case, God is not creating things directly. God
is giving a major category, you know, which is vegetation,
and then he he asks the earth to produce variability
on that category. So he's asking the earth to produce
difference he says, produce all kinds of vegetation. I'm not
going to even tell you how many, how many varieties,
what exactly it is you do. I want you to
create variation, to generate variation on a unity, which is vegetation.
But what's important is, of course, I'm also going to
put heaven inside of that variation, which is that each
identity that will come out will have a seed in it,
So produce vegetation with seed inside. That of course, is
saying that this relationship between heaven and earth, between the
one and difference, you could say the one and the
many as well the many, in the sense of how
it is not completely the one. You'll start to see,
you know, how it is a fractal relationship. And you
see that right at the outset. Because when God creates
heaven and Earth, the first thing he does is he
separates the earth. He puts a second heaven inside the waters.
He said, let though there be waters above and waters below,
and then we will there will be a firmament beneath
between the waters. And so what that means is that
everything that we encounter, everything that exists in the world,
is earth. Right. It is an aspect of Earth. It
is an aspect of a variation, it's an aspect of difference,
it is an aspect of change. It has all of
this inside of it, because it is all in the earth, right.
And I think it was Saint Augustine who hinted that
when you look around and even if you look at
the stars and you look at the sun, what you're
seeing is all the earth. You know, because Heaven has
pure actuality is not available to us. Of course, it's
also true that the earth has kind of pure chaos
or pure potentiality, is also not completely not completely available
to us. But at least in the story of the creation,
God is bringing Heaven into Earth and creating a version
of Heaven inside the earth or at the firmament that's
inside the waters, and then everything that will be created
inside will also be, you know, an aspect of that variability.
And so you can see that this is extremely important
in understanding how things function now to really understand the
the aspect of the the negativity, right, or the aspect
of of heaven. And one of the things that that
that I talk about, but I know my brother always
talks about it as well, is to kind of understand
the earth aspect as a question right, or as a
how about this? Right? So imagine God says let the earth,
let the earth produce vegetation. And now the earth what
it does is it proposes, and it says, well, how
about this? What about this? Does this fit? Is this
part of what you're saying? And it's constantly asking questions
of the identity, it's always asking questions of heaven and saying,
you know, how does how does your identity adjust to this?
How does your identity fit in this context in this time?
You know? How does justice apply to this particular context
where someone has just done something and has been put
in jail? How does justice apply to this particular situation?
In a war where two people are fighting, And so
the earth or the particular or the difference, you know,
or the negativity can be understood as not that, but
understood as not that which is asking the question is it? That?
Is it? This? Is it? Is it? What is it? Right?
And this question can be understood at many levels. It
can understood, of course, you know, as the identity itself,
like what is this? And it could also be understood
is how does this identity apply to this particular situation?
And now of course, you know some of the truth Fathers,
they in some ways deal with this, not exactly in
the same way that I'm trying to help you understand.
But let's say Sam Maximus, he talks about what he
calls logos and tropos, which is the idea that all
beings have a logos. They have they have an identity
which binds them together in a in one. But then
they have a tropos, which is that the way in
which that identity is then adjusted or applied in different
context is the tropos. Now, of course Sam Maximus does
it deal with the question of of of negativity per se.
He only he sees it more from the pop from
the let's say, from the perspective of positivity, for the
from the perspective of how different identities in their kind
of in the kind of fullness of creation, how different
identities can manifest multiplicity and variation on the theme. But
you can also, like I'm trying to do now, understand
it from the point of view of the negative, from
the point of view of the space. Of course, one
of the ancient, ancient understandings of this relationship is one
of the is that I've already hinted to you already,
which is the relationship between the man and the woman,
that is the relationship between male and female in their
specific role. You know, in terms of sexual reproduction. You
can understand that the way that it's understood by the
ancients is that the man is the head, and the
man provides the seed, and then the mother or the
woman will have the womb. That is, it is an
opening of an empty space. Right, it is a place
in which the seed will come, and then from the
earth will gather body from potential reality and will become
a child. And so the child is you know, a
representation of the father, but is also not the father, right,
is also not that. And then the brothers and sisters
are all part of the same family, but they are
also not each other. They are different from each other.
And so what the earth is always producing with the
womb is producing is variability. And of course his veriability
is fractal, like we've always said. So of course the
child itself, but then every single aspect of the person
will have its own very particular instantiation, which will both
make it the same and always different as something else.
And you know, in the story, for example, of the Theogony,
the had theogony. You can see how this can of
course go awry. It's a very powerful image where in fact,
the Father is having relationships with the mother. You know,
the heaven is having relationships with the Mother and is
producing variations on heaven. In the earth is producing things
that have filiation to heaven. But there are some aspects
that the earth produces which are understood as being not
connected or that they are monsters, right, they are excessive variation.
And so you know, these are the giants, the early
giants that had you know, ten thousand arms in ten
thousand heads, like these crazy descriptions of these insane giants.
And of course the Father then is judging, and the
Father will say no to that aspect of the world.
And in that particular case, you can see it from
the point of view the Father of course as saying, well,
you know, we don't want these giants in the world.
But you can also understand it from the point of
view of the mother that is producing this variation and
sees it from the point of view of variation, and therefore,
in this particular case, you know, is more interested in
the variation than in the filiation, and therefore sees the
judgment of the God as an affront to variation. So,
you know, you can kind of almost understand all of
postmodern theory as this type of reaction when in some
ways there is a sense that there's something unjust about
the capacity for heaven, the capacity for logos, the capacity
for identity to exclude in the capacity for identity to
judge the beings. And so it is possible to kind
of see this, this this gap now of course, in
the in the Christian perspective, you know, in the in
the in the perspective of scripture, when the earth, you
could say, when the Earth reacts in that way, one
of the things it's doing is not being itself right.
And this is of course the revolutionary gesture. That is
when emptiness tries to act as being. This is when
there is sin. This is when things go awry. Now,
it's a little hard to understand it at the outset
when you think of heaven and earth, But when we're
going to get to the other opposites, you're going to
see how this makes sense.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: Of course, in the Bible, God separates man and woman,
separates the male and the female as an image of
heaven and earth as an image of the continuation of
what God was doing in creation. And now again this
is what you know. The man will provide seed and
the woman will provide body, and therefore heaven and earth
will continue. And like I said, it's really understood as
complementary in some ways. You both need each other. You know,
you can't. You cannot have earth without heaven, and you
cannot have heaven without earth. So it's seen as something
that is quite positive. But then there's another opposite that
appears in the story because it's all very fractal, which
is the tree of good and evil. And this is
where this is hopefully going to be more easy to
kind of understand why it is that we need we
need both aspects of the world. Now, I'm going to
take my brother's translation of it, where Mateur says, you know,
the tree of good and bad. I really like that
way of talking about it. And the reason why I
like it is because it makes us calm. We can
interpret what it is that's going on in the story
without becoming too emotional, without you know, without it immediately
becoming a kind of moral judgment or whatever. Because the
question is if you think about it in terms of
the tree of gold, good and bad. The question is
why did God put a tree of the knowledge of
good and bad in the world. You know, this is
something that a lot of atheists or more agnostic people ask.
It's like, well, if evil didn't exist in the world
before the fall, then why is there a tree of
the knowledge of good and evil? You know, where does
that come from? Where does evil come from? What is evil?
How is it that there's evil in the world. But
understanding the tree of the knowledge of good and evil
as a fractal representation, as a lower, more particular representation
of the first separation, which is the separation of heaven
and earth, might help you understand that. And so when
you think of good and bad, you have to realize
that good and bad is absolutely necessary for the existence
of things, just like that and not that is necessary
for the existence of things. So is good and bad,
and they are in some ways a mirror of each other.
That is that and not that heaven and earth and
good and bad are related to each other. Let's see
how so everything that exists exists because it is united
around a good right. And so a pencil has a purpose.
There's a reason for the pencil to exist and its elements,
both its elements in terms of its you know, kind
of structural constituents and its actual materiality. Right, the things
that it's made of is united around its purpose. Now,
in order for the pencil to exist, there has to
be bad, because bad if you remember what if you
remember what I said at the outset is related to
not that. It's related to difference. Everything that exists is
a not that for everything else that is. A pencil
makes a bad spoon, a pencil makes a bad rabbit. Right,
So there's actually around this being. There is a near
indefinite void which defines it. There is a near definite emptiness,
which is, you know, showing the limit of what the
pencil is by asking secretly does this make a good spoon?
Does this make a good rabbit? Obviously it doesn't ask
it explicitly, you know, because it is indefinite. There's an
indefinite amount of things that this is bad for and
therefore bad. It could should be understood as the difference
between beings. It's a buffer that exists around beings and
between beings, and it's very necessary for that to exist.
And so the idea of good and bad is absolutely necessary.
For you to exist now, you know, saying it from
the Syrian when he talks about this, you know, when
he talks about the tree of the knowledge of good
and evil. He says that Adam and Eve were meant
to at some point be given the fruit of the
knowledge of good and evil, and that it would come
to know the knowledge of good and evil. And the
way he says it, he says that they would know.
It's as if they would know about sickness from the
point of view of health. Right, think about it in
the term that I'm saying, which is that when you're
using a pencil, you know what a bad pencil would
be because you know what you're trying to do with
a pencil. You implicitly know that if this isn't well sharpened,
that it's that if it's too small, or that if
it would be made out of you know, out of jello.
I always use jello as an example. If it was
made out of jello, or out of all kinds of things,
out of snow or out of whatever, then it would
make a bad pencil. There's an indefinite amount of badness
which surrounds it. So when I'm using the pencil, when
I'm doing something according to its purpose. I can have
the knowledge of good and evil from the point of
view of the good. But the idea that san Efrem
shows is that because we ate of the fruit of
the knowledge of good and evil, it's as if now
we know health from the point of view of sickness.
That is, now we have this problem, which is that
you know, I'm fine myself with a bad pencil, and
I know it's a bad pencil because when I try
to use it, it doesn't work well, and there's a
frustration in the gap where I can experience the gap
between the state of the world, that is the broken
pencil or the the you know, the pencil that's not
made from the right stuff and what I know I'm
trying to accomplish by using this pencil. So, of course,
you know, in the case of the fall of Adam
and Eve, it's not necessarily related to pencils. It's related
to the moral capacity of the human So in the
state of the fall, what happens is that I see
the things that I wish I was doing. I see
the state that I wish I had, but I feel
the gap between the state that I'm in and the
state that I'm trying to accomplish. And that is when
we start to experience two things. One is death and
the other can be evil. How what is death and
how is death related to that? Well, death is experiencing
the bad. Death is being in a state of badness.
It's being in a state of the gap. Right, And
so when I'm in that gap, I feel that things
aren't connected to each other, that things are dissolving, that
they're moving back to dust, as God said about us.
But you can imagine that all of the things, your actions,
they are not completely united towards true purposes. You can
feel the distance between where you are in terms of
a kind of fragmentation in yourself and where you should
be in terms of morality. But you can understand that
it applies to all kind of levels of being. So
that is one thing that we experience. Now there's another
aspect that we experience, which is sin. What is sin
in this context? Sin is the attempt to twist the world,
to pretend that bad is good, to kind of twist
reality towards something, uh and try to hold it that
way even though it is not what it's trying to do.
How how does that work? You can understand it in
all kinds of ways, you know, which is that you know,
addiction is a good way of understanding it, which is
that when someone becomes an addict to a substance, what
they're trying to do is they're trying to fill a
need that they have, which is a very very high need,
you know, maybe the need for spiritual for accomplishment, the
need for relationship, the need to be connected with others,
to be in a relationship of love, you know, with
with with the people around us. And then they try
to take something that's not meant for that, and they
try to make those two things fit. And so what
they what they're doing is they're twisting reality, right, They're
they're twisting the world in a mistaken belief that if
you push the evil strong enough that it will somehow
accomplish what it is that you desired. And of course
that never works, you know. And so a good way
of understanding sin and evil too is that it is
in some ways a declaration of not that. Now, think
of Adam and Eve when they fell in the garden.
This is exactly what happened. The first thing that they
did is that they tried to hide themselves. They tried
to emphasize them, not that. They tried to cover and
protect themselves from each other, protect themselves from God. And
then they started to blame each other and to blame
you know, to blame the serpent, to blame Eve. And
what that does is that of course emphasizes the not that.
It emphasizes it as my identity. And so now my identity,
because my identity is supposed to be that which binds
you know, my identity is supposed to be that which
binds me to you in love, and that which binds
us together in love towards God. But when I protect
myself and I cut myself off from others, then that
becomes an image of pride, and an image an image
of sin, and an image of not that. And so
so much of sinning is, you could say, none that,
trying to be that. It is in some ways difference,
trying to make itself into identity. And so think about
a lot of the sins that are called upon in
the in the uh, in the the ten Commandments. So
lying making a false testimony, you know, I am twisting
reality in order to make a situation serve my purposes.
And I am treating others, you know, as these tools
that I can manipulate in order to reach my goal.
And so I'm isolating myself from the people I like
to because I'm misrepresenting reality, and I'm doing it for
a purpose of making myself stronger, making myself more protected.
You know, think about all the other ways. Stealing obviously
is an easier one, you know, wanting the things from
your neighbor, you know, being coveting things that others people have.
You know, this idea that in some ways you are again.
You know, you and I are not together, and now
I want to take your thing and bring it to
me because you have nothing to do with me, and
I'm completely separating myself from you and treating myself as God. Ultimately,
most of the sins are when we try to treat
ourselves and try to act as if we are the
fullness of unity, when of course that is that is
not the case. And so you can really kind of
understand that the tree of the knowledge of good and
bad is actually completely a natural aspect of reality, that
you need this capacity to differentiate good and bad in
order to do anything. Everything you do, you're always to
some extent, you know, dealing with this problem. Every time
you you know, every time you you know, you use anything,
every time you eat a fruit, you're judging. You know,
the difference between a good apple and a rotten apple,
and so you'll read for the good apple. All of
this is completely necessary. And you know the difference between
a good an apple and a doorknob, and you know
that a doorknob makes a bad apple, and that is
completely fine. And the difference aspect of it is completely
necessary for the world to exist. And the problem with
the difference is when difference tries to you make too
much noise, and when difference tries to call to itself
as a kind of as if it was being itself.
And so this is the question we need to ask
about some of the kind of postmodern thinking and some
of the even some of the modern thinking. You know,
a good example, and this is gonna be a it's
gonna be a harsh one, but I think it's probably
important to to kind of understand that is the way
in which in the modern world, as soon as the
Enlightenment and the kind of secular mind started to develop itself,
we immediately had two deformations of the sexual union and
of course, you know, we really have to understand that
the sexual union is at the outset. If you think
of the joining of heaven and earth, and in Scripture
and how it the entire world is resolved between, you know,
the the the bride, the heavenly bride and the heavenly
groom joining together and forming a new heaven and a
new Earth. You know, all of that that is manifested
in revelation. That it's not weird that right at the
outset of the modern age there would be these two
sexual deviances. And of course one was born in Marquis
de Sad, which we call Sadism, and one was born
in Sassam Mazuk, which we call Masochism. And in these
two tendencies, and there's a reason why a lot of
the postmodern authors are interested in this question. That's why
you know, Battai or Delous or even people like Deda
are trying to to some incentive, trying to interpret these
phenomena because they understand that they're related in a deep
way to our modern situation, and that there is a
a kind of desire to look at the questions of
you like a kind of excess of one side an
excess of power and authority and an excess of you
could say, submission. So if you look at masochism, so
a good example would be what is the difference between
as a kist and a martyr. You know, the martyr
understands that there is and Christianity in general. If you
look at the crucifixion, the crucifixion, In the crucifixion, there
is this this beautiful sense in which God is also
trying to kind of empty himself and is trying to
you know, uh, engage with the void in this loving manner.
And when we look at Christ die on the cross,
you know, experience that negativity, right, experience in some ways
that to be completely passive in terms of how others
are acting upon him and become ultimately the passivity you
could say, almost of the earth. Of course, he's also
he's also becoming heavy and at the same time, the
crucifixion is difficult to talk about, but if you look
at at the martyr, you know, the martyr kind of
understands the power of the power of negative, the power
of opening the space for transformation, of becoming in some
ways a victim so that the world is transformed, becoming
that which is acted upon in order to change the
space to ask the question, is this just? Is this right?
See in my body, whether or not what is happening
now is actually a scandal, And let that interaction, let
me become a place on which the unjust will act,
become a question that will expose the sin right, that
will expose the excesses of action. Now, the martyr in theory,
in the Christian tradition, is not supposed to provoke his
own martyrdom. It's not supposed to go out in order
to be martyred, but is supposed to when it happens
to him, to go forth and to understand this, this
story that he's engaging in, and what he is going
to become.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: The masachist is very different. The masochist finds pleasure, egotistic pleasure,
you could say, in suffering. When Christ is on the cross.
He's not finding pleasure on the cross. When Christ is
on the cross, he is suffering and dying. When the
martyr is suffering and dying, it is not the pain,
It is not the pain that is giving that person
a kind of bodily perverse pleasure, but is rather, you know,
the capacity to imitate Christ and to see God's glory
come down, you know, and liberate them, free them from
the from the torture. So you can see in the difference,
you can see masochism as a kind of perversion of
the tie of negativity that the Christian cosmology understands, right,
the kind of questions that Christianity is asking. And of course,
ultimately this relates to the Mother of God. And this
is again these things are hard to talk about, but
I think it's probably important to talk about it. There's
of course the deep analogy between the Mother of God,
between Mary and the earth. You know. The word Mary
seems to derive from the term bitter, which is related
to the bitter waters, you know, which is related to
this idea of a kind of pure earth. And this
is of course the same with virginity, you know. Female
virginity is also a form of negativity that sounds weird
when I say it. Negativity in the sense that it
is a pure space, right, It is an undefined It
is a kind of question that is unanswered. Right, it
is a living prayer, if you want to think about
it that way, which is why there is of course
air relationship between the Mother of God and this opening
up right, and this prayer, you know, and the chalice
as this opening up towards Heaven and the purity of
the untouched negativity, you could say. And that is also
one of the reasons why we always say, for example,
that the Virgin is a secret of the church. You know,
the void is something which has to remain a secret.
It has to remain a secret because when it starts
to speak on its own, it is necessarily sinful, because
that is not its nature. The nature of the earth
and the nature of negativity is to be secret is
to be a sigh, you know, is to be a
you know, it is to be a yearning, right, a
kind of a secret yearning is maybe even that's the
best way of understanding in its depth. And so it
is very important, like I said, in the in the
structure of the story. But you can see understand why
why it is that the story looks the way it does,
you know, why is it that Eve is the one
that eats the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil?
From the point of view you could say of a
kind of revolution of earth where the earth or difference
or not that tries to take that for itself and
what that does. And it's also understandable why the Mother
of God then restores that by becoming the pure virgin
and being a mother without without being defined, being a
mother without being defined by any kind of particularity. So
these are very deep symbols. It's hard to you can't
completely come to the end of them, and that please
forgive me, because I'm just turning around this mystery hopefully
enough that you will be able to kind of grasp
some of it and have a sense of some of it.
But it's important to understand that, you know, since World
War Two especially, there has been a kind of obsession
with not that that there has been an obsession with
understanding God as alterity for example. You know, you see
that in Emmanuel Livinas, and you see that in other
contemporary philosophers, where they want to understand God as the
Holy Other. You probably heard that term before. And in
some ways you could say that this is a reaction.
You know, it is in some ways a in some
ways a kind of reaction to a kind of Hegelian synthesis,
where a reaction to this idea that that we can
bring the escaton, that we can bring you know, the
fullness of everything into the world, through through the state,
through you know, a kind of through progress or whatever
way of understanding it. It's kind of understanding. And that
had that led to to the war, to the access
into all of these all of these ways of thinking,
it is almost it is very normal that after that
there would be a kind of reaction to emphasize, you
could say, the negativity and to emphasize difference, and to
emphasize not that. But of course that is not how
it functions. Right. The world is a dance. The world
is a dance between that and not that. The world
is a dance between identity and difference, and we have
to maintain that dance. You know, in the past generations,
since World War Two, we have gone so far in
emphasizing the not that and difference and strangeness. You know
that the world is becoming very fragile, and things are
returning to dust, and there is a kind of chaos
of uncertainty and the chaos of lack of direction, and
a chaos of lack of unity, which will ultimately lead
to a reaction of Heaven, not of God necessarily, but
just a natural reaction of that, right, a natural reaction
of identity, and so hopefully you can see that we
have to be able to regain the dance. And you know,
I really hope that all of you can see that
I'm that I myself am trying to do that. That
there's a reason why I wrote a story about Saint Christopher,
the dog headed monster Saint. There's a reason also why
I am, you know, a Christian who goes to church
and participates in those types of identities. Is that I
want to help people find the nice swing, like the
gentle swing, not the radical one, you know, and a
gentle swing, which is actually a form of courting, you know,
a courting that between heaven and earth, between our different
identities and their variation. And you know, and I say
this recently, I put out a video that interpreted the
parable of the banquet, and of course, you know, it's
not surprising that immediately after that certain people call me,
well in say it straight out, but you know, hinted
that I might be some kind of a fascist or
some kind of a you know, supremacist, or some kind
of an identitarian. And you know the answer is I
want to dance, you know, I want to dance, and
I want the dance to happen at the family level,
you know, at the national level, at your tribal level,
at the church level. I want to see that dance
where there is an understanding of who we are and
there's an understanding of difference and we can participate in
how those two come together and create the beautiful world
that we live in. And we must not forget that
it is that it is a beautiful world, even though
sometimes it feels like everything is going crazy and falling apart.
So this is a little just a little video to
help you think about the negative aspect of the world
and the not that aspect of the war world and
understand that. Also understand that every time that you die,
every time that you sin, and every time that you
kind of fall into death, it is always a question,
you know, and you know Saint Paul says that you know,
sin is not that the law brings about sin. Sin
is not good. But when you do sin and you
kind of fall into a little moment of death and
you kind of experience a little bit of not that,
it is an opportunity to ask the question, and it
is an opportunity to see the gap between where you
are and where you can go and it can become
a springboard for transformation. So this is of course why
Christianity understands the need for not not necessarily sin, but
in general of pain and of suffering, that that we
in some ways have to experience suffering to some extent,
because it reminds us that, you know, we're looking towards
in a direction, and it reminds us of the gap
between where we are and when we're where we hope
it should be, and we should when it happens to us,
whether it's through our own sins where we fall and
we have to repent, or whether it's true through the
natural evils, the natural bads that happen to us, you know,
a tree falling on your house, or or a sickness
that you get that in some ways that this is
this is this is part of reality, and it is
can become a kind of question. And ultimately, this is
the more secret or difficult part, is that is that
all of that can be kind of transformed into a
kind of glory. You know, you have to remember that
although in the Bible it says that the man is
the head of the household in Proverbs, it's also says
that woman is the crown of her husband and is
his glory. And therefore there is an aspect of the
negativity or the negative, or the space or the opening
that is also one which is above us, and that
is represented of course in the apothetic tradition. And then
the idea that God is always not that you know.
So hopefully these small meditations will help you, and please
take them all as analogies, as circles going around a
very very difficult subject and one which we probably shouldn't
be talking about, but that I find myself pulled into
talking about more and more. So thanks everybody, I for
you'reens If you enjoy what we're doing, don't forget. You
can go to the Symbolic world dot com. You can
sign up, you can participate in our little community there.
You can even support us financially if that's something you're
interested in and you know we're just doing what we
can do. So thanks everyone, and I'll talk to you
very soon. Bye bye. If you enjoy these videos and podcasts,
please go to the Symbolic world dot com website and
see how you can support what we're doing. There are
multiple subscriber tiers with perks. There are apparel and books
to purchase. So go to the Symbolic World dot com
and thank you for your support.