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Speaker 1: So a few weeks ago I was invited to the

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Touchdown conference with Rodreer and Paul kings North and also

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Deacon Seraphim Roland Richard Roland, who you know from.

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Speaker 2: The Universal History podcast.

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Speaker 1: As you might know or not know, Deacon Seraphim and

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I are working together on the Symbolic World Press. He

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is the CEO of our company. Deacon Seraphim is really

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not only you could say, helping me create some of

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the most beautiful things that we can. He is also

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becoming a voice of his own and his insight and

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his wisdom.

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Speaker 2: Is looked after.

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Speaker 1: He has a podcast on ancient faith. He is doing

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all kinds of things, and so do not be surprised

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if you see videos with him on his own on

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my channel, because he has a lot to offer and

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a lot of wisdom and symbolic thinking. He also has

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a level of detail that I do not have, and

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so he's often capable of offering sources that I don't

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have access to. So this is the talk that he

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gave at Touchstone, a kind of road map as to

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how to live a newly enlightened or a you could say,

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an enchanted life in the modern world. What are the

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small steps you could do with your kids, with your family,

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what it is that you need to think of to

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remember to participate in, and so please enjoy.

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Speaker 2: This is Jonathan Pegel. Welcome to the Symbolic World.

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Speaker 1: Hello everyone, we are finally announcing our Paradiso class. We

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have done two already. We have the Inferno, we have

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the Purgatory, and now we are moving to Paradise.

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Speaker 2: That is right.

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Speaker 3: Dante himself says Inferno that we prefer hell to Paradise,

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and similar early most of us prefer to read Inferno,

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but when we come to reading Paridiso, we're very confused.

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So we're going to be actually taking you through that

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poem line by line, like we did with Inferno and Purgatorio,

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and actually looking at how Dante very carefully reconciles some

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of the contradictory traditions about the heavens in the Christian

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apocalyptic tradition and does that through the persons of the saints.

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Speaker 1: And so this is truly important for us right now,

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with the re enchantment of the world happening, we have

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to be able to look at those that that did

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it in the most powerful way that we're able to

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reconcile the ancient pagan traditions with Christianity, with his modern understanding,

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the most modern understanding of the cosmos that he had.

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Speaker 2: And so this is the work that we need to do.

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So we need to learn from Dante.

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Speaker 1: So the course it starts November fifth to December third, right,

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is that what I've got five weeks two to five

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on Wednesdays.

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Speaker 3: So the cost is going to be one hundred ninety

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dollars US. But we do have an early bird sale

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through the month of October, which bumps it down to

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one hundred and sixty one. You can use the code

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early Paradiso and that is good through the end of October.

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Speaker 1: And the Inferno and the Purgatorial class are also on

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sale at the same time, so you have fifty percent

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off during the month of October Code Dante fifty. And

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you know that means you have no excuse if you

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haven't taken the first classes. Now is the chance to

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scoop all that up.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, and if you don't want to watch live or

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it doesn't work for your schedule, you'll be able to

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follow along at your own pace.

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Speaker 2: Just like with all of our courses.

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Speaker 3: You'll have access to lecture, recording slides, additional readings, and

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you can still ask questions and interact with your fellow

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classmates in our circle forums.

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Speaker 2: And so join us.

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Speaker 1: After all of this suffering through Inferno and Purgatorio, the

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Symbolic World finally goes to heaven.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, join us. I went.

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Speaker 4: Actually I first learned about Johnson Pagot and the speaker

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you heard, So those are those of you who are

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here last year, might remember Vesper Stamper, and I met

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her and our next speaker, Richard Roland and Jonathan all

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at the World. It's a Symbolic World summit that was

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held a year before last down in Florida, And I

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knew nothing about this group, so probably been hearing a

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lot about it, and I was just blown away. And

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you got an idea of why I was so blown

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away when I was down there. I attended this conference,

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but I kind of did, and I didn't attend it.

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When I go to a conference, I'm just kind of

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auditioning speakers. And they had two different rooms and there'd

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be two speakers speaking at the same time, and I'd

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listened to somebody speak and they'd speak for five minutes,

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and if they didn't grab me. I'd run to the

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other room and I'd listen to that guy for five minutes,

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and I'd run back the other room. And so I

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walked on this guy who I'd never heard of, Richard Roland,

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and it was about halfway through the conference, and I thought,

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oh my goodness, I got to get him a touchdoone

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because I was really quite blown away by what he

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had to say. Well, I ain't caught about half your talk,

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and that was still enough to put the hook in me. Well,

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let me tell you. Richard Rowland is a software developer,

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a German philologist, and an Orthodox Christian, living in Texas

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with his wife and children. He speaks and publishes on

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Germanic poetry, the Inklings, and the Sacramental imagination. He regularly

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contributes to Jonathan Pagot's The Symbolic World YouTube channel, and

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I've signed up for a number of their series and

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I recommend you do the same. It's called the Universal

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History Series, which has recently launched a six week course

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studying the epic poem Beowolf.

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Speaker 2: Richard co hosts the.

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Speaker 4: Monsault Paul podcast and has published several works of fiction

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and nonfiction. So please join me in welcoming Richard Rolan.

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Speaker 3: It's a little surreal being here, actually, because I've heard

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many things about Touchstone over the years, mostly through my

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good friend doctor Gary Jenkins, who's back in the back

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and is one of your new editors. But it's just

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really wonderful to be here.

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Speaker 2: Now.

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Speaker 3: What you didn't say is what you told me when

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you first invited me to come speak here, which is

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you said you'd have to be like, you'd have to

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be like a little more strict about your time, because

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I went like thirty minutes over in Florida. So I'm

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going to try to be strict about my time today.

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Why is any day better than another when all the

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daylight in the year is from the sun. By the

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Lord's decision, they were distinguished, and he appointed the different

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seasons and feasts. Some of them he exalted and hallowed,

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and some of them he made ordinary days. This is

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from Ecclesiasticus, Chapter thirty three, verses seven to nine. In

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August of twenty nineteen, just a few months before the

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COVID lockdowns the George Floyd Riots, there was a series

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of essays published in a special issue of The New

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York Times called The sixteen nineteen projects.

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Speaker 2: Some of you maybe are familiar with this.

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Speaker 3: The following year, right in the middle of everything, in

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the middle of our civilization's most chaotic moment since nine

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to eleven, the collection was expanded into a book length

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publication called The sixteen nineteen Project. A New Origin Story Now,

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as the book's subtitle indicates, it promised a new origin

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story for American culture and society, a new answer to

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the question who are we, where did we come from?

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And the answer, in short, was the African slave trade.

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Sixteen nineteen being the year that African slaves first arrived

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in North America as opposed to like seventeen seventy six,

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was just when the American colonies declared their independence from

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Great Britain. Now, as the sixteen nineteen Project argues, and

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this is a direct quote, slavery is the foundation on

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which this country is built, and the essential dichotomy between

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oppressor and oppressed, between slave owners and slaves is the

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truest and most important story about what America is and

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who the people are that live there.

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Speaker 2: Now.

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Speaker 3: Whatever you think about what was happening from twenty nineteen

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to twenty twenty one, it was clearly an inflection point,

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a moment of crisis. Were the stories that held us

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together as Americans. Were the stories that held us together

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as Western people had begun to crumble, had begun to unravel.

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And you could kind of argue, of course, and you've

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heard lots of persuasive arguments already this weekend that that

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unraveling had already been going on for a long time.

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But there was definitely thing that was happening there, especially

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for the young people. I mean, they're going to be studies, papers, dissertations,

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conferences done on just what that two year period, the

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effect that it had on our young people in like

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fifty or sixty years, when it's too late to do

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anything about it. The unique pressures of those years made

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it very clear that a new story was needed. And

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one of the stories that was proposed was to take

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the shame, to take the guilt of one our of

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our three greatest civilizational sins. I will not tell you

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what the other two are. You can ask me later,

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and make it the most essential thing about ourselves. It

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was to say that the truest thing about ourselves is

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actually our division and are inequality. Now, before I go

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much further, I want to give you another example of

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historical myth making, which is actually pretty similar. It won't

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seem similar at first, but hang in there with me.

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So in one hundred and fifty years following the Norman invasion,

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this is ten sixty six.

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Speaker 2: And all that. Some thank you, some of.

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Speaker 3: You well read people of people of culture, good, good, good.

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The place known as England did not actually exist, not

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as we know it today. There were really two societies.

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There were two languages, two cultures. There was a Norman

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French speaking aristocracy who thought of themselves not really actually

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as English lords and nobles, but as kings and dukes

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of France, who also happened to control this small but

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very wealthy in terms of natural resources island nation on

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the edge of Europe. And then an Anglo Saxon or

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for my Oxfordians, an Old English speaking peasant class who

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themselves had also had then driven out the Romano Celtic

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tribes some six seven hundred years before, naming them, by

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the way, Welsh Welsh, which is an Old English word

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which means foreigner. Now, this is one of history's great jokes,

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is that only the English can make you feel like

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a foreigner in your own country. Sorry, Paul, I don't

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know if Kingsworth's in here or not, but all right,

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that's just that's my I'm an Anglo Saxonist. These are

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my people. That's just that's my joke, so I have

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to tell it. So the island of Britain was a

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hodgepodge of identities, rights, languages, histories, and about a generation

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after the Norman conquest on the Welsh borderlands, there was

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born a man who became a priest, but he's not

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remembered for any of that. There was born a man

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named Jeffrey of Monmouth. Now Jeffrey was himself a man

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of his time. He's a hodgepodg so much so that

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nobody actually seems to have agreed about exactly who his

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parents were, exactly what his nationality was.

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Speaker 2: Was he Welsh? Was he Norman?

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Speaker 3: Was he the son of a Breton, that is, as

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in from Brittany, from the Celtic coast of France. Was

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he the son of Bretton nobles who had come over

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with the conqueror, who'd settled down in the Celtic borderland of.

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Speaker 2: England, Whatever and whoever he was, Jeffrey.

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Speaker 3: Was a priest, and he was a historian, and the

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history that I wrote, which you can get a copy

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of from our good friends at eight Day back in

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the back.

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Speaker 2: The history that he wrote.

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Speaker 3: Brought together all the disparate threads of what it meant

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to be British. And later on future historians would argue

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about Jeffrey's works. They would say it's some kind of pseudohistory.

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Later still they would say that maybe actually he did

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indeed carefully weave in the oral history of the Welsh

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and Britain tribes together with the ancient king list of

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the Romana British dynasties who ruled over the many little

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kingdoms of the Isle of Albion in the long years

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between Constantine and Oswald. People argue about these things. Dissertations

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have to be written. Don't invite these people to your parties.

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Now truth be told. It just doesn't matter whether you

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think that the history of kings of Britain is history

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or pseudohistory, or some blend of the two. It just

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doesn't matter, because the story that Jeffrey told held Britain together,

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It created it, It invented it. In fact, as he's

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writing it right around the time of Henry the Third,

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who is the first king who really styles himself as the.

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Speaker 2: King of the English.

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Speaker 3: Now it holds Brittin together for a thousand years. And

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I'm not saying it was a nice thousand years. You know, obviously,

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lot of civil wars and so on, dynastic struggles, civil wars,

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religious reforms, more civil wars, the rise and fall of

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an empire, two World wars, and yet that entire time

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you could point at a thing and say that's Britain.

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Speaker 2: His story would be told.

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Speaker 3: And retold again on both sides of the English Channel

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for the next several centuries. But in all cases it

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begins in the most surprising place imaginable. And here I'm

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going to read some poetry. It's just the warning. When

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the siege and the assault had ceased at Troy, and

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the fortress fell in flame, to fire, brands and ashes,

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the trader, who was the contrivance of treason there fashioned

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was tried for his treachery.

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Speaker 2: The most true upon earth.

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Speaker 3: It was Eneus the noble and his renowned kindred, who

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then laid under them lands and lords, became of well

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nigh all the wealth in the Western Ailes. When Royal

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Romulus to Rome, his road had taken in great pomp

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and pride. He peopled at first and named it with

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his own name, that yet it now bears. Tyrius went

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to Tuscany, and towns founded Langebert in Lombardy uplifted holes,

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and far over the French flood. It was still called

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the French Flood, not the English Channel.

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Speaker 2: Back then.

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Speaker 3: Felix Brutus on many a broad bank and bray Britain

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established full Fair, where strange things, strife and sadness at

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wiles in the land did fare and each other. Grief

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and gladness off fast have followed there. And when Fair

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Britain was founded by this famous lord, bold men were

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bred there, who in battle rejoiced, And many a time

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that betide they troubles aroused.

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Speaker 2: In this domain.

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Speaker 3: More marbles have been by men seen than in any

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other that I know of since that olden time. But

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of all that here abode in Britan, as kings ever,

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was Arthur most honored, as I have.

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Speaker 2: Heard men tell.

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Speaker 3: Wherefore a marvel among men I mean to recall, a

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sight strange to see.

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Speaker 2: Some men have held it one of.

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Speaker 3: The wildest adventures of the wonders of Arthur. If you

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will listen to this lave but a little while, now,

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I will tell you at once, as in town I

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have heard it told, as it is fixed and fettered

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in story, brave and bold, that's linked and truly lettered,

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as was loved in this land of old. Now, if

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you want to know the rest of that story, you

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have to read Sir Gawaine and the Green Knight. This

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is Tolkien's translation, by the way, of this fourteenth century

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Middle English poem about Sir Gawayne. You have a story

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about King Arthur. You have a story about Sir Gawaine.

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But where does it begin. It begins at the sack

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and the ruin and the destruction of Troy. And if

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you can understand why they thought that was important, because

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when the Gawayne author, I just sort of picked him

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because it's cool, but also because he's kind of he's

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like several hundreds of years after Jeffrey. If you can

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understand why they thought it was important to trace their

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line back to Troy, then you can actually begin to

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recover your heritage as Western people. So I'm not here

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today to poke holes in the sixteen nineteen project. I'm

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not here to complain about the way that the world is.

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I'm not here to talk about how bad things are.

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Speaker 2: Truth be told.

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Speaker 3: I am, as I was telling somebody this morning, it's

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kind of a child soldier of the culture Wars, and.

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Speaker 2: I still have a lot of PTSD over that.

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Speaker 3: I'm not looking to revisit those particular battlefields, but what

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I am as a father of six children, and like

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Aeneas after the ruin of Troy, I've been trying to

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carry my father and my household gods to a new

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hearth and to a new homeland where we can all

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be whole. That hearth is where I'm focused, and it's

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to your hearth and to your dining room table that

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I want to return at the end of this talk.

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To get there, though, we'll need to explain the difference

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between these two attempts and mythology. One of them has

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already fizzled out. Nobody's talking about the sixteen nineteen project anymore.

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The other continues to be the driving force behind all

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of our genre storytelling, most of our cultural myths. And

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to understand all of this, we will have to understand

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the differences and the surprising similarities between the ways that

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the authors of the sixteen nineteen project see History and

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the Way that Jeffrey of Monmouth saw it.

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Speaker 2: So what is history?

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Speaker 3: Jeffrey's work, The History of the Kings of Britain is

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of a particular and peculiar ancient medieval genre, sometimes referred

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to as universal history.

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Speaker 2: So my friend Jonathan Pagoe and I for.

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Speaker 3: About four years now have been making videos and podcasts

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together about this subject. And one of the most common

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questions I get is what do you mean by universal history?

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Where the emphasis is on the second word, and so

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here a little etymology will help us out. As Doug mentioned,

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I'm a philologist, so I'll try to keep this tight

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and brief, but I just want you to know, like

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we could just spend the rest of the day talking

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about the word history. So, in its earliest sense, from

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the Greek history history, historia simply means inquiry. It means

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knowledge gain from inquiry. And we still preserve this sense

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in kind of archaic names, for like the Natural history Museum,

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that's not the history of nature, it's here's the museum

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of the things that we have learned learned from an

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inquiry into nature. Aristotle's The History of the Animals is

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what we would today consider to be like a biology

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or maybe like a zoology text, whether that's a fair categorganization.

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That's a different kind of a conference, I think. But

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the word then makes its way into Old English via Latin,

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and by this time it has picked up the senses

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of account description, written account of past events, recorded knowledge

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of past events, story or narrative, and finally, by the

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twelfth century it has come to mean the story or

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account of a person's life, a chronicle, an account of

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events as relevant to a group of people or people

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in general. So the story of your people mattered because

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it was your story, and therefore participation in that story

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makes you a part of your people, which means that

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if you forget your story, you actually forget yourself, You

355
00:21:01,720 --> 00:21:06,200
forget who you are. To forget it is to forget yourself.

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It's to cut yourself off from reality. It is to

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be dissipated and scattered, like the nations on the plane

358
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of Shinar. So, taken in this sense, a universal history

359
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is a history of everything and everyone. Who we are,

360
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how we got to be where we are, how the laws, customs, rituals,

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traditions of our people give us meaning and allow us

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to continue to go here, so that we can be.

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Speaker 2: Long in the land.

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Speaker 3: Herodotus, who is very often considered the father of history,

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writes his histories as a way of telling the story

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of the Hellenes and as a way of telling the

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story of the Hellenes and the Persians. But he took

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it as a given that in order to do this

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he would have to go back to the story of

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the abduction of Helen and the beginning of the Trojan War. This,

371
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after all, is the first great war between the East

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in the West. This is how the identity of the

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00:22:02,839 --> 00:22:07,119
Greeks was formed in opposition to the Barbarians, which to

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the Greeks meant simply people who do not speak Greek. Similarly,

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almost every work of Jewish and Christian history from the

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Torah until modern times has seen it necessary to begin

377
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at Genesis, because the first eleven chapters of Genesis have

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the answers to these questions who are we, where do

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we come from?

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Speaker 2: What does it mean to be us?

381
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Speaker 3: But they have the answer to those questions for everyone,

382
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for the whole race of Adam. So, for instance, the

383
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Anglo Saxon Chronicle, which is a work which is mostly

384
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concerned with events in the eighth and the ninth centuries.

385
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Begins at the incarnation, but then takes pains to trace

386
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the lineage Alfred back to Noah. But beginning in the

387
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nineteenth century, there was a concerted effort to kind of

388
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move history.

389
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Speaker 2: Closer to the sciences.

390
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Speaker 3: So there's a guy named Leopold von Rnk, very often

391
00:23:01,079 --> 00:23:05,720
considered to be the father of modern source based historiography.

392
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And what he said is history should be concerned with

393
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his quoting him here, what really happened knowable only by

394
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genuine and original documents. And this attitude towards history is

395
00:23:18,200 --> 00:23:21,319
not unlike the obsession that you'll get with the original

396
00:23:21,400 --> 00:23:24,480
articles in biblical textual criticism. Those things are related that

397
00:23:24,559 --> 00:23:27,200
came out of the same movement, And this is an

398
00:23:27,200 --> 00:23:29,759
obsession which, as you will probably know, has driven a

399
00:23:29,759 --> 00:23:32,400
lot of people to despair, since, of course we do

400
00:23:32,519 --> 00:23:36,039
not have these original articles. Are these original articles in

401
00:23:36,079 --> 00:23:38,119
the room with you right now? You know what we

402
00:23:38,240 --> 00:23:41,880
have is actually a received tradition. There's like one millennial

403
00:23:41,920 --> 00:23:44,599
in the audience who laughed at the meme reference I

404
00:23:44,720 --> 00:23:51,039
just made. What we have is the tradition actually as

405
00:23:51,039 --> 00:23:52,559
it was passed down to us.

406
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Speaker 2: So in our own age.

407
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Speaker 3: An over abundance of sources and changing attitudes towards time

408
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and meaning actually taken away the certainty that this modernist

409
00:24:04,079 --> 00:24:07,799
approach to history promised. So it is now possible to

410
00:24:07,839 --> 00:24:14,240
find expert historians cherrypicked quotes academia dot edu articles. I

411
00:24:14,279 --> 00:24:19,440
had a wonderful Oxford professor who always pronounced dot adieu

412
00:24:20,240 --> 00:24:25,319
like academia dot adieu. Anyway, I love him so much.

413
00:24:26,799 --> 00:24:30,160
You can find these articles to support virtually any position

414
00:24:30,559 --> 00:24:33,200
that you might want to take on any given historical events. So,

415
00:24:33,400 --> 00:24:35,839
for instance, going back to the founding of this country,

416
00:24:35,839 --> 00:24:37,799
if you want to find evidence that the people who

417
00:24:37,799 --> 00:24:40,160
founded this country held a variety of views and positions

418
00:24:40,440 --> 00:24:44,160
that we would now consider to be morally reprehensible.

419
00:24:43,599 --> 00:24:45,319
Speaker 2: You can totally find that evidence.

420
00:24:45,359 --> 00:24:47,200
Speaker 3: If you want to find evidence that they were racists,

421
00:24:47,480 --> 00:24:50,119
that they were slave owners, that they were freemasons, that

422
00:24:50,200 --> 00:24:54,759
they were unitarians, that they were extremely dedicated Christians with

423
00:24:54,839 --> 00:24:57,640
a strong theocratic vision for America as a city set

424
00:24:57,680 --> 00:25:01,119
on a hill, you can go find an expert who

425
00:25:01,119 --> 00:25:04,200
will tell you every single one of those stories just

426
00:25:04,240 --> 00:25:07,160
dependagon which funding fathers you want to focus on, how

427
00:25:07,240 --> 00:25:13,319
essential you want to claim this particular person, date, quote, book, article, declaration,

428
00:25:13,359 --> 00:25:17,240
et cetera. How important all of those things are. So

429
00:25:17,920 --> 00:25:22,240
it's actually worse than this, though, because thanks to modern technology,

430
00:25:22,240 --> 00:25:26,440
in particular the camera, phone and mass media, it is

431
00:25:26,440 --> 00:25:30,880
actually now possible for us to watch some real time

432
00:25:31,000 --> 00:25:35,039
event playing out, and for one half of the country

433
00:25:35,599 --> 00:25:38,440
they see one event, and the other half of the

434
00:25:38,440 --> 00:25:43,720
country sees the other event, a completely different thing, with

435
00:25:43,799 --> 00:25:46,240
a completely different meaning and a completely different outcome, and

436
00:25:46,240 --> 00:25:47,440
we're looking at the same.

437
00:25:47,240 --> 00:25:47,960
Speaker 2: Piece of data.

438
00:25:49,920 --> 00:25:51,880
Speaker 3: You think of lots of examples of this in recent

439
00:25:52,000 --> 00:25:56,000
American history. This is amazing to think about, given the

440
00:25:56,000 --> 00:25:58,759
fact that very typically that the typical modern response to

441
00:25:58,799 --> 00:26:01,839
any miraculous event, like when we say this miracle happened,

442
00:26:01,839 --> 00:26:06,319
the resurrection happen, you know, just pick a miracle. The

443
00:26:07,359 --> 00:26:10,519
thing that people always ask me, especially especially younger people,

444
00:26:10,519 --> 00:26:11,960
the thing that they always ask is, well, okay, but

445
00:26:12,039 --> 00:26:13,759
if you'd been there with a camera.

446
00:26:15,000 --> 00:26:18,039
Speaker 2: Like would it you know, like, what would it have

447
00:26:18,119 --> 00:26:18,519
looked like?

448
00:26:19,559 --> 00:26:22,759
Speaker 3: And so for instance, Saint Constantine's vision of the Holy Cross,

449
00:26:22,799 --> 00:26:25,799
the instructions to buy this sign conquer, Okay, but if

450
00:26:25,799 --> 00:26:28,119
you'd been there with a video camera, what would the

451
00:26:28,200 --> 00:26:30,480
video camera have seen as though the video camera is

452
00:26:30,480 --> 00:26:36,440
actually the perceptive agent. So this shift in the way

453
00:26:36,480 --> 00:26:38,759
that we viewed time and history are really actually part

454
00:26:38,799 --> 00:26:42,200
of shifting paradigms through which we have been experiencing time

455
00:26:42,480 --> 00:26:45,079
as we moved into the modern world. So time and history,

456
00:26:45,119 --> 00:26:47,359
by the way, not the same thing strictly speaking, but

457
00:26:47,359 --> 00:26:49,960
they are closely related to each other. So there's a

458
00:26:49,960 --> 00:26:53,759
great French philosopher, anthropologist, Olivia Clement, who I really like.

459
00:26:54,119 --> 00:26:57,119
He has a wonderful book, Transfiguring Time. I don't know

460
00:26:57,119 --> 00:26:58,680
if eight Day has that or not. Always try to

461
00:26:58,720 --> 00:27:02,000
tell eight Day, get this book and sell it, because

462
00:27:02,000 --> 00:27:03,000
I'm going to talk about it.

463
00:27:03,039 --> 00:27:05,160
Speaker 2: And I don't get any money for that.

464
00:27:05,200 --> 00:27:09,160
Speaker 3: By the way, I just really like them. But I

465
00:27:09,200 --> 00:27:11,079
forgot to mention this one anyway. It's a great book,

466
00:27:11,359 --> 00:27:14,480
Transfiguring Time, and he talks about how the ancient Pagans

467
00:27:14,480 --> 00:27:18,559
experienced time as this great cycle, a succession of generations

468
00:27:18,640 --> 00:27:19,200
or ages.

469
00:27:19,559 --> 00:27:21,079
Speaker 2: So there are idyllic ages of.

470
00:27:21,000 --> 00:27:23,240
Speaker 3: Gold and silver and bronze in which men live the

471
00:27:23,279 --> 00:27:25,480
life of the gods. And although each one of these

472
00:27:25,519 --> 00:27:29,440
generations perishes more often through their own folly, which echoes

473
00:27:29,440 --> 00:27:32,359
some kind of an adenic fall story. Their lives are longer, better,

474
00:27:32,480 --> 00:27:36,799
more peaceful than our own. Mediating between these ancient ages

475
00:27:36,839 --> 00:27:39,559
and our own Age of Iron is the fourth age,

476
00:27:40,319 --> 00:27:45,599
the Age of Heroes, and these heroes establish the world

477
00:27:45,880 --> 00:27:49,119
which we now inhabit. They killed monsters, they found cities,

478
00:27:49,359 --> 00:27:51,799
They do mighty deeds, and because of their mighty deeds,

479
00:27:51,880 --> 00:27:54,920
we're told this is a hesiod. They are given the

480
00:27:54,960 --> 00:27:58,880
rest and repose of the men of the Age of Gold.

481
00:27:59,039 --> 00:28:02,160
But as for us, we men of the Age of Iron,

482
00:28:03,039 --> 00:28:05,559
we are locked in the endless cycle of the year,

483
00:28:06,400 --> 00:28:10,119
and in the greater thousands of years, cycles of the stars,

484
00:28:10,559 --> 00:28:15,000
repeating each sunrise, each summer, each winter, each equinox, each solstice,

485
00:28:15,440 --> 00:28:22,920
and the Golden Age is inaccessible to us, or almost inaccessible,

486
00:28:23,480 --> 00:28:26,039
because ancient man had one powerful recourse.

487
00:28:26,079 --> 00:28:26,680
Speaker 2: They had one.

488
00:28:26,559 --> 00:28:30,480
Speaker 3: Powerful tool as old as time itself, and that is

489
00:28:31,200 --> 00:28:35,640
the festival. Through the act of celebration, of feasting and

490
00:28:35,680 --> 00:28:40,400
retelling the ancient stories of your heroes, your city, your people,

491
00:28:40,839 --> 00:28:45,680
you could for a day, for a moment, access the

492
00:28:45,720 --> 00:28:46,759
Golden Age again.

493
00:28:47,119 --> 00:28:49,359
Speaker 2: You could access that higher time.

494
00:28:50,119 --> 00:28:53,599
Speaker 3: There's the Greek word for this, cairos, which originally just

495
00:28:53,640 --> 00:28:55,880
meant the proper or fitting time for something to happen.

496
00:28:55,880 --> 00:28:58,319
Speaker 2: It still has that connotation, but words changed. They pick

497
00:28:58,400 --> 00:29:00,079
up meaning over history.

498
00:29:00,839 --> 00:29:04,119
Speaker 3: And so the originally means the proper fitting time for

499
00:29:04,160 --> 00:29:07,119
which for a ritual to be carried out, or like

500
00:29:07,160 --> 00:29:09,359
the proper time to go to war, the proper time

501
00:29:09,759 --> 00:29:10,519
to do something.

502
00:29:10,559 --> 00:29:11,920
Speaker 2: If you just read the iliit in.

503
00:29:11,839 --> 00:29:14,319
Speaker 3: The Odyssey, they're always like before they do something, is like,

504
00:29:14,400 --> 00:29:16,319
is this a good day to attack the walls of Troy?

505
00:29:16,680 --> 00:29:17,240
Speaker 2: Let me go?

506
00:29:17,519 --> 00:29:20,799
Speaker 3: And you know, consult the oracles, ask the gods kill

507
00:29:20,880 --> 00:29:24,440
a lamb, how many loaves does the liver have? Et cetera. Right,

508
00:29:24,480 --> 00:29:26,920
all that stuff. That's what divination is for, is to

509
00:29:26,920 --> 00:29:31,960
figure out what is the proper and fitting time to act. Now,

510
00:29:33,920 --> 00:29:36,880
by extension, it comes to mean the time to which

511
00:29:36,920 --> 00:29:41,720
that ritual gives you access, an undying time that fills

512
00:29:41,720 --> 00:29:44,559
the chronos of the endless days and years with meaning.

513
00:29:45,039 --> 00:29:47,799
And this is the basis of the ancient agricultural cycle

514
00:29:47,799 --> 00:29:51,920
of feasts, which is universal to all cultures, especially those

515
00:29:52,119 --> 00:29:55,200
which developed in a temperate climate, where season and solstice,

516
00:29:55,519 --> 00:30:00,680
springtime and harvest all have meaning. Now, inattentive years of

517
00:30:00,720 --> 00:30:03,880
the old testament have opined that the Law of Moses

518
00:30:04,279 --> 00:30:07,599
replaced the old pagan cyclic view of time with one

519
00:30:07,640 --> 00:30:11,720
that was strictly linear, but this is simply not correct.

520
00:30:13,119 --> 00:30:14,759
Speaker 2: The feast of the Mosaic Law.

521
00:30:14,599 --> 00:30:17,359
Speaker 3: I think of, Passover, Pentecost, and so on have their

522
00:30:17,759 --> 00:30:22,440
obvious and universal correspondence in the agricultural cycles of the

523
00:30:22,440 --> 00:30:25,480
ancient Eeriest. But in the Torah these feasts become tied

524
00:30:25,519 --> 00:30:31,359
to definitive moments in history, in the story of God's

525
00:30:31,400 --> 00:30:33,799
redemptive work on behalf of his people.

526
00:30:34,079 --> 00:30:36,400
Speaker 2: So the feast brings time and history together.

527
00:30:38,039 --> 00:30:40,480
Speaker 3: So the late spring or early summer feast of the

528
00:30:40,480 --> 00:30:43,240
First Ruts becomes the feast of Pentecost, which is the

529
00:30:43,279 --> 00:30:45,119
day on which the Most High God gives his law

530
00:30:45,160 --> 00:30:47,359
to his people, which is the means by which they

531
00:30:47,400 --> 00:30:50,599
can enter into a knowledge of Him. So, according to

532
00:30:50,640 --> 00:30:53,319
an ancient belief of the Hebrew peoples, which is for instance,

533
00:30:53,519 --> 00:30:57,359
expressing the apocryphal Book of Jubileese, it was on the

534
00:30:57,440 --> 00:31:01,039
day of Pentecost that Noah made his with the God

535
00:31:01,039 --> 00:31:03,359
of Israel. It's on the day of Pentecost that the

536
00:31:03,359 --> 00:31:05,920
Tower of Babbel falls. It's on the day of Pentecost,

537
00:31:05,960 --> 00:31:09,839
that Abraham makes his own covenant with God. And it's

538
00:31:09,839 --> 00:31:11,519
on the day of Pentecost that the law is given

539
00:31:11,559 --> 00:31:14,200
to Moses. So you could go so far as to say, actually,

540
00:31:14,200 --> 00:31:17,400
from a heavenly perspective, that each one of these moments

541
00:31:17,480 --> 00:31:21,599
is just Pentecost. It's the single day of Pentecost, which

542
00:31:21,640 --> 00:31:25,359
is always the day on which God renews his covenant

543
00:31:25,559 --> 00:31:26,599
and gives us.

544
00:31:26,559 --> 00:31:28,480
Speaker 2: The law by which He should be known.

545
00:31:29,720 --> 00:31:32,200
Speaker 3: Now, in the center of the yearly cycle, the axis

546
00:31:32,240 --> 00:31:34,799
on which the whole thing turns, you have the feast

547
00:31:34,920 --> 00:31:39,960
of Passover. My tradition, we call it Pasca, which means passover.

548
00:31:40,759 --> 00:31:44,759
Speaker 2: That's all that is. That's what it is. It's passover.

549
00:31:45,119 --> 00:31:47,240
Speaker 3: Like you could just take all of the Orthodox liturgical

550
00:31:47,400 --> 00:31:51,000
texts and you know for pasca and we sing, you know,

551
00:31:51,039 --> 00:31:54,160
a great and holy Pasca. But you could sing passover.

552
00:31:54,240 --> 00:31:56,559
It would be correct. That's what the word means in

553
00:31:56,599 --> 00:32:00,640
Greek anyway. Okay, So, but at the center of the

554
00:32:00,680 --> 00:32:04,720
yearly cycle, the axis on which it all turns is pasca, passover,

555
00:32:05,000 --> 00:32:08,359
in which God makes a distinction between you and the Egyptians.

556
00:32:08,680 --> 00:32:10,519
That is, he is calling his people out of the

557
00:32:10,599 --> 00:32:14,160
nations of the world, and now setting the part constituting

558
00:32:14,200 --> 00:32:18,079
them as a people set apart unto himself. It should

559
00:32:18,119 --> 00:32:22,880
thus be no surprise that Christ, our light in our life,

560
00:32:23,519 --> 00:32:30,000
was himself sacrificed at passover, becoming the sacrificial lamb, leading

561
00:32:30,079 --> 00:32:32,680
us out of bondage to what ancient Christian hymns referred

562
00:32:32,680 --> 00:32:38,359
to as the spiritual pharaoh, the serpent, the devil. And

563
00:32:38,400 --> 00:32:43,519
so Saint Paul can say, Christ, our pasca, our passover

564
00:32:43,960 --> 00:32:45,599
has been sacrificed for us.

565
00:32:46,119 --> 00:32:49,440
Speaker 2: Therefore let us keep the feast now.

566
00:32:49,480 --> 00:32:51,519
Speaker 3: Already, in the first few centuries of the Christian faith,

567
00:32:51,559 --> 00:32:54,559
a very clear understanding had developed, and this is evident

568
00:32:54,559 --> 00:32:56,720
in the ancient poscle hymns and sermons from this early

569
00:32:56,759 --> 00:33:00,440
period that the historical events of the Old ten Estiment

570
00:33:00,880 --> 00:33:06,160
prefigured the fullness that the feasts which commemorated them found

571
00:33:06,200 --> 00:33:09,559
in Jesus Christ. So from this perspective, the passion, death,

572
00:33:09,799 --> 00:33:14,960
resurrection of Christ is actually the original passover. You get that, so,

573
00:33:15,119 --> 00:33:18,920
like think of a line of history cross in the middle,

574
00:33:19,559 --> 00:33:24,440
that's actually the origin point. When Christ is crucified, Saint

575
00:33:24,480 --> 00:33:28,240
Maximus the Confessor says, he finished his creating the world.

576
00:33:29,039 --> 00:33:31,319
He's really actually talking about finishing the creation of man,

577
00:33:31,359 --> 00:33:34,160
but in any case, different talk.

578
00:33:36,079 --> 00:33:38,400
Speaker 2: So that's the first passover.

579
00:33:40,640 --> 00:33:44,359
Speaker 3: When he defeats the enemy of death, when he calls

580
00:33:44,480 --> 00:33:45,680
us out of the Egypt of this.

581
00:33:45,680 --> 00:33:48,799
Speaker 2: World and into the Promised Land, and.

582
00:33:48,720 --> 00:33:54,839
Speaker 3: That has ripple effects back to the Exodus, but also

583
00:33:55,000 --> 00:34:02,079
forward to us. Because Christ is new atom, he makes

584
00:34:02,480 --> 00:34:05,720
common cause with the entire human race. And therefore this

585
00:34:05,799 --> 00:34:10,679
is not a Jewish story. It is a human story.

586
00:34:11,599 --> 00:34:16,360
The Gospel is good news for everyone. Everyone is invited

587
00:34:16,480 --> 00:34:20,880
to celebrate. So if you were to represent this on

588
00:34:20,920 --> 00:34:22,679
a diagram, sometimes when I talk about this, I have

589
00:34:22,719 --> 00:34:24,760
a little whiteboard that would obviously not work in here.

590
00:34:24,920 --> 00:34:26,599
I did sort of think maybe I could like whip

591
00:34:26,639 --> 00:34:29,960
something up in MS paint this morning. Did not work out,

592
00:34:30,079 --> 00:34:33,039
So you're just gonna have to imagine. But I just

593
00:34:33,199 --> 00:34:36,679
imagine Crucifix in the center, which the church fathers say,

594
00:34:37,679 --> 00:34:39,679
you know, was both in a mystery the creation of

595
00:34:39,679 --> 00:34:42,360
the world, and also the fullness of time. All of

596
00:34:42,440 --> 00:34:47,440
time begins at Pasca, flows from it, gather and is

597
00:34:47,480 --> 00:34:51,360
gathered up into it in the Escaton. Thus the events

598
00:34:51,440 --> 00:34:54,639
of Holy Friday, Holy Saturday of Great and Holy Pasca

599
00:34:54,679 --> 00:34:58,360
can be through the chairotic time of the liturgy, closer

600
00:34:58,400 --> 00:35:01,880
to us than the events the Vietnam War or whatever

601
00:35:01,920 --> 00:35:05,320
you were doing last Tuesday. Now, there's a lot of

602
00:35:05,320 --> 00:35:08,760
ways to describe modernity. I actually I'm a really big

603
00:35:08,800 --> 00:35:12,320
fan of Ziemint Bauman's Liquid Modernities, and so I was

604
00:35:12,400 --> 00:35:14,480
I really pleased to hear it brought up last night.

605
00:35:14,960 --> 00:35:17,440
There's a lot of ways to describe modernity, but one

606
00:35:17,440 --> 00:35:19,760
of the easiest ways to explain it is that it

607
00:35:19,800 --> 00:35:25,159
is a movement opposed to Cairos. So modernity is profoundly

608
00:35:25,559 --> 00:35:29,400
concerned with progress, with getting somewhere. We don't really know where,

609
00:35:29,960 --> 00:35:33,119
but we're going to get there. So the modern project

610
00:35:33,119 --> 00:35:35,400
has found it necessary to break down all of the

611
00:35:35,440 --> 00:35:40,880
old limits around time and around space. On a practical level,

612
00:35:41,239 --> 00:35:44,519
most of us are not actually worried about predicting the

613
00:35:44,599 --> 00:35:47,880
vernal equinox. In fact, there's a lot of smart people

614
00:35:47,880 --> 00:35:51,159
in this room, but I would venture to say most

615
00:35:51,199 --> 00:35:57,239
of you couldn't do it from scratch. Probably not by

616
00:35:57,280 --> 00:35:59,239
the way people ask me sometimes like how like in

617
00:35:59,239 --> 00:36:02,280
a classical ad setting, how are we supposed to like

618
00:36:02,280 --> 00:36:04,719
teach astronomy, how do we teach the stars? That's how

619
00:36:04,760 --> 00:36:08,679
you start like you're not a classically educated person if

620
00:36:08,679 --> 00:36:13,320
you cannot like figure out when spring starts by observing

621
00:36:13,360 --> 00:36:17,400
the stars and planets anyway, different rant, I'm sorry, they're

622
00:36:17,440 --> 00:36:18,400
all bleeding in now.

623
00:36:19,800 --> 00:36:24,000
Speaker 2: Okay. So maybe you have a home garden. When do you.

624
00:36:23,960 --> 00:36:26,079
Speaker 3: Decide to plant, Well, whenever the little demon in your

625
00:36:26,079 --> 00:36:28,360
pocket tells you to, can you just pull it out?

626
00:36:29,079 --> 00:36:29,679
Speaker 2: Look it up?

627
00:36:30,559 --> 00:36:33,320
Speaker 3: Oh, this is a good planting time. I used to

628
00:36:33,360 --> 00:36:35,760
have to like get this stuff from your grandpa. You know,

629
00:36:38,000 --> 00:36:39,800
there were several attempts in the early modern period to

630
00:36:39,800 --> 00:36:42,239
get rid of Kiro's entirely. There was a failed attempt

631
00:36:42,320 --> 00:36:45,440
at metric time, for which we can blame the French,

632
00:36:46,159 --> 00:36:53,480
and he knows, he knows. There was a failed attempt

633
00:36:53,480 --> 00:36:57,320
at metric time. There was an attempt to enforce, for instance,

634
00:36:57,320 --> 00:36:59,800
a ten day work week, which to just not go

635
00:37:00,159 --> 00:37:04,840
well with anybody. There was the removal of Christian holidays,

636
00:37:05,199 --> 00:37:08,440
some fifty or so holidays being removed from the calendar

637
00:37:08,519 --> 00:37:12,800
of Western civilization during the early modern period, and then

638
00:37:12,840 --> 00:37:16,159
to replace them with some civil holidays or some other

639
00:37:16,199 --> 00:37:19,840
things that we'll get to in a moment. And I'm

640
00:37:19,880 --> 00:37:21,559
sorry to say that Christians had a part in this

641
00:37:21,679 --> 00:37:24,920
as well. There is, of course, the very well known

642
00:37:24,920 --> 00:37:29,480
Puritan War on Christmas being a good example. So if

643
00:37:29,519 --> 00:37:32,119
every day is neither more nor.

644
00:37:32,000 --> 00:37:34,880
Speaker 2: Less holy than the last.

645
00:37:34,239 --> 00:37:38,639
Speaker 3: Then keeping a celebration like Christmas or Easter is nothing

646
00:37:38,679 --> 00:37:43,039
more than superstition. If we were to diagram this modern

647
00:37:43,119 --> 00:37:46,199
view of time, it would just be a long line

648
00:37:46,199 --> 00:37:49,639
with points, and each point would be at a regular,

649
00:37:49,719 --> 00:37:55,440
perfectly regular interval, because each day is like the last. Now,

650
00:37:55,440 --> 00:37:57,519
at some point in the last one hundred and twenty years,

651
00:37:57,559 --> 00:38:01,159
the modern project started to fall apart. Measuring the whole world,

652
00:38:01,400 --> 00:38:05,679
collecting all the data, explaining all of the miracles did

653
00:38:05,719 --> 00:38:08,960
not actually have the intended effect. It did not remove

654
00:38:09,079 --> 00:38:13,519
ambiguity and mystery from the world. Instead, the sheer number

655
00:38:14,000 --> 00:38:18,760
of seemingly contradictory facts threatened to drown us because we

656
00:38:18,800 --> 00:38:22,199
couldn't agree on a vision of progress. What are we

657
00:38:22,280 --> 00:38:24,559
working towards? Is it a capitalist utopia? Is it a

658
00:38:24,559 --> 00:38:29,159
worker's paradise? There was no greater pattern by which the

659
00:38:29,199 --> 00:38:32,760
story of history could be organized, so various governments tried

660
00:38:32,800 --> 00:38:34,360
to control this, and one of the ways they tried

661
00:38:34,360 --> 00:38:38,400
to control this is with propaganda. So in modernity, you

662
00:38:38,440 --> 00:38:41,679
can only celebrate things inasmuch as they feed into the

663
00:38:41,719 --> 00:38:45,039
identity of the nation state. So there's this replacement of

664
00:38:45,039 --> 00:38:47,400
religious holy days with patriotic holidays.

665
00:38:48,239 --> 00:38:49,320
Speaker 2: It's part of that shift.

666
00:38:50,320 --> 00:38:55,480
Speaker 3: And then postmodernity brought all of that crashing down. And

667
00:38:55,519 --> 00:38:58,639
what's interesting about postmodernity is that it actually brought back

668
00:38:58,679 --> 00:39:00,360
in this old language, old.

669
00:39:00,199 --> 00:39:00,760
Speaker 2: Way of thinking.

670
00:39:00,760 --> 00:39:03,119
Speaker 3: I think Jonathan's still in the room, but this is

671
00:39:03,159 --> 00:39:04,760
one of the most important things that I think he's

672
00:39:04,760 --> 00:39:09,559
helped us understand, is that postmodernity actually brought back the

673
00:39:09,599 --> 00:39:13,280
old language of center and margin, the old language of hierarchies.

674
00:39:13,320 --> 00:39:16,280
And in that sense, it's actually, in certain ways closer

675
00:39:16,599 --> 00:39:19,199
to the ancient way of seeing history than modernity was.

676
00:39:19,960 --> 00:39:24,000
But postmodernity is only ever capable of seeing history in

677
00:39:24,119 --> 00:39:31,440
a series of struggles center versus margin, privilege versus oppressed

678
00:39:31,960 --> 00:39:36,519
bourgeoisie versus the proletariat. And the problem with seeing the

679
00:39:36,519 --> 00:39:39,320
world in this way is that there can never be

680
00:39:39,400 --> 00:39:43,079
a common celebration. There can never be a single moment

681
00:39:43,519 --> 00:39:47,719
that all peoples and all times look towards, celebrate and

682
00:39:47,880 --> 00:39:51,920
find themselves parts of a larger story. And if we

683
00:39:51,960 --> 00:39:57,159
wanted to diagram. This post modern experience of time. It's

684
00:39:57,320 --> 00:39:57,880
just a line.

685
00:39:58,760 --> 00:40:02,880
Speaker 2: There's no points, there's no magnificance. It is whatever you

686
00:40:02,880 --> 00:40:03,400
want it to be.

687
00:40:07,159 --> 00:40:12,320
Speaker 3: It's a flat, undi undifferentiated experience of time in which

688
00:40:12,360 --> 00:40:15,880
our lives are now so totally insulated thanks to modern technology,

689
00:40:16,000 --> 00:40:19,320
so totally insulated from the cycle of the seasons, from

690
00:40:19,360 --> 00:40:22,480
the rising and setting of the sun, that we don't

691
00:40:22,599 --> 00:40:25,800
need to know the cairos to do something. Because it's

692
00:40:25,800 --> 00:40:28,719
always a good time to buy blackberries. You can buy

693
00:40:28,800 --> 00:40:30,119
blackberries any time of the year.

694
00:40:30,159 --> 00:40:30,760
Speaker 2: Did you know this?

695
00:40:31,119 --> 00:40:35,119
Speaker 3: You just walk into I'm serious, this is a problem now,

696
00:40:35,199 --> 00:40:37,840
I'm really serious. Like if I wanted to like sum

697
00:40:37,920 --> 00:40:40,519
up everything that's wrong right now, like you know my

698
00:40:40,679 --> 00:40:42,239
gripe with a machine, if you want to put in

699
00:40:42,239 --> 00:40:43,719
that way, it's the fact that I can buy by

700
00:40:43,880 --> 00:40:47,960
blackberries in the middle of winter. Everybody knows blackberries are

701
00:40:47,960 --> 00:40:50,360
harvest one time a year, and you can only store

702
00:40:50,400 --> 00:40:51,840
them for a certain amount of time, and if you

703
00:40:51,880 --> 00:40:54,119
do not eat them all before Michaelmas, the devil will

704
00:40:54,119 --> 00:40:59,320
steal them. This something was well known and understood by

705
00:40:59,320 --> 00:41:01,519
our ancestors. But now you have a refrigerator, you can

706
00:41:01,519 --> 00:41:06,920
buy a BlackBerry anytime you want. So you guys are

707
00:41:06,920 --> 00:41:08,920
still laughing about that, but I'm really mad about the

708
00:41:08,960 --> 00:41:13,400
BlackBerry thing. So if modernity removes cairos so that the

709
00:41:13,440 --> 00:41:15,559
only thing which can be celebrated is the nation state,

710
00:41:15,599 --> 00:41:20,400
postmodernity just removes that celebration altogether. So something like a

711
00:41:20,440 --> 00:41:22,360
Pride parade, for instance, it's not a celebration.

712
00:41:23,320 --> 00:41:24,159
Speaker 2: It's an act of war.

713
00:41:26,679 --> 00:41:29,119
Speaker 3: Since there are no longer common points of reference, since

714
00:41:29,159 --> 00:41:32,480
identity is constructed, since our stories are understood primarily in

715
00:41:32,519 --> 00:41:37,760
these power differentials, inequalities, any celebrations are now punitive.

716
00:41:38,519 --> 00:41:40,559
Speaker 2: Whenever you're celebrating.

717
00:41:39,960 --> 00:41:43,039
Speaker 3: One thing, you're punishing something else, which is why they

718
00:41:43,079 --> 00:41:48,639
don't want us to celebrate, because they'll interpret Christian celebration

719
00:41:49,360 --> 00:41:51,400
and I don't have a they in particular mind, just

720
00:41:51,440 --> 00:41:55,119
the world. Okay, they interpret Christian celebration was done in

721
00:41:55,119 --> 00:41:59,519
a public way as this is an assault, right, This

722
00:41:59,639 --> 00:42:00,679
idea of speech.

723
00:42:00,400 --> 00:42:01,440
Speaker 2: Is violence, for instance.

724
00:42:02,039 --> 00:42:06,800
Speaker 3: So despite being a culture which prides itself on inclusivity,

725
00:42:07,159 --> 00:42:10,599
we are actually the most divided that we've ever been,

726
00:42:11,239 --> 00:42:16,400
not just from each other, but also from our ancestors. Now, ironically,

727
00:42:16,760 --> 00:42:19,159
the Middle Ages, which is not generally considered to be

728
00:42:19,199 --> 00:42:24,079
the most inclusive period in human history, is actually has

729
00:42:24,440 --> 00:42:28,360
a vision of storytelling which was capable of bringing together

730
00:42:28,400 --> 00:42:30,639
all these disparate elements in your story and in your

731
00:42:30,639 --> 00:42:33,559
society and your history, and bring them together.

732
00:42:34,079 --> 00:42:35,119
Speaker 2: At the foot of the cross.

733
00:42:36,239 --> 00:42:38,440
Speaker 3: So one of the curious aspects I want to go

734
00:42:38,480 --> 00:42:40,800
back to, Jeffrey. Now, one of the curious aspects of

735
00:42:40,840 --> 00:42:42,280
medieval universal histories.

736
00:42:42,719 --> 00:42:47,199
Speaker 2: How are we doing? Ooh boy, Okay, I'm not gonna

737
00:42:47,239 --> 00:42:48,239
make it man, all right.

738
00:42:48,719 --> 00:42:51,320
Speaker 3: So one of the curious aspects of medieval universal histories

739
00:42:51,400 --> 00:42:53,400
is the way that the cross becomes the central point

740
00:42:53,440 --> 00:42:56,920
around which conflicting origins can be arranged. So early on,

741
00:42:57,480 --> 00:43:00,480
Christian universal histories take the events of the Trophrojan War

742
00:43:01,360 --> 00:43:03,679
the end of the Hellenic Age of Heroes as a

743
00:43:03,679 --> 00:43:08,119
matter of fact, while Pagans, when they convert, take careful

744
00:43:08,199 --> 00:43:10,519
pains to tie their own culture back to the events

745
00:43:10,519 --> 00:43:13,519
of the first eleven chapters of Genesis, and in particular

746
00:43:13,679 --> 00:43:18,960
the famous Table of Nations in Genesis eleven. Cultures who

747
00:43:19,000 --> 00:43:22,519
convert very late at a time when converting to Christianity

748
00:43:22,599 --> 00:43:25,760
also meant being grafted on to the Greco Roman inheritance

749
00:43:25,800 --> 00:43:28,719
of antiquity, they worked very hard to trace themselves back

750
00:43:28,840 --> 00:43:33,000
both to Genesis but then also to Troy, so that

751
00:43:33,079 --> 00:43:36,920
Pagan Norse, when they finally convert, they you hemerize their gods,

752
00:43:37,000 --> 00:43:41,639
their old gods as Trojan survivors, and then also trace

753
00:43:41,679 --> 00:43:45,239
their people back to a legendary fourth son of Noah

754
00:43:45,760 --> 00:43:46,760
about whom there are many.

755
00:43:46,639 --> 00:43:49,119
Speaker 2: Traditions even in ancient Judaism.

756
00:43:49,519 --> 00:43:52,880
Speaker 3: Now with this in mind, we're now prepared to understand

757
00:43:53,159 --> 00:43:56,719
why the story which Jeffrey of Monmouth tells begins at Troy.

758
00:43:57,440 --> 00:44:02,360
As he tells it, those days when David reigned in

759
00:44:02,440 --> 00:44:07,800
judea brute, that is, Brutus Felix Brutus, great grandson of Venias,

760
00:44:07,920 --> 00:44:11,639
arrived in the island of Albion and exile after a

761
00:44:11,679 --> 00:44:16,079
long and violent search for a homeland, and there they

762
00:44:16,119 --> 00:44:20,400
found the island desolate, ruled over by a race of giants,

763
00:44:20,880 --> 00:44:24,400
which Brute and his Trojan kinsmen killed or drove out,

764
00:44:24,880 --> 00:44:30,880
establishing a kingdom which then runs parallel to the Davidic dynasty,

765
00:44:31,960 --> 00:44:36,039
but also to this burgeoning little city state on the Tiber,

766
00:44:36,280 --> 00:44:38,039
which will eventually become kind.

767
00:44:37,840 --> 00:44:38,519
Speaker 2: Of a big deal.

768
00:44:40,199 --> 00:44:42,840
Speaker 3: Brutus is succeeded by his son Leo. About the same

769
00:44:42,880 --> 00:44:47,159
time that David is succeeded by Solomon and Silvius. Ipputus

770
00:44:47,199 --> 00:44:50,840
becomes king of the Latin succeeding his father. But Brutus's

771
00:44:51,119 --> 00:44:55,079
dynasty continues with a mix of good and bad kings,

772
00:44:55,079 --> 00:44:58,400
including of course King Lear of leader Fame, until some

773
00:44:58,480 --> 00:45:02,440
four books in Jesus Christ is Born, I quote by

774
00:45:02,440 --> 00:45:06,679
whose precious blood was mankind redeemed that aforetime had been

775
00:45:06,719 --> 00:45:11,239
bound in the chains of the devil. Now Monmouth's history

776
00:45:11,639 --> 00:45:17,280
thus triangulates these three locations Jerusalem, Rome, Britain, and their

777
00:45:17,360 --> 00:45:23,000
stories are told in parallel until the time of Pope Eleutherius.

778
00:45:23,440 --> 00:45:27,320
The now Roman faith of Christianity is brought to Britain

779
00:45:27,760 --> 00:45:29,880
at the behest of the King of the Britons, and

780
00:45:29,920 --> 00:45:34,039
by making this connection, the stage is now set in

781
00:45:34,079 --> 00:45:35,719
a few generations for.

782
00:45:35,800 --> 00:45:39,000
Speaker 2: The coming of the person of Arthur. And in the

783
00:45:39,039 --> 00:45:40,480
person of Arthur, all.

784
00:45:40,320 --> 00:45:43,199
Speaker 3: The things that it means to be British, not merely

785
00:45:43,280 --> 00:45:48,880
Anglo Saxon or Norman or Welsh, are united. The descendants

786
00:45:49,679 --> 00:45:53,280
of the invaders from a foreign land, connected to the

787
00:45:53,280 --> 00:45:57,599
oldest story in Europe, now very importantly a Christian monarch,

788
00:45:58,360 --> 00:46:00,880
a lord of a kingdom with as much claim to

789
00:46:00,960 --> 00:46:03,599
antiquity and Christianity as.

790
00:46:03,400 --> 00:46:04,559
Speaker 2: Anywhere else in the world.

791
00:46:04,639 --> 00:46:06,280
Speaker 3: And now to make up for the fact I'm going

792
00:46:06,320 --> 00:46:08,159
to make you slightly late for lunch, I'm almost done,

793
00:46:08,239 --> 00:46:10,199
but I'll give you something which I wasn't going to

794
00:46:10,239 --> 00:46:12,559
give you. So this is like to buy a little

795
00:46:12,599 --> 00:46:15,119
bit of your time. And that is the name of

796
00:46:15,199 --> 00:46:17,360
King Arthur's Lance. Does anybody know this? By the way,

797
00:46:17,719 --> 00:46:19,679
does anybody know the name of King Arthur's lands without

798
00:46:19,679 --> 00:46:21,199
looking it up on your pocket demon?

799
00:46:23,039 --> 00:46:23,239
Speaker 2: Was that?

800
00:46:24,320 --> 00:46:24,400
Speaker 1: No?

801
00:46:24,519 --> 00:46:30,880
Speaker 2: That's his sword? Was that? No? That's not it? No?

802
00:46:31,559 --> 00:46:36,639
Wait say it again? No, no, no, okay, all right, Ron?

803
00:46:37,159 --> 00:46:44,360
Who is that? Yeah?

804
00:46:44,400 --> 00:46:46,360
Speaker 3: It's really fun when you're reading along and Jeffrey, it's

805
00:46:46,440 --> 00:46:48,960
like and then you know, here's here's Arthur and his

806
00:46:49,079 --> 00:46:52,719
sword caliburn, and his and his shield pre you when

807
00:46:53,400 --> 00:46:54,119
and his lance?

808
00:46:54,480 --> 00:46:58,280
Speaker 2: Ron it's actually it's actually short for a Welsh word.

809
00:46:58,639 --> 00:47:01,199
Speaker 3: But anyway, Yeah, that's that's the name of That's actually

810
00:47:01,239 --> 00:47:02,760
why I read all this stuff. I just want the

811
00:47:02,840 --> 00:47:08,400
cool names of weapons. So much later in the medieval period,

812
00:47:08,400 --> 00:47:11,960
this latter angle, this idea of Christianity coming to the

813
00:47:12,000 --> 00:47:14,599
island of Britain is further developed with legends about Joseph

814
00:47:14,639 --> 00:47:17,679
of Vermathea, the infant Christ and did these feet, et cetera,

815
00:47:17,719 --> 00:47:21,000
et cetera. But Jeffrey's version of Arthur is very early,

816
00:47:21,800 --> 00:47:24,039
and that is, of course because he didn't invent the character.

817
00:47:24,159 --> 00:47:27,360
Arthur's a person to him, a historical person to him.

818
00:47:27,400 --> 00:47:31,039
He knows stories about Arthur, and so there's very few

819
00:47:31,079 --> 00:47:33,280
of the characters in Jeffrey that you would expect to

820
00:47:33,280 --> 00:47:34,760
meet in later Arthury and romances.

821
00:47:34,760 --> 00:47:36,320
Speaker 2: There's no Lancelot yet, for instance.

822
00:47:36,800 --> 00:47:39,719
Speaker 3: But his most important deeds in the history of the

823
00:47:39,760 --> 00:47:42,840
Kings of Britain are generally as a general, as a

824
00:47:42,840 --> 00:47:45,159
war leader, and as a Christian king who opposes the

825
00:47:45,159 --> 00:47:50,679
invading Anglo Saxons, who are Pagans, the ancestors of much

826
00:47:50,679 --> 00:47:51,719
of Jeffrey's audience.

827
00:47:51,960 --> 00:47:55,400
Speaker 2: Is the point I'm trying to make there, as well

828
00:47:55,440 --> 00:47:56,760
as actually the Roman.

829
00:47:56,559 --> 00:48:00,960
Speaker 3: Emperor, and so thus Britain is part of a larger story,

830
00:48:00,960 --> 00:48:05,119
but it's also Britain. It has a unique identity that's

831
00:48:05,199 --> 00:48:07,519
nested within this higher order, but it is distinct to

832
00:48:07,599 --> 00:48:10,800
being Britain. It's independent, it's not a vassal state. It's

833
00:48:10,800 --> 00:48:13,760
a kingdom with ancient claims to sovereignty and independence and

834
00:48:13,800 --> 00:48:19,119
so on. Because the mythological roots, of course of Britain

835
00:48:19,159 --> 00:48:22,880
go just back as far as the mythological roots of Rome,

836
00:48:22,920 --> 00:48:26,400
they go back to Troy. So this myth, which continues

837
00:48:26,400 --> 00:48:28,920
to be developed in its most refined form, for instance,

838
00:48:29,039 --> 00:48:32,719
Layman's Brute, it's referenced in that prologue to Sir Gawaine

839
00:48:32,719 --> 00:48:34,480
in The Green Knight that I read to you, proved

840
00:48:34,519 --> 00:48:37,960
to be potent enough to craft a British identity. And

841
00:48:38,000 --> 00:48:40,519
so in twelve sixteen, as The Brute was being written,

842
00:48:40,599 --> 00:48:43,400
King Henry the Third was crowned King of England. And

843
00:48:43,440 --> 00:48:46,000
he's the first monarch since ten sixty six to consider

844
00:48:46,079 --> 00:48:47,519
himself a.

845
00:48:47,480 --> 00:48:50,760
Speaker 2: King of England, not a Norman, not an Anjovin king,

846
00:48:51,519 --> 00:48:52,880
but English.

847
00:48:53,159 --> 00:48:55,400
Speaker 3: The story of Britain, which folded Britain into the larger

848
00:48:55,440 --> 00:48:59,800
Christian story, proved potent enough to contain a distinct British

849
00:48:59,800 --> 00:49:02,960
idea identity actually well after the Reformation. And I'm not

850
00:49:03,000 --> 00:49:05,679
saying that identity was wholly without problems, obviously, but it.

851
00:49:05,639 --> 00:49:07,239
Speaker 2: Was cohesive, it was durable.

852
00:49:07,559 --> 00:49:10,599
Speaker 3: It gave the people of the island of Britain a

853
00:49:10,639 --> 00:49:13,679
mythology in which to situate themselves long after they had

854
00:49:13,719 --> 00:49:16,119
ceased to believe in it as primary history, and would

855
00:49:16,159 --> 00:49:18,719
just be really clear before I wrap up, I'm not

856
00:49:18,760 --> 00:49:23,760
saying Jeffrey invented the story. He's collecting, he's retelling, There's

857
00:49:23,800 --> 00:49:25,800
no doubt about it. But the story is retelling is

858
00:49:25,800 --> 00:49:28,320
one that is very old and has the weight of

859
00:49:28,360 --> 00:49:30,960
antiquity and anonymity behind it.

860
00:49:30,960 --> 00:49:32,599
Speaker 2: It's very important for a founding myth.

861
00:49:33,480 --> 00:49:35,400
Speaker 3: If you can point to the guy in the room

862
00:49:35,400 --> 00:49:37,480
who wrote the founding myth, it's not a founding myth.

863
00:49:38,239 --> 00:49:40,440
So for a story like this to work, it's got

864
00:49:40,480 --> 00:49:44,519
to have that weight behind it. And it's very important

865
00:49:44,559 --> 00:49:47,320
that we understand this when we try to situate ourselves

866
00:49:47,559 --> 00:49:53,840
within the Christian tradition. We can't manufacture this. So how

867
00:49:53,840 --> 00:49:55,400
do we take this home? Which is supposed to have

868
00:49:55,480 --> 00:49:57,119
been the last fifteen minutes of my talk, I'm going

869
00:49:57,159 --> 00:49:58,119
to make it the last two minutes.

870
00:49:58,159 --> 00:49:58,960
Speaker 2: Here we go hold on.

871
00:50:00,119 --> 00:50:02,199
Speaker 3: I use the story of Brutus and Arthur and Troy

872
00:50:02,239 --> 00:50:04,280
and Britain as an example of the way that medieval

873
00:50:04,320 --> 00:50:07,679
cultures situated themselves in the larger Christian and Greco Roman

874
00:50:07,760 --> 00:50:11,119
story because it's more or less familiar to us in

875
00:50:11,119 --> 00:50:15,280
the anglosphere, but also distant enough from us, or at

876
00:50:15,360 --> 00:50:17,519
least from some of us. Obviously, we've got some people

877
00:50:17,559 --> 00:50:21,000
from the UK here that we can use it as

878
00:50:21,079 --> 00:50:23,800
an example of a useful example of how this sort.

879
00:50:23,599 --> 00:50:24,599
Speaker 2: Of thing works.

880
00:50:25,360 --> 00:50:27,679
Speaker 3: So when we talk in terms of stories and storytelling,

881
00:50:28,199 --> 00:50:30,079
most of you will hear what I am saying in

882
00:50:30,159 --> 00:50:33,519
terms of books and cinema, maybe music, things that we've

883
00:50:33,559 --> 00:50:36,639
been conditioned to think of a storytelling within our own society.

884
00:50:37,079 --> 00:50:40,320
You might also be thinking that we need a textbook,

885
00:50:40,360 --> 00:50:43,760
we need curricula to educate our children in this way,

886
00:50:43,760 --> 00:50:46,039
and maybe you're right. But when it comes to the

887
00:50:46,119 --> 00:50:50,199
question of how do I take this home, how do

888
00:50:50,280 --> 00:50:54,039
I transmit this to my children? I like to start

889
00:50:54,480 --> 00:51:00,280
with food. Now, there are various reasons for this. Is

890
00:51:00,280 --> 00:51:04,000
that I am a hobbit in my heart, and I think, actually,

891
00:51:04,039 --> 00:51:06,039
in serious all seriousness, a lot of the charm and

892
00:51:06,239 --> 00:51:09,360
desirability of reading The Lord of the Rings comes from

893
00:51:09,440 --> 00:51:12,039
the fact that there's the sense of this connection of

894
00:51:12,079 --> 00:51:17,079
food to place and to time into an identity. And

895
00:51:17,119 --> 00:51:19,400
after all, aren't all the best books such as The Hobbit,

896
00:51:19,760 --> 00:51:26,039
The Odyssey, the Bible, they're really just books about cooking. Seriously, though,

897
00:51:26,079 --> 00:51:28,320
read the Odyssey it's like the longest travel, like the

898
00:51:28,360 --> 00:51:32,039
longest food blog you've ever read. So my journey into

899
00:51:32,039 --> 00:51:34,800
these deep patterns of universal history is actually really personal

900
00:51:35,280 --> 00:51:37,159
and that as for me, this journey began with my

901
00:51:37,360 --> 00:51:41,159
wife's rediscovery of an intent to cook her way through

902
00:51:41,880 --> 00:51:44,880
the Christian year. And this is when we were at

903
00:51:44,880 --> 00:51:47,360
the time in a tradition where there was no Christian year.

904
00:51:47,760 --> 00:51:50,119
And so my wife said, I would like to rediscover this.

905
00:51:50,199 --> 00:51:52,320
And the thing I have control over is the kitchen,

906
00:51:52,360 --> 00:51:54,920
and so this is what we're going to do. So

907
00:51:55,039 --> 00:52:00,920
through feasting and hospitality, we re enchanted our family's experience

908
00:52:00,960 --> 00:52:03,679
of time. And it's my belief that if we could

909
00:52:04,119 --> 00:52:07,440
just recover, to begin with, just recover Christian patterns of

910
00:52:07,519 --> 00:52:12,920
fasting and feasting in other words, celebration, something like an

911
00:52:12,960 --> 00:52:17,039
American Christian culture could begin to emerge or be recovered,

912
00:52:17,440 --> 00:52:20,519
one rooted in the ancient rhythms of the Church year,

913
00:52:21,119 --> 00:52:23,679
vibrant with the hospitality of the new world.

914
00:52:24,440 --> 00:52:27,360
Speaker 2: This isn't about inventing a new myth. It's about living

915
00:52:27,360 --> 00:52:30,119
out the old ones. Folding our daily.

916
00:52:29,880 --> 00:52:33,599
Speaker 3: Lives into the eternal cairos where Christ is at the center.

917
00:52:33,920 --> 00:52:36,559
And so here I will mention to you my second

918
00:52:36,599 --> 00:52:42,199
book plug for the day, Evelyn burge Vitch's delightful cookbook

919
00:52:42,239 --> 00:52:44,320
A Continual Feast. And they have just a few copies

920
00:52:44,320 --> 00:52:46,079
back there at the book table, which you can get.

921
00:52:48,599 --> 00:52:49,280
Speaker 2: My wife and I.

922
00:52:49,360 --> 00:52:50,840
Speaker 3: This is the book that my wife and I used

923
00:52:51,000 --> 00:52:53,800
to cook our way through the Christian calendar and to

924
00:52:53,880 --> 00:52:55,119
rediscover our faith.

925
00:52:55,719 --> 00:52:55,800
Speaker 1: Now.

926
00:52:55,840 --> 00:52:57,559
Speaker 3: Iviitch reminds us in the book, by the way, that

927
00:52:57,679 --> 00:53:02,400
feasting is an incidental it's sacramento. It's a way to

928
00:53:02,440 --> 00:53:04,880
celebrate the joys of family and faith together. And so

929
00:53:04,920 --> 00:53:08,800
it draws from the traditions of the old world, which

930
00:53:08,880 --> 00:53:11,679
shows in this book how the major feasts that all

931
00:53:11,840 --> 00:53:17,000
Christians hold in common, Nativity, Theophany, Apasca, Pentecost, etc. Can

932
00:53:17,039 --> 00:53:22,039
transform ordinary meals into these portals and these little windows

933
00:53:22,039 --> 00:53:26,119
into sacred time. There's a wonderful anonymity by the way

934
00:53:26,159 --> 00:53:30,480
to a recipe or else they you could say, recipes

935
00:53:30,519 --> 00:53:34,199
have divine authority if you don't think, okay, but think

936
00:53:34,239 --> 00:53:37,280
when I say something like this is my grandmother's banana pudding.

937
00:53:37,800 --> 00:53:39,920
If I say this is my banana pudding, it's a

938
00:53:39,920 --> 00:53:42,840
little it's like, okay, man, that's a little pretentious, Like

939
00:53:42,840 --> 00:53:43,960
would just say you made a pudding.

940
00:53:44,199 --> 00:53:44,679
Speaker 2: But if I.

941
00:53:44,639 --> 00:53:50,400
Speaker 3: Say this is my grandmother's banana pudding, there's a divine

942
00:53:50,440 --> 00:53:52,920
authority there, like this came to us. No, I'm serious,

943
00:53:52,960 --> 00:53:55,960
Like this came to us from the ancestors.

944
00:53:57,199 --> 00:54:01,280
Speaker 2: Right. So there's an old world, an old world.

945
00:54:01,000 --> 00:54:05,000
Speaker 3: Practice of having what the Serbs call a family slava.

946
00:54:05,440 --> 00:54:07,440
Speaker 2: But this is just the serves that did this. Everybody

947
00:54:07,519 --> 00:54:09,480
used to do this. The English used to do this,

948
00:54:09,519 --> 00:54:12,679
The Norwegians used to do this. A family feast or

949
00:54:12,719 --> 00:54:14,000
a holy day, which.

950
00:54:13,800 --> 00:54:16,679
Speaker 3: Is like a big celebration for your family, and it's

951
00:54:16,760 --> 00:54:19,960
when you bring your community together. So for some people

952
00:54:19,960 --> 00:54:21,639
this might be the birthday or the name day of

953
00:54:21,679 --> 00:54:24,760
the family patriarch. For others, this was, for instance, Saint

954
00:54:24,840 --> 00:54:28,519
John's Night at Midsummer, when the wealthy of the community

955
00:54:28,639 --> 00:54:31,559
feasts the poor, which is one of the things you're

956
00:54:31,559 --> 00:54:33,679
supposed to do at a feast, I hope you know.

957
00:54:34,639 --> 00:54:35,400
Speaker 2: Usually it was.

958
00:54:35,400 --> 00:54:37,760
Speaker 3: A day which was connected in some way with some

959
00:54:37,880 --> 00:54:40,599
great feast of the Christian year of our Lord, of

960
00:54:40,599 --> 00:54:42,400
one of his servants of one of his saints under

961
00:54:42,400 --> 00:54:45,320
whose name the hospitality was being practiced, because that's a

962
00:54:45,320 --> 00:54:49,039
way to give to your hospitality that anonymity or that

963
00:54:49,079 --> 00:54:52,800
divine authority, which makes it authentic instead of just self serving.

964
00:54:53,440 --> 00:54:57,039
So in our family it sort of accidentally became situated

965
00:54:57,119 --> 00:55:02,239
right around Christmas and not on Christmas Day itself, but

966
00:55:02,280 --> 00:55:04,719
we usually do it right around the first of January,

967
00:55:04,840 --> 00:55:06,800
which is part of the twelve Days of Christmas, as

968
00:55:06,840 --> 00:55:10,199
I hope you will know. And on this day we

969
00:55:10,400 --> 00:55:12,880
hold what has come to be known in our community

970
00:55:12,920 --> 00:55:17,039
as a Charles Dickens Christmas. And what we do is

971
00:55:17,079 --> 00:55:18,719
we take the recipes from this book that I just

972
00:55:18,719 --> 00:55:21,599
showed you, the recipes of old europe plum puddings, very

973
00:55:21,599 --> 00:55:23,239
different kind of a thing than a banana pudding, by

974
00:55:23,280 --> 00:55:28,039
the way, Roast goose mince meat pies with real mince meat,

975
00:55:28,840 --> 00:55:31,679
a roast that's been marinating in a vat of cider

976
00:55:31,760 --> 00:55:32,280
for a week.

977
00:55:33,079 --> 00:55:36,000
Speaker 2: All these recipes are in this book. By the way.

978
00:55:36,480 --> 00:55:38,960
Speaker 3: The impetus for the celebration for us actually came from

979
00:55:38,960 --> 00:55:40,760
this desire just to have a Christmas like the one

980
00:55:40,800 --> 00:55:43,000
you read about in an old book, you know, And

981
00:55:43,000 --> 00:55:44,920
then like, you know, I'm from the South, so you

982
00:55:44,960 --> 00:55:47,480
have what turkey and stuffing? Like I was like, I

983
00:55:47,559 --> 00:55:50,480
want to find out what goose is. Like, guys, turkey

984
00:55:50,559 --> 00:55:52,800
is a sy op to keep you from eating goose.

985
00:55:54,159 --> 00:55:57,480
Like once you have goose, that's it, You're done. You

986
00:55:57,480 --> 00:56:01,679
will never buy another turkey. So every year the menu

987
00:56:01,760 --> 00:56:03,360
is essentially the same. But what we do is we

988
00:56:03,440 --> 00:56:06,599
rotate out the guest list. And so sometimes we invite

989
00:56:06,599 --> 00:56:10,119
our sixteen adult god children. Sometimes we invite new members

990
00:56:10,119 --> 00:56:11,679
of our parish that we would like to get to know.

991
00:56:11,800 --> 00:56:14,679
Sometimes we invite those just who have no one else

992
00:56:14,719 --> 00:56:17,280
with whom they can celebrate Christmas.

993
00:56:17,800 --> 00:56:20,320
Speaker 2: The meal is not a meal, it's a feast.

994
00:56:21,000 --> 00:56:24,199
Speaker 3: It has the kinds of prayers and toasts and the

995
00:56:24,239 --> 00:56:29,199
storytelling that make a meal into a feast. So matter

996
00:56:29,239 --> 00:56:32,079
where or when you live, to be a follower of

997
00:56:32,159 --> 00:56:36,039
Christ has always meant to be a pilgrim and a

998
00:56:36,079 --> 00:56:40,320
stranger to this world. And this, I think, by the way,

999
00:56:40,360 --> 00:56:43,039
is why the Aeneid resonated so deeply with Christians in

1000
00:56:43,079 --> 00:56:46,480
the Middle Ages, even more so than Homer, Because.

1001
00:56:46,239 --> 00:56:49,800
Speaker 2: To be in exile in search of a new homeland, to.

1002
00:56:49,880 --> 00:56:54,320
Speaker 3: Carry your father on your back. Old anchises with his

1003
00:56:54,400 --> 00:57:01,840
bad knees to carry him with you. What is best

1004
00:57:01,960 --> 00:57:04,920
about what it means to be you, to be where

1005
00:57:04,960 --> 00:57:07,719
you're from, even as you go in search of this

1006
00:57:07,760 --> 00:57:12,840
new homeland. Well that's the story of trying to tell

1007
00:57:13,599 --> 00:57:18,280
the Christian story. It's a long road and there's going

1008
00:57:18,320 --> 00:57:19,960
to be a lot of meals along the way.

1009
00:57:20,079 --> 00:57:20,400
Speaker 2: Thank you.