Intermission: a summer event
With Martin Shaw and Jonathan Pageau in Dublin
*** UPDATE: 1st March
This event has now sold out - but we are running it again the next day, Sunday 4th June. Tickets here, while stocks last ... ***
Hello readers. Forgive the interruption, but I want to spread the word about an event I’ll be doing in Dublin this June, for which only limited tickets will be on sale.
Christ, Creation and the Cave is an afternoon and evening event with me, symbologist Jonathan Pageau and storyteller Martin Shaw. We’ll be seeking out the ‘bush soul’ of Christianity, by exploring both its symbolic and literal roots. Here’s the blurb:
How can we understand the deep symbolism of the Christian story? What do the lives of the saints and the tales woven around them have to say to us today? Can the ancient roots of the faith, in Ireland and beyond, be rediscovered in a world desperate for spiritual truth? How should we live that truth?
Jonathan Pageau, Paul Kingsnorth, and Martin Shaw will come together to introduce a different Christian vocabulary, regale an audience with Christian wonder tales, and to lay out a vision that goes beyond the confines of modernity or cosy nostalgia.
That’s what we’re up to, and you can read more - and book a place - here. There are 90 tickets available. I’m excited about this one, and I think that interesting things will come of it. Perhaps I’ll see some of you there.
If you’d like to hear me talking in the meantime about some of the same issues, and a lot of others, you might like this recent podcast, in which I spoke with Mike Sauter and Michael Martin about the Machine and its impacts. There will be a few more video chats on the way soon, including one with historian Tom Holland which I’m looking forward to.
Hope there will be a recording we can access, even for a fee. I’m living the small-scale, local Christianity of homeschooling my differently wired kids here in the States and, sadly, can’t get myself to Ireland. But I sure would like to listen in.
Fantastic conversation! I’ve been wrestling with a similar ‘attraction to monasticism’ as a married father of four in The Machine Age for nearly my entire life (60+). Lay monsticism, third orders, etc. Fascinated with organized communities like the Bruderhof, Amish, Mennonites, etc. Also with secular eco-communities & villages etc. But not attracted enough to break with my suburban Hudson Valley comfortably middle class life & IT professional salary & benefits. I was out last spring & summer at some green woodworking & spoon carving events, camping - tent & sleeping bag etc. I came to the stark realization that I am in love with the idea of camping far more than the actual practice of it. I now suspect I am in the same position re monastic spirituality. Ultimately - the ‘machine’ prevails by giving us enough to feel comfortable in pursuing our individualistic desires & interests - while nostalgically dreaming of the ‘old days’. As we all fragment into our own media driven ‘realities’ the Machine marches on. We truly are addicts who are struggling to move beyond the idea of breaking free - trapped by the fear of discomfort.