The Monthly Salon: January
Plus some events coming up, in Ireland, England and America
Hello everyone. It’s conversation time again. Before we start though, there are three events coming up that I want to tell you about. These will be the only public events I will be doing until the autumn, when my book on the Machine is finally due out. More on that another day.
Before then, I will be:
In Galway City, Ireland, very soon - Saturday 15th February - for a day-long event with Martin Shaw, Paul VanderKlay and others. There will panel discussions, conversation, music and poetry. We’ll be circling around the topic of Christianity, culture and civilisation. A few tickets remain.
In London, England, on Monday 17th March, giving a talk at the Temenos Academy about the Orthodox Christian understanding of nature, and our place within it. You can find out more, and buy advance tickets, here.
In Wyoming, USA, from 27th to 29th June, for the ‘Doomer Optimism campout.’ at the Wagon Box Inn. This will be a weekend of discussions about the Machine, nature, human nature, technology, land, culture and all sorts of related issues, interspersed with music, conversation, dips in the river, fishing, walks, chats at the bar and all sorts of other Western-type things. I’m encouraging my American readers to come along; I think you’ll like it. You can read more about the Wagon Box here. It’s a great place.
With that done, we can move on to your thoughts, ideas and questions. It’s 2025, and I’m wondering how my readers are feeling about it. There are obviously political shifts going on, especially in the US. But there are technological shifts in the air too - AI is advancing fast and unpredictably, for starters. The climate itself is literally shifting, along with our ways of seeing the world. Things are changing, but also accelerating. How are you feeling about it? Who has a new year’s resolution they want to share? Over to you, to talk about that - or something else entirely.
OK, so I am a Trump supporter who is taking a terrible journey down into schadenfreude. it’s not nice of me, but I can’t resist.
Do you hate me? Do you feel sorry for me? Can you concede he’s doing the right things? Are any readers of this Substack with me?
Expat Aussie, gen X, living in Canada, mother of 5 boys, Catholic convert here.
I have felt for several years a deepening concern for the developments in our world, in December it switched to a sense of urgency. This translated on a personal level to repentance and deepening of my faith, a letting go of a lot of things. I have been going to daily Mass as often as I can after dropping my kids to school, with a sense of standing vigil, and praying for the needs of the whole world. I am on day 46 of a 54 day novena to our Lady, and one of the intentions was for God’s help to live a simple, humble life, living within our means with enough to help others. If this means selling our home to downsize, and look for ways to form intentional community I want to be ready and able to do so. Last week I discovered your writing/talks along with Dr Martin Shaw and Jonathan Pageau, and it felt like such a timely gift and encouragement.
When I look at current events on a human level, my stomach lurches. But then I look at the history of the Church and its saints, and remind myself we have lived through the fall and rise of civilizations before, and to keep my eyes on Jesus, and look for ways to love and serve in my community. I think of a quote of St Avitus of Vienne (470-519 AD) “My political views are those of the Our Father.”
Finally, I offer this poem, Canticle for Ordinary Time, written about 8 years ago. It still feels true.
Wonders never cease-
this is what needs to be said
over and over to the desolate.
The murmuration of starlings
above a highway
the path of moonlight on water
the sweet unfolding of a woman
and a man in the night
the soughing of wind
in the deodar cedar
the human voice raised in song.
Night swimming in Howe Sound
like floating in a sea of stars,
where every stroke and kick
sparks blue fire.
The stillness of a heron
on his bank at daybreak
the sudden wet twisting
of a newborn’s body onto the bed
and first cry,
the soft red glow of the sanctuary lamp
patient beacon of a preposterous message-
that God hides in the most ordinary
of substances
and waits and waits and waits for us.