Transcript
Speaker: Hey everybody, welcome back to Artists of the Way.
Speaker: I'm John.
Speaker: And I'm Nate.
Speaker: And we are the hosts.
Speaker: I keep hearing my mandolin strings echo from my vocal thing and it's distracting me.
Speaker: Is that because you're talking so on tune?
Speaker: I'm talking on tune.
Speaker: Tune.
Speaker: What's A?
Speaker: A. Is that C?
Speaker: I just said A, so that's A. I think that was C. A.
Speaker: Do, re, mi, fa, so, la.
Speaker: Is that it?
Speaker: Anybody who's clicking on this podcast, it's like the first time they've ever listened.
Speaker: It's like, what on earth?
Speaker: We're here to talk about mandolin strings resonating in my office.
Speaker: We're really here to talk about things that resonate with our heart.
Speaker: That's a good segue.
Speaker: Nice.
Speaker: Yes, Nate, we're just here to chat about some things.
Speaker: So what you been thinking about this week?
Speaker: What I've been thinking about this week, John, is a little bit C.S.
Speaker: Lewis.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: This is going to be a good episode if we're talking about C.S.
Speaker: Lewis.
Speaker: We're going to be, so it's going to be good.
Speaker: I love Lewis.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I was listening to the end of Paralandra, which is his second book in the space trilogy.
Speaker: I wasn't sure which one it was.
Speaker: It's also called the Ransom Trilogy.
Speaker: Because he holds the books for ransom for money.
Speaker: Most authors just sell you their book for money, but he actually, when he sent it out... It's kind of the same thing as selling.
Speaker: No, because he had a letter on there, and he was like, unless you pay me $10, I will kill this book.
Speaker: Someone did it!
Speaker: The book is out there!
Speaker: I know!
Speaker: We've all paid the ransom, but if it goes like a certain amount of months without the ransom, you pay the...
Speaker: book gets killed.
Speaker: So like with the Lewis Foundation, he's taken care of this whole time.
Speaker: That's most of their job, is just checking on the ransom.
Speaker: Keeps coming in.
Speaker: Good.
Speaker: There's one really devoted fan of the Space Trilogy out there.
Speaker: He's like, I've got to buy another book!
Speaker: Oh no, I've got to get the whole trilogy!
Speaker: Why did he do this for a whole trilogy?
Speaker: Darn you, Ransom Trilogy.
Speaker: Ransom is the name of the main character.
Speaker: Elwyn Ransom.
Speaker: He's actually who Lewis held for Ransom.
Speaker: A real man.
Speaker: This bit will continue.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: I just say okay.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: So you're reading Paralandra.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Or listening to it.
Speaker: That's the same thing.
Speaker: It's not.
Speaker: But I was experiencing the book.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: I think it counts.
Speaker: I think it's a thing, but you can't call it reading.
Speaker: But what if somebody is really bad at reading and that's the only way they can experience books?
Speaker: Would you say that's fine?
Speaker: But they're not reading.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Because reading is a thing and listening is a different thing.
Speaker: Both good things.
Speaker: We should be doing both.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Do you think listening is less than reading the book?
Speaker: I think they're probably different goods.
Speaker: I think it's really good.
Speaker: I think it's good for your brain to read and you get a good different experience because you're not having the outside influence of a spoken narrator.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: And you get that experience of just like forgetting that you're reading and it's just washing into you and it's good for your brain.
Speaker: But listening is awesome too when you can't be reading and to hear someone else's interpretation of the book.
Speaker: What if you never have that experience where a book washes over you?
Speaker: Do you not?
Speaker: Not really.
Speaker: Oh.
Speaker: I think I've had it...
Speaker: I can only pinpoint one time that I think I've had that.
Speaker: Maybe twice.
Speaker: I guess maybe it happened with the Silmarillion a little bit.
Speaker: But that doesn't really happen to me.
Speaker: Oh, okay.
Speaker: So I don't... Yeah, so I think then listening... I mean, it's still, I'm sure, good for you to read, but I think then listening is great.
Speaker: What a time-honored thing.
Speaker: A lot more people have listened through the age than read.
Speaker: And it's wonderful.
Speaker: Cool.
Speaker: Sorry, totally veered to stop talking there.
Speaker: Yeah, but I was reading the book through my headphones and... It's like slam dunk on my intellectual point with a joke.
Speaker: The premise of this series is in the book one, Ransom gets kidnapped and taken to Mars.
Speaker: Would you say that he's held for Ransom?
Speaker: Almost.
Speaker: He's kind of brought there as a sacrifice.
Speaker: They think that he's supposed to be- So a ransom for a god.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That's a ransom.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But he's-
Speaker: they actually didn't want to sacrifice him.
Speaker: They were just actually angels who take care of the planet.
Speaker: And they're like, what?
Speaker: No, we don't want to sacrifice.
Speaker: So was it like a, like a, it's just a misunderstanding.
Speaker: Oh, they were trying to sacrifice him to the angel.
Speaker: I said, yes.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: I thought the angels had taken him under the pretense that they were going to sacrifice him.
Speaker: No, just kidding, man.
Speaker: No, but it's like the, the angels are like kind of, they're not usually called angels.
Speaker: They're called like,
Speaker: or Yarsas.
Speaker: Nice.
Speaker: But it's like basically, you know, Mars.
Speaker: This is the real Mars.
Speaker: This angel who takes care of the planet Mars.
Speaker: That's that fake orange rock in the sky.
Speaker: Oh, I see.
Speaker: But his name, he's like the proper Mars.
Speaker: His name is Mars.
Speaker: Or in the real name of the planet is Malacandra.
Speaker: Is there a connection between him and Mars, the God of War?
Speaker: Totally.
Speaker: Nice.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And that's... Tolkien, or not Tolkien, Lewis flexing his like medieval... Oh yeah, totally doing that in these books.
Speaker: And then the second book...
Speaker: Ransom is brought by the, essentially the angels to Venus, which is called, the real name of Venus is Perilandra.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: And he's brought there to, it's like, it's like a planet that hasn't fallen.
Speaker: Mm-hmm.
Speaker: Like the people, there's not, it's not highly populated though.
Speaker: There's a lot of animals and there's only two people on the planet.
Speaker: So it's like, it's like another Adam and Eve story, but it's like the beginning of humanity basically on this planet.
Speaker: But, um, so this would be pre Jesus ransoming them.
Speaker: Well, it's interesting because we're still living within the universe that Jesus came to our planet and that comes into it because there's creatures on like Mars and other planets, but they're not humans.
Speaker: But they say after God was incarnated as a human, then all the planets that are like birthing people, they're forever going to be man after that.
Speaker: So it's once for all on a planet.
Speaker: Well, no.
Speaker: Well, maybe that.
Speaker: But at this point, I'm saying is that these people look like humans on Venus because they came after God was incarnated.
Speaker: Oh, okay.
Speaker: Cool.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But then, yeah, they definitely have a relationship with the true God there.
Speaker: But...
Speaker: And Satan or a demon comes to the planet by basically inhabiting the bad guy from the last book.
Speaker: And so it's, again, he's trying to tempt the Eve character into sin.
Speaker: And our guy Ransom is there to...
Speaker: stop him okay interesting yeah yeah it's really cool but what struck me was um we're fast forward to the end of the book so you should go read the rest of it it's really good yes we may be spoiling some some books in this episode
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But, but we'll, I'll fast forward past some of the, the good stuff at the, at the end where, um, our guy ransom is on top of mountain talking to, um, now the Adam and Eve characters who are like King and queen of the planet.
Speaker: And like they, okay, this is a spoiler, but they didn't, they didn't fall.
Speaker: And so it's going to be continued to be like an unfallen world.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: It's really cool.
Speaker: Crazy.
Speaker: So everybody trip your next vacation book tickets to Venus.
Speaker: It's good.
Speaker: It's good.
Speaker: Good place.
Speaker: It is a gas giant so you'll have to swim but wait.
Speaker: There's a lot of water.
Speaker: Venus is not a gas giant.
Speaker: I had my planets confused.
Speaker: No.
Speaker: No.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I was homeschooled so we'll blame.
Speaker: You should have known better.
Speaker: She's going to attack.
Speaker: Look out for my mom's defense of herself in the comments.
Speaker: Down below.
Speaker: Under the table.
Speaker: But at the end of the book, we're just kind of chatting together because we got some questions for these angel characters that are Mars and Venus, essentially.
Speaker: And we hear about the Adam character kind of prophesies what's going to happen on our planet, basically the revelation and stuff.
Speaker: And...
Speaker: And our main character, Ransom, he gets a little concerned that, like, we thought that Earth was kind of the center of, like, God's creation universe.
Speaker: But now there's this planet and there's other places around the universe.
Speaker: And he's, like, concerned that there's not, like, a true center to God's plan.
Speaker: And, like, is there a plan even?
Speaker: And so this concept is, like,
Speaker: bothering him that like maybe there's not a plan maybe it's all like random and stuff is their true center and so i'd like to read some of the book because really what i want to talk to today about is with you is um how art can give you uh
Speaker: wash over you and give you a vision of spiritual truths and eternity in a way that goes beyond just maybe just talking about it.
Speaker: And so we're going to be reading some Lewis today and letting the art wash over our audience.
Speaker: I'm going to read a little bit of Tolkien.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Basically, this is a Lewis and Tolkien episode, which we didn't plan.
Speaker: But Nate was like, I want to talk about this.
Speaker: And I have some Lewis thoughts.
Speaker: There will be more.
Speaker: And then I was like, I have some Tolkien thoughts.
Speaker: The first of our Lewis and Tolkien episodes.
Speaker: Which there will be many.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Hope you like that.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Sorry, guys.
Speaker: We're obnoxious with this.
Speaker: So in this section that I'm going to read, it's almost like
Speaker: almost like a song, we have paragraphs of elevated speech that talk about God and his plan, and they all end in blessed is he, and they just go one after another like waves washing over you as you read them.
Speaker: And there's so many of these beautiful paragraphs.
Speaker: I can't read all of them, but I have a selection of them that hopefully give some of these great truths and the wash.
Speaker: Mm-hmm.
Speaker: We'll start with like the little introduction to this section.
Speaker: They're asking the Eldila, the angels, to speak to Ransom's question about what's like the what's the purpose and is their meaning?
Speaker: The voice that spoke next seemed to be that of Mars, but Ransom was not certain.
Speaker: And who spoke after that, he does not know at all.
Speaker: For in the conversation that followed, if it can be called a conversation, though he believes that he himself was sometimes the speaker, he never knew which words were his or another's, or even whether a man or an Eldil was talking.
Speaker: The speeches followed one after another, if indeed they did not all take place at the same time.
Speaker: Like the parts of a music into which all five of them had entered as instruments, or like a wind blowing through five trees that stand together on a hilltop.
Speaker: Now we'll jump to one of the middle sections.
Speaker: The dust itself, which is scattered so rare in heaven.
Speaker: Oh, I want to do one before that.
Speaker: Oh, my goodness.
Speaker: We were going well.
Speaker: Oh, my word.
Speaker: This guy, we're going to fire him after this episode.
Speaker: It's going to be a long episode.
Speaker: That's what I said last episode.
Speaker: Hang on for as long as I can.
Speaker: All right, here we go.
Speaker: Though men or angels rule them, the worlds are for themselves.
Speaker: The waters you have not floated on, the fruit you have not plucked, the caves into which you have not descended, and the fires through which your bodies cannot pass, do not await your coming to put on perfection, though they will obey you when you come.
Speaker: Times without number I have circled Arbol while you were not alive, and those times were not desert.
Speaker: Their own voice was in them, not merely a dreaming of the day when you should awake.
Speaker: They also were at the center.
Speaker: Be comforted, small immortals.
Speaker: You are not the voice that all things utter, nor is there eternal silence in the places where you cannot come.
Speaker: No feet have walked nor shell on the ice of Glund.
Speaker: No eye looked up from beneath on the ring of Lurga.
Speaker: An iron plan in Nervil is chaste and empty.
Speaker: Yet it is not for nothing that the gods walk ceaselessly around the fields of Arbol.
Speaker: Blessed is he.
Speaker: That dust itself, which is scattered so rare in heaven, whereof all worlds and the bodies that are not worlds are made, is at the center.
Speaker: It waits not till its created eyes have seen it, or hands handled it, to be in itself a strength and splendor of Meleldil.
Speaker: That's God's name in these books, Meleldil.
Speaker: Only the least part has served, or ever shall, a beast, a man, or a god.
Speaker: But always and beyond all distances, before they came and after they are gone, and where they never come, it is what is and utters the heart of the Holy One.
Speaker: It is...
Speaker: Holy One, with its own voice, it is farthest from him of all things, for it has no life, no sense, nor reason.
Speaker: It is the nearest to him of all things, for without intervening soul, as sparks fly out of fire, he utters in each grain of it the unmixed image of his energy.
Speaker: Each grain, if it spoke, would say, I am at the center.
Speaker: For me all things were made.
Speaker: Let no mouth open to gainsay it.
Speaker: Blessed is he.
Speaker: each grain is at the centre the dust is at the centre the worlds are at the centre the beasts are at the centre the ancient peoples are there the race that sinned is there tor and tinedril are there the gods are there also blessed is he
Speaker: Where Meleldil is, there is the center.
Speaker: He is in every place, not some of him in one place and some in another, but in each place the whole Meleldil, even in the smallness beyond thought.
Speaker: There is no way out of the center save into the bent will, which casts itself into the nowhere.
Speaker: Blessed is he."
Speaker: Each thing was made for him.
Speaker: He is the center.
Speaker: Because we are with him, each of us is at the center.
Speaker: It is not as in the city of the darkened world, that's our world, where they say each must live for all.
Speaker: In his city, all things are made for each.
Speaker: When he died in the wounded world, he died not for men, but for each man.
Speaker: If each man had been the only man-made, he would have done no less.
Speaker: Each thing, from the single grain of dust to the strongest Eldil, is the end and the final cause of all creation, and the mirror in which the beam of his brightness comes to rest and so returns to him.
Speaker: Blessed is he.
Speaker: He has immeasurable use for each thing that is made, and his love and splendor may flow forth like a strong river which has need of great water course, and fills alike the deep pools and the little crannies that are filled equally and remain unequal.
Speaker: And when it has filled them brimful, it flows over and makes new channels.
Speaker: We also have need beyond measure of all that he has made.
Speaker: "'Love me, my brothers, for I am infinitely necessary to you for your delight, and for your delight I was made.
Speaker: Blessed be he.
Speaker: He has no need at all of anything that is made, and Eldel is not more needful to him than a grain of dust, a people world no more needful than a world that is empty, but all needless alike, and what all add to him is nothing.'
Speaker: We also have no need of anything that is made.
Speaker: Love me, my brothers, for I am infinitely superfluous, and your love shall be like his, born neither of your need nor of my deserving, but of plain bounty.
Speaker: Blessed be he.
Speaker: And these go on until the character, until Ransom sees like the whole universe kind of in visible format and it gets complicated and then it becomes simple and we find out that he's been reveling in this conversation and in the vision of a glimpse of how God sees the world for like a year, though it just felt a few minutes.
Speaker: But I just love how these truths, they just like wash over you in elevated speech and gives you a little glimpse of how in our human way, we just can think of things in a very small way.
Speaker: Like, is this the way that things are?
Speaker: Yes, it's this way.
Speaker: But then in God's view, it's also this way and stuff like that.
Speaker: Mm-hmm.
Speaker: like the talk about love me for I'm infinitely necessary.
Speaker: Love me for I am infinitely superfluous.
Speaker: And, and just those dichotomies that are like both true and both beautiful is really lovely.
Speaker: I think that's something I like about God is I think he is inherently paradoxical.
Speaker: And I think,
Speaker: I don't think I've said this on the podcast.
Speaker: Maybe I've said it to you before, but I feel like the universe is in some sense built on a foundation of paradoxes.
Speaker: Like I think God just...
Speaker: I mean, there's the like age old, like dilemma that I think every Christian wrestles with of like justice and grace.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And like finding that middle ground.
Speaker: And the best we can do is find a middle ground.
Speaker: But God is like, no, I'm actually the fullness of both.
Speaker: I'm fully both.
Speaker: I am grace and justice both to the nth degree.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, it's like, and try to understand that.
Speaker: Try to deal with that.
Speaker: You can't.
Speaker: I am so much beyond you.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And so I think the universe that God created, because I think he is, is just paradoxical.
Speaker: And I think...
Speaker: That just makes sense to me because we can never make sense of a paradox.
Speaker: I don't know what the actual definition of a paradox is, but it's essentially by definition something you can't reconcile intellectually.
Speaker: And so...
Speaker: whatever is there.
Speaker: It doesn't mean they're contradictory inherently, but you just can't reconcile them.
Speaker: But they are reconciled in God.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Just as in Christ, all things are reconciled.
Speaker: But they are reconciled in God because he is where all things are held together.
Speaker: He holds all things together.
Speaker: And so I love that.
Speaker: God can say I am entirely this.
Speaker: I'm also entirely this.
Speaker: And then our brains go, what?
Speaker: That doesn't fit into my mapping of the faith.
Speaker: I'm in the smallest seed, the smallest microbe.
Speaker: I am all of me there, but I'm also bigger than the universe.
Speaker: Yeah, that's lovely.
Speaker: What do you...
Speaker: What do you think of that?
Speaker: I think it's good.
Speaker: Oh, nice.
Speaker: But that's what I love about Lewis is the way that he, through his books and essays, just kind of expands your mind and gives you an elevated view of what heaven or eternity or spiritual things are actually going on.
Speaker: Even if it's not like...
Speaker: It's factually, necessarily exactly the way it's going to be.
Speaker: But it gives you a vision that breaks you out of your little world that we live in here and helps you be aware of, oh, this is a bigger world and bigger reality than I usually think about.
Speaker: I, yeah, I think I'm going to jump to slightly like theological intellectual side of that too.
Speaker: I think he was really good at that.
Speaker: And I think sometimes...
Speaker: We don't remember how, I guess, controversial some of his things could be.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: That he would say.
Speaker: Like, you've got the last battle there.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I think of the last battle wherein he makes the somewhat controversial, maybe Christian universalist.
Speaker: Feels like that.
Speaker: Argument of the Telmarine who worshipped Tash all his life.
Speaker: And at the end, Aslan, God says, really all along you were pursuing me, and now you're welcomed into eternity in heaven.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Which is something a lot of people raised in like an Orthodox or traditional, we'll say traditional, like a traditional Christian upbringing would be like, that's heresy.
Speaker: But Lewis is like, I don't know, God is so big.
Speaker: Can we entertain the thought that...
Speaker: There's something weird and mysterious going on here, and I don't know.
Speaker: I'm not really convinced of Christian universalism personally, though I think there's some compelling arguments in there, but we don't have to talk about that today because this is not about Christian universalism.
Speaker: Yeah, I think we definitely got to return all things to Scripture and judge things against...
Speaker: scripture totally well that's the plumb bob right so like we can have all these discussions and right and i'm sure lewis has things in scripture where he says this is where i see that coming from i know there's a lot of arguments for just using that as like a case study intellectually of like this is a polarizing thing to talk about yeah i've heard very compelling arguments arguing primarily from scripture for that really yes we can we can talk
Speaker: more about it.
Speaker: And now I'm like, well, the audience want to hear about it.
Speaker: If you're interested, comment.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: We'll talk about it later or I'll send you some things or something.
Speaker: So we can talk about it later.
Speaker: But I've heard really compelling arguments for that from Scripture.
Speaker: So Scripture is still that plumb bob, but we're able to have conversations around it that broaden our minds
Speaker: To the possibilities of what God is not in a way that detaches us from scripture, but we can talk about.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Will in the end Christ somehow in a way we don't quite understand, save everyone and bring everybody into heaven somehow.
Speaker: Or will it be eternal conscious torment?
Speaker: Or will it be like an annihilation theory of hell where really it's like eternal death, you know, or they cease to exist?
Speaker: We can have those conversations still rooted in scripture, but it doesn't have to necessarily like threaten our faith to talk about these things because our God is so much bigger than them.
Speaker: You know, he's big enough that
Speaker: He, our, our, I'm losing my words.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: He is big enough that he's like kind of beyond all of those conversations in the sense of like, we can entertain that and still put our faith in God and trust him to correct us where we need to be corrected.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But we can talk about what does his creation look like?
Speaker: What might it look like?
Speaker: What is his eternal plan and what does that look like?
Speaker: In that sort of speculative way.
Speaker: As long as we don't let that become our thing, right?
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: I feel like...
Speaker: people can have disagreements about this and like I can feel like very sure that it's one way.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But another good believer can feel it's another way.
Speaker: But you just want to be careful while you're having those thoughts that your faith is in God and not like –
Speaker: I can only believe in God if it's my interpretation on this.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: If it's Christian universalism.
Speaker: Or if it's eternal conscious torment, you know, or anything.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And so we can't pin our faith on being right about this issue, but we need to ultimately have our faith in God that he is loving and he is just and he'll take care of it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But I think Lewis does both in his fiction and his nonfiction a really good job of that, of being really rooted in his faith in God, his relationship with God.
Speaker: And then saying, let's explore this from all kinds of weird angles that maybe I'm making an intellectual argument for, or maybe I'm just exploring through story.
Speaker: Well, he kind of said that in like the great divorce at the beginning of it.
Speaker: It's like, I'm not trying to say anything about how it actually is.
Speaker: Though when you read it's like I don't know that's actually that way.
Speaker: It's like I wasn't trying to say it was.
Speaker: It sounds like you're trying to say that's how it is.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: Don't know.
Speaker: You just want to put that.
Speaker: Sounds like you're trying to have your cake and eat it too.
Speaker: What's that?
Speaker: Trying to have your cake and eat it too.
Speaker: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker: You just want to put that disclaimer at the beginning of everything you say.
Speaker: But I think that's an important humility we should all have about our theology.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: is that there's some things that are orthodox that are Jesus died and rose from the dead.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Literally physically.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You don't want to be like, maybe I want to be humble and say, maybe that's not true.
Speaker: Maybe Jesus didn't rise from the dead and save me.
Speaker: I'm just being humble here.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Like we can, we can be bold in our faith in the person of God in Christ and what he accomplished.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But all of the like theology and doctrine around that, I think the humility to say, this is how I understand it.
Speaker: But I could get to heaven and God could say, man, you faithfully followed me.
Speaker: We're so off on infant baptism, John.
Speaker: You just really wanted to be Anglican.
Speaker: Which is like, I love my Anglican children.
Speaker: That's fine.
Speaker: Babies can't breathe in the water.
Speaker: You're going to drown them, John.
Speaker: You're going to drown them.
Speaker: I was just sprinkling.
Speaker: Oh, you were just sprinkling.
Speaker: The good thing is that the Catholics are right that baptism saves, just not about the infant part.
Speaker: So they did die, but they were saved.
Speaker: Well, nobody had that doctrine.
Speaker: I know.
Speaker: It's because I'm so huge and mysterious, John.
Speaker: Oh, goodness.
Speaker: I'm never going to play God the Father after that.
Speaker: No show will cast me now.
Speaker: No, but I think Lewis was really good at using art in that way.
Speaker: I feel like he's just so good that I can forgive him for some of those weird things.
Speaker: Just ignore that.
Speaker: I just love the rest.
Speaker: We get to heaven and God's like, he was actually right about all of everything.
Speaker: I wouldn't mind if people were right about Christian universalism and God somehow saved everybody.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Cool, that would be nice.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I'm like, ideally, I think that'd be great.
Speaker: I don't know if I'm 100% convinced.
Speaker: Again, we'll talk off air.
Speaker: No, no.
Speaker: It's not where I currently land.
Speaker: No, no.
Speaker: Yes, but no, I think art...
Speaker: I'm trying to decide if I'm going to jump to Tolkien or jump to another thought.
Speaker: Nate, pick a path.
Speaker: We're giving Nate a choose-your-own-podcast adventure.
Speaker: Do you want me to... I want to hear your thought.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: One of the plays that I did early on as an actor who was learning and a teenager was All I Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: The ending piece of that, it's sort of a vignette show.
Speaker: Kind of like You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown.
Speaker: So it has all these little vignettes.
Speaker: The ending vignette is...
Speaker: I don't even remember what they're talking about, like what the like theme, or not theme, but like subject of their discussion is.
Speaker: But it's like this final day of class with a professor who had gone through World War II.
Speaker: Oh, no.
Speaker: And somebody's asking, what's the meaning of life?
Speaker: He's like, what's your last question on the day of class?
Speaker: And somebody's like, what's the meaning of life?
Speaker: Professor's like, okay, pulls out this little circular mirror and just starts reflecting light in people's eyes.
Speaker: And he's like, I think this is the meaning of life.
Speaker: And they're like, what?
Speaker: What do you mean by that?
Speaker: It's a poor meaning.
Speaker: Just to shine this light in my eye?
Speaker: Come on, man.
Speaker: Stupid.
Speaker: But it's about...
Speaker: reflecting the light good to other people.
Speaker: Take that a step further as a Christian, as we have to do.
Speaker: Yeah, like good, but not good enough.
Speaker: We take that a step further.
Speaker: We're reflecting the light of Christ.
Speaker: I think every Christian is meant to reflect that to the world and especially artists.
Speaker: Our goal as artists is to reflect truth.
Speaker: Any good artist should be trying to do that.
Speaker: If they're not, they're a bad artist.
Speaker: They should at least be trying to reflect their understanding of truth to the world.
Speaker: We don't want universalism for them.
Speaker: But so then that idea that for us Christians, the truest thing is Christ.
Speaker: Like we just said, that's what we're hanging our hat on.
Speaker: That's what we're putting our faith in.
Speaker: Christ is the truest thing.
Speaker: So our art shouldn't just be reflecting the reality of human experience or human emotion.
Speaker: Those things are important and will be in it.
Speaker: And I think.
Speaker: I'll add this in a second, but that art should also be reflecting.
Speaker: should primarily be reflecting Christ to the audience, to the fellow actors.
Speaker: I think it can reflect Christ through the human experience.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Because Christ is in the human experience, baked in, I think, to its DNA in an abstract, not literal sense.
Speaker: We're not baking here.
Speaker: We're not baking.
Speaker: That is for communion.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: No, now it's just wafers.
Speaker: It used to be delicious bread, and now it's wafers.
Speaker: I feel like that's a little bit of an insult to God.
Speaker: It's just like we get to heaven, and God's like, you were spot on on your doctrine, but then you made me a wafer man.
Speaker: And then you go home and eat great Italian bread.
Speaker: Great Italian bread.
Speaker: And have nothing to do with me.
Speaker: Don't have the wherewithal to bring that great Italian bread to church and say, can you make this Jesus instead?
Speaker: Why of course son it's bread What was I saying I don't even but like yeah in reflecting the reality of the human experience Christ is in that so I think you can pick a Totally random.
Speaker: I don't know Mary Poppins is written by a Buddhist, but I think beautifully reflects the she was a Buddhist.
Speaker: No, yeah
Speaker: Australian Buddhists?
Speaker: Australian Buddhists.
Speaker: They make them?
Speaker: They do.
Speaker: Crikey.
Speaker: Crikey, it's a Buddha.
Speaker: Written by a Buddhist.
Speaker: fairly, like, it's fantastical and secular, but I think beautifully reflects some wonderful truths that Christ baked in and is a beautiful sort of, has a beautiful redemptive piece that sort of echoes with the great redemption that we all hope to have and the great.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You know?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So I think artists should strive to do that.
Speaker: You don't have to be Buddhist, though.
Speaker: You have to be Buddhist to create art that reflects the truth of the Christian.
Speaker: It's a shame.
Speaker: It's a real bummer.
Speaker: God, I want to be an artist.
Speaker: Oh, buddy.
Speaker: I want to spend eternity with you.
Speaker: I know.
Speaker: But you want to be an artist.
Speaker: Dang.
Speaker: I'm going to love your art, though.
Speaker: It's going to be really nice.
Speaker: It's going to honor me so much.
Speaker: But you're going to be a Buddhist.
Speaker: Oh, goodness.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Want to hear more Lewis?
Speaker: Let's hear more Lewis.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Where shall we?
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Audience, you pick.
Speaker: They can't respond.
Speaker: We're not young enough to fall for the door of the Explorer saying yes trick.
Speaker: Do you want... Oh, I got Nate.
Speaker: Which book are we going to do?
Speaker: You pick.
Speaker: Oh, I do love Screwtape Letters.
Speaker: Yeah, yes.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Hey, audience.
Speaker: Should we read The Screwtape Letters?
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Somebody, at least one audience member has to have turned off the podcast from that.
Speaker: Nope, I'm out.
Speaker: I'm done.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: What you got for us from Screwtape Letters?
Speaker: We got the end of the Screwtape Letters here.
Speaker: I love this ending.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: What a just middle finger.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: Take that.
Speaker: I know.
Speaker: I feel like Lewis would give the middle finger to Satan.
Speaker: He kind of did in his like, he'd like use like the word like, and that should be damned.
Speaker: And I mean that literally should go to hell.
Speaker: Oh, I love that.
Speaker: So yes, we know the screw tape letters.
Speaker: It's letters from a senior demon written to a junior demon about this is how you got to tempt your guy away from the enemy, which is God.
Speaker: And so we go through a bunch of letters.
Speaker: And then in this final one, the guy became a Christian earlier.
Speaker: And that's too bad for the demons.
Speaker: But they're still working on him, though.
Speaker: But in this final letter, we find... They're our protagonists, so we have to root for them.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Right?
Speaker: Protagonists are always the good guys in stories.
Speaker: Like in that Oceans movie.
Speaker: Yup.
Speaker: But in this final one, the guy died in like a bombing.
Speaker: Like bombing of England in World War II.
Speaker: And so the guy died and he sees – once he dies, his spiritual eyes are open because his soul is living now and he sees the demon that had been trying to tempt him.
Speaker: But now we're going to jump to this paragraph.
Speaker: As he saw you, he also saw them.
Speaker: I know how it was.
Speaker: You reeled back dizzy and blinded, more hurt by them than he had ever been by the bombs.
Speaker: the degradation of it, that this thing of earth and slime could stand upright and converse with spirits before whom you, a spirit, could only cower.
Speaker: Perhaps you had hoped that the awe and strangeness of it would dash his joy, but that is the cursed thing.
Speaker: The gods are strange to mortal eyes, and yet not strange.
Speaker: He had no faintest conception till that very hour of how they would look and even doubted their existence.
Speaker: But when he saw them, he knew that he had always known them and realized what part each one of them had played at many an hour in his life when he had supposed himself alone.
Speaker: So that now he could say to them one by one, not, who are you?
Speaker: But, so it was you all the time.
Speaker: All that they were and said at this meeting woke memories.
Speaker: The dim consciousness of friends about him which had haunted his solitudes from infancy was now at last explained.
Speaker: That central music in every pure experience which had always just evaded memory was now at last recovered.
Speaker: Recognition made him free of their company almost before the limbs of his corpse became quiet.
Speaker: Only you were left outside.
Speaker: He saw not only them, he saw him.
Speaker: This animal, this thing begotten in a bed, could look on him.
Speaker: What is blinding, suffocating fire to you is now cool light to him.
Speaker: Is clarity itself, and where's the form of a man?
Speaker: You would like, if you could, to interpret the patient prostration in the presence, his self-abhorrence and utter knowledge of his sins.
Speaker: Yes, Wormwood, a clearer knowledge than even yours, on the analogy of your own choking and paralyzing sensations when you encounter the deadly air that breathes from the heart of heaven.
Speaker: But it's all nonsense.
Speaker: Pains he may still have to encounter, but they embrace those pains.
Speaker: They would not barter them for any earthly pleasure.
Speaker: All the delights of sense or heart or intellect with which you could once have tempted him, even the delights of virtue itself,
Speaker: now seem to him in comparison but as the half nauseous attractions of a rattled harlot would seem to a man who hears that his true beloved whom he has loved all his life and whom he had believed to be dead is alive and even now at his door
Speaker: He is caught up into that world where pain and pleasure take on trans-finite values and all our arithmetic is dismayed.
Speaker: Once more, the inexplicable meets us.
Speaker: Next to the curse of useless tempters like yourself, the greatest curse upon us is the failure of our intelligence department.
Speaker: If only we could find out what he is really up to.
Speaker: That was it.
Speaker: Because they can't comprehend that he could actually love them and make them to be loved.
Speaker: But I just love that when the guy dies and suddenly things become clear, the angels are there and he sees, you were my friends and my companions this whole time.
Speaker: And he sees God and he knows that and he recognizes him and they know each other and he doesn't have...
Speaker: The pain of all of his sin and stuff, despite the knowledge of it.
Speaker: I've got to jump into Tolkien now.
Speaker: I think this is perfect.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: Now I feel like I should go grab Return of the King and read it.
Speaker: Will you stall our audience for me?
Speaker: I'll try.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Believe in you.
Speaker: You can say whatever you want.
Speaker: I'll be in the other room, so I won't even know.
Speaker: Hi, audience.
Speaker: Thank you for being here.
Speaker: I know there's a lot of podcasts that you could be listening to.
Speaker: And maybe you are.
Speaker: Maybe you're not listening to this podcast right now.
Speaker: Maybe someone else is listening to it.
Speaker: But be comforted that one day you might listen to this and hear me talking to you.
Speaker: Are you talking to somebody who's not listening to our podcast?
Speaker: Offensive you got immediately.
Speaker: Maybe, John, what about it?
Speaker: Got a problem with it, John?
Speaker: They might listen someday.
Speaker: They'll know it was me talking to them all along.
Speaker: They'll hear you calling over the mountains.
Speaker: Listeners.
Speaker: Dear listeners.
Speaker: You come at last.
Speaker: Okay, so...
Speaker: Tolkien, I think... I like how you open to the beginning of the book and then flip all the way to the end.
Speaker: Listen.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: I was like, maybe there was something at the beginning of the book that I wanted to read, even though I have all my notes right here about what I wanted to share from The Return of the King, one of my favorite books.
Speaker: I think that Tolkien... Is this White Shores?
Speaker: That will be one of them.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: I think that Tolkien is the best at describing eternity and heaven of anything outside of Scripture.
Speaker: Whoa.
Speaker: Outside of Lewis?
Speaker: I like Tolkien's descriptions better than Lewis's.
Speaker: I do like Lewis's.
Speaker: Tolkien is beautiful.
Speaker: Tolkien is beautiful.
Speaker: I admittedly, there easily could be theologians who've written more beautiful accounts of heaven.
Speaker: But they didn't get famous like Tolkien.
Speaker: They didn't.
Speaker: We're not reading them.
Speaker: Who's Augustine?
Speaker: Some people even call him Augustine.
Speaker: I don't know who he is.
Speaker: Which one is he?
Speaker: Is he both?
Speaker: Some days he's Augustine.
Speaker: Other days he's Augustine.
Speaker: Weirdo.
Speaker: Weirdo.
Speaker: What did he do?
Speaker: Lay the bedrock for the Western Church's theology?
Speaker: Lame.
Speaker: That's kind of cool.
Speaker: That's kind of cool.
Speaker: Nice.
Speaker: Even some Eastern Orthodox like him, I think.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I think so.
Speaker: He's generally, most of the church fathers everybody likes.
Speaker: The hippos like him.
Speaker: Hippos, they're like woo.
Speaker: Woo-hoo.
Speaker: Isn't that like what he is, Augustus of Hippo?
Speaker: Yeah, Augustine of... Of Hippo.
Speaker: Hippo, yep.
Speaker: It's not there.
Speaker: Pagent Saint.
Speaker: It's not there.
Speaker: I went too far back.
Speaker: I'm sorry, people know I went too far forward again.
Speaker: I'm just stalling now.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: doom doom doom
Speaker: It's got to be right here, right?
Speaker: Have you ever flipped through a book?
Speaker: Not found what you're looking for.
Speaker: We'll keep flipping on through.
Speaker: Flipping on through.
Speaker: Flipping on, flipping on, flipping on through.
Speaker: Trying it?
Speaker: Literally, I had it just a minute ago.
Speaker: Have you ever looked through a book?
Speaker: Not found what you're looking for.
Speaker: Have a look through a book.
Speaker: Oh, here we go.
Speaker: Lovely.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: You found what he's looking for.
Speaker: I did.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: So if you don't know the ending of Return of the King, I'm about to spoil the entire story for you.
Speaker: It won't be spoiled.
Speaker: You'll still enjoy it.
Speaker: Well, that's true.
Speaker: I'm about to reveal what the ending is, but you must go watch it or read it because it's my favorite story.
Speaker: And it's not just because it's an awesome fantasy story.
Speaker: It's because it is so immensely resonant and beautiful and echoes with eternity in the gospel.
Speaker: Resonant good.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: So, preamble to my two Tolkien things.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Tolkien hated allegory, but Tolkien is...
Speaker: I think impossible to read without a Christian lens.
Speaker: Many, many, many people do it.
Speaker: And I think they miss the rich depth of his work immensely.
Speaker: I was just listening to Leaf by Niggle again, which I will get to in a moment, which is a short story by Tolkien's.
Speaker: And I needed to do dishes today.
Speaker: So I threw on like somebody reading it.
Speaker: Because it's Thursday.
Speaker: It's Thursday.
Speaker: That's my dishes day.
Speaker: It is my dishes day.
Speaker: I work from home, so I do dishes around my lunch.
Speaker: But I was like, okay, I need to listen to this.
Speaker: Anyways, and so somebody was reading it who does like a Tolkien YouTube channel, but she's not Christian.
Speaker: And so she'd be kind of interjecting her interpretation throughout.
Speaker: And I'm like, wow, you are just missing it.
Speaker: You're just missing what this is.
Speaker: Definitely not Christian.
Speaker: And she like recognized, oh yes, Tolkien was Christian.
Speaker: This is working itself in in some ways, but still like the significance of it, I think, was missed.
Speaker: Tolkien...
Speaker: cannot help but imbue I think almost every part of his work with the reality of the kingdom of God I think it is it's on it like condensation on a soda cup like you can't hold it without getting your hands wet with the kingdom of God wow now you got even better I know
Speaker: So, Tolkien's great, one of his great magnum opuses, I think he has several magnum opuses, which I don't think is possible, but I think he does.
Speaker: My Tolkien fanboy is showing one of his great magnum opuses, Lord of the Rings, his big story.
Speaker: The only thing he finished.
Speaker: He finished The Hobbit and Leaf by Niggle.
Speaker: leaf by niggle is a short story no i know is that not i know i'm technically finishing something he didn't finish much he didn't we'll get to that in leaf by niggle but oh it's fascinating nate i can't wait anyways sorry i'm i'm i'm taking too much time lord of the rings okay tolkien could you tell us what lord of the rings is about well there's some jewelry
Speaker: But Tolkien has this immense gift to make everything feel so dour and dark.
Speaker: And yet, something beautiful and amazing and salvific comes through.
Speaker: What he calls eucatastrophe.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Which I think is amazing.
Speaker: Side note, I think Avengers Endgame is eucatastrophe.
Speaker: But we can talk about that later.
Speaker: Yeah, sure it is.
Speaker: I just had that thought recently and I was like, Nate will appreciate this thought.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Tony?
Speaker: Tony, the portal scene, that's like such a dark moment.
Speaker: And then it's like, whoa, light.
Speaker: So Tolkien has this thing that he's like, I think this is a true thing because you see it in Christ is what Tolkien says.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: There's catastrophe where everything's gone wrong.
Speaker: And then there's eucatastrophe where out of that catastrophe, something beautiful and good is worked.
Speaker: Or it's like something inexplicably went very right.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: It's like deus ex machina, but way better.
Speaker: Suck it, Greeks.
Speaker: Why did they come up with that?
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: That was like a Greek theater thing.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Deus ex machina was a theater thing.
Speaker: Bring it back.
Speaker: Bring it back.
Speaker: Bring it theater back.
Speaker: Theater's very back.
Speaker: It doesn't need me to bring it back, which is good.
Speaker: You're dying.
Speaker: I'm dying right now, live on air.
Speaker: So Tolkien has constructed this dark, dour situation wherein Frodo has taken this ring to Mount Doom and it must be destroyed and he fails at his quest and he gets lightly mutilated and betrays his friend.
Speaker: And Gollum, who's been working with them, now has betrayed them and is trying to take the ring back.
Speaker: And the Nazgul, who are these terrifying monsters that have been hunting him, are headed for Mount Doom.
Speaker: And the ring falls in and you're like, oh my gosh, wait.
Speaker: They're actually like, it happened, it worked, but then the mountain starts erupting and you're like, oh my gosh, Sam and Frodo are going to die.
Speaker: They're just going to die on this mountain.
Speaker: They've been talking about it already.
Speaker: They've run out of supplies.
Speaker: They are sure to be dead.
Speaker: There is like a whole paragraph.
Speaker: Frodo says, well, this is the end, Sam Gamgee.
Speaker: Literally says that.
Speaker: They just lay down and Frodo says, I'm glad to be here with you, Sam, here at the end of all things.
Speaker: It's a beautiful line.
Speaker: Elijah Wood delivers it beautifully, I think, in the movie.
Speaker: And then you see some happenings and there's some eagles and they deus ex machina and that's great.
Speaker: And you know that they rescue them from the mountain, but then you jump to Sam's perspective.
Speaker: as he wakes up and he's literally just been in what is basically hell.
Speaker: It's fire and brimstone and darkness and evil.
Speaker: And Sam awoke and found that he was lying on some soft bed, but over him gently swayed wide beeching boughs and through their young leaves sunlight glimmered green and gold.
Speaker: All the air was full of a sweet mingled scent.
Speaker: He remembered that smell, the fragrance of Ithilien.
Speaker: "'Bless me,' he mused.
Speaker: "'How long have I been asleep?'
Speaker: For the scent had borne him back to the day when he had lit his little fire under the sunny bank, and for the moment all else between was out of waking memory.
Speaker: He stretched and drew a deep breath.
Speaker: "'Why, what a dream I've had,' he muttered.
Speaker: "'I'm glad to be awake.'
Speaker: He sat up, and then he saw Frodo was lying beside him and slept peacefully, one hand behind his head and the other resting upon the coverlet.
Speaker: It was the right hand, and the third finger was missing, which was where he was mutilated.
Speaker: Full memory flooded back, and Sam cried aloud, It wasn't a dream.
Speaker: Then where are we?
Speaker: And a voice spoke softly behind him.
Speaker: Side note, when Sam last saw this man, he died.
Speaker: When he last saw him, he died.
Speaker: He died, but then God sent him back because he was an angel and his work wasn't done.
Speaker: Tolkien would hate me describing it that way, but that's what it is.
Speaker: And a voice spoke softly behind him.
Speaker: In the land of Ithilien and in the keeping of the king, and he awaits you.
Speaker: With that, Gandalf stood before him robed in white, his beard now gleaming like pure snow in the twinkling of leafy sunlight.
Speaker: "'Well, Master Samwise, how do you feel?'
Speaker: he said.
Speaker: But Sam lay back and stared with open mouth, and for a moment, between bewilderment and great joy, he could not answer.
Speaker: At last he gasped.
Speaker: "'Kandolph, I thought you were dead, but then I thought I was dead myself.
Speaker: Is everything sad going to come untrue?
Speaker: What's happened to the world?'
Speaker: A great shadow has departed, said Gandalf, and then he laughed, and the sound was like music or like water in a parched land.
Speaker: And as he listened, the thought came to Sam that he had not heard laughter, the pure sound of merriment, for days upon days without count.
Speaker: It fell upon his ears like the echo of all the joys he had ever known.
Speaker: But he himself burst into tears.
Speaker: Then, as a sweet rain will pass down a wind of spring, and the sun will shine out the clearer, his tears ceased and his laughter welled up, and laughing, he sprang from his bed.
Speaker: And I think that's just one of the most beautiful eschatological things ever written.
Speaker: There is another quote that's out on the internet, and I cannot verify that it was actually Tolkien that said it, because it uses that phrase, but I can't find a citation for it.
Speaker: So it is possible.
Speaker: It could have come from Tim Keller, because he preached a sermon using something from that.
Speaker: Or it could have actually come from Tolkien and have been one of his letters, and I just can't find a citation.
Speaker: Could have been from a Tolkien-Tim Keller rap battle.
Speaker: Yes, they did do that often.
Speaker: Occasionally.
Speaker: They loved to rap battle.
Speaker: Super frequently.
Speaker: No, it's a few times.
Speaker: But the quote goes, the birth, the death, and resurrection of Jesus means that one day everything sad will come untrue.
Speaker: I don't know for sure that that was Tolkien.
Speaker: It rings maybe as a paraphrase of Tolkien a bit more to me than his actual words.
Speaker: But I think that that is the belief that's running under this and running under all of Tolkien's work is that eye on the kingdom of God and Tolkien just being such a gifted writer and because of his deep love for God that...
Speaker: He never really wrote about in a book.
Speaker: He never wrote apologetic books like Lewis.
Speaker: They had very different approaches to that.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But it just spills out into him creating the beautiful phrase, everything sad is come untrue.
Speaker: And I'm like, that's the thing we look forward to, that one day we're going to be reconciled with Christ.
Speaker: And even if, like we were talking about with hell, Christian universalism isn't the thing, we don't need to be like, oh, well, it's going to be sad.
Speaker: Somehow everything sad will become untrue.
Speaker: Because God is big enough to do that.
Speaker: And the saddest thing maybe that ever happened is Jesus dying.
Speaker: And that became untrue.
Speaker: You know, it's wonderful.
Speaker: I'm also going to read just cause we're going on and on.
Speaker: So my connection point here, cause I forgot to like bridge over is Lewis talking about heaven there.
Speaker: And you were mentioning the joys of, of like heaven and eternity and what that will be like.
Speaker: And I just think Lewis Tolkien, excuse me, Lewis does a fine job too.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: He does a great job.
Speaker: Fine in the British sense.
Speaker: He does a fine job.
Speaker: He does a fine job, too.
Speaker: He does a fine job, too.
Speaker: Tolkien somehow makes another dark situation happen.
Speaker: Then we get past that dark situation, and then we get to basically the gateway to heaven.
Speaker: And Frodo has just been so wracked by the trauma and the pain of everything that he went through that he can't find peace in the world.
Speaker: And so he gets on this ship to sail to the other world.
Speaker: which is in this, in the world of the book Valinor, but basically heaven.
Speaker: I'm in heaven.
Speaker: But he writes just the most beautiful description of entering into heaven.
Speaker: And if it's not like this, then I will submit a formal complaint to God when I get to heaven.
Speaker: So he's saying goodbye to all his friends.
Speaker: Then Frodo kissed... These are other hobbits, if you don't know.
Speaker: Then Frodo kissed Merry and Pippin and last of all, Sam, and went aboard and the sails were drawn up and the wind blew and slowly the ship slipped away down the long gray firth and the light of the glass of Galadriel that Frodo bore glimmered and was lost.
Speaker: And the ship went out into the high sea and passed out into the west.
Speaker: Until at last, on a night of rain, Frodo smelled a sweet fragrance on the air and heard the sound of singing that came over the water.
Speaker: And then it seemed to him that as in his dream in the house of Bombadil, the gray rain curtain turned all to silver glass and was rolled back.
Speaker: And he beheld white shores and beyond them a far green country under a swift sunrise.
Speaker: Oh.
Speaker: Tolkien, I think, is also great at marrying... Right?
Speaker: It's so good.
Speaker: Every time, it makes me cry.
Speaker: Goosebumps.
Speaker: I mean, it didn't right now, but... Jump on YouTube, you can see my goosebumps.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: If you're not watching this, what are you doing?
Speaker: We did an animation of the gray rain curtain peeling back and everything turning to silver glass and then white shores and beyond a far green country.
Speaker: That's on a different video platform.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: It's on...
Speaker: Angel, because it's Christian.
Speaker: They won't let us do that on YouTube.
Speaker: We'll get demonetized as if we're earning money.
Speaker: We're going to get canceled.
Speaker: Oh, no.
Speaker: I think Tolkien's really good at marrying the stuff of our everyday life and the stuff of eternity, which I think is good because I think a lot of times when we think about thinking about eternity, think about thinking about eternity.
Speaker: But when we're like, I need to focus on eternity, I think we think that means there's nothing of the stuff of our life in that a lot of times.
Speaker: I think we're like, it's high in the lofty.
Speaker: And it is.
Speaker: But it's also just a far green country.
Speaker: Like God made this world and he said this was good.
Speaker: And this is what he put us in.
Speaker: And what he's promising us is a new earth.
Speaker: A renewed creation, but still creation.
Speaker: But this is part of the timeline.
Speaker: This is part of the story.
Speaker: And what we see then will really just be what all of this was an echo of.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: And a glimpse of.
Speaker: And it matters, though.
Speaker: This matters, absolutely.
Speaker: The other day, my brother was taking a genealogy deep dive into his wife's family and found, like, oh, these ancestors were in the Civil War and this and that.
Speaker: But then he, like, said, I don't really know, like...
Speaker: why this matters, like genealogy, like it doesn't change any way that I live, you know, but it's like, but that kind of stuff though is like inherently,
Speaker: Fascinating.
Speaker: And I think what you were saying about not focusing on just beyond an eternity, but also the here and now, I think that things like history and genealogy can take us out of our moment that we're living here and remind us that...
Speaker: Life is bigger than our moment here.
Speaker: There was a past that matters.
Speaker: And then there's also a future that matters.
Speaker: And it's like, I love like those boring genealogies in the Bible.
Speaker: Why are those there?
Speaker: Well, actually, it's pretty cool that God who authored scripture made sure that Jedidiah was mentioned.
Speaker: And they're like those people that we don't remember.
Speaker: God remembers.
Speaker: I love, well, I don't love reading it, but I love that it is in the Bible, the long descriptions of the tabernacle and the temple in Exodus and Kings.
Speaker: Because it's like, what's the purpose of this?
Speaker: Especially in Kings where it's just a record of history.
Speaker: It's like, why is this in God's word?
Speaker: Well, maybe because God thought it was beautiful and wanted to set it down and remember this beautiful work of art made for his glory in scripture.
Speaker: And as an artist, that's special to me that God took special note on, designed it this way.
Speaker: I'm going to view these guys with very special artistic abilities, and they are going to make some great-looking apricots.
Speaker: I love it.
Speaker: It's great.
Speaker: Those pillars.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's great.
Speaker: I have another part to read.
Speaker: Do you want to read another thing, and then I'll read another thing.
Speaker: And then we'll wrap it up.
Speaker: Yeah, okay.
Speaker: Which doesn't mean we have to rush to wrap it up, but just so that... Hang on, you should pick another book and then we can ask the audience.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: I did remember what I wanted to be.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Hey, audience.
Speaker: Thank you guys for listening.
Speaker: And if you aren't currently listening to our episode but are listening to another episode...
Speaker: Hey, listener.
Speaker: Hear my call through the mountains.
Speaker: Listen to our podcast.
Speaker: Come off, Joe Rogan.
Speaker: Come to us.
Speaker: He doesn't have weird calls through the mountains that derail the quotes of Lewis and Tolkien while we're talking about eternity.
Speaker: Apparently he does if you're listening to him and you're hearing this, though.
Speaker: That's true.
Speaker: Did Joe Rogan steal our podcast?
Speaker: Joe?
Speaker: Joe?
Speaker: Joe?
Speaker: Joe!
Speaker: What are you doing, Joe?
Speaker: Fuck.
Speaker: Fuck.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Hey, audience.
Speaker: Should we read The Weight of Glory?
Speaker: We should.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: And another person's.
Speaker: They're dropping like flies.
Speaker: This is like in Judges when God's like, hey, Gideon, have them go drink the water.
Speaker: And if they slop it up like dogs and get rid of them, he's like, hey, John and Nate, treat your audience like you're a explorer.
Speaker: It's like the kindergartners.
Speaker: And then whoever turns off shouldn't be enough.
Speaker: They weren't worthy.
Speaker: They weren't worthy to be artists of the way audience members.
Speaker: right all right the weight of glory is um is a collection of essays and the most famous of them is called the weight of glory so it's a whole book called the weight of glory but i feel like maybe i've read this essay i feel like i was assigned it it's beautiful um i think i had covid when i read it so i don't know how much i remember of it
Speaker: Well, that's what we're here for.
Speaker: Every COVID will become untrue on this podcast.
Speaker: At least this one instance of the COVID.
Speaker: I was supposed to be doing like a retreat thing and it was right after Hunchback.
Speaker: So I only had like a day to do my retreat.
Speaker: So I really just took like two hours, but then I had COVID.
Speaker: So I was hiking through the forest of Holland and then got lost and then was hiking through a suburb while reading The Weight of Glory and reflecting on it to write something and then felt really sickly still and was lost in the forest.
Speaker: And I was like...
Speaker: Oh, it was fun.
Speaker: Like I generally knew where I was.
Speaker: Yes, I did.
Speaker: It was fun.
Speaker: And then I like crawled through the suburbs and then I found Shay and I was like, Hey Shay, I wrote some things down.
Speaker: I did my assignment.
Speaker: I feel sick, but I read this great essay.
Speaker: That's wonderful.
Speaker: There's my random COVID weight of glory story.
Speaker: You forgot about COVID, didn't you people?
Speaker: We're bringing it back.
Speaker: That was quite the thing.
Speaker: Um, so yeah.
Speaker: In this essay, Lewis talks about what the meaning of glory and how people don't –
Speaker: like downplay what that is and what we should be pursuing in this.
Speaker: But this specific part I want to read, it was an amazing experience when I first read it because I felt like he was describing something that I wondered if like one of those things like maybe only I've ever experienced this.
Speaker: I've never heard anybody talk about it before.
Speaker: And that's the way he talks about it.
Speaker: It's like this is something that people don't talk about but everybody experiences.
Speaker: And it's like, that's the thing.
Speaker: So I'm going to read it.
Speaker: Do it.
Speaker: In speaking of this desire for our own far off country, which we find in ourselves even now, I feel a certain shyness.
Speaker: I am almost committing an indecency.
Speaker: I am trying to rip open the inconsolable secret in each one of you, the secret which hurts so much that you take your revenge on it by calling it names like nostalgia and romanticism and adolescence.
Speaker: The secret also which pierces with such sweetness that when in very intimate conversation the mention of it becomes imminent.
Speaker: We grow awkward, in effect to laugh at ourselves.
Speaker: The secret we cannot hide and cannot tell, though we desire to do both.
Speaker: We cannot tell it because it is a desire for something that has never actually appeared in our experience.
Speaker: We cannot hide it because our experience is constantly suggesting it and we betray ourselves like lovers at the mention of a name.
Speaker: Our commonest expedient is to call it beauty and behave as if that settled the matter.
Speaker: Wadworth's expedient was to identify it with certain moments in his own past.
Speaker: But all this is a cheat.
Speaker: If Wadsworth had gone back to those moments in the past, he would not have found the thing itself, but only the reminder of it.
Speaker: What he remembered would turn out to be itself a remembering.
Speaker: The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust to them.
Speaker: It was not in them, it only came through them.
Speaker: And what came through them was longing.
Speaker: These things, the beauty, the memory of our own past, are good images of what we really desire.
Speaker: But if they are mistaken for the thing itself, they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshippers.
Speaker: For they are not the thing itself.
Speaker: They are only the scent or a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited.
Speaker: Do you think I'm trying to weave a spell?
Speaker: Perhaps I am.
Speaker: But remember your fairy tales.
Speaker: Spells are used for breaking enchantments as well as for inducing them.
Speaker: And you and I need of the strongest spell that can be found to wake us from the evil enchantment of worldliness which has been laid upon us for nearly a hundred years.
Speaker: Almost our whole education has been directed to silence this shy, persistent inner voice.
Speaker: Almost all our modern philosophies have been devised to convince us that the good of man is to be found on this earth.
Speaker: I do love that.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And I think maybe elsewhere in this essay, he talks about that feeling of
Speaker: wanting to be drawn into beauty to become a part of beauty like like i've experienced like standing on a mountain and seeing that's beautiful but it's not enough i want to like become one with the beauty of it and like to have him like talk about it's like oh you've experienced that too and yeah i love him i always want to touch paintings
Speaker: I'm like, they're so beautiful, and they're so, especially ones with texture.
Speaker: I'm like, it's not enough for me to just look at it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Like, if there's, like, I don't know, any of these.
Speaker: No, that one right there.
Speaker: The one above me.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You guys have seen it before.
Speaker: It's wholly embraced.
Speaker: It's the one that's swirly and colorful.
Speaker: I had it hanging behind me a little bit.
Speaker: Like, I want to look at the brush strokes and, like, trace them with my hands.
Speaker: Like, it's not enough to just look at it.
Speaker: No, it gives me that longing of, that's beautiful, and I want to be a part of it, but I know I can't.
Speaker: What's also amazing, I feel like that you encounter that in many ways, not just when you see something that echoes of that, but I think when there's a complete absence of something of that, too.
Speaker: Oh.
Speaker: Because I initially was thought back to...
Speaker: get a little personal here.
Speaker: I don't want to get too personal on the podcast, but I didn't have, I had a, I had a like childhood that had some like struggles in it.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Um, my parents were divorced.
Speaker: Uh, lots of things were mixed up with that, but I was a very sad child.
Speaker: I had a few friends.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: I think for a lot of times I would like get to the end of myself and just be like, I'm just longing.
Speaker: I just got familiar with this ache.
Speaker: And I think probably everybody's gotten familiar with this ache.
Speaker: This was just the way I got familiar with it, which was just an ache for everything to be set right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: An ache for this beauty, an ache for everything sad to be untrue.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: And...
Speaker: That's why when we get to it and achieve it, we're still feeling that ache.
Speaker: Or when we're totally depressed and at the end of ourselves and nothing sounds like it can...
Speaker: fix things we still have that ache and even in good moments we can't like be completely happy because it's not here right i think we get i think we get four tastes and maybe there's times where god graciously lets us forget because of some of the echoes of it that he's let us
Speaker: enjoy like i think spending time with my wife is oftentimes close to that i think good community like times with us i think can be close to that and i can sort of especially if you forget yourself and just are sort of existing yeah like it is a really good sort of echo and foretaste i i think of what the kingdom of god is yeah meant to be which makes sense because it's also here as well as not yet
Speaker: Yeah, when you're doing things that are eternal things.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Communing with people who are eternal or with God.
Speaker: Yeah, that's a beautiful passage.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: What do you got?
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: Leaf by niggle.
Speaker: What are those words?
Speaker: Well, one of them is leaf.
Speaker: The other one is bi.
Speaker: Like a leaf?
Speaker: Leaf, yes.
Speaker: Like a leaf tree?
Speaker: Leaf bi-niggle.
Speaker: One of the leaf trees?
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: There's palm trees and there's leaf trees.
Speaker: There's a leaf tree.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I want to talk about this and then around that talk about how we as artists create with eternity in mind.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: It's getting to be a long episode, but you know what?
Speaker: It's good and we're going to keep going because I'm loving it.
Speaker: We're saying this is a good episode.
Speaker: I think it's a good episode.
Speaker: I hope the others agree.
Speaker: If you guys think it's a good episode, leave us a review, comment, like the video.
Speaker: Keep listening.
Speaker: Keep listening.
Speaker: We're not done.
Speaker: Don't take that preamble as thinking we're done.
Speaker: Leaf by Nagel is about... It's a short story that Tolkien wrote.
Speaker: It's...
Speaker: It's inspired by himself and his experience as an artist.
Speaker: My inspiration was me.
Speaker: I'm so inspiring.
Speaker: He would hate that.
Speaker: Tolkien was a very insecure guy.
Speaker: And as you mentioned, there's a lot of things that he didn't complete in his life.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: He loved art, but I think in a lot of ways felt like his art was inadequate or was not where he should be spending his time.
Speaker: He had to be forced to be putting it out in the world.
Speaker: And I think somewhere deep down he wanted to.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: Which he even alludes to in this.
Speaker: It's just, if you are an artist, please find Leif, especially a Christian artist,
Speaker: And especially one who does not have the luxury of being able to make art their full-time job, which is most artists.
Speaker: Please read Leaf by Nagel because it is striking.
Speaker: Looking forward to this.
Speaker: I would read the whole thing, but that would put us another half hour longer.
Speaker: So I'm going to summarize, but still please go read it or turn it off.
Speaker: Go read it and come back.
Speaker: And you should still read it.
Speaker: I need to stay, though.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: I'm going to try and just be sparse.
Speaker: I'm not going to get into super detailed moments.
Speaker: Niggle is an artist.
Speaker: Oh.
Speaker: He lives in this little English countryside town.
Speaker: It's probably rainy.
Speaker: As it is.
Speaker: He has a homeowner's association that's strict.
Speaker: He has a neighbor that he doesn't love named Mr. Parrish, which I would be shocked if somewhere Tolkien wasn't smirking about that being associated with the church.
Speaker: I haven't figured that out yet, but I'm like, that seems...
Speaker: Tolkien cared too much about language to name a character Parrish when he was Catholic.
Speaker: So he doesn't love his neighbor very much.
Speaker: And he has this journey he's going to go on, but he doesn't remember exactly when he's going to have to leave.
Speaker: And he doesn't really want to do his packing and get ready for it.
Speaker: What he really wants to do is create and paint.
Speaker: And what he wants to paint is a tree.
Speaker: But Tolkien says he's not the kind of artist that is good at painting the tree.
Speaker: He's bad at painting the tree, but he's good at painting the individual leaves.
Speaker: He will spend hours on this leaf.
Speaker: Isn't this Tolkien talking about himself?
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: He's getting the curvature right, the way it shines off of the...
Speaker: The sun shines off of it and eventually the tree grows into a whole landscape and there's birds that need tending and there's mountains behind it and he's like, oh my gosh, I don't know when I'm ever going to be able to complete this.
Speaker: And he keeps getting distracted by various things.
Speaker: Tolkien describes him, I have to read this because it's too good of a description that I think, I'm like, oop, that's me.
Speaker: Where is it?
Speaker: It's at the...
Speaker: I should have marked this up like you did.
Speaker: I knew I was going to read from the book with this one.
Speaker: Back page, maybe.
Speaker: There we go.
Speaker: So he kept getting distracted.
Speaker: There were other hindrances too, for one thing.
Speaker: He was sometimes just idle and did nothing at all.
Speaker: For another, he was kind-hearted in a way.
Speaker: You know the sort of kind heart.
Speaker: It made him uncomfortable more often than it made him do anything.
Speaker: And even when he did anything, it did not prevent him from grumbling, losing his temper, and swearing mostly to himself.
Speaker: All the same, it did land him a good many odd jobs for his neighbor, Mr. Parrish, a man with a lame leg.
Speaker: So he is kind-hearted.
Speaker: That's great.
Speaker: He is focusing on the people around him, but a little bit begrudgingly.
Speaker: He's like, yeah, I guess this is of more importance, but I really would rather work on my tree.
Speaker: Well, the day comes, he's not able to finish his tree.
Speaker: It's time for him to go on his journey.
Speaker: So he goes on his journey and then finds himself in this weird, trippy time of working in a workhouse and being tended to in the workhouse infirmary because he falls ill.
Speaker: Oh.
Speaker: But as he's doing this work in the workhouse, he finds that his mind gets clearer as he's working and doing this work and focusing on this thing.
Speaker: And he finds that he's able to rest more and has more peace in life than he ever did.
Speaker: And then he overhears this conversation between two people.
Speaker: Talking about Leith.
Speaker: Talking about him.
Speaker: And wondering, is he ready to move on to the next step yet?
Speaker: And one of them is very anti-Niggo and is like, no, I don't think he's ready.
Speaker: We need to give him some work.
Speaker: And the other one's like, no, I think he's ready for some gentle treatment.
Speaker: And he's really a good man.
Speaker: And here's some things in his favor and things that he did.
Speaker: And it's strange.
Speaker: And then...
Speaker: He they like realize that he's been listening to them and they're like, well, what do you what do you say?
Speaker: And I can't remember exactly.
Speaker: I just listened to it today.
Speaker: I should remember.
Speaker: I'm on the right page for it.
Speaker: Nice.
Speaker: Well, the first thing he does is he asks about his neighbor who he didn't like now because they mentioned him.
Speaker: And he was like, what about him?
Speaker: And they're like, oh, well, he's still he's still working here.
Speaker: And.
Speaker: Parrish or a different name?
Speaker: Parrish.
Speaker: Parrish is also like there.
Speaker: Parrish is here too?
Speaker: We're working on him.
Speaker: He's like, well, you know, I'd like to see him.
Speaker: I hope he's not very ill.
Speaker: Can you cure his leg?
Speaker: It used to give him such a wretched time.
Speaker: And please don't worry about him and me.
Speaker: He was a very good neighbor and let me have excellent potatoes very cheap, which saved me a lot of time.
Speaker: Excellent potatoes.
Speaker: Did he?
Speaker: Said the first voice.
Speaker: I'm glad to hear it.
Speaker: There was another silence.
Speaker: Niggle heard the voices receding.
Speaker: Well, I agree.
Speaker: He heard the first voice say in the distance.
Speaker: Let him go on to the next stage tomorrow, if you like.
Speaker: And so he goes on to the next stage of his journey.
Speaker: After having somehow proved himself to these voices, he's not really sure how.
Speaker: And here's where I think we get to my favorite part of this story.
Speaker: This has all been sort of preamble, which I think is important thematically.
Speaker: But he's taken into this...
Speaker: like countryside okay and he's taken to the top of a hill and there there's a bicycle which looks a lot like the bicycle he used to own in town and it has his name on it so he takes it and he's riding the bike along and he's just enjoying the countryside it's the niggle mobile that sounds weird for some reason yeah and he gets to this tree this great beautiful tree he's like whoa
Speaker: Look at this great, beautiful tree.
Speaker: And he realizes this tree, this living tree, is his tree.
Speaker: And there's mountains behind it that are his mountains.
Speaker: And the leaves are the leaves that he painted.
Speaker: And there's birds.
Speaker: And he's like, this was his art.
Speaker: Before him stood the tree, his tree, finished.
Speaker: If you could say that a tree that was alive...
Speaker: If you could say that of a tree that was alive.
Speaker: Its leaves opening, its branches growing and bending in the wind that Niggle had so often felt or guessed and had so often failed to catch.
Speaker: He gazed at the tree and slowly he lifted his arms and opened them wide.
Speaker: It is a gift, he said.
Speaker: He was referring to his art and also to the result.
Speaker: but he was using the word quite literally.
Speaker: That's my first favorite quote.
Speaker: So somehow, this countryside that he's been brought to is the thing he's been trying to create.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: We'll touch on that a little bit more in a second.
Speaker: But first, it is a gift.
Speaker: That... It's a Boromir quote.
Speaker: It is a Boromir quote.
Speaker: Tolkien's recycling his writing.
Speaker: Come on, John Ronald Ruel.
Speaker: Ruel.
Speaker: So that posture that the things that we create are gifts to us from God.
Speaker: Is that what he was saying?
Speaker: I think so.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Because it says he said that he was referring to his art and to the result of the art.
Speaker: But he used the word quite literally.
Speaker: This thing I've created, which also somehow is like real in front of me.
Speaker: It's a gift that I think he's receiving, though it also I think is a gift to others.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I also think that that is just the Christian life.
Speaker: Everything is a gift we receive from God that we also give to the world and back to God.
Speaker: And it's that.
Speaker: And then God fills us.
Speaker: And I think that that's true creatively.
Speaker: I would say fairly literally.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: When operating correctly, we receive from God, we receive.
Speaker: give that out and trust it to him.
Speaker: What a blessing to be able to be in that position.
Speaker: I think that does necessitate that our focus not beyond the thing that we're creating, but that our focus beyond the creator that we're seeking God's face, not the reality of our art, which I think is niggle gets caught up in all these other things that you can see Tolkien wrestling with.
Speaker: Are these things more important than the art?
Speaker: And I think he says yes, but, or I think he says no, but yes.
Speaker: Like the art is very important.
Speaker: The art shouldn't be diminished, but also yes, these things are kind of more important.
Speaker: That's where he's, his focus was where it should have been, even if it was hard.
Speaker: A little begrudgingly.
Speaker: His focus was on everything else serving others.
Speaker: Which is, I think, an outpouring of when we are seeking God's face, when we're fixed on him, we're serving others and we're serving our art.
Speaker: We're serving the art that God gave us.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Then his neighbor that he didn't like never liked his paintings.
Speaker: Discounted them.
Speaker: He asked.
Speaker: Marked them down.
Speaker: Held them for ransom.
Speaker: Just like Lewis.
Speaker: At one point he's like, hey, can I take some of this canvas that you've painted and use it to patch my roof?
Speaker: Like he just does not care about it at all.
Speaker: But he's a great gardener.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: And so Niggle's here and he's looking at this landscape and he can just picture what can be done with it.
Speaker: He's like, I need Parrish.
Speaker: I need Parrish to come help me garden.
Speaker: Lo and behold, a little bit later, Parrish walks up.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: With a hoe, less of a bad leg.
Speaker: He's... Go on.
Speaker: For gardening.
Speaker: Go on.
Speaker: For gardening.
Speaker: Fine, with a shovel.
Speaker: With a rake.
Speaker: Uh-huh.
Speaker: Um...
Speaker: And he and Nigel, without even talking, just start working on this land and beautifying it and making it everything that it can.
Speaker: Him with his practical work of being able to garden and tend this and Nigel with his vision and what he learned in the workhouse.
Speaker: So he wouldn't really be able to do this without that time of refinement that he had.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: And then he sort of starts to get to the point of being done with this.
Speaker: He feels like he's done everything that he can.
Speaker: He and Parrish have built a house.
Speaker: And he's like, I think I've done everything with this landscape that I can.
Speaker: And so he starts to look to the mountains and he's like, I think I'm being drawn to the mountains.
Speaker: And then I'm kind of reading the climax here, but that's fine.
Speaker: That's what we're doing.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Bunch of climaxes.
Speaker: What?
Speaker: Nothing.
Speaker: I'll tell you later.
Speaker: I have to focus.
Speaker: I have to read this.
Speaker: Sorry.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Sorry, audience.
Speaker: It's late.
Speaker: That struck me.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: So he's like, I want to go into the mountains.
Speaker: And then they saw a man and he looked like a shepherd.
Speaker: He was walking towards them down the grass slopes that led into the mountains.
Speaker: Do you want a guide?
Speaker: He asked.
Speaker: Do you want to go on?
Speaker: For a moment a shadow fell between Niggle and Parrish, for Niggle knew that he did now want to go on and in a sense ought to go on, but Parrish did not want to go on and was not ready to go on.
Speaker: I must wait for my wife, said Parrish to Nigel.
Speaker: She'd be lonely.
Speaker: I rather gathered that they would send her after me some time or other when she was ready, and when I'd got things ready for her.
Speaker: The house is finished now as well as we could make it, but I should like to show it to her.
Speaker: She'll be able to make it better, I expect, more homely.
Speaker: I hope she'll like this country too.
Speaker: He turned to the shepherd.
Speaker: "'Are you a guide?'
Speaker: he asked.
Speaker: "'Could you tell me the name of this country?'
Speaker: "'Don't you know?'
Speaker: said the man.
Speaker: "'It is Niggle's country.
Speaker: "'It is Niggle's picture, or most of it, a little of it, is now Parrish's garden.'
Speaker: "'Niggle's picture?'
Speaker: said Parrish in astonishment.
Speaker: "'Did you think of all this, Niggle?
Speaker: I never knew you were so clever.
Speaker: Why didn't you tell me?'
Speaker: "'He tried to tell you long ago,' said the man.
Speaker: "'But you would not look.
Speaker: "'He had only got canvas and paint in those days, "'and you wanted to mend your roof with them.
Speaker: "'This is what you and your wife used to call Nagle's nonsense, "'or that daubing.'
Speaker: "'But it did not look like this, then.
Speaker: "'Not real,' said Parrish.
Speaker: No, it was only a glimpse then, said the man.
Speaker: But you might have caught the glimpse if you had ever thought it worth your while to try.
Speaker: Then Niggle is like, well, I didn't give you much of a chance.
Speaker: And they have a sweet moment and Niggle moves on.
Speaker: But that... First of all...
Speaker: This is, again, thinking, I think, similarly to Lewis, of just sort of fictitiously story-wise, just like, wouldn't it be cool in heaven if we all got just our little own plots and there was Nate's country?
Speaker: And it's like, God's just kind of giving you this to tend and it is sort of...
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: It's digital art and you're living in it.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: You know, and like, but beautified in the way that you see it.
Speaker: And like, and some of it is, is, is, is John's amphitheater, you know?
Speaker: Um, I'm like, that's a, that's a sweet idea that, that, and I don't know that that's how new creation will work, but there is a reality to we're put here to tend the world that God made and, and, and,
Speaker: and help it to be be glorified and holy and good in the sense of not glorified, like help it.
Speaker: to get to that sort of fulfilled stage.
Speaker: And we don't achieve that, but God uses us in that way.
Speaker: We're his tools and servants.
Speaker: We create something that is holy and reflects his image and is good and thus beautifies the world around it.
Speaker: We create works of art.
Speaker: And that is through God's enabling, even if it's just in the way that he created us to be able to create.
Speaker: It makes me think too of, oh, you've been faithful with five talents.
Speaker: I'm going to give you five cities.
Speaker: Mm-hmm.
Speaker: Mm-hmm.
Speaker: And then the just, which I think is true, but the beautiful idea that the good of art, when it's done right, is that it is a glimpse and a reflection of the kingdom of God.
Speaker: Mm-hmm.
Speaker: And that can take so many different forms of how that is portrayed.
Speaker: But to me, those works of art that stick with me are ones where I can look at it and I'm like, that's an echo of the kingdom of God.
Speaker: That's an echo of the kingdom of God.
Speaker: And sometimes they seem like... I'm a citizen of the kingdom now, so I recognize it.
Speaker: Mm-hmm.
Speaker: And it comes in various sizes.
Speaker: I think this painting, I think probably all of these have echoes of that, I would say.
Speaker: Even BD1, because he's just adorable.
Speaker: The movie Logan comes to mind, which is again, like brutal, but there's things in there where I'm like, that moment.
Speaker: That's an echo of the kingdom of God.
Speaker: And I've mentioned before, I think that director has something more going on.
Speaker: And so I'm like, you can, it can be in all these like different things, but there's the echo of the kingdom of God.
Speaker: There's the glimpse of it, if you can see it.
Speaker: And just the idea that
Speaker: That's a way we as artists serve the church.
Speaker: Maybe we don't... There's a place totally for evangelization in art.
Speaker: And the gospel absolutely should be preached.
Speaker: But maybe...
Speaker: It's just good enough for us as artists to give glimpses to the heart of Christ and to the love of Christ and glimpses into the kingdom of God so that the world can see it and people can see it.
Speaker: And we can only do that when we're seeking God's face first and living primarily as citizens of the kingdom of heaven and not with other people.
Speaker: things weighing us down.
Speaker: I mean, we can do it with other things weighing us down.
Speaker: We all have things that hold on to us and that are hard to sort through and give to God.
Speaker: We're always doing that, but it operates best when we are rooted in our faith in Christ, our relationship with him, the knowledge that he loved us, came, died, rose again, is our older brother in the faith, in our eternal life.
Speaker: And then
Speaker: now has made us citizens of heaven and children of God.
Speaker: And like, Niggle, when we give those glimpses, we may not even think that...
Speaker: we did a great job in this case or whatever and stuff such that, you know, like, so that it's, we don't have like the pride aspect to it.
Speaker: Totally.
Speaker: And we may never feel free of that tension, that ache, right?
Speaker: Like what Lewis is talking about.
Speaker: I think for many artists,
Speaker: We create really in search of heaven.
Speaker: And I don't think that that's a bad impulse.
Speaker: That's again, I feel like I said this a couple episodes ago, but that's again why it's artists of the way.
Speaker: We create as we go.
Speaker: That's just what artists do.
Speaker: We may do a variety of other things along the way as well, but that's just part of our rhythm of life as we create.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: We create as we go, but that tension we feel in the things that we create and our job that pulls at us or our sense of inferiority or anxiety that pulls at us or the sense of its incompleteness that pulls at us or our sense of its amazingness that it takes over our life.
Speaker: We'll never be free of those tensions until we reach heaven.
Speaker: But in heaven, we're going to see something so completeness.
Speaker: beautiful and everything sad will become untrue and we will see the angels and love them and be recognized by them and recognize them and we will see the beautiful paradox of God and be rooted in that forever and see the fulfillment of everything we were creating towards that is so much greater than everything that we can imagine but also that we see
Speaker: hope, I would imagine, glimpses.
Speaker: We recognize.
Speaker: We recognize where God gave us the echo of eternity that maybe was Nate's little echo of eternity that he could share with the world.
Speaker: And maybe my little echo of eternity of the kingdom of God to share with the world.
Speaker: And all of our audience's echoes of the kingdom of God to share with the world, which I think everybody has, whether you're an artist or not.
Speaker: It's the body of Christ, right?
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: I brought the last battle.
Speaker: We're not going to read from it tonight.
Speaker: But at the end, they see that Aslan's country that they enter is actually the real Narnia that the other was just like a dim shadow of.
Speaker: It looks the same, but it's like the real thing.
Speaker: It's deeper.
Speaker: It's richer.
Speaker: It's just more real.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And maybe there'll be something like that.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Man, thank you for weaving that spell.
Speaker: That was beautiful.
Speaker: You've kicked it off.
Speaker: It was beautiful.
Speaker: That was lovely.
Speaker: Like Lewis said, not all, some spells are to break enchantments too of being stuck in the fakeness that this is the only thing.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: There's a, I don't know, there's a beauty and a magic to the world that we should embrace.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Mm-hmm.
Speaker: And then not only as doing art artists, but in like just...
Speaker: doing life like niggle did and treating how we treat others and stuff that has such eternal ramifications that may seem very mundane here, but, but it stores up treasures and glory and in heaven.
Speaker: And if we want our art to be like these things that we've read, which I certainly do, that's what I'm striving towards with my book and well, everything I create.
Speaker: We don't... Intentionality is good, but we don't achieve that on intentionality alone.
Speaker: We achieve that by living it out.
Speaker: I just read... I don't know if it's a quote from somebody or if it's just Instagram wisdom.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: But I read somewhere on a writing forum, somebody would be like...
Speaker: You're going to write what you read.
Speaker: So make sure you know what you're reading and you're reading the kind of thing that you want to write.
Speaker: If you want to be, if you're reading young adult fiction, then that's what you're going to write.
Speaker: And if that's what you want to write, great.
Speaker: Like read young adult fiction.
Speaker: But if you want to write, like, I don't know, inspirational Amish fiction, then don't read Hunger Games and Divergent because you're going to have an Amish lady who's fighting other Amish ladies in the jungle.
Speaker: Now I kind of want to read like a dystopian Amish.
Speaker: I feel like that might just be the handmaid's tale.
Speaker: That's what they're doing.
Speaker: They're just living a dystopian life.
Speaker: Savage.
Speaker: No, we can't say whatever about the Amish because some Amish listen.
Speaker: I was like, they don't use technology.
Speaker: We can say anything.
Speaker: Oh, no.
Speaker: Did I lose my point?
Speaker: I like what you were saying.
Speaker: It reminded me of something we had talked about off air.
Speaker: But if you want to create something beautiful, try living a beautiful life.
Speaker: Yes, that's what I was getting at.
Speaker: If you want to create something filled with God's spirit, press into God in your regular life.
Speaker: I've been reflecting on that a lot over the last few months.
Speaker: Maybe we talked off air.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: It was connected to our simplicity conversation about our phones and stuff.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Um, and just around that I've been thinking about what am I like taking in online?
Speaker: If I'm just doom scrolling Instagram and TikTok reels, is that what I'm going to, that's what I'm going to churn out.
Speaker: And maybe some of those are, I enjoy that.
Speaker: I enjoy sending some to my wife and seeing a whole batch that she sent me over her lunch break.
Speaker: That can be a fun thing.
Speaker: But if that's everything that I'm doing as opposed to like,
Speaker: And I don't know that that is inherently bad, but for the kind of person, sorry, audience, I punched my mic.
Speaker: For the kind of like person I want to be, the kind of art I want to create, like, let's just slow down and take time to read things instead of going through like this.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: How much time am I spending digitally versus how much time am I sitting reading a book where maybe I haven't gotten absorbed into a book very much like I mentioned before and it hasn't washed over me in that way, but maybe it can.
Speaker: Can I keep trying?
Speaker: can I surround myself with more beautiful art and make what I'm around more aesthetically pleasing?
Speaker: My office has been gray and dull and boring in my cubicle.
Speaker: And I'm looking at trying to get some art and things that will spruce it up and the prayer of St.
Speaker: Francis and the everything sad is going to be a come untrue quote and some things like that.
Speaker: Like, like what can we surround ourselves with to live that life and then put that out in our art?
Speaker: And most especially, how do we do that in our relationship with God?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And not as a means to an end to create better art, but just to know if we want to make art that's imbued with the kingdom of God and echoes with that.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: We've got to have that relationship with God first and make that a priority.
Speaker: It's amazing how intentionality can bring so much more life to your life instead of just going along with the flow.
Speaker: Okay, I'm just going to go back to my phone and keep scrolling and this and that.
Speaker: My wife Ellie was talking the other day that...
Speaker: when she's home with the boys, she has much better days when she plans on doing activities, even if it's just like me and Baron are going to do laundry together or we're going to go to the park together.
Speaker: But if, and she ends the day so much more with more energy and refreshment, even though she was doing things versus a day where she didn't plan on doing things.
Speaker: And it's just kind of feeling like in survival mode,
Speaker: Even though things aren't really happening, ending the day exhausted because of the lack of intentionality and Baron is moody and stuff.
Speaker: But like when you put that intentionality in, it's life that comes with it.
Speaker: I felt that way.
Speaker: You know, I've been depressed the last couple of days, but like I've had on my computer a to-do list.
Speaker: I'm like, well, you know what?
Speaker: I got through that to-do list at least.
Speaker: And that's great.
Speaker: And just the intent, being able to get through the day and be intentional about, okay, I want to, I want to pray.
Speaker: I want to do morning, evening in prayer and like pray in the middle of the day and just reflect with God.
Speaker: And I want to write and I want to read this book of the Bible and I want to,
Speaker: get these things done at my job and do this for the podcast.
Speaker: Rest could be part of the intentionality too.
Speaker: It should be a part of that audience.
Speaker: I'd like to be.
Speaker: Rest.
Speaker: I'm just bad at resting.
Speaker: So that can be a hobby horse of mine.
Speaker: That's good.
Speaker: Cool.
Speaker: This was a rich discussion.
Speaker: I loved it.
Speaker: If you guys loved it, well, first, thank you guys for joining us.
Speaker: Thank you for staying for this long episode.
Speaker: I know.
Speaker: Hour and 45.
Speaker: I know.
Speaker: They're just going to keep getting longer.
Speaker: Wait till it's a whole 24 hours.
Speaker: Ooh, marathon.
Speaker: Nate is crying.
Speaker: It'll be exciting to try.
Speaker: I bet we can do it.
Speaker: If we get to like, if we get to, if we get to.
Speaker: 10 subscribers.
Speaker: We have 10 subscribers.
Speaker: Oh, we're doing it!
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: Maybe we'll do this.
Speaker: Maybe we'll set a goal.
Speaker: Anyways, thank you guys for doing it.
Speaker: I'd love to hear you guys' thoughts.
Speaker: If you guys have pieces of art where you're like, this is an echo of eternity that I see in this, we'd love to hear it or thoughts about how you can create with that in mind.
Speaker: Comment on the video down below, right under the table.
Speaker: Down there.
Speaker: Or on our social media, send us an email through our website.
Speaker: We'd love to hear from you guys.
Speaker: Write us a letter.
Speaker: You can...
Speaker: Mail it?
Speaker: You can mail the letter.
Speaker: I haven't put my address out there.
Speaker: You just got to mail it to us.
Speaker: Just write us?
Speaker: No, write John and Nate.
Speaker: Oh, okay.
Speaker: And then I'll reach it.
Speaker: Yes, if you guys enjoy the podcast, join us if you're on audio.
Speaker: We're both reaching out to the video dramatically like we're Darth Vader trying to call you to join the Empire.
Speaker: There's two of us, so you're going to do it this time.
Speaker: Two Darth Vaders.
Speaker: Luke would have joined if he had two dads.
Speaker: If he had two gay dads, then Luke would have joined the Empire.
Speaker: I am your father.
Speaker: And so is Steve.
Speaker: Hello, Luke.
Speaker: Steve.
Speaker: If you guys like the podcast, it'd be very helpful if you left a review, shared it, subscribed.
Speaker: Word of mouth is like the way that these things go around and grow.
Speaker: Word of sharing it.
Speaker: Word of sharing.
Speaker: Sharing is caring.
Speaker: Do you care?
Speaker: Do you?
Speaker: Do you even care?
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: But that would be greatly appreciated.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: If people leave a review, maybe we'll read a review.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: That's a thing some people do.
Speaker: Then you could become famous.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: If you, yeah, maybe leave a review and read a review.
Speaker: If we get a review in the week after I put this podcast out, then I will read the review.
Speaker: I may read just a section of the review if the review seems really crazy and shares like some crackpot conspiracy theories or something.
Speaker: Steve.
Speaker: Yeah, come on, Steve.
Speaker: Ever since Darth Vader turned good and left you.
Speaker: Now he's just all about the aliens.
Speaker: Spamming podcast reviews.
Speaker: I know, just like, well, did you know that the lizard people.
Speaker: Gosh, it's going to be terrible.
Speaker: I know.
Speaker: So if you're not Steve, leave a share.
Speaker: We trust you.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: I think that's everything.
Speaker: We did it.
Speaker: We did it.
Speaker: Thank you guys again.
Speaker: You did it with us.
Speaker: You did it with us.
Speaker: You marathoned through an hour and 47 minutes and 53, 54, 55, 55.
Speaker: Blessings.
Speaker: Have a great week, guys.
Speaker: It's Friday.
Speaker: It's week's over.
Speaker: Shoot, you're right.
Speaker: Have a good weekend, guys.
Speaker: Have a good weekend.
Speaker: Look, that's going in.
