I don't know that I can claim the term unfolding, but I resonate with so much of this. I too am wary of the dramatic conversion experience, and the ways we want to pin all our fears and hopes and dreams onto that one moment of revelation. But I have found myself constantly experiencing smaller moments of metanoia that reveal, in that unfolding pattern, the Christ at the heart of creation and my own being. I still struggle to talk about it, and to cleanse it of all the encrustations of my upbringing.
Thanks, Rebekah! I have a sense that it's exactly in our *struggling* to talk about these things that we have a chance of doing justice to them. And as I've said before, your writing has a way of opening a door that I'm very grateful for.
Grateful as always for your reflections here. The past few years of my life have been an unexpected experience of something "quiet and obvious and unfolding" and I can feel hesitant to put it into words. In a lovely synchronicity, when I did first try to put it into words, in a message to a friend, I saw almost those exact same words reflected back at me in the introduction to a book my friend then recommended to me: We Must Become Mystics, by Mark Vernon.
I grew up without much Christianity besides the default school-assembly kind - and even that was in the Welsh language - and learning how little I knew about Christianity, and how wrong I was in some of my assumptions, has been humbling. My 15-year sojourn through paganism and druidry has been a huge part of what led me to this moment and continues to inspire me even as I draw nourishment from the structure and depth offered by the Christian traditions I have found myself exploring.
But perhaps one of the greatest gifts of this unfolding, for me, is that it has lifted the burden of needing to feel significant in any way, and offered me the gift of fully inhabiting the smallness of my self, which I finally feel able - even eager - to accept. In this small corner of the world, which is neither fully one place or another, I have work that is mine to do, and I find I can do it gladly.
Thanks for sharing this, Cadno. I'd be curious to know more about those assumptions that you were wrong about. This is one of those places where my own experience of growing up around various forms of Christianity means I don't have a clear sense of how it is seen or experienced from the outside. So if you're up for sharing a bit more, I'd be glad to hear it.
Meanwhile, I love the way you describe the gift of smallness, that resonates deeply with me. And I am going to look out Mark Vernon's book.
Thank you! Full disclosure: I still haven't finished his book (though I keep meaning to).
Having mulled over your comment and tried to distil my answer down to a sensible length, I think the most significant mistaken assumption was the approach to the material world. I went looking for a quote from Rowan Williams (which turned out to be a quote from John of Damascus) to help me articulate this: I take matter seriously because I believe in a God who became matter. A divine creative source who becomes embodied in the materiality of creation offers a radically different way of thinking with matter and embodiment. And my reading around early Celtic Christianity - aided by the research of Nick Mayhew-Smith, and to some extent Paul Kingsnorth and Martin Shaw, among others - has demonstrated persuasively enough that the best and truest interpretation of ‘the kingdom’ and ‘new creation’ is the restoration of right relationship.
In the pagan circles I frequented, it was commonly held that our despoliation of the earth was due to a Christian worldview in which God gave man dominion over all living things, and in which this world matters far less than the world to come. As a pagan, it became almost too easy to dismiss everything that is wrong with the way we live now as the product of Christianity, when by ‘Christianity’ we generally mean materialist industrial capitalism. The fact that materialist industrial capitalism arose within civilisations which identified as Christian is still something to reflect on, but on the whole the more I learn about Christianity the more antithetical I find it to this worldview.
The concept of sin is another big one, perhaps too big to touch upon here - suffice it to say that I have grown to understand it as more than a set of stifling rules which authorities use to judge whether or not I am a Good Person (after all, we have social media to fulfil that function these days). No doubt it has been horribly misused to cause great harm and, again, that is something to reflect on. But I have actually found it a healing approach to the very real difficulty of being a person in this world.
Thanks for this beautifully distilled response, Cadno! Apart from anything else, your things "to reflect on" point towards the double-edged nature of Christianity and its heritage, which often go astray in the clash of polemic and apologetic. Sooner or later, I want to write about the perspective which Ivan Illich gives on this double edge, because I suspect there may be others who would find it as helpful as I have done. Meanwhile, if you're writing more about your own journey anywhere, then let me know, as I would love to read more.
I'm fascinated by these new stirrings of Wild Christians. I too grew up in (American) evangelical church, and eventually it was my husband standing up there in front preaching. Now we are lost wanderers without a church home but our faith even stronger. This is all so very close to our hearts; I hope your feeling of embarrassment passes. We know many people who are feeling a great hunger to see the threads you trace connect again. I'm sure we aren't the "cool" people to be associated with -- but we are authentic.
Thanks for this, it's heartening to read, and I love the thought that what I'm writing might reach the people you are thinking of here. I was never any good at being "cool", anyway, and even for those who are, I don't think any good comes of it.
You've got me wondering a little more about that embarrassment I named. Some of it is probably a fear of writing myself to a place where I'm understood by no one! Knowing how fiercely these borders get policed – and thinking of people I know and like who have good reasons to be allergic to any talk of Christianity.
But there's something else, a sense of tenderness, like this is very personal stuff to be trying to write about in public. This summer, I reread The Rivers North of the Future, the book that David Cayley made out of his late interviews with Ivan Illich. There are points in the book where Illich speaks far more directly about his faith than anywhere else in his writing, and at one of those points, he tells Cayley, 'It's a very intimate thing I say to you, and I'm really embarrassed to say it in front of these microphones you have put on my desk here in Ocotopec. Nevertheless, I dare it. I don't risk it; I dare it. I dare to allow people to listen to how I speak to a friend.' To come across that acknowledgement of embarrassment from someone to whom I owe so much was a gift.
Yes, it wasn't right of me to suggest that your embarrassment was for fear of not being cool. I understand this more modest motive and the difficulty of speaking or writing about the intimate and spiritual. The fact is, over the internet it is probably impossible to speak just as one would to a friend because of all the limitations of the medium, and because we are strangers. I have just begun to read your writing this past summer and look forward to following along.
Fair question, Rosie – and thanks for asking, because I'm sure you're not the only reader for whom it comes up.
Honestly, my first reaction is that I'm probably not best placed to respond, in as much as what you're getting at is all the things that Martin or Paul or I might not experience, or that might not be so obvious to us, because we're inhabiting male bodies. And I can see how the stories I'm telling in this post will raise this kind of question, since they revolve around the experiences of these three men.
When I think about your question and my experiences with Christianity more generally, what comes to mind is how many of the people who have embodied what speaks to me most strongly within the tangle of things that Christianity can be have been women. I'm not thinking of high-profile figures at this moment. I'm thinking of a woman at a place I once worked who held one of the lowest status jobs within the official hierarchy, but who everyone recognised was the person who held the community of that workplace together through her care and kindness, and whose whole way of being was bound up in a very down-to-earth way with her Salvation Army faith. I'm thinking of a couple of Quaker activists, old enough to be my grandmothers, who I knew when I was a well-meaning but lost twenty-year-old.
When it comes to those who are helping me think through all the stuff I'm writing about in this series, many of them are women: Rebekah Berndt; Elizabeth Slade, who is the friend whose journey from scientific atheist to church leader went via her essay for the Sanctum book; Elizabeth Oldfield, who I spoke with in the podcast that I shared last week. I'm thinking, too, of conversations with Rachel Rose Reid about her training with the Kohenet Hebrew Priestess Institute and its project of reclaiming the parts of Judaism that were pushed to the edges of the written texts, or just left out, because of who wasn't in the rooms when things got written down.
These encounters are a huge part of what nourishes my desire to explore the things I'm writing about here – but I suspect that all of those I've just mentioned would resonate with your question – and I'm wondering if the difficulty you're pointing to is part of why I find so much that's trustworthy in what I hear from them. You've also got me wondering about these big conversion experiences and whether there's something particularly male about them, or at least about the ways they end up being narrated. I don't know.
But yes, this was one of the layers I had in mind when I wrote about the layers of history that make all of this a source of pain for many, and that deserve more attention than there was room for in the scope of this week's essay. So thank you for bringing me back to it.
When I complete the arc of the current series, which has two more pieces to go, I'm planning to publish an exchange with another of the friends I talk about all this with, the artist and theologian Vanessa Chamberlin. I'll carry your question with me into that.
Thanks for your thoughtful reply. I was brought up anti-religious, and it's hard to say whether that's the deciding influence: I think not. I know some great Quakers and Christianarchists, and I love that tradition, The Diggers, John Ball, etc. I love to sing firy English gospel songs that incarnate the power of that lineage.
But also- I say sometimes that I'm an equal-opportunities hater of all Patriarchal religions. Submission to them feels like submission to a power that hates my kind, to a lineage of thought that has denied and degraded the deep female, causing great suffering to women down the ages. I mean real suffering and death. It feels to me like it would be impossible to disentangle Christianity from the stains of that. (Maybe that kind of submission feels different for menfolk?)
So- with a caveat of each to their own- and I'm truly happy for your enlightenment and joy- to see radical, wild-loving menfolk retreating to that world feels disappointing at some deep level; like a retreat from the implications of immersion in the wild. (I have just found you, but I've followed Paul Kingsnorth and Martin Shaw for some time, and therefore followed their conversions.)
All of this is highly subjective, and I make no claim for anyone else but myself.
Thanks, Rosie – I'm glad you're reading and if you're up for sticking around and continuing to probe at these questions, then I'd be glad of it. There are a bunch of us navigating in this territory, not necessarily all landing in the same place.
Also, I second every word of this, from Andrew's comment below: "I guess I am in some ways going through Jerusalem, rather than around, to get to the middle of it, but not without oath to never bow a knee knowingly to anything or anyone that would play nice with the witchhunt/woman lessening spirit(s) of the past and present."
I have been snagged on Andrew's (beautifully written) comment for a week now. I think the question of going through rather than around is a bigger one than it seems. I would recommend Sophie Strand's novel The Madonna Secret. She's another of these Substack pockets whose orbit path crosses yours on occasion. But I think the book is this question.
I live at the bottom of the world. What I'm doing in my work is strange, therefore often solitary. It is always a great pleasure to find other people walking any path similar to my own. I appreciate your work very much.
Hey Rosie. In my own way, clearly from the remove of male body, I spend a fair bit of time thinking about fault lines and the history you are spekaing about here. I guess I am in some ways going through Jerusalem, rather than around, to get to the middle of it, but not without oath to never bow a knee knowingly to anything or anyone that would play nice with the witchhunt/woman lessening spirit(s) of the past and present. I would like talking about this some more here but maybe that sounds either boring or tedious and don't assume that my interest is anybody's hobby but my own.
I am coming to the end of McGilchrist's 'The Matter with Things' - the grand finale and climax of which is 'the sense of the sacred' - and I had noticed several references to Charles Foster along the way (including a very positive soundbite on the back cover) - how marvellous that he has been involved with Dark Mountain! I believe it to be very true that there are a lot of hidden friends moving in parallel in the dark - perhaps when the dawn rises and we realise just how 'not-alone' we are, then will come the revolution! ;) And you were influenced by the Radical Orthodox, fascinating. I look forward to more of this.
Thanks, Sam! While I was working on this piece, I found myself trying to work out how I first got put on to the Radical Orthodoxy scene. There's a reference to Pickstock on the final page of The Rivers North of the Future and Gustavo Esteva also told me about Illich being enthused by Radical Orthodoxy in his last years, but that would have been in 2007. Around 2004, I reconnected with an old school friend who had read theology in Cambridge and knew many of those involved. But I'd already stumbled across this stuff a year or two earlier, possibly just through random internet connections.
Another hidden friendship story is that, in those years when I was piecing myself back together after the mess that late-90s Oxford had made of me, my closest friend and co-conspirator was Mary Harrington, and a lot of our conversations revolved around what 'reconstruction' on the far side of 'deconstruction' would look like. So you can see why discovering Milbank, Pickstock and co would have fed into that for me.
There's more stories here, but some of them of the kind that need to be told over a pint. Maybe we'll get the chance one of these days!
Oh and also - fascinating that you know Mary H (I read everything of hers) - but I know Mark V a little, as we attended the same church in the 90s, when he was just going off to his training!
A pint would be excellent - I keep meaning to get into Illich (ever since your talk at the last DM festival which I came to). I was in Cambridge late 90s doing vicar training, but I also started a PhD with Graham Ward, just when the first RO book came out, and everyone was abuzz. I had (have) some significant differences with it, though, so gave up the PhD at that point (now restarted in Bristol, hence the McGilchrist).
I find myself longing, lately, for more comfort in silence and not knowing, to discover it as a place of deep rest and ease. I've always had some comfort in these, but not so much that I could , eyes shut in the night, enter the darkness and silence with the comfort and ease which is deep rest. I know in my bones, now, that ... and this is where I must slip in the X which marks the lacuna, for I cannot know what it might be. Not yet.
Thanks for this writing, Dougald: most subtle. Brian Bates's Way of Wyrd popped into my mind while thinking about your thoughts; read it way back in mid-80's. I do envy your encounter with the parliament of covids. I hear that the Animals are Talking (Sonia Shah writes in the NYT) but What do they Mean?
I digress: last night I listened in to the first session of Tom Cheetham's lecture series "Queerer Than We Can Suppose - Lectures on Love and Psychocosmology". 20 years ago I heard him lecture at Temenos when he was over in the UK to launch his new book "The World Turned Inside Out: Henry Corbin and Islamic Mysticism". Way back in '76 Golgonooza had published Corbin's "Mundus Imaginalis, or the Imaginary and the Imaginal" in affordable paperback which I remember reading, so I was kind of prepped for the Temenos lecture in 2003. After hearing Cheetham talk, I subsequently read enthusiastically The World Turned Inside Out but then, halfway, abruptly stopped as my markings show. (As prep for the current lectures I'm re-reading it, and again, I can hardly put it down.)
This is not an easy book for it takes us into a world metaphysically constructed in a way quite different from that of Machine Modernity. However, I now realise that Cheetham's ( then) interpretation of Corbin's philosophical quest was framed by his reading of James Hillman and that this eclipsed his perception of the formative influence of Russian religious philosophy on Corbin in 1930's Paris. Lacking this key context -the influence of Russian religious thought - I couldn't link Cheetham's book into any personally significant narrative.
Forgive me if this is off-page, but Russian theosophy was really essential to me in the 70's, especially as represented by Berdyaev. The discovery that Corbin's navigation into esoteric Islam grew out of his interest in Russian sophiological thought happened when I recently stumbled upon a brilliant dissertation paper by Hadi Fakhoury published by McGill Uni in 2013.
This gave me chills in places, and I sense something (s) emerging from the swamps and vales of our deeper selves in these associations. The manner in which conventional religion has split the human soul from it's sources in nature has always struck me as a fundamental catastrophe. Conventional attempts to heal the divide through notions of Christian "stewardship" seem to merely confirm the conceit. Rejecting the mystery all together leaves us where? It can't be ignored because it is felt. And I love that you were alerted to it by the human craft you saw in old buildings, "the dialogue between body, mind and matter, the weave of applied intelligence, that making once required." There's a portal in that work that's hard to describe but has profoundly affected me as a tradesperson. I find myself thinking of an opening to a poem I've never been able to finish. 'We will find the words in our footprints as we walk them/following the creeks of their meanings down the dark mountain..."
Thanks, Rob! I'm glad you picked up on that line about "the weave of applied intelligence". The experience of picking up tools alongside a skilled carpenter in my 40s was a revelation, the appreciation of the layered and interwoven set of intelligences involved in working on an old wooden building. Among the responses it triggered was some real anger at an education system that would never let a kid like me – middle class and gifted with words – think for a moment about going into a skilled trade. Something was revealed to me there about the prejudice and ignorance built into the way I had been schooled.
Thanks Dougald. I’m sure the next hold will present itself. For some reason I’m looking forward to a post on how you became unstuck. And I’m thinking of all the Dougalds and Dougies, the dark strangers coming down the dark mountain. The liminal, peripheral spaces, the pearl found by the scavenger. I’m excited for you.
Thanks, Martin! It's good to be reminded of that night at Galgael when I told the story of all us dark strangers on the mountain. And thinking about it, my answer to the final question that night contributed to the process of coming unstuck. But I'll tell the story of how that finally happened in the next instalment in the series. Thanks for sharing the excitement.
From a journal of writings I kept more than a decade ago now and that I am now plundering for ideas ... "Gravity gets us all, sooner or later. This may not be the most original observation, but at this age these words increasingly resonate with me. I am not the centre of the world, but I am the centre of my world, however irrelevant that might be in the greater scheme of things. Somewhere inside, I can’t relinquish the thought, the belief, that our little lives, confounded as they are by a million contradictions and confusions, nevertheless, add up. The whole is, in some mysterious way, greater than the sum of the parts. Given the suffering of so many in this world, such a belief might seem like a solipsistic fantasy. But for countless millions, it is what sustains them through their daily lives. We, over-educated Westerners, should temper our cynicism in the face of such overwhelming odds. To do so, we are not required to surrender our hard-won powers of reason. Instead, like Stalker, in Tarkovsky’s film of that name, we need to cultivate a deeper faith – in life, in the mystery of creation that we find ourselves immersed in. Let us attune our senses to find joy in the sounds, colours, sensations, now, in this moment. Feel the pull of planetary energies and forces, below our feet in the surging ocean of molten rock, above our head in the infinity of star-spangled space. Resist the dull-minded, horizontal thinking of the everyday world. “The purpose of art is the lifelong construction of a state of wonder.” Glenn Gould. Without such a faith in life, what would there be to stop me leaping off Waterloo Bridge at the next hightide." I still accord with this. Faith in life, not the church, not the distractions of religious protocols and their policing of our bodily and transcendental lives.
You had me at Jackdaw, even if your taste in pocket cards does run toward Joker.
Pretence aside, surprise and an honor at the red card. The companionship of black feathers and a roof between the ruins is the last currency here. Bottoms up to that bottle into the neck of the same.
Seems like the kids' table is where it's at, which feels appropriate. It's a delight to be here with you three.
I guess writing these posts is my way of dealing myself in at this table, or like the moment when you've been sat at a table for what feels like ages without saying anything, and you finally find some words to step into the flow of the conversation.
Writing that, I suddenly remember the Saturday when my friend Keith invited me to lunch with his family and friends, and as I stepped across the threshold, he called out to everyone, 'This is Dougald – be gentle with him, he's not Jewish!' And in the hours that followed I experienced a rhythm of conversation, an unfamiliar syncopation, where you had to move a little differently to get a word in edgeways, and I began to understand what he had meant...
And yeah, the different wording on our invitations, the non-fixity of species, these are things I long to explore together.
One thing that's happening to me as I write my way into all this is that I'm finding myself drawn deeper into the imaginal, in ways that animate my reading of the old texts, and that seem to hold clues for navigating the confusion and excitement that you name, R.G.
And along with this comes a sense of release from having to have a set of answers, mine or anyone else's, that determine where I'm allowed to sit. It just all seems a lot stranger than that, and a lot less like an exam, if that makes any sense?
Unfamiliar syncopation. That made me laugh out loud. The reason the will of G-d had to be determined by the divination of the Urim and Thummin was maybe "the word in edgewise" gene was functioning then. A still small voice would have been a needle at a gunfight when my family got wound up together.
On those layers of the imaginal: I am learning (like a pickpocket "learns" about your economics) about the idea the Kabbalists have of the five levels of interpretation of the Word(s). Pshat, Remez, Drosh, and Sod--the stairs down or is it further up and in from the literal to the mystified. Even the closest to the surface, Pshat or straight, doesn't play nice with the litero-certain, and moving on from there, such thumping the chest of truth looks less Silverback and more organ grinder monkey with each mile.
Release. Sense. Yes. Senses in fact. All of them coming alive.
Save me one of the little seats as well. Funny but my invitation doesn't say Christianity at all. Same handwriting. Something strange and particular in the loop of the lettering and the shimmer of the ink. And all the vowels are in pencil. A Word both rooted and mutable. Don't tell the grown-ups. They still think the fixity of the species is a thing.
Waah... How clumsy of me, I accidentally removed your original comment, R.G., while trying to edit my own! But here's what you wrote:
"can't wait for more of this. i'm having trouble finding my way with this Christian renaissance. it's tremendously good (and long overdue) that so many people are letting go of Christianity as a dogmatic orthodoxy. but at the same time—in the absence of that orthodoxy—it's unclear what unites people as Christians, given that the central figure is such a cipher. how many of the Gospel accounts must we agree are truthful, let alone the rest of the Bible? where does God fit in? for example—if i believe that the Elohim of the Old Testament aren't necessarily cognate with the spiritual force that swept away the historical Yeshua (who was more like an entheogenic healer-exorcist than a "wisdom teacher") where do i sit at the big table of this new Christianity? presumably at the other end from Kingsnorth, who seems to be at the "tolerant conservative" end of the table (as is his right, no criticism there). can i sit near Martin Shaw? do i have to sit at the kids' table? it's all very confusing—and very exciting. looking forward to further exploration."
I struggle with the need for religion: I don't feel this need. Quite the opposite. I believe that the tradition of priests and minsters is an imposition, a power block that inhibits people from developing their own inner life. Spiritual practices are a different matter. Learning that you can access the deep wellsprings of life in your own consciousness, (alone or with others) is an important rite of passage that seriously undermines the church's employment of the Word to disempower its followers. If we live amongst the "ruins", those ruins also include our religions. We need to build new forms of spiritual sharing, devoid of the elaborate hierarchies that the church have erected to protect themselves over the past few centuries. We need a revitalised gnostic tradition for the everyman/woman.
Thanks, Nick. Thinking about your comment, I'm struck by the binary of "religion" vs "spirituality" that emerged (as far as I can tell) in the late 20th century – you know, the identity of "I'm spiritual, but I'm not religious". I'm actually not setting out to write in favour of being "religious" here, and somewhere down the line, I want to dig into the histories of the whole concept of "religion" and the discussions about going "beyond" religion that have cropped up at various points in the history of modernity.
One thing I would say is that, if there's a pull that a good many people I speak to are feeling towards a closer relation to what remains of our ruined traditions, it's often born out of a dissatisfaction with the personalised version of spirituality that has flourished in recent times. There's a desire for something more demanding than a pick-n-mix of the appealing bits of other people's traditions, which is often what "I'm spiritual, not religious" has ended up meaning in practice.
I'm gonna tag on the end of this lovely thread. Such a great post, I'm feeling the embodied craft and your time with carpenter, and the scavenger - and something in there that can help resolve us of the need for the encrusted dogmas. There is a key in those crafts, themselves scavenged from materiality, that underpins the gods that grow up around them, that is small but useful, personal but shared. I leave you with part of talk Alice will be giving to some architecture students:
Building the commons starts in our heads when we let go of the hierarchies engendered in capitalism- that tell us that only a very few people are good at things and everyone else must follow them, recieving the fruits of their brilliance. It is my understanding that within the commons, everyone has a gift to bring, and that gift regularly manifests with the full potential of human skill in whoever is willing to work at it. The idea of community comes from the interlacing of those skills. The richness of crafts shared amongst neighbours. When we build the commons we fully expect, that the infrastructure we create will bring out excellence from every corner of our communities. As designers we might have to put down the ego that places is in such high esteem, but in return we gain access to the best of every discipline, as our neighbours discover what they are capable of.
Sorry, only got around to replying now - not even sure you'll ever see this.
I was trying to avoid that binary when I said, albeit understated, that we need "new forms of spiritual sharing". I well appreciate the role that the church plays in the civic life of places. Arguably, that's its main function now. But the spirituality of christian worship feels depleted by its lack of embrace of more profound practices offered by traditions that draw on techniques of shared experience. For example, one of the most extraordinary shared spiritual experiences I've had was being in a large group practising overtone chanting. In such a group, led by a skilled teacher, Jill Purse, you experience in an absolutely clear manner, a transpersonal reality where your individuality is transcended and you experience a kind of group mind. It's actually quite overwhelming and very physical. This is just one such example of shared spirituality - there are many others. All are centred on the understanding that individual humans have extraordinary capacity for resonating with each other. Yes, in the church, singing does this, to some extent. But christianity, in its various traditional forms, has largely rejected such embodied experience in preference for hierarchy of The Word mediated by a priestly caste. The renewal will come when that hierarchy surrenders its power and wealth and seeks a deeper community of experience.
I don't know that I can claim the term unfolding, but I resonate with so much of this. I too am wary of the dramatic conversion experience, and the ways we want to pin all our fears and hopes and dreams onto that one moment of revelation. But I have found myself constantly experiencing smaller moments of metanoia that reveal, in that unfolding pattern, the Christ at the heart of creation and my own being. I still struggle to talk about it, and to cleanse it of all the encrustations of my upbringing.
Thanks, Rebekah! I have a sense that it's exactly in our *struggling* to talk about these things that we have a chance of doing justice to them. And as I've said before, your writing has a way of opening a door that I'm very grateful for.
Grateful as always for your reflections here. The past few years of my life have been an unexpected experience of something "quiet and obvious and unfolding" and I can feel hesitant to put it into words. In a lovely synchronicity, when I did first try to put it into words, in a message to a friend, I saw almost those exact same words reflected back at me in the introduction to a book my friend then recommended to me: We Must Become Mystics, by Mark Vernon.
I grew up without much Christianity besides the default school-assembly kind - and even that was in the Welsh language - and learning how little I knew about Christianity, and how wrong I was in some of my assumptions, has been humbling. My 15-year sojourn through paganism and druidry has been a huge part of what led me to this moment and continues to inspire me even as I draw nourishment from the structure and depth offered by the Christian traditions I have found myself exploring.
But perhaps one of the greatest gifts of this unfolding, for me, is that it has lifted the burden of needing to feel significant in any way, and offered me the gift of fully inhabiting the smallness of my self, which I finally feel able - even eager - to accept. In this small corner of the world, which is neither fully one place or another, I have work that is mine to do, and I find I can do it gladly.
Thanks for sharing this, Cadno. I'd be curious to know more about those assumptions that you were wrong about. This is one of those places where my own experience of growing up around various forms of Christianity means I don't have a clear sense of how it is seen or experienced from the outside. So if you're up for sharing a bit more, I'd be glad to hear it.
Meanwhile, I love the way you describe the gift of smallness, that resonates deeply with me. And I am going to look out Mark Vernon's book.
Thank you! Full disclosure: I still haven't finished his book (though I keep meaning to).
Having mulled over your comment and tried to distil my answer down to a sensible length, I think the most significant mistaken assumption was the approach to the material world. I went looking for a quote from Rowan Williams (which turned out to be a quote from John of Damascus) to help me articulate this: I take matter seriously because I believe in a God who became matter. A divine creative source who becomes embodied in the materiality of creation offers a radically different way of thinking with matter and embodiment. And my reading around early Celtic Christianity - aided by the research of Nick Mayhew-Smith, and to some extent Paul Kingsnorth and Martin Shaw, among others - has demonstrated persuasively enough that the best and truest interpretation of ‘the kingdom’ and ‘new creation’ is the restoration of right relationship.
In the pagan circles I frequented, it was commonly held that our despoliation of the earth was due to a Christian worldview in which God gave man dominion over all living things, and in which this world matters far less than the world to come. As a pagan, it became almost too easy to dismiss everything that is wrong with the way we live now as the product of Christianity, when by ‘Christianity’ we generally mean materialist industrial capitalism. The fact that materialist industrial capitalism arose within civilisations which identified as Christian is still something to reflect on, but on the whole the more I learn about Christianity the more antithetical I find it to this worldview.
The concept of sin is another big one, perhaps too big to touch upon here - suffice it to say that I have grown to understand it as more than a set of stifling rules which authorities use to judge whether or not I am a Good Person (after all, we have social media to fulfil that function these days). No doubt it has been horribly misused to cause great harm and, again, that is something to reflect on. But I have actually found it a healing approach to the very real difficulty of being a person in this world.
Thanks for this beautifully distilled response, Cadno! Apart from anything else, your things "to reflect on" point towards the double-edged nature of Christianity and its heritage, which often go astray in the clash of polemic and apologetic. Sooner or later, I want to write about the perspective which Ivan Illich gives on this double edge, because I suspect there may be others who would find it as helpful as I have done. Meanwhile, if you're writing more about your own journey anywhere, then let me know, as I would love to read more.
I'm fascinated by these new stirrings of Wild Christians. I too grew up in (American) evangelical church, and eventually it was my husband standing up there in front preaching. Now we are lost wanderers without a church home but our faith even stronger. This is all so very close to our hearts; I hope your feeling of embarrassment passes. We know many people who are feeling a great hunger to see the threads you trace connect again. I'm sure we aren't the "cool" people to be associated with -- but we are authentic.
Thanks for this, it's heartening to read, and I love the thought that what I'm writing might reach the people you are thinking of here. I was never any good at being "cool", anyway, and even for those who are, I don't think any good comes of it.
You've got me wondering a little more about that embarrassment I named. Some of it is probably a fear of writing myself to a place where I'm understood by no one! Knowing how fiercely these borders get policed – and thinking of people I know and like who have good reasons to be allergic to any talk of Christianity.
But there's something else, a sense of tenderness, like this is very personal stuff to be trying to write about in public. This summer, I reread The Rivers North of the Future, the book that David Cayley made out of his late interviews with Ivan Illich. There are points in the book where Illich speaks far more directly about his faith than anywhere else in his writing, and at one of those points, he tells Cayley, 'It's a very intimate thing I say to you, and I'm really embarrassed to say it in front of these microphones you have put on my desk here in Ocotopec. Nevertheless, I dare it. I don't risk it; I dare it. I dare to allow people to listen to how I speak to a friend.' To come across that acknowledgement of embarrassment from someone to whom I owe so much was a gift.
Yes, it wasn't right of me to suggest that your embarrassment was for fear of not being cool. I understand this more modest motive and the difficulty of speaking or writing about the intimate and spiritual. The fact is, over the internet it is probably impossible to speak just as one would to a friend because of all the limitations of the medium, and because we are strangers. I have just begun to read your writing this past summer and look forward to following along.
Glad to have you reading! And I didn't take any offence at that suggestion. It got me thinking, something I'm always grateful for.
I wonder if it is easier to get down with Christianity if one is not inhabiting a female body?
Fair question, Rosie – and thanks for asking, because I'm sure you're not the only reader for whom it comes up.
Honestly, my first reaction is that I'm probably not best placed to respond, in as much as what you're getting at is all the things that Martin or Paul or I might not experience, or that might not be so obvious to us, because we're inhabiting male bodies. And I can see how the stories I'm telling in this post will raise this kind of question, since they revolve around the experiences of these three men.
When I think about your question and my experiences with Christianity more generally, what comes to mind is how many of the people who have embodied what speaks to me most strongly within the tangle of things that Christianity can be have been women. I'm not thinking of high-profile figures at this moment. I'm thinking of a woman at a place I once worked who held one of the lowest status jobs within the official hierarchy, but who everyone recognised was the person who held the community of that workplace together through her care and kindness, and whose whole way of being was bound up in a very down-to-earth way with her Salvation Army faith. I'm thinking of a couple of Quaker activists, old enough to be my grandmothers, who I knew when I was a well-meaning but lost twenty-year-old.
When it comes to those who are helping me think through all the stuff I'm writing about in this series, many of them are women: Rebekah Berndt; Elizabeth Slade, who is the friend whose journey from scientific atheist to church leader went via her essay for the Sanctum book; Elizabeth Oldfield, who I spoke with in the podcast that I shared last week. I'm thinking, too, of conversations with Rachel Rose Reid about her training with the Kohenet Hebrew Priestess Institute and its project of reclaiming the parts of Judaism that were pushed to the edges of the written texts, or just left out, because of who wasn't in the rooms when things got written down.
These encounters are a huge part of what nourishes my desire to explore the things I'm writing about here – but I suspect that all of those I've just mentioned would resonate with your question – and I'm wondering if the difficulty you're pointing to is part of why I find so much that's trustworthy in what I hear from them. You've also got me wondering about these big conversion experiences and whether there's something particularly male about them, or at least about the ways they end up being narrated. I don't know.
But yes, this was one of the layers I had in mind when I wrote about the layers of history that make all of this a source of pain for many, and that deserve more attention than there was room for in the scope of this week's essay. So thank you for bringing me back to it.
When I complete the arc of the current series, which has two more pieces to go, I'm planning to publish an exchange with another of the friends I talk about all this with, the artist and theologian Vanessa Chamberlin. I'll carry your question with me into that.
Thanks for your thoughtful reply. I was brought up anti-religious, and it's hard to say whether that's the deciding influence: I think not. I know some great Quakers and Christianarchists, and I love that tradition, The Diggers, John Ball, etc. I love to sing firy English gospel songs that incarnate the power of that lineage.
But also- I say sometimes that I'm an equal-opportunities hater of all Patriarchal religions. Submission to them feels like submission to a power that hates my kind, to a lineage of thought that has denied and degraded the deep female, causing great suffering to women down the ages. I mean real suffering and death. It feels to me like it would be impossible to disentangle Christianity from the stains of that. (Maybe that kind of submission feels different for menfolk?)
So- with a caveat of each to their own- and I'm truly happy for your enlightenment and joy- to see radical, wild-loving menfolk retreating to that world feels disappointing at some deep level; like a retreat from the implications of immersion in the wild. (I have just found you, but I've followed Paul Kingsnorth and Martin Shaw for some time, and therefore followed their conversions.)
All of this is highly subjective, and I make no claim for anyone else but myself.
Thanks, Rosie – I'm glad you're reading and if you're up for sticking around and continuing to probe at these questions, then I'd be glad of it. There are a bunch of us navigating in this territory, not necessarily all landing in the same place.
Also, I second every word of this, from Andrew's comment below: "I guess I am in some ways going through Jerusalem, rather than around, to get to the middle of it, but not without oath to never bow a knee knowingly to anything or anyone that would play nice with the witchhunt/woman lessening spirit(s) of the past and present."
I have been snagged on Andrew's (beautifully written) comment for a week now. I think the question of going through rather than around is a bigger one than it seems. I would recommend Sophie Strand's novel The Madonna Secret. She's another of these Substack pockets whose orbit path crosses yours on occasion. But I think the book is this question.
I live at the bottom of the world. What I'm doing in my work is strange, therefore often solitary. It is always a great pleasure to find other people walking any path similar to my own. I appreciate your work very much.
Hey Rosie. In my own way, clearly from the remove of male body, I spend a fair bit of time thinking about fault lines and the history you are spekaing about here. I guess I am in some ways going through Jerusalem, rather than around, to get to the middle of it, but not without oath to never bow a knee knowingly to anything or anyone that would play nice with the witchhunt/woman lessening spirit(s) of the past and present. I would like talking about this some more here but maybe that sounds either boring or tedious and don't assume that my interest is anybody's hobby but my own.
I am coming to the end of McGilchrist's 'The Matter with Things' - the grand finale and climax of which is 'the sense of the sacred' - and I had noticed several references to Charles Foster along the way (including a very positive soundbite on the back cover) - how marvellous that he has been involved with Dark Mountain! I believe it to be very true that there are a lot of hidden friends moving in parallel in the dark - perhaps when the dawn rises and we realise just how 'not-alone' we are, then will come the revolution! ;) And you were influenced by the Radical Orthodox, fascinating. I look forward to more of this.
Thanks, Sam! While I was working on this piece, I found myself trying to work out how I first got put on to the Radical Orthodoxy scene. There's a reference to Pickstock on the final page of The Rivers North of the Future and Gustavo Esteva also told me about Illich being enthused by Radical Orthodoxy in his last years, but that would have been in 2007. Around 2004, I reconnected with an old school friend who had read theology in Cambridge and knew many of those involved. But I'd already stumbled across this stuff a year or two earlier, possibly just through random internet connections.
Another hidden friendship story is that, in those years when I was piecing myself back together after the mess that late-90s Oxford had made of me, my closest friend and co-conspirator was Mary Harrington, and a lot of our conversations revolved around what 'reconstruction' on the far side of 'deconstruction' would look like. So you can see why discovering Milbank, Pickstock and co would have fed into that for me.
There's more stories here, but some of them of the kind that need to be told over a pint. Maybe we'll get the chance one of these days!
Oh and also - fascinating that you know Mary H (I read everything of hers) - but I know Mark V a little, as we attended the same church in the 90s, when he was just going off to his training!
A pint would be excellent - I keep meaning to get into Illich (ever since your talk at the last DM festival which I came to). I was in Cambridge late 90s doing vicar training, but I also started a PhD with Graham Ward, just when the first RO book came out, and everyone was abuzz. I had (have) some significant differences with it, though, so gave up the PhD at that point (now restarted in Bristol, hence the McGilchrist).
This "speaks to me" now.
I find myself longing, lately, for more comfort in silence and not knowing, to discover it as a place of deep rest and ease. I've always had some comfort in these, but not so much that I could , eyes shut in the night, enter the darkness and silence with the comfort and ease which is deep rest. I know in my bones, now, that ... and this is where I must slip in the X which marks the lacuna, for I cannot know what it might be. Not yet.
Thanks for this writing, Dougald: most subtle. Brian Bates's Way of Wyrd popped into my mind while thinking about your thoughts; read it way back in mid-80's. I do envy your encounter with the parliament of covids. I hear that the Animals are Talking (Sonia Shah writes in the NYT) but What do they Mean?
I digress: last night I listened in to the first session of Tom Cheetham's lecture series "Queerer Than We Can Suppose - Lectures on Love and Psychocosmology". 20 years ago I heard him lecture at Temenos when he was over in the UK to launch his new book "The World Turned Inside Out: Henry Corbin and Islamic Mysticism". Way back in '76 Golgonooza had published Corbin's "Mundus Imaginalis, or the Imaginary and the Imaginal" in affordable paperback which I remember reading, so I was kind of prepped for the Temenos lecture in 2003. After hearing Cheetham talk, I subsequently read enthusiastically The World Turned Inside Out but then, halfway, abruptly stopped as my markings show. (As prep for the current lectures I'm re-reading it, and again, I can hardly put it down.)
This is not an easy book for it takes us into a world metaphysically constructed in a way quite different from that of Machine Modernity. However, I now realise that Cheetham's ( then) interpretation of Corbin's philosophical quest was framed by his reading of James Hillman and that this eclipsed his perception of the formative influence of Russian religious philosophy on Corbin in 1930's Paris. Lacking this key context -the influence of Russian religious thought - I couldn't link Cheetham's book into any personally significant narrative.
Forgive me if this is off-page, but Russian theosophy was really essential to me in the 70's, especially as represented by Berdyaev. The discovery that Corbin's navigation into esoteric Islam grew out of his interest in Russian sophiological thought happened when I recently stumbled upon a brilliant dissertation paper by Hadi Fakhoury published by McGill Uni in 2013.
So, tonight is lecture 2 of Queerer Than We Can Suppose with Tom, titled A New Chart of the Imaginal. It's based on a late article by Corbin in which he sets out to clarify further his meaning of the Imaginal. I think we're going to end up in a very weird place; I will try and hang on in there. The online background for the above is Tom Cheetham's substack "As Variously As Possible" at https://tomcheetham.substack.com/?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=web&utm_campaign=substack_profile and Hadi Fakhoury's "Henry Corbin and Russian Religious Thought" on https://www.amiscorbin.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Fakhoury.pdf
This gave me chills in places, and I sense something (s) emerging from the swamps and vales of our deeper selves in these associations. The manner in which conventional religion has split the human soul from it's sources in nature has always struck me as a fundamental catastrophe. Conventional attempts to heal the divide through notions of Christian "stewardship" seem to merely confirm the conceit. Rejecting the mystery all together leaves us where? It can't be ignored because it is felt. And I love that you were alerted to it by the human craft you saw in old buildings, "the dialogue between body, mind and matter, the weave of applied intelligence, that making once required." There's a portal in that work that's hard to describe but has profoundly affected me as a tradesperson. I find myself thinking of an opening to a poem I've never been able to finish. 'We will find the words in our footprints as we walk them/following the creeks of their meanings down the dark mountain..."
Thanks, Rob! I'm glad you picked up on that line about "the weave of applied intelligence". The experience of picking up tools alongside a skilled carpenter in my 40s was a revelation, the appreciation of the layered and interwoven set of intelligences involved in working on an old wooden building. Among the responses it triggered was some real anger at an education system that would never let a kid like me – middle class and gifted with words – think for a moment about going into a skilled trade. Something was revealed to me there about the prejudice and ignorance built into the way I had been schooled.
Thanks Dougald. I’m sure the next hold will present itself. For some reason I’m looking forward to a post on how you became unstuck. And I’m thinking of all the Dougalds and Dougies, the dark strangers coming down the dark mountain. The liminal, peripheral spaces, the pearl found by the scavenger. I’m excited for you.
Thanks, Martin! It's good to be reminded of that night at Galgael when I told the story of all us dark strangers on the mountain. And thinking about it, my answer to the final question that night contributed to the process of coming unstuck. But I'll tell the story of how that finally happened in the next instalment in the series. Thanks for sharing the excitement.
From a journal of writings I kept more than a decade ago now and that I am now plundering for ideas ... "Gravity gets us all, sooner or later. This may not be the most original observation, but at this age these words increasingly resonate with me. I am not the centre of the world, but I am the centre of my world, however irrelevant that might be in the greater scheme of things. Somewhere inside, I can’t relinquish the thought, the belief, that our little lives, confounded as they are by a million contradictions and confusions, nevertheless, add up. The whole is, in some mysterious way, greater than the sum of the parts. Given the suffering of so many in this world, such a belief might seem like a solipsistic fantasy. But for countless millions, it is what sustains them through their daily lives. We, over-educated Westerners, should temper our cynicism in the face of such overwhelming odds. To do so, we are not required to surrender our hard-won powers of reason. Instead, like Stalker, in Tarkovsky’s film of that name, we need to cultivate a deeper faith – in life, in the mystery of creation that we find ourselves immersed in. Let us attune our senses to find joy in the sounds, colours, sensations, now, in this moment. Feel the pull of planetary energies and forces, below our feet in the surging ocean of molten rock, above our head in the infinity of star-spangled space. Resist the dull-minded, horizontal thinking of the everyday world. “The purpose of art is the lifelong construction of a state of wonder.” Glenn Gould. Without such a faith in life, what would there be to stop me leaping off Waterloo Bridge at the next hightide." I still accord with this. Faith in life, not the church, not the distractions of religious protocols and their policing of our bodily and transcendental lives.
You had me at Jackdaw, even if your taste in pocket cards does run toward Joker.
Pretence aside, surprise and an honor at the red card. The companionship of black feathers and a roof between the ruins is the last currency here. Bottoms up to that bottle into the neck of the same.
Seems like the kids' table is where it's at, which feels appropriate. It's a delight to be here with you three.
I guess writing these posts is my way of dealing myself in at this table, or like the moment when you've been sat at a table for what feels like ages without saying anything, and you finally find some words to step into the flow of the conversation.
Writing that, I suddenly remember the Saturday when my friend Keith invited me to lunch with his family and friends, and as I stepped across the threshold, he called out to everyone, 'This is Dougald – be gentle with him, he's not Jewish!' And in the hours that followed I experienced a rhythm of conversation, an unfamiliar syncopation, where you had to move a little differently to get a word in edgeways, and I began to understand what he had meant...
And yeah, the different wording on our invitations, the non-fixity of species, these are things I long to explore together.
One thing that's happening to me as I write my way into all this is that I'm finding myself drawn deeper into the imaginal, in ways that animate my reading of the old texts, and that seem to hold clues for navigating the confusion and excitement that you name, R.G.
And along with this comes a sense of release from having to have a set of answers, mine or anyone else's, that determine where I'm allowed to sit. It just all seems a lot stranger than that, and a lot less like an exam, if that makes any sense?
Unfamiliar syncopation. That made me laugh out loud. The reason the will of G-d had to be determined by the divination of the Urim and Thummin was maybe "the word in edgewise" gene was functioning then. A still small voice would have been a needle at a gunfight when my family got wound up together.
On those layers of the imaginal: I am learning (like a pickpocket "learns" about your economics) about the idea the Kabbalists have of the five levels of interpretation of the Word(s). Pshat, Remez, Drosh, and Sod--the stairs down or is it further up and in from the literal to the mystified. Even the closest to the surface, Pshat or straight, doesn't play nice with the litero-certain, and moving on from there, such thumping the chest of truth looks less Silverback and more organ grinder monkey with each mile.
Release. Sense. Yes. Senses in fact. All of them coming alive.
If there's a kids' table, I'm sitting right there with you, brother! :)
Save me one of the little seats as well. Funny but my invitation doesn't say Christianity at all. Same handwriting. Something strange and particular in the loop of the lettering and the shimmer of the ink. And all the vowels are in pencil. A Word both rooted and mutable. Don't tell the grown-ups. They still think the fixity of the species is a thing.
cheers! always good to have some company.
Waah... How clumsy of me, I accidentally removed your original comment, R.G., while trying to edit my own! But here's what you wrote:
"can't wait for more of this. i'm having trouble finding my way with this Christian renaissance. it's tremendously good (and long overdue) that so many people are letting go of Christianity as a dogmatic orthodoxy. but at the same time—in the absence of that orthodoxy—it's unclear what unites people as Christians, given that the central figure is such a cipher. how many of the Gospel accounts must we agree are truthful, let alone the rest of the Bible? where does God fit in? for example—if i believe that the Elohim of the Old Testament aren't necessarily cognate with the spiritual force that swept away the historical Yeshua (who was more like an entheogenic healer-exorcist than a "wisdom teacher") where do i sit at the big table of this new Christianity? presumably at the other end from Kingsnorth, who seems to be at the "tolerant conservative" end of the table (as is his right, no criticism there). can i sit near Martin Shaw? do i have to sit at the kids' table? it's all very confusing—and very exciting. looking forward to further exploration."
I struggle with the need for religion: I don't feel this need. Quite the opposite. I believe that the tradition of priests and minsters is an imposition, a power block that inhibits people from developing their own inner life. Spiritual practices are a different matter. Learning that you can access the deep wellsprings of life in your own consciousness, (alone or with others) is an important rite of passage that seriously undermines the church's employment of the Word to disempower its followers. If we live amongst the "ruins", those ruins also include our religions. We need to build new forms of spiritual sharing, devoid of the elaborate hierarchies that the church have erected to protect themselves over the past few centuries. We need a revitalised gnostic tradition for the everyman/woman.
Thanks, Nick. Thinking about your comment, I'm struck by the binary of "religion" vs "spirituality" that emerged (as far as I can tell) in the late 20th century – you know, the identity of "I'm spiritual, but I'm not religious". I'm actually not setting out to write in favour of being "religious" here, and somewhere down the line, I want to dig into the histories of the whole concept of "religion" and the discussions about going "beyond" religion that have cropped up at various points in the history of modernity.
One thing I would say is that, if there's a pull that a good many people I speak to are feeling towards a closer relation to what remains of our ruined traditions, it's often born out of a dissatisfaction with the personalised version of spirituality that has flourished in recent times. There's a desire for something more demanding than a pick-n-mix of the appealing bits of other people's traditions, which is often what "I'm spiritual, not religious" has ended up meaning in practice.
I'm gonna tag on the end of this lovely thread. Such a great post, I'm feeling the embodied craft and your time with carpenter, and the scavenger - and something in there that can help resolve us of the need for the encrusted dogmas. There is a key in those crafts, themselves scavenged from materiality, that underpins the gods that grow up around them, that is small but useful, personal but shared. I leave you with part of talk Alice will be giving to some architecture students:
Building the commons starts in our heads when we let go of the hierarchies engendered in capitalism- that tell us that only a very few people are good at things and everyone else must follow them, recieving the fruits of their brilliance. It is my understanding that within the commons, everyone has a gift to bring, and that gift regularly manifests with the full potential of human skill in whoever is willing to work at it. The idea of community comes from the interlacing of those skills. The richness of crafts shared amongst neighbours. When we build the commons we fully expect, that the infrastructure we create will bring out excellence from every corner of our communities. As designers we might have to put down the ego that places is in such high esteem, but in return we gain access to the best of every discipline, as our neighbours discover what they are capable of.
Sorry, only got around to replying now - not even sure you'll ever see this.
I was trying to avoid that binary when I said, albeit understated, that we need "new forms of spiritual sharing". I well appreciate the role that the church plays in the civic life of places. Arguably, that's its main function now. But the spirituality of christian worship feels depleted by its lack of embrace of more profound practices offered by traditions that draw on techniques of shared experience. For example, one of the most extraordinary shared spiritual experiences I've had was being in a large group practising overtone chanting. In such a group, led by a skilled teacher, Jill Purse, you experience in an absolutely clear manner, a transpersonal reality where your individuality is transcended and you experience a kind of group mind. It's actually quite overwhelming and very physical. This is just one such example of shared spirituality - there are many others. All are centred on the understanding that individual humans have extraordinary capacity for resonating with each other. Yes, in the church, singing does this, to some extent. But christianity, in its various traditional forms, has largely rejected such embodied experience in preference for hierarchy of The Word mediated by a priestly caste. The renewal will come when that hierarchy surrenders its power and wealth and seeks a deeper community of experience.