Ceaseless Prayer
00:00:00Sonya: For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.
00:00:03Henry: That’s a good one. Maybe he was trying to be a play on words on “you are what you think,” trying to bring up Augustine. My friend showed me some of his work a few years ago.
00:00:13Henry: So it’s funny coming back to this and trying to synthesize that together.
00:00:17Sonya: It’s interesting to reread something, especially something that had a big effect on you and to compare and contrast how you react to it now.
00:00:27Henry: I think I appreciate it even more in this case.
00:00:30Sonya: A deeper resonance. I wanted to mention to you that I just finished this book called The Way of a Pilgrim and The Pilgrim Continues on His Way, which I think was originally two books, but I read it mashed together into one book. It’s about the idea of ceaseless prayer. It’s written about a Russian peasant who is a wandering hermit who tries to pray in his heart at all times. And it was very readable and pretty interesting.
00:01:03Henry: You said it was Russian. So was it translated to English?
00:01:06Sonya: Yeah, it’s translated. I wish I could read everything in its original language, but that’s not at all practical. I’m looking at the passages I highlighted to see if there’s any particularly good quotes here.
00:01:19Sonya: One of the first quotes that’s fairly early on in the book that I really liked was: “When I began to pray with the heart, everything around me became transformed. And I saw it in a new and delightful way. The trees, the grass, the earth, the air, the light, and everything seemed to be saying to me that it exists to witness to God’s love for man and that it prays and sings of God’s glory. Now I understood what I had read in the Philokalia about the creature’s knowledge of speech, and I saw how it was possible to communicate with God’s creation.”
00:01:53Henry: Nice. Wow. Very poetic.
00:01:57Henry: I’m reminded of that conversation I had with Michael Sacasas, and he mentioned, or I mentioned the similar thing of understanding more about the world helps you see more in it. I think his example was trees or birds — bird watching, say, if you don’t know anything about birds, they’re just all birds. But eventually you know the names of them and you appreciate it more. And then also I think somewhere in there, it reminded me of the whole “the rocks cry out,” that God exists and that we should glorify him.
Creation
00:02:37Sonya: I’ve been thinking a lot about creation as a whole, which is — I’m not even sure that I really have anything to add to that concept. It’s more that I’ve just been meditating on that idea.
00:02:58Henry: How you’re just thinking about it. I think that’s an interesting thought. I feel like we have this instinct to not just need an answer, but “what’s the point?” or “where are you getting at?” And sometimes it’s just good to think.
00:03:17Sonya: That’s been a large part of my — if I have a conclusion, it’s something like, wow, it’s all there. And the world is so big. So beyond my ability to — I can look at pieces of it and I can think about pieces of it. But trying to hold it all in my mind as an entirety is impossible, but it’s also rewarding to try. Just thinking about space and how there are all these planets where as far as we can tell, there’s no life, there are just vast emptiness, there are black holes, there are millions and trillions of stars.
00:04:17Sonya: And thinking all of that is so beyond or so outside of what I experience on a day to day basis, but it’s also part of God’s creation. It’s just interesting and awe-inspiring, to think about the hugeness and the diversity of form that’s out there, but it’s all in this holistic system. It’s just incredible.
00:04:50Henry: Yeah, summed up in that word “creation.” It just means a lot more than what we normally see. You could even go the other way around too, right? When we see things that are small, that’s all there too.
00:05:10Sonya: Say that again, I think one of your —
00:05:12Henry: Oh, I was just saying the opposite approach. If you look at a microscope, you see that this universe also contains a lot of small things and we also don’t interact with those. When we feel small because we see big things, that probably is more likely, but I don’t know if that’s the case.
00:05:43Sonya: I wonder. I feel like both can be inspiring, but I wonder if it’s more intuitive that we’ve always been able to compare ourselves to the mountains or to the sky, whereas it’s a relatively new capability for us to be able to see smaller things.
00:06:05Henry: That’s definitely a lot more recent. You’re right.
00:06:14Sonya: But that’s also amazing. I think about human civilization and how just unimaginably much effort went into building the infrastructure and the tools that we have and the knowledge that we have access to. What an incredible amount of labor by our ancestors and by people who are alive now, who we don’t necessarily know or think about very often.
What Is Salience?
00:06:44Henry: Yeah, just what’s in front of us and what’s supporting all that. Is that related to that word you mentioned, salience?
00:07:03Sonya: I think it could be. I think of salience as being the intersection of importance and interestingness or priority. Whatever is most salient to you is what feels most suited to the moment or what should be on your mind now. Or what arouses the attention. It’s what you — I find it hard to pin down. But it’s something I’ve been thinking about a lot: what do we consider of the highest priority to our attention? What grabs us?
00:08:00Henry: And is that specifically a personal thing? Or do you mean it as a general thing?
00:08:07Sonya: That is what the term means in general. Although I often feel really dissatisfied with dictionary definitions because they often neglect the connotations of a word. So if you look up the dictionary definition of salience —
00:08:32Henry: I’ve never even heard of it before you mentioned it.
00:08:35Sonya: Okay. So the definition from Oxford Languages that Google puts in its little box is “the quality of being particularly noticeable or important; prominence.” So I feel like salience is often equated with significance. And there’s a lot of overlap. But I feel like salience has this — I think of it as having a quality of being a spark, being alive in some way.
00:09:10Henry: And so when you mean spark, you mean a spark to your attention rather than it gives you a spark?
00:09:18Sonya: I think both. I think of salience as having a quality of liveness or excitement that I wouldn’t necessarily ascribe to the word significance. It’s not that I don’t like the word significance. I just think it has a different flavor to it.
00:09:40Henry: Yeah, and the spark is like it catches your eye. Visually a spark, but that could be mentally as well.
00:09:50Sonya: It’s like a piece of a puzzle clicking in or something. When something feels salient.
00:09:58Henry: And that might relate to — I feel like in our last conversation, I mentioned tacit knowledge and the whole thing of when you learn something it reshapes how you think about the world. So the thing that is able to do that is salient to you in that moment.
00:10:22Sonya: Yes. It is almost like — I feel like it has a magical quality to it. And I like that you tied it back to that possibility of transformation.
The Ordinary as Extraordinary
00:10:35Henry: And I wonder if that’s what you’re talking about when you’re in nature or seeing all these different forms. There’s that whole thing of seeing what are not everyday things as extraordinary, and also being able to see the ordinary as extraordinary as well.
00:11:00Henry: Because one could be more physical — something out there that really catches your eye, literally. But then also a change inside of you that makes you revisit the existing things that you see day to day in a different light. Actually that’s a good connection going back to the book you were reading, right? That person was able to continuously pray such that they see a plant and then suddenly that just means a lot more than it was before.
00:11:35Sonya: This is so cliche, but I feel like this is one of the things that psychedelics can do for you — make it possible or make it easier to feel everything as sacred. That’s one of the classic psychedelic reactions, to feel tapped into the oneness.
00:12:05Sonya: And that’s almost an artificial means of — I don’t know if artificial is the right word, but you take a pill and it has this effect.
00:12:11Henry: It’s not that it’s necessarily artificial. The whole thing of having a virtual church service doesn’t mean it’s not real, but it’s not what we typically think of for doing that thing.
00:12:37Sonya: I don’t know what it was, perhaps it will be returned to me. Oh, so you know how there’s classical physics and then there’s quantum physics. It’s not that classical physics is incomplete in a way — and actually quantum physics is also incomplete, just less so. But they’re — the models are useful under different conditions. You can have the same object that is better described by one model of physics or another, depending on the conditions that it’s under. And I feel that’s relevant — you can have the same thing and in different circumstances, different models describe its behavior.
00:13:35Sonya: And in a way our perception is like that also. You can have the plant and it can be just a plant depending on your perspective. Or if you’re in a different state of mind, it’s a signifier of all of God’s creation.
00:13:53Henry: Right, it could just be the plant is a weed, then you wanna get rid of it, or you’re trying to use it to cook, or you just planted it and it was a gift from someone so you really want to take care of it. Those are all very normal scenarios that make you think differently about plants.
00:14:11Sonya: Yeah, your relationship to the plant can be different. But the plant itself is still the plant. It always has that selfness to it. But our way of relating to it is dynamic. I’m even open to the idea that the plant’s way of relating to us is dynamic. I’m not sure what that would look like. I don’t know what a plant’s perspective would be or would feel like because it’s an open question — the mechanisms of consciousness, where’s the threshold. I don’t really know.
00:14:51Henry: I think a little bit about when we were talking about tacit knowledge, you mentioned it’s like a dance. And maybe that’s similar — the plant’s not literally gonna talk to us, but there is a sense in which the things that we try to understand in the world speak to us in certain ways. Even if it’s not literally.
Patterns as Language
00:15:20Sonya: I see patterns often in that light as being a way to speak to the universe or a way for the universe to speak to us, in the patterns.
00:15:34Henry: And maybe tying it back to salience, it’s the idea that things are almost calling out to you in a sense. And I think if we think of it that way, it does make life a little bit more magical. The things I’m trying to learn, maybe they even want me to learn about them, which is kind of weird, but.
00:16:08Sonya: Yeah. The way that our human minds work is we tend to anthropomorphize everything. We see everything as an agent. But I don’t think that’s necessarily wrong. Because it’s our way of trying to interface with — okay, I understand that you are an entity, say a plant. So how do I try to empathize with the entity of this non-human thing? And I think one of the techniques that we often reach for to do that is to conceive of — okay, if it were human, what would its experience be? Or what would be a human way of conceiving of what it is to be a plant.
00:17:04Sonya: And it’s not that it’s accurate per se. I’m sure that being a plant, whatever it feels like, I’m sure it’s not what it feels like to be human. But I think there’s still something beautiful in our desire and our impulse to connect in that way — if I were you. We try to empathize with everything.
00:17:37Henry: And that desire, how could that not be a good thing? If you think about it, it’s wanting to empathize with people and things, rather than — I would say, contrast to the idea that everything is just a resource that we use for our own means. It feels like by treating other things that way — that’s just the golden rule thing, but we don’t wanna be treated that way. We might end up treating ourselves badly, even if it’s not people. And I think maybe that relates to legibility, that concept, right?
00:18:31Henry: That one view that makes things efficient or whatever.
00:18:37Sonya: Oh, I think this is very relevant. I think of legibility as the spreadsheet impulse.
00:18:48Sonya: To make everything into data. And it’s useful for certain purposes, but it’s also flattening. How can I extract one measure or a set of static measures when everything is changing and everything is at least four dimensional, maybe more — we don’t really know.
00:19:14Henry: And we’re just trying to point out that that’s not the only way to see something. That view is everything should be a grade or a list or a box or whatever that is. And that works in a lot of cases, but I think especially if you’re gonna deal with people, which you’re going to eventually, you might lead to some outcomes that we might not like.
The Felt Body
00:19:34Henry: So actually one example I’ve been thinking about — I’ve been reading a lot of Ivan Illich again lately. And I don’t even know if I’ve mentioned him before, but —
00:19:50Sonya: I think a couple of times, yeah.
00:19:52Henry: Okay. So he was talking a bit about the body. Embodiment and this idea of — and he was criticizing medicine and all that stuff, but even farther down, he was trying to look into the history of medicine and how we think about it and the history of the senses, right, how we see vision and hearing and that stuff.
00:20:19Henry: And he was saying — and I didn’t look into this too much, but I do remember this term of the humors. Do you know about this?
00:20:27Sonya: Yeah. I mean just the embarrassed outlines, but yeah.
00:20:31Henry: We used to think that that’s the thing inside of us, right? There’s a bunch of those.
00:20:39Sonya: It was the black bile and the other kinds of bile and the idea that we depend on these different types of liquids and have them in a correct balance.
00:20:56Henry: Right, it’s the whole water, earth, air, fire — funny, it’s like Avatar. But now supposedly we know that we have organs in our body and how they work and that all that stuff is just not real.
00:21:16Henry: But he was seeing how that change also starts to affect us in terms of how we think about our own body — that we think of our body as a machine, because we think of the organs and how they function in a certain way and they have a certain purpose. And so when we think about our body now, the only thing we think of is just a system of organs.
00:21:34Henry: And the way we treat our body that way, it’s “well, if I take this thing, then it’ll increase this number and decrease this number.” And so our whole body’s turned into a bunch of numbers, some statistics. And even how we think about whether we should take a certain action is “X percent of people had this condition and had this result.”
00:21:54Henry: He just didn’t like the idea that we were reducing ourselves to these numbers rather than individual people with a certain story. And doctors, they used to ask a bunch of questions. The whole point of going to the doctor was to explain your life and what happened. They have to figure out what happened. But now instead you just do a bunch of tests and it tells you the numbers. And it doesn’t mean it’s wrong. It’s just the attitude of how we think about ourselves has changed.
00:22:34Sonya: That ties into something that many people find incredibly frustrating about the modern healthcare experience. I mean, there are a lot of things to find frustrating there, but one of the things is you get all these forms that you fill out and there’s always “here’s a list of conditions, have you experienced any of these conditions?” I feel like I’ve filled out pretty similar forms about umpteen million times. And I’ve answered the same questions umpteen million times verbally — the nurse will give you a quiz. And I feel like that information, as far as I can tell, is never actually consulted. The doctor comes in and asks you the same questions that you were just asked. And I just find that really frustrating. It feels very disrespectful. And I also feel so disempowered. There’s nothing I can do about it. I can’t be like, “well, maybe you should just read that form.”
00:23:42Sonya: And that’s a ramification, a consequence of that overall model — that way of processing our conception of our bodies or something.
00:24:03Henry: Yeah. And he was sad about this idea that the body is now the diagnosed body, rather than what he would call the felt body. How come it’s so much harder to understand ourselves now? And he thinks a lot of it is the way we conceive of it through this very mechanistic way of thinking.
00:24:31Henry: And I’ve mentioned this a few times, but we outsource not just how we feel, but what we should do. How much we should eat, what we should eat, all these things, because supposedly this other thing knows better than ourselves. And so there becomes a dependency on these other things.
00:24:58Sonya: And we also — I wonder, so we have a very individual, a unit idea of bodies. My body is a separate unit that’s made up of these separate units that interface but are all distinct from each other. And there’s a papering over the messiness and the interdependency.
00:25:23Sonya: I have skin, right. The skin encloses my body. So there is a distinctness that we see, and we see this distinctness as especially salient — it’s the determining way of looking at the body.
00:25:48Sonya: But say you have a community come together. There is a real physical sense in which that community is made up of bodies. Is it its own body? And this is obviously relevant to how the church or various churches conceive of themselves. And also some of the descriptions in the Bible of the church and of our relationships to Christ.
00:26:23Sonya: Is a species a body? Is all of humanity a body in a way? You can say yes or you can say no and either can be true depending on how you think about it.
00:26:41Henry: One way I think it can be true is memory — the way we remember through culture, I suppose. That’s how we pass on — a lot of identity is through memory. If you don’t have time, then I don’t see how you could be the same thing. And so if we’re talking about humanity, then that is tradition.
00:27:09Sonya: Yeah. But we remember within each other or we use each other to access memories. It’s all very messy.
Remembrance
00:27:19Henry: This is a little bit random, but I was talking to my friend again about baptism and he brought up memory. Because he was saying, what are we doing when we partake in the bread and the wine?
00:27:55Henry: And I think most people would say something like it’s to help us recall something. But the question he was asking is, what are you remembering? And I had to think about it.
00:28:11Sonya: Well, that makes me think of how the first communion takes place on Passover, which is a remembrance event.
00:28:25Henry: Yeah, that itself is another remembrance — it at least points to something in the past.
00:28:34Sonya: It’s like sustaining a pattern that ancestors experienced.
00:28:39Henry: And he pointed out, this is obvious, but it was interesting to me. He was like, “Well, what are we remembering? We’re not remembering ourselves. So it’s not a past experience that we’ve gone through.” Then he’s like, “How can we remember something that didn’t actually happen to us?”
00:29:03Sonya: And maybe one answer to that could be that it’s the Christian body as a whole remembering. And you are just a figment of the entirety that is doing this remembering altogether.
00:29:21Henry: I think that’s what he was pointing at. It’s not you, but you’re remembering what other people have gone through. But also maybe even another sense would be that there is a sense where we are almost transported to that time. It’s not the same, but by partaking in this act, we in a sense are brought back to that time where it actually happened, and that we also are partaking in that. So it’s not just a symbol, I suppose. Part of it is — it’s actually — we’re actually doing that, that Christ is there, right?
00:29:58Henry: I think we talked about this before, the whole — is everything a symbol or is it literal? And I think that for most people that take the communion, they do think that Christ is there, but it’s just in what form.
00:30:15Sonya: That’s something that comes up in — I don’t know if this is Catholic specific or if it varies. But the idea of the metaphysical transformation, that the atoms are the same, but the significance of them is different. The idea that, yes, this is the literal body and blood in a metaphysical sense —
00:30:54Sonya: Which goes beyond our normal intuitions for how material works. Which is I think part of why it can seem so ridiculous from the outside. You think this little piece of bread and this little cup of fermented grape juice is literally flesh and blood. And the idea being that matter is not just matter really.
00:31:28Henry: I think that is particularly a Catholic view, transubstantiation.
00:31:35Sonya: Oh yeah, that’s what it is.
00:31:37Henry: And it’s hard for me to grasp, I think, as a Protestant or as a modern person, that just doesn’t make sense, right? It’s like how can something — but in terms of how they describe that, it’s still the thing, but then somehow it’s not. And clearly they’re talking about different definitions or different ways of thinking about something — the form of it or whatever. It still looks like a piece of bread, but actually it’s the Christ.
00:32:06Henry: It doesn’t mean I believe it, but I would like to understand it better and not dismiss that necessarily.
00:32:19Sonya: I find it to be an intriguing notion. I’m not — I feel like it’s set up in a way that’s unfalsifiable. So I don’t really know how to deal with that.
00:32:31Sonya: But this conversation also makes me think of the phrase “washed in the blood.” Which I feel like maybe we talked about before.
00:32:39Henry: I think you mentioned it, but I don’t know if we really talked about it much.
00:32:44Sonya: It’s a very visceral way of describing salvation — that you’re — I mean, blood is sticky and smelly and it has a thickness to it. I think I find that to be a really interesting — I don’t know if metaphor is even the right word, I don’t think it’s meant as metaphorical. But the idea of being — imagine being next to Jesus on the cross and he’s receiving that wound in his side and there’s a gush of blood that pours over you. Depending on one’s personal level of squeamishness, that could be a disgusting image.
00:33:36Henry: The cross — I feel like that used to be a pretty odd symbol to make the point of your whole faith. It’s something that’s really bad, for the most part.
00:33:56Sonya: Intense agony.
00:33:58Henry: Yeah. And just saying “washed in the blood” — that will just bring to mind washing yourself in general with water and just thinking about how much water that is to clean your body and then thinking that it’s all blood. And I can see how anyone would think that’s very visceral.
Embodiment
00:34:19Sonya: That’s something that I find compelling and important about Christianity — the emphasis on the body, on flesh. I feel like this maybe came up before in our conversations that it’s very physical, which makes sense to me because we are physical as far as I can tell. And so there’s that dimension to the faith — that it does have to do with your literal body.
00:34:52Henry: Yeah. And I think the thing we were talking about was why do we have an inclination to either get rid of the body — mention technology, right — or be just disembodied because of society and how it works. I think it’s good to pay attention to where that’s happening.
00:35:20Henry: In our day to day, slowly — we’re always in our body, you can’t not be in it, but when are we — and I think maybe that’s why I mentioned the whole felt body thing, which is how come it feels harder and harder to understand myself. Sometimes when people ask you, “how are you doing?” it’s so easy to just be “either I’m okay” or just not say anything. Or with food — you can be on your computer all day and then you don’t even drink water or go to the bathroom or eat food. You forget.
00:36:01Sonya: It’s like you’re drawn into the machine. And maybe through our minds, we have this capacity to be drawn into other systems. You can be the praying hermit and feel drawn into all of creation — your mind is interfacing with all of it. You can also be drawn into the internet or you can be drawn into the body of the church. Because we have this ability to simulate the rest of a system and to see how we are part of that system. I also think it’s subconscious too.
00:36:54Sonya: We recreate whatever we participate in inside of ourselves. At least that’s what I think.
00:37:02Henry: I wonder if that is basically what I used the word “indwelling” for before. We take what we see and then we learn to apply it. It’s that lens through which we see the world or trying to transform ourselves. That’s funny — at the beginning of this conversation, I mentioned the book “You Are What You Love,” and then it reminds me of the whole “you are what you eat.” So it’s — whatever you do or think about.
Shape All the Way Down
00:37:44Sonya: Whatever you touch, in any concept of touch — it could be physical touch. When you physically touch something — I’m touching a pillow that’s in front of me — you do merge with it, right? You become contiguous with it. Your shape is now welded to its shape.
00:38:08Sonya: Shape is another thing that I’ve been thinking about, shape and patterns. The very substance of life itself is shape. That’s how cells run on shape — the different shapes of different molecules or different chemicals. That’s how our cells work — it’s like a puzzle system. It’s a puzzle machine or something. There’s that machine metaphor again.
00:38:47Henry: Yeah, it’s hard not to. I think I’ve said that before. By programming, I by default want to make everything a list, which is just the simplest thing for the computer to understand. And the way I might think about other things, I might do that as well.
00:39:15Henry: And something I’ve been thinking about is also that all those things by themselves aren’t necessarily good or bad. It’s just how it is. But on aggregate, I think it leads to some different behaviors and how we think. That’s true of a lot of problems — when only one person has it, it’s whatever. But then if everyone has it, it’s different. If everyone has a car and you have a traffic jam.
00:39:45Sonya: “Quantity has a quality all its own” is one of the phrases about that.
00:39:53Sonya: Scale changes things and you get emergence at certain scales. You hit a certain threshold and then you have a new phenomenon that emerges from the interaction of all the things.
00:40:09Henry: And that’s what Illich talks about with thresholds as well. He says there’s always two thresholds for an institution. There’s a point where, say, medicine — it hit that first threshold. It helped a lot, washing your hands, stuff like that back in the day. And then now there’s diminishing returns and ultimately negative returns on scaling a certain way of doing things.
00:40:37Sonya: And there’s a way in which a pattern or a system — I think of a system as a sophisticated type of pattern, a self-perpetuating pattern. That’s usually fairly complex. It has its own volition in a way. A pattern will just keep extending itself. Maybe I’m overstating things a little bit.
00:41:09Henry: Well, that reminds me of how the medium and the message works again. Where McLuhan — if he doesn’t say the medium is the container, but that the medium is the environment — then that environment does cause many changes in how everything works. It does shape everything after it and before it.
00:41:41Sonya: Yeah, when we get standardized shipping containers, that changes how goods are produced. It changes the literal shape that we make things.
00:41:54Sonya: That’s the rise of Ikea — everything is easy to flat pack and it’s more efficient that way.
00:42:05Henry: Right. And he has that whole thing where all media will add things, but also remove things. And that’s the salient thing too — it’ll bring more things to light and also move things to the background.
00:42:21Henry: And that’s what perspective is, I suppose. But through the medium, it shows that.
00:42:28Sonya: It makes me think again of the impossibility of seeing everything all at once. Focus is a good way to think about it — you can zoom in or you can zoom out and different features will be apparent at different scales.
00:42:46Henry: Right. So it doesn’t even make sense to almost ask the question of what is an unfocused view of things. Going back to the whole “objective” — or that version of what objective means.
Beyond Our Concepts
00:43:05Sonya: This is one of the great mysteries of God. At least I think of God as seeing everything on every scale all at once, completely. Which is just far beyond human capabilities.
00:43:26Sonya: And because I’m human, what I have to think about God is concepts, and the concepts are always going to — a concept in and of itself emphasizes certain things, it has certain boundary conditions. And a big part of the idea of God is that it explodes those. I lean into — I talk to God as if he were an individual. I use human pronouns for God. And I think that’s useful. It’s a way to engage that feels natural and that fits my neural architecture as a human. But I don’t think that it’s accurate per se. Just because how could it be?
00:44:27Henry: But he allows us to do that. He maybe encourages it if we believe in a personal God. So that’s the amazing thing. It’s this all-encompassing objective thing has become subjective for us individually.
00:44:46Sonya: And that’s wonderful. It’s very comforting to be able to have that personal relationship. And it does take faith, right? To believe that the personal relationship is part of the whole and that it’s not artificial in some way.
00:45:20Sonya: Does my relationship with God take place inside of me? In some sense, yes. But then what am I inside of? I find it mind boggling and I always feel very tentative whenever I try to couch it in concrete terms. There’s something inherently unpindownable about it.
00:45:50Sonya: It’s also so controversial. Any conception that I have of things is going to be widely disagreed with by a bunch of other people.
00:46:00Henry: Maybe. I guess it depends.
00:46:03Sonya: It definitely depends on the people.
Eucatastrophe
00:46:08Henry: I’ve been thinking about this quote from CS Lewis. And you mentioned that you just read Screwtape. But his — actually, sorry. I meant Tolkien. But his essay on fairy stories, and maybe we talked about this too. I mentioned fairy stories and how the gospel is a fairy story. And we talked about magic, right. And I think he’s appealing to that. He’s saying that the story of the gospel has entered history, with the capital H. And I think he’s saying that the birth of Christ is what he calls the eucatastrophe of man’s history.
00:46:59Henry: And then later he says the resurrection is the eucatastrophe of the incarnation. And eucatastrophe is just a good catastrophe, if you break down the word.
00:47:19Sonya: Eu —
00:47:21Henry: Yeah, eu. And I really like this quote. He says later: “There is no tale ever told that men would rather find was true. And none which so many skeptical men have accepted as true on its own merits.”
00:47:39Henry: So when we were talking about how this objective thing has become the most subjective, personal, intimate thing — that is something we would want, even if you didn’t believe it.
00:47:55Sonya: I haven’t read Kierkegaard yet, but I think this is one of the things that Kierkegaard deals with. I feel very drawn to this existentialist Christianity. I do think that the story resonates on every level.
00:48:19Sonya: I wanna compare it to — say there’s a guitar and if you thump a guitar, all of the strings are gonna resonate and they don’t all make the same sound. But the same resonance is vibrating through all of them. And that’s how I feel about the story of the incarnation and eventually the resurrection — that it resonates on every level.
00:48:50Henry: And they’re in harmony too.
00:48:53Sonya: It’s such a — I see Christianity as being, Jesus comes in, conquers death, and allows us to be okay with death being a part of life, because it isn’t the final ending that we mortally conceive of it as.
00:49:22Henry: Yeah, conquer death.
00:49:27Sonya: And I think we see that on the cellular level also, which maybe sounds silly. Everything that’s alive is a continuation of the death of ancestors. And I see that as being harmonious with Christianity.
00:49:58Henry: I said that because of the music, but no, that makes sense.
00:50:03Sonya: Well, that’s also the patterns all tangled up in each other. Music is math and math is kind of everything. I definitely feel very self-conscious talking about this.
00:50:19Henry: Yeah, it’s very — it’s definitely not speculative. It’s more just raw and personal. It’s not just facts and things. It’s how you see it.
00:50:39Sonya: There’s always vulnerability in being sincere because people can disagree with you. And I’ve tried to invest a lot of emotional energy in being okay with disagreement, because it’s gonna happen. So it’s something that you have to come to terms with, if you have any heartfelt ideas about the world.
00:51:14Sonya: If you have this thing that you feel very much is true and that it’s a really beautiful and important truth, and then almost no matter what it is, there’s something painful in having that dismissed by others. At least for my psychology, there is.
00:51:43Henry: Yeah, definitely. I completely agree.
00:51:48Sonya: But a big part of growing up for me has been — yes, there are uncomfortable experiences. And that’s okay. You can be uncomfortable, you can feel pain and it’s okay. It doesn’t by definition feel good, but it’s okay to not feel good about some things and to still ride through the experience and be okay on the other side.
Praise and Prayer
00:52:21Henry: Maybe we mentioned this too — something CS Lewis really said. I think it’s what you’re getting to. We sometimes can’t help but want to express how much we like something or someone to other people. And I don’t remember the exact quote, but it was saying that when we want to honor or glorify — and he’s talking about God, but anything, right. He does mention other examples. Maybe it’s a great movie or a great book or a great joke or a person. When you really like that thing, you go out of your way to tell everyone, right?
00:52:55Henry: And he’s saying that the reason why we do it isn’t just because we like it. But that somehow by telling people it actually — he uses the word — it consummates the love that you have for that thing. Meaning it’s the completion of the thing. You almost — by not doing it, you’re doing yourself a disservice. That’s what I mean by you can’t help but do it in some sense.
00:53:37Sonya: That really resonates with me in terms of praise. Praise is just a very natural reaction to something being so grand and wonderful and inspiring. You just wanna talk about it.
00:53:58Henry: And that’s the thing — why do we need a justification for praise then? He’s saying that it’s a natural, inherent part of wanting to do that.
00:54:13Sonya: And it feels good. I like consummation as — it’s a confirmation of joy.
00:54:25Sonya: There’s something very affirming about declaring.
00:54:29Henry: And I think that’s getting into why we say we worship God and we praise him. Because it’s like, well, why does he need to be praised? Or why does he want us to do that? Doesn’t he already know? Or is it for him? It’s like, no, it’s actually for us.
00:54:49Sonya: Yes. Oh, so this book that I was reading about prayer — I definitely think that — I’m gonna read you another quote.
00:55:00Sonya: “These and similar consolations led me to conclude that the fruits of the prayer of the heart can be experienced in three ways: in the spirit, in the emotions, and in revelations. In the spirit one can experience the sweetness of the love of God, inner peace, purity of thought, awareness of God’s presence, and ecstasy. In the emotions, a pleasant warmth of the heart, a feeling of delight throughout one’s being, joyful bubbling in the heart, lightness and courage, joy of life, and indifference to sickness and sorrow. And in revelation one receives the enlightenment of the mind, understanding of Holy Scripture, knowledge of speech of all creatures, renunciation of vanities, awareness of the sweetness of interior life, and confidence in the nearness of God and his love for us.”
00:55:53Sonya: I thought that was a really beautiful description of how prayer is transformative of you. It changes you, it changes the form of your mind and your experience. And I think we’re encouraged to pray largely for our own good, because it does bring you closer to God and invite God’s presence into you.
00:56:25Henry: Yeah, because I think we asked the question, what is it? What’s the point of it. And I think that speaks to that a bit — it’s an act where you are allowing God to speak to you. Even though it feels like, from the outside, aren’t you the one saying everything? It’s like a one way from you to God, rather than God to you in some sense.
00:56:55Sonya: I think of praying as very much having a dimension of invitation to it. And that actually makes me think of an occultist principle, which I think has some overlap with Christian demonology too — that to be possessed, you have to invite the demon. And I think that’s true of good spiritual energy also. And that’s part of what conversion is, right? It’s opening yourself up to let God in.
00:57:37Henry: Yeah, exactly. And the whole thing about emptying ourselves — but that’s not the end, right. The end is because we need to be filled with, in this case, the Holy Spirit. It doesn’t stop with just getting rid of everything, but there’s the positive aspect.
00:57:58Sonya: And there’s humility in it too. The “I don’t know everything and I’m not complete without the grace.”
00:58:13Henry: Yeah, because it’s an action we take that feels like inaction for people in society who love to act. It feels like the worst thing to do from the outside, right? You’re just sitting there not doing anything. But we’re not sure where to go. And you’re right, it is a humble stance of listening.
00:58:49Sonya: And there’s such an emphasis in prayer on aligning oneself with God’s will and striving to do God’s will, despite our imperfection, our fallen state. And it’s appealing to God for help too. Help me please, help me try to meet your standards and try to be what you want.
00:59:23Henry: And there’s a verse that talks about how to know someone is to know their mind. And the way we do that is by interfacing with the Spirit in doing so. That’s literally how we communicate. And I think we can also talk about intercession, where we don’t necessarily always pray for ourselves, but we pray for other people too. And that’s powerful, right? Being able to spend not just the time, but the thinking and — I think about how we use the term prayer in the general sense now. It sounds very — it has lost its power in some sense.
01:00:24Sonya: That it’s used casually.
01:00:26Henry: Yeah. Or online and stuff. When someone’s like “praying for you,” how do you take that?
01:00:44Sonya: Yeah. What does that actually mean concretely that they’re doing?
01:00:52Sonya: Whenever I personally tell someone that I’m praying for them, I make sure to actually take a moment and pray. And I do it as much for my own sake. When I say that I’m praying for somebody else, I want it to be true in a not casual way, in a ritual and sacred way.
01:01:22Henry: Yeah, that we actually believe that God listens, right. Otherwise, why are we doing it?
01:01:33Sonya: It’s not just that I’m thinking of you. I can think about somebody and wish them well without actually praying for them. And then I try to do both, or it’s almost natural for both to happen.
01:01:50Henry: Yeah, prayer itself isn’t even an isolated action, I guess. It comes from a certain place and also leads to certain things after.
01:02:09Sonya: Thinking about patterns again and praying for God’s will, or praying to take on God’s will, or to embody or continue or enact — be the instrument of. Maybe that’s the better way to think of it: “I want to be your tool.” Thinking of that as — allow me to manifest the patterns that are what you want. Or what is right, what is virtuous, holy.
01:02:51Henry: Through meditating on —
01:02:54Sonya: Yeah, or asking for God’s help in doing that. And that makes me think of what you were saying about communion earlier, that it’s a remembrance, a continuation.
01:03:09Henry: Yeah. That’s interesting that each prayer, every time we pray, reminds us of all the other times that we’ve prayed. And also just thinking about all the Christians throughout history.
01:03:22Sonya: It’s like being part of sustaining that pattern. That has sustained itself, that is almost justified at least in part by its ability to continue.
The Invisible Church
01:03:31Sonya: This actually makes me think of Screwtape. One of the things that Screwtape says is — and Screwtape is a deputy of Satan, as you may know, but I don’t know if other people potentially listening to this would know that.
01:04:00Sonya: So he says to his minion that he’s instructing: “One of our great allies at present is the church itself. Do not misunderstand me. I do not mean the church as we see her spread out through all time and space and rooted in eternity, terrible as an army with banners. That, I confess, is a spectacle which makes our boldest tempts uneasy. But fortunately it is quite invisible to these humans.”
01:04:24Sonya: And I love that image of the church. And I think Lewis probably means the Catholic church specifically, but I think of it as — I have an expansive notion of the church as consisting of all Christians.
01:04:44Henry: Yeah, I mean, he is Protestant, so I’m assuming —
01:04:48Sonya: Oh, I thought Lewis was Catholic. I guess I’m mixing him up with —
01:04:52Henry: Or Anglican, so yeah.
01:04:56Henry: But I don’t think that changes much honestly.
01:05:01Sonya: I love that image of the church as being spread out through all time and space and rooted in eternity. How beautiful that is.
01:05:13Henry: Yeah. That’s amazing.
01:05:16Sonya: It makes me think of a tesseract or something — this great omnipresent pattern that’s turning through dimensions that we can’t even see.
01:05:32Henry: And even his point that the average Christian, let alone person, doesn’t know that. We’re not aware. Did he say it was invisible?
01:05:47Sonya: Yeah, I think he says “invisible to these humans.” But what’s interesting is that it’s invisible, but we’re also part of it. We participate in it.
01:06:04Henry: Yeah. And actually we do use that phrase sometimes. I’ve heard that a lot — “the invisible church.” And it does refer to what you were saying, that this is all Christians at this time — that is the invisible church. Even if they don’t necessarily go to church at the moment or people that maybe they will be Christian or whatever.
01:06:31Sonya: Yeah, having it extend through all time is an amazing notion. And “rooted in eternity.” Because I know Lewis has a really interesting conception of time. Let me see — I’m trying to find another quote that explains it really well. Oh, okay. Is it right if I read another quote?
01:07:01Henry: Yeah, no, go ahead.
01:07:02Sonya: So this is Screwtape speaking again. He says: “But you must remember that he” — referring to the human — “takes time for an ultimate reality. He supposes that the Enemy” — and the Enemy refers to God, because this is a devil speaking — “like himself, sees some things as present, remembers others as past, and anticipates others as future, or even if he believes that the Enemy does not see things that way, yet in his heart of hearts he regards this as a peculiarity of the Enemy’s mode of perception. He doesn’t really think, though he would say he did, that things as the Enemy sees them are things as they are.”
01:07:36Sonya: “If you tried to explain to him that men’s prayers today are one of the innumerable coordinates with which the Enemy harmonizes the weather of tomorrow, he would reply that then the Enemy always knew men were going to make those prayers and if so, they did not pray freely but were predestined to do so. And he would add that the weather on a given day can be traced back through its causes to the original creation of matter. So that the whole thing, both on the human and on the material side, is given from the word go.”
01:08:17Sonya: “What he ought to say, of course, is obvious to us: that the problem of adapting the particular weather to the particular prayers is merely the appearance at two points in his temporal mode of perception of the total problem of adapting the whole spiritual universe to the whole corporeal universe; that creation in its entirety operates at every point of space and time, or rather that their kind of consciousness forces them to encounter the whole, self-consistent creative act as a series of successive events.”
01:08:50Sonya: “Why that creative act leaves room for their free will is the problem of problems, the secret behind the Enemy’s nonsense about love. How it does so is no problem at all; for the Enemy does not foresee the humans making their free contributions in the future, but sees them doing so in his unbounded now. And obviously to watch a man doing something is not to make him do it.”
01:09:15Sonya: I thought this was a really interesting and beautiful way of communicating a being outside of time. Time being within God or a manifestation of God, rather than something — we are inside of time, but God is not. And that really breaks our intuition in a way. It breaks a lot of our normal conceptions about how things operate.
01:09:48Sonya: And that makes it really hard to communicate because — how do you talk about something that is outside of, or bigger than, or contains what you are? That’s one of the big mysteries, right? How do we understand something that is beyond us, that we are inside of?
01:10:13Sonya: I think of it as being nested. That’s how I try to make it work within the limits of my human cognition.
01:10:25Henry: It’s even just amazing that we can even try to do that in some sense.
01:10:32Sonya: Yeah, it’s a privilege. It’s a gift to us.
01:10:37Henry: I actually do see now that I think that’s also a curse too. If that’s something that keeps you up at night.
01:10:44Sonya: Oh, definitely. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about time, about causality, the problem of free will for sure. I’m not even really sure what free will is supposed to mean.
01:11:06Henry: Yeah, I don’t know either. I think my view now is only that no one is making me make decisions — forcing me against my will.
01:11:20Sonya: Sort of interpersonal free will.
01:11:25Henry: Yeah, it’s just — there isn’t someone that has a knife at you saying “you should do this.” Everything I’m choosing, I wanted to. But it doesn’t mean that my preferences and all — that’s just how I was. No coercion. I think that’s all it means.
Grace and the Fall
01:11:55Sonya: Where I am currently at — and I may change my mind about this — but where I’m currently at with this puzzle is that God makes us as we are. And it seems to me that a reason for sending Jesus to absolve us of our sins is that God knows that we are as we are.
01:12:26Sonya: And maybe doesn’t want to punish us for expressing our natures and gives us this opportunity to be ourselves, as imperfect and flawed as we are, and still be received into grace. It’s the great mercy.
01:12:49Sonya: That’s what allows us to — God gives us free will so that we can choose to turn to God. But also forgives us for all the choices we make to turn away.
01:13:08Sonya: I see that as the resolution to the great unfairness of — I mean, the story of the fall is incredibly unfair, right? You place this tree and then tell them not to touch the tree. But of course, because of their natures, it’s going to be absolutely irresistible to them.
01:13:27Sonya: I feel so tentative and awkward about making any certain description of how I think this works because I could be wrong. I’m probably — I almost am certain that I’m wrong. At the very least due to just the limits of human cognition.
01:13:56Henry: Yeah, no, I agree. And it’s funny because even though that is a struggle that people have been dealing with for a long time throughout history, but also personally, we still choose to believe in this. And I think for me, a lot of it is not how it started, but where it ended. In terms of the resurrection and everything, it’s like — the answer, assuming that was a problem in the first place, is appealing enough to me to continue trying to figure that out. But also to say that I still believe. I’m still willing to say I believe anyway. By faith.
01:14:45Sonya: I think one dimension of faith is believing in each other, in a very prosaic way — believing that other people exist and are real and have their own minds and their own spirits and souls. Because as a singular subjective organism, I don’t have any definitive proof that you exist. This is the p-zombie concept or the simulation idea. How do we really know? And I think it’s faith. We don’t really know. It’s faith.
01:15:28Henry: That’s okay.
01:15:29Sonya: Yeah, it’s all right. And it works pretty well. I don’t need to have a scientific type of certainty.
01:15:44Sonya: It’s okay to accept that we’re limited.
01:15:47Henry: Right. And I feel like that is the point of our faith and prayer — it’s almost a reminder that we are the creature. We are not the creator.
01:15:59Sonya: Something I’ve been thinking about lately is that each aspect of the creation, at least as I see it, seems to require every other aspect of the creation. Everything hangs together. Everything is all part of the same whole. And without any element of it, it wouldn’t be the whole.
01:16:30Henry: Yeah. I can tie that back to the whole emergence and not flattening things. But was there anything particular you were —
01:16:39Sonya: No, I think that’s what I mean. The whole is the whole. It contains everything. And it wouldn’t be the whole if everything weren’t everything. But everything is everything. I don’t know, it sounds banal, but that’s what I’ve been thinking about. Everything is everything. Wow.
No Ordinary People
01:17:05Henry: I wonder what that means. I did start — I’m starting to read Orthodoxy by Chesterton.
01:17:16Sonya: Oh.
01:17:17Henry: I just started. I read the intro and a little bit of the first chapter, and he actually talks about thisness too, in some sense. I’m not exactly familiar with him, but he’s super into paradox. And he has this thing where he thinks the main problem in terms of this book and why he wrote it is how can we be astonished at the world, but then also live in it.
01:17:34Henry: And I think that’s maybe going all the way back to what we were talking about with magic and salience — all that. It’s almost like this world has some supernatural element or something that just makes us in awe. But also if we live in it, the day to day just feels like whatever.
01:18:04Henry: And he’s trying to say that somehow these normal but awe-inspiring things are the things that help him realize that Christianity is what makes all that make sense to him. He has this story, which is a geography thing, but he’s saying that there’s this yachtsman who tried to go out to the sea. And he came back and found England and he thought that it was a new island, but then he realized later it’s the same place.
01:18:36Henry: And again, I don’t get the geography there, but I’m assuming he’s just saying that you went out to sea, you found a different place and you thought it was the new world or something. And then you realize you’re actually just back where you were. But because it looked different to you.
01:18:53Henry: So he’s saying other people might be like, “aren’t you a fool?” That’s just — you’re just wrong. And he’s like, no, that’s a great mistake. But what he said: “What could be more delightful than to have in the same few minutes all the terrors of going abroad, combined with the security of coming home?”
01:19:23Sonya: Oh, yes. That’s a great parable maybe. Because that reminds me of the angels saying “be not afraid.”
01:19:41Henry: Oh, yeah. When they met Joseph, or you mean —
01:19:47Sonya: There might be multiple. I think Gabriel, doesn’t Gabriel also say to Mary, “be not afraid” or something along those lines?
01:19:55Henry: Yeah. When Christ — yeah. When they came, they’re like, “what are you doing here?” Yeah, I think —
01:19:59Sonya: I think it comes up multiple times. The idea being — any encounter with the transcendent is terrifying as well as glorious. It’s just so beyond, so big. I don’t have words for it, which is the nature of it.
01:20:25Henry: Yeah. And it’s funny because he’s like — the only peculiar reason I mentioned that person is because I am that person.
01:20:35Sonya: That’s definitely how I feel about having found faith again after a long time in the wilderness, as it were, or a long time as an atheist. I don’t really believe in any different things. I believe in very different things about those things.
01:20:56Sonya: Now I read about physics and we really don’t understand what the fabric of reality is. We have some models that seem to describe its behavior pretty well, but say the answer to “why is there something and not nothing” — we have not progressed at all on that question. We understand much more about what the something that is does, but we have no idea why there is something.
01:21:42Sonya: And I see the answer to that question as being God. And that feels unfalsifiable to me, because I think we came up with the concept of God in response to the reality of God. I think we figured out that God is required by the creation. The creation necessitates the creator. I don’t know. I again feel very tentative about this, but it’s where I’m currently at in terms of trying to understand creation.
01:22:20Henry: Yeah. For me, even a lot of explanations, I basically just see them more in retrospect. There’s a lot of proofs and all these things. And I believe them because I already believe in God, but I don’t know if I would necessarily use that to try to convince anyone. I don’t know if I even would try that at all at this point. It’s more just a testimony of — this is why I believe. And maybe you can take something from that. But I’m not gonna try to convince you with supposedly objective truth. Rather, I would just tell you my experience and you might get something.
01:23:00Sonya: I like the model of witness, as opposed to — I think apologetics has a role also, it’s useful to me anyway. But in terms of — my respect for people who try to convert other people has gone up, even though I think it certainly seems like a thankless task to me. And I’m not even sure that trying to convert other people is the right way to go about converting other people. I don’t know, but it seems really hard.
01:23:40Henry: Yeah. I mean, I think it depends on what “trying” means and how you go about doing it. I think I talked about this with Nadia too, but we have that term “evangelism.” And there is some sense where everything I do and as all Christians, all of our actions are towards that goal.
01:24:02Henry: But then it doesn’t mean that I’m trying to come up with tricks or something to try to get someone to believe something. If I say the right things — just be yourself. Living your life in the way that, as you said, honors God, that’s praying. And you’re thinking about how to do his will. That is how we help people.
01:24:24Sonya: And I try to accept that it’s ultimately up to God and it’s up to the other person.
01:24:33Henry: Us. Yeah.
01:24:35Sonya: I can be part of the pattern. I can be the puzzle piece that I am. But I can’t do more than that. A phrase that I really like is “all that you can do is as much as you can.”
01:24:51Sonya: I think it applies in every domain — it’s very easy to look at yourself and the scale mismatch between one’s own efforts and the problems in the world, or just the immensity of the world. I am just a drop of water in a wave. And how I deal with that is just — yep, I am just a drop of water in a wave. And it’s okay. It is what it is.
01:25:28Henry: Yeah. And then also for our faith, God still loves us even though whatever that is. And I think of that parable about the seeds, right. We are the people putting the seeds in the ground and the ground is all the different people that you’re meeting or talking to. And so we’re not the ones that make that plant grow. God’s the one that does that, but we can at least say it, right. We can preach or whatever word it is, but you can tell your story and people can take that as they can.
01:26:10Henry: And we, I think from experience and just seeing online or whatever it is, we all know — and also just thinking about ourselves — I don’t think I would want someone to tell me about what they think the world is like in certain ways. I think just being, as you said, honest about what you think about it — people can see that you’re being sincere. Maybe that’s the word.
01:26:42Sonya: I like what you said about how you can attest to what your experiences are. And there’s a humility in that also. What I can offer you is what I have. I can tell people about how I feel and experience God in my own life, but I can’t be God. It would be absurdly hubristic for me to think that.
01:27:16Henry: Yeah. And also, I feel like that goes against what we’re even saying in some sense. The whole point is I didn’t come to this all on my own either. So why would I expect me to somehow bring other people? Like it was all me — it definitely wasn’t like that.
01:27:40Sonya: Thinking back on the idea of the church spread throughout time. And I hope — I don’t have any real rational reason to think this, but it would make me happy so I hope it — which is that I hope that everyone is brought into the harmony of salvation in the end.
01:28:06Sonya: I don’t know if that’s real. I don’t know if that’s true. But I do hope it. Our mortal lives are finite. And I do think that there is something infinite — that there is an infinite life of the spirit and that it contains more, or that there are more possibilities there than what we experience here on earth.
01:28:35Sonya: Or — I don’t know, here on earth, the division between earth and heaven is not necessarily a physical division, I guess, but I don’t know.
01:28:45Henry: Right. There’s a lot of ways to think about heaven.
01:28:53Sonya: Oh, that makes me think again of the idea of the resonance on multiple levels. Maybe heaven just exists on every scale, in different ways. That seems plausible to me.
01:29:08Henry: Yeah. I mean, just one simple thing would be — we talk about heaven on earth, as in maybe you can help to bring heaven on earth as a Christian. But then there’s also this ultimate — I still believe in the second coming where Christ will come back and that heaven. But you could also think of being a Christian and that being on your mind — that I live in light of the fact that if I know I’m going there, then that’s how I should change my actions and how I can affect society because of that shift.
01:29:37Henry: Another CS Lewis quote I read, from the essay “The Weight of Glory” — the end of that is so good. But yeah, it’s basically about the importance of each person in some sense. And he says: “It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are in some degree helping each other to one or other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all our dealings with one another — all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal.”
01:30:46Sonya: I like that. That’s the — that makes me think also of what you related about the Chesterton book that you just started. The ordinary is sacred.
01:31:03Sonya: That also ties into the idea of ceaseless prayer, and wanting to be aligning one’s heart with God at all times, in all of our activities.
01:31:22Henry: Yeah. That is the ideal. Why would I wanna separate that if it’s — especially if it’s that.
01:31:31Sonya: Everything that we’ve experienced is part of the creation, including ourselves. Which is just astounding.
01:31:40Henry: Yeah, it’s just — when you finally contemplate some of this stuff. And yeah, it’s very — maybe it seems abstract, but for finally not distracting ourselves and getting into questions that we might not have the answers to, it helps you appreciate life.
01:32:01Sonya: Something in one of our earlier conversations I mentioned — that as an atheist, I saw all of these ideas as being metaphorical or symbolic. And I think that’s true to some extent. But I just didn’t take the ideas seriously, and I didn’t think about what they really meant. And I’m glad that now I’m able to. I’m grateful. Which I guess — happy almost Thanksgiving.
01:32:37Henry: Yeah, that is interesting. I feel that even for things that are not what I consider Orthodox belief. Things that just people believe — there’s always a lot of things that we dismiss. I think that’s why I say it goes both ways. For a person that’s an atheist, they might dismiss all religion. And then religious people — I don’t know if I’m doing it because I think I’m afraid I’m gonna change my beliefs or anything, but it’s like, why even look into that at all?
01:33:10Henry: And now it’s more like I’m willing to engage in that because I see that, first, that actually is a way people express their spirituality. It helps me understand them and myself too. But I don’t know — what does it take for someone to not dismiss Christianity?
01:33:39Sonya: That’s a good question. Maybe that’s part of the call to love our neighbors — to do what you mentioned, to try and understand.
01:33:51Sonya: It’s really hard. I think for me, I’m able to keep trying because I know that I’m forgiven for my failures.
01:34:08Henry: Although that in itself was something you had to believe or understand. Unless that was already something you did believe even when you were an atheist.
The Leap of Faith
01:34:21Sonya: I guess I didn’t. When I was an atheist, I didn’t see forgiveness as a possibility really. Or a necessity. And my path back to faith was very bumpy and jumpy. And I probably — I’m not sure that I would even say now that I understood what was happening. But I definitely didn’t understand and didn’t feel like I understood what was happening.
01:34:55Sonya: And it was confusing and scary. I felt the love of God before I had any idea what — I was just like, “What happened to me? I don’t — what is this?” And it was frightening to let myself think through it because I had this transcendent experience. And then I was afraid to lose it. I was like, “What if I really examine this intellectually and let myself question everything that’s happening here? Will I have to give it up again? Will it be gone?”
01:35:43Sonya: And eventually how I resolved that was — God has withstood even the fiercest questioning. And I don’t need to worry that I’m going to hurt God with my inquiry. Or maybe there is a sense in which I can hurt God with my inquiry, but I think God will be able to withstand it, and will be okay with me. God made me as I am, right? So I’m going to do what is in my nature to do.
01:36:19Sonya: And for me, that is trying to pick everything apart, trying to deconstruct it and understand what’s happening. And I feel like now I’ve come to terms more with the limits of that approach. And that’s been part of rediscovering faith — accepting that not everything can be deconstructed.
01:36:42Sonya: But I felt guilty and weird about trying to understand what I thought God even was. And it was kind of a semi-harrowing experience. I don’t want to say that it was — people have obviously been through things that are way harder. But it was — I felt dislocated. When you have a big shift in paradigm, you find everything else that you thought has to shift along with it.
01:37:26Henry: Right. It doesn’t fit or whatever.
01:37:31Henry: That’s — I don’t wanna say encouraging, but you’re still — you don’t even know really. The whole thing about feeling it before you even realized it, I think is the whole tacit thing. And the wanting to question but feeling guilty on doing it. That’s really interesting. But then later you gave yourself almost the permission to do so because you felt like God would forgive you if you were asking.
01:38:12Sonya: It was a dimension of the leap of faith. It was a weird kind of holding two things in my head at once: I’m not sure that what I’m experiencing is what it feels like it is, and I need to think about it in depth, to pick apart what I’m experiencing. But if it is true, then it’s okay for me to do that. Which is — I don’t know, a weird mixture of assumptions. I wasn’t sure whether I believed.
01:38:54Henry: Yeah. And I guess that surrender is the ultimate expression of faith where you’re not sure but you decide anyway. You live with that for that moment and see where it goes.
01:39:11Sonya: It’s funny. Now I feel totally secure in the idea of God existing and being manifest in my life and in everyone’s lives. And I find Christianity specifically much more mind-boggling. I feel more of that “decision to believe” aspect in Christianity now, where at first it was the idea of God being real that was really counter to everything that I had thought for a long time.
01:39:50Sonya: And now I feel like that is more — I don’t want to say that I don’t have doubt because I think everyone has doubt in various ways, and it’s part of being human, maybe.
01:40:05Henry: Yeah. Or wanting certainty, I think.
01:40:08Sonya: Yeah, “wanting certainty” — that’s a good way to put it. The nebulousness of certainty. Maybe once again, I feel like the concepts that I have at hand are in some way too small to encompass what I’m trying to understand. But again, I guess it circles back around to — well, that’s okay.
01:40:35Henry: Right, exactly. Language itself is also not exact and certain, but also — I mean, we wouldn’t be able to communicate if everything was exact anyway.
01:40:49Sonya: Yeah. How — oh my gosh. I’m not sure what communication would even be if we required exactness. Shared exactness requires sameness, maybe. I think maybe the closest we can get to that might be math, but even that is — there are lots of raging debates in mathematics.
01:41:15Henry: Yeah, I think for the everyday, sure. But then also the more exact and abstract something is, the less likely we will use it in the day to day to just talk.
01:41:30Sonya: It makes me think again of the mountain and the microscope. You can look at stones that make up a mountain, you can look at stones under a microscope, and you’re gonna see really different details on those different scales, but there is some essence, maybe, of nature.
01:41:50Henry: Oh, I — so, because I was listening to our first talk about when you first talked about coming back to faith, you mentioned that you didn’t remember what verse it was that might have helped with that. It was in First Corinthians. But it looks like it was First Corinthians one.
01:42:10Sonya: Yeah, I think so.
01:42:12Henry: It talks about the foolishness to the Greeks. Let me look at it again.
01:42:30Sonya: I suspect it was “Has God not made foolish the wisdom of the world?” I think it’s probably this whole 18 to 25 paragraph. “For the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom. And the weakness of God is stronger than human strength.”
01:42:49Henry: And that really resonated.
01:42:53Sonya: Yeah. I’m not sure why this passage in particular clicked so much. I still find it very resonant. But I don’t know why this was — maybe it was a combination of the right moment and —
01:43:13Sonya: I would just attribute it to God, for whatever reason.
01:43:19Henry: Yeah. But I mean, thinking about what we just said, I feel like it does relate to the whole doubt and certainty.
01:43:29Sonya: Yeah, the limits of knowledge, or at least the limits of human knowledge. Maybe what’s emblematic of this is that knowledge is a human concept and that it’s shaped around what it is for us to know — how we relate to knowing, what knowing feels like to us.
01:43:53Sonya: And I don’t think that it’s illegitimate to apply that concept to God or to conceive of God having knowledge. And I do think we are made in his image, as the teaching says. But I do also feel like, because God is beyond, is bigger, is all-encompassing, our concept of knowledge is going to miss things. It just can’t be what knowledge is to God.
01:44:30Sonya: But at the same time, I need the concept to be able to try and bridge that gap.
01:44:43Sonya: “For the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength.” And also, “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise; the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate.” It’s like — damn, that’s true.
01:44:59Sonya: Yes, you will.
01:45:01Henry: Happening a lot.
Holy Mystery
01:45:06Sonya: There’s just mystery. There is this transcendent, holy mystery that we are part of and that we confront. It’s a big part of our lives — the mystery of God. At least that is how I conceive of it.
01:45:31Sonya: It’s also — I feel like once I reconverted, I started rapidly losing my ability to communicate with atheists. At least about these things. My mindset changed so much that — I should try to have an extended conversation about this again with an atheist, because I feel like I haven’t. I’ve had brief conversations, but not a really in-depth, “let’s hash it out where we disagree.”
01:46:08Henry: Oh, in that way.
01:46:12Sonya: It sounds like a very exhausting prospect, but it might be a useful exercise.
01:46:17Henry: Right. I’ve talked to a lot of atheists on this podcast, but we’re not arguing. We’re talking about things that we like talking about. So it’s still about faith, and I never had a problem with that. But we’re not like — I’m not saying “I believe and you don’t.” Yeah, I probably wouldn’t like that either.
01:46:40Sonya: I was thinking about mystery. And I’m not sure — I feel like my concept of mystery now might be something like “the unknown” in terms of a purely materialist, atheistic worldview. I don’t think that I believe in a different unknown from atheists. I think what I believe about that unknown is different. I see it as a manifestation of holy mystery as opposed to merely just stuff we haven’t figured out.
01:47:22Henry: Right. So you could even say it’s just both. I believe everything that you believe, but also this other thing.
01:47:29Sonya: Yeah, I believe in pretty much largely the same stuff that atheists believe, but I just believe that also that’s God.
01:47:39Henry: We were saying it’s not just that it’s not there. Maybe that relates to the whole — things that have — it’s dynamic. It has agency. The whole calling out to us.
01:47:53Sonya: I’m semi-okay — I don’t think I’m ever really gonna be okay with not knowing. That’s — pride is definitely one of my big struggles. Wanting certainty, wanting to know, wanting for myself to be an authority in an epistemic way and wanting to serve that role for myself.
01:48:18Sonya: And it’s probably always going to be a struggle. The notion that we all have our own crosses to bear. And it’s not easy. That’s the nature of bearing a cross — it’s not easy.
01:48:38Sonya: But that’s okay. It’s okay that it’s not easy and it’s okay that it’s painful and frustrating sometimes.
01:48:56Henry: Bonhoeffer says: “Faith alone is certainty. Everything but faith is subject to doubt. Jesus Christ alone is the certainty of faith.” I think that’s funny — “faith alone is certainty.”
01:49:36Sonya: That has a paradoxical bent to it.
01:49:41Henry: I mean, if I interpret the whole “everything but faith is subject to doubt” — that actually makes me think that it’s saying the only thing you can be certain of is that you have to have faith in something and you can’t doubt that.
01:49:54Sonya: Yeah. Oh, that makes me think of — our experiences of each other are contingent on faith. I have faith that you are real, that you are you.
01:50:13Henry: A machine or something. Yeah.
01:50:14Sonya: Or yeah, in some way, a facsimile. I think that you’re real, that you’re really Henry, that you’re really a person, that you have the same fullness of humanity that I do. That’s very much a —
01:50:35Henry: Even hearing you say that, it’s funny. It makes me feel good. Because I’m thinking that’s why we like it when we are acknowledged, right? When people recognize that — not just no one’s gonna say “we’re real,” but when people say our name. And I think that maybe goes back to Christ and God and how, the idea that he calls us by name, he knows us by name. And that personal aspect is so important to how we think about faith.
01:51:10Sonya: Yeah. And we get to be part of it. We get to take a step toward Jesus and be welcomed.
01:51:43Sonya: Wait, is Bonhoeffer Christian?
01:51:49Henry: Yeah. Dietrich Bonhoeffer.
01:51:57Sonya: Wait, this is not the band? Isn’t there a band called —
01:52:01Henry: Oh, you’re thinking of Bon Iver. No, totally different.
01:52:28Sonya: I think because I’ve heard Bon Iver so many times I was like, that’s the shape of those sounds.
01:52:38Sonya: I recently read an article and I think this is also why I made the connection — that was about Christianity in folk rock and how it’s vaguely invoked, but sort of danced around. There’s a lot of Christian iconography in folk rock, but not a lot of sincere profession of faith.
01:53:08Henry: In the lyrics or —
01:53:10Sonya: Yeah. I could send you this. I could probably find this article again.
01:53:18Henry: Yeah. It is interesting thinking about how people express their faith through art and music.
01:53:26Sonya: Yeah, so this article was called “The Vague Christianity of Folk Rock.” I don’t even remember how I ended up reading this. But that was why I was surprised. I was like, “oh wait, so why didn’t that come up in this article?” But the reason why is because I was mishearing you.
01:53:47Henry: That’s funny. Yeah, Bonhoeffer is a pretty interesting Christian.
01:54:02Sonya: It’s very comforting to talk to other Christians who have — there’s a shared foundation of ideas. So maybe it feels comforting in the way that it’s always comforting to talk to someone who has all this shared context with you.
01:54:27Henry: Yeah, but I guess talking to someone about something like faith is — I feel like it’s more special than just “I don’t know, you like the same band or food.” I mean, I know that people act like that, that becomes its own religion too.
01:54:47Sonya: Yeah, but — sometimes I feel like, we believe that God is real, that Jesus really did die. And as you said, that there will be a second coming. And these are very transcendent things to deal with. So it is different. Or at least I feel that it is different.
01:55:20Sonya: There is some way in which there is a sacramental aspect to the conversation when it dwells on these topics.
01:55:31Sonya: So, on a very prosaic, not-so-sacramental note, I do have to walk my dog soon because it’s been getting dark so early that we have to walk the dog at around four instead of later. Usually we were doing it in the evening before, but had to move it.
01:55:50Henry: Oh yeah, we’ve been talking for a while.
01:55:56Sonya: As always, it was an interesting and thought-provoking and also just spiritually nourishing conversation.
01:56:04Henry: That too. I think that’s — edifying. I love that word. I think that’s what you’re getting at. Maybe when you get to talk to another person of faith, it just makes you feel better.
01:56:20Sonya: Yeah. I feel like this is part of what God wants — or maybe what we’re called to do. I guess I’m very neurotic about this right now. Trying to talk about what I think is happening while at the same time feeling like I am inadequate to express it. Maybe with more practice, I’ll come to terms with that, but this is still pretty new to me.
01:56:55Sonya: It still feels self-conscious.
01:56:58Henry: Yeah. Maybe that might work better. But yeah, just the idea of fellowship and even seeing Christ in other people and encouraging one another to continue on the race, if you want to use that word. So yeah, it’s always great.
01:57:17Sonya: Christ told us to love God and love your neighbor as yourself and follow the commandments. And the practice of loving your neighbor — when it feels like it’s working, it feels really good. And sometimes even when it’s hard, it can feel good. But it’s nice that sometimes it feels like it comes naturally.
01:57:48Henry: Yeah, for sure.
01:57:51Sonya: I guess we’re blessed that God gives us a task that we can succeed at as much as we can fail at it, or that we get to experience both.
01:58:07Henry: Yeah. And sometimes it’s enjoyable even in this life. I think that’s the other thing. Because I think you talk about dread or work being something you dread and not enjoying anything.
01:58:22Sonya: Yeah. God, in his infinite wisdom — I do think it’s real. The infinite wisdom thing is real. And none of this is a coincidence. The way that the faith has developed, the way that we try to embody it, or the way that we do embody it, in all our flaws — it’s this beautiful, sacred pattern that stretches through all of time. Which is incredible.
01:58:56Henry: Yeah. Even if we can’t see it, we have faith in it, I suppose.
01:59:00Sonya: Yeah, we’re a part of it. That’s so mind-boggling — that that transcendent thing is something that we are a piece of.