The Mythic Masculine #84 | Matrimony, Culture & The Heart's Work - Stephen Jenkinson
My guest today is once again Stephen Jenkinson, a culture activist, teacher and author, and principal instructor of The Orphan Wisdom School, co-founded with his wife Nathalie Roy. He has Master’s degrees from Harvard University (Theology) and the University of Toronto (Social Work).
The School, though now formally closed, has made an incredibly significant mark on my life and Stephen continues to tour and teach all over the world. I’ve had the wild good fortune to have collaborated with Stephen in numerous ways, including producing the short film Lost Nation Road, as well as being part of the team architecting The Scriptorium - an Orphan Wisdom online archive.
His most recent book Matrimony: Ritual, Culture and the Heart’s Work, is the subject of our conversation today.
In a time when many couples are opting out of marriage altogether, sensing that the modern wedding has often become a hollow performance, Stephen offers a different perspective. He suggests that “wedding” and “matrimony” are not interchangeable at all. One is largely engineered so that nothing really happens; the other, when approached as a deity, can be an alchemical ritual, where vows are enactments and blessings might bind all who attend with real consequence.
Through personal stories from the trenches, Stephen reminds us that matrimony, at its core, is a radical act of citizenship: a cultural undertaking where love is asked to nourish more than the couple themselves, and where village emerges from the willingness to place life at the center.
LINKS
* Stephen Jenkinson Official Website
* Matrimony - Ritual, Culture and the Heart’s Work
SHOW NOTES
* 00:01 — Ian introduces Stephen Jenkinson and frames the conversation around his new book Matrimony: Ritual, Culture, and the Heart’s Work.
* 00:02 — Stephen names the modern wedding as a hollow performance engineered so that “nothing really happens.”
* 00:03 — Ian describes matrimony as a radical act of citizenship where love is asked to serve culture, not just the couple.
* 00:05 — Stephen recounts learning to understand death as a deity, a presence requiring etiquette and literacy.
* 00:06 — He draws the parallel: matrimony, too, is a neglected deity — an ancestral presence asking something of us.
* 00:07 — Ian speaks about how witnessing Stephen’s ceremonies reshaped his understanding of what a wedding can be.
* 00:08 — Discussion of village-making: thresholds like death and matrimony as visitations where culture has a chance to appear.
* 00:15 — Stephen distinguishes ritual from celebration and explains why most weddings are not rituals at all.
* 00:16 — He clarifies the differences between weddings, marriage, and matrimony — three undertakings often collapsed into one.
* 00:17 — Exploration of the etymology: matrimony rooted in mother — the repertoire of mothering culture.
* 00:18 — Matrimony as a repertoire of culture-mothering, not dependent on having biological children.
* 00:41 — Stephen describes “the sacraments of trade” and how ancestral presence is elevated in a true matrimonial exchange.
* 00:42 — Ian reflects on death and matrimony as moments when life, not the individual, is placed at the center.
* 00:51 — Ian describes how village-mindedness appears through threshold events: birth, death, love, and the guidance of community.
* 01:04 — Stephen shares what it meant to be a “spirit lawyer” for matrimony, serving the deity rather than the couple.
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