“All the natural movements of the soul are controlled by laws analogous to those of physical gravity. Grace is the only exception.” … “It is necessary to uproot oneself. To cut down the tree and make of it a cross, and then to carry it every day.” … “I have to imitate God who infinitely loves finite things in that they are finite things.” … “To know that what is most precious is not rooted in existence—that is beautiful. Why? It projects the soul beyond time.”(Simone Weil, Gravity & Grace)“That's how the figure of Christ comes into this idea of the madness of love. It's that kind of mad, self emptying act completely. And it's the  one thing, she says, it's the only thing that means that you  are able to love properly. Because to love properly, and therefore to be just properly, you have to love like Christ does. Which is love to the extent that you, that you empty yourself and, you know, die on a cross.” (Deborah Casewell, from this episode)This is the third installment of a short series on How to Read Simone Weil—as the Mystic, the Activist, and the Existentialist.This week, Evan Rosa invites Deborah Casewell, Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Chester, author of Monotheism & Existentialism, and Co-Director of the Simone Weil Research Network in the U.K.—to explore how to read Simone Weil the Existentialist.Together they discuss how her life of extreme self-sacrifice importantly comes before her philosophy; how to understand her central, but often confusing concept of decreation; her approach to beauty as the essential human response for finding meaning in a world of force and necessity; the madness of Jesus Christ as the only way to engage in struggle for justice and how she connects that to the Greek tragedy of Antigone, which is the continuation of the Oedipus story; and, the connection between love, justice, and living a life of madness.About Simone WeilSimone Weil (1909–1943) was a French philosopher, mystic, and political activist. She’s the author of Gravity and Grace, The Need for Roots, and Waiting for God—among many other essays, letters, and notes.About Deborah CasewellDeborah Casewell is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Chester, author of Monotheism & Existentialism, and is Co-Director of the Simone Weil Research Network in the U.K.Show NotesSimone Weil’s Gravity & Grace (1947) (Available Online)Deborah Casewell’s Monotheism & ExistentialismSimone de Beauvoir’s anecdote in Memories of a Beautiful Daughter: “Shouldn’t we also get people’s minds, not just their bodies? Weil: “You’ve never been hungry have you?”Leon Trotsky yells violently at WeilThe odd idolizing of Weil without paying attention to her writing”You get a kind of, as you say, a kind of odd idolization of her, or a sense in which  you can't then interact so critically   or systematically with her philosophy, because her figure stands in the way so much, and the kind of the respect that people have.”Anti-Semitism despite JewishnessSimone Weil’s relationship to food: an unhealthy role model“She’d reject anything that wasn’t perfect.”Extreme germophobeExpression of solidarity with the unfortunateHer life comes before her philosophy. Being, you might say, comes before thinking.Weil’s life of extreme self-sacrifice as “mad”—alienating, insane, strange to the outside world.“ I think an essential part of, to an essential part of understanding her is to understand that   world is kind of structured and  set up in such a way that it runs without God, without the supernatural, God's kind of abdicated through the act of creation. And as a result, the universe operates through necessity and through force. So left to its own devices, the universe, I think, tends towards crushing people.”Abandonment vs abdicationPeople possess power and ability and action—a tension between activity and passivityWeil’s Marxism and theory of labor and workActivity becomes sustained passivityConsent, power, and the social dynamics of force and necessityI think she sees the best human existence is to be in a state of obedience instead. And so what you have to do is relinquish power over people.The complexity of human relationships“She was a very individual person … a singular, individual life.”The Need for Roots“And this is what I do like about Simone Weil—is that she's always happy to let contradictions exist. And so when she describes human nature and the needs of the soul, they're contradictory. They all contradict each other. It's freedom and obedience.”Creating dualismsShe is a dualistSimone Weil on Beauty and Decreation”Decreation is essentially your way to exist in the world ruled by force and necessity without succumbing  to force and necessity, because in a way there's less  of you to succumb to force and necessity.”Platonic idea of MetaxuWeil on the human experience of beauty—” people need beautiful things and they need experiences of beauty in order to exist in the world, fundamentally… if this world is ruled by force and necessity.”The unity of the transcendentals of beauty and truth and goodness—anchored in GodWeil’s PlatonismWeil as religious existentialist, as opposed to French atheistic existentialist“ For her, God is the ultimate reality, but also God is love. And so the goal of human existence, I think, is to return to God and consent to God. That's the goal of human life.”“What are you paying attention to?”The madness of ChristThe struggle for justice“Only a few people have this desire for justice, this madness to love.”Existentialism and Humanism: “Sartre says that  man is nothing but what he makes of himself.”Making oneself an example“The real supernatural law, which is mad and unreasonable, and it doesn't try to make accommodations and get on with the world and deal with tricky situations. It's just mad.”Simone Weil on Antigone and the continuation of the Oedipus storySummary of the Greek tragedy, Antigone“And so Antigone says, the justice that I owe is not to the city. It's not so that the city can, you know, continue its life and move on. The justice that I owe is to the supernatural law, to these more important primordial laws that actually govern the  life and death situations and the situation of your soul as well. And that's why she does what she does. She's obedient to the unwritten law rather than the written law.”“The love of God and the justice of God is always going to be mad in the eyes of the world.””The spirit of justice is nothing other than the supreme and perfect flower of the madness of love.”The mad, self-emptying love of Christ“That's how the figure of Christ comes into this idea of the madness of love. It's that kind of mad, self emptying act completely. And it's the  one thing, she says, it's the only thing that means that you  are able to love properly. Because to love properly, and therefore to be just properly, you have to love like Christ does. Which is love to the extent that you, that you empty yourself and, you know, die on a cross.”Does Weil suggest an unhealthy desire to suffer?“ It hurls one into risks one cannot run. If one has given one's heart to anything at all that belongs to this world. Um, and the outcome to which the madness of love led Christ is, after all, no recommendation for it.”“But if the order of the universe is a wise order, there must sometimes be moments when, from the point of view of earthly reason, only the madness of love is reasonable. Such moments can only be those when, as today, mankind has become mad from want of love. Is it certain today that the madness of love may not be capable of providing the unhappy masses, hungry in body and soul, with a food far easier for them to digest than our inspirations to a less lofty source? So then, being what we are, is it certain that we are at our post in the camp of justice?”“ From a loftier view, only the madness of love is reasonable.”“Only the madness of love can be the kind of love that actually helps people in the world. Fundamentally, that people, even though they know it's mad, and they find it mad, and they would sometimes rather not see it, they need that kind of love, and they need people who love in that kind of way. Even if it's not the majority, people still  need that. And so in some way, the way in which  she is, and the way in which she sees Christ being, is indispensable. Even though the path that you have to go down has nothing to recommend, as she says, in the eyes of the reasonable world, nothing to recommend it. It's the only just thing to do. It's the only just and loving thing to do in the end.”Production NotesThis podcast featured Deborah CasewellEdited and Produced by Evan RosaHosted by Evan RosaProduction Assistance by Macie Bridge, Alexa Rollow, Emily Brookfield, and Zoë HalabanA Production of the Yale Center for Faith & Culture at Yale Divinity School https://faith.yale.edu/aboutSupport For the Life of the World podcast by giving to the Yale Center for Faith & Culture: https://faith.yale.edu/give

“What are you going through?” This was one of the central animating questions in Simone Weil’s thought that pushed her beyond philosophy into action. Weil believed that genuinely asking this question of the other, particularly the afflicted other, then truly listening and prayerfully attending, would move us toward an enactment of justice and love.Simone Weil believed that any suffering that can be ameliorated, should be.In this episode, Part 2 of our short series on How to Read Simone Weil, Cynthia Wallace (Associate Professor of English at St. Thomas More College at the University of Saskatchewan), and author of The Literary Afterlives of Simone Weil: Feminism, Justice, and the Challenge of Religion and Evan Rosa discuss the risky self-giving way of Simone Weil; her incredible literary influence, particularly on late 20th century feminist writers; the possibility of redemptive suffering; the morally complicated territory of self-sacrificial care and the way that has traditionally fallen to women and minorities; what it means to make room and practicing hospitality for the afflicted other; hunger; the beauty of vulnerability; and that grounding question for Simone Weil political ethics, “What are you going through?”We’re in our second episode of a short series exploring How to Read Simone Weil. She’s the author of Gravity and Grace, The Need for Roots, and Waiting for God—among many other essays, letters, and notes—and a deep and lasting influence that continues today.In this series, we’re exploring Simone Weil the Mystic, Simone Weil the Activist, Simone Weil the Existentialist. And what we’ll see is that so much of her spiritual, political, and philosophical life, are deeply unified in her way of being and living and dying.And on that note, before we go any further, I need to issue a correction from our previous episode in which I erroneously stated that Weil died in France. And I want to thank subscriber and listener Michael for writing and correcting me.Actually she died in England in 1943, having ambivalently fled France in 1942 when it was already under Nazi occupation—first to New York, then to London to work with the Free French movement and be closer to her home.And as I went back to fix my research, I began to realize just how important her place of death was. She died in a nursing home outside London. In Kent, Ashford to be precise. She had become very sick, and in August 1943 was moved to the Grosvenor Sanitorium.The manner and location of her death matter because it’s arguable that her death by heart failure was not a self-starving suicide (as the coroner reported), but rather, her inability to eat was a complication rising from tuberculosis, combined with her practice of eating no more than the meager rations her fellow Frenchmen lived on under Nazi occupation.Her biographer Richard Rees wrote: "As for her death, whatever explanation one may give of it will amount in the end to saying that she died of love.In going back over the details of her death, I found a 1977 New York Times article by Elizabeth Hardwick, and I’ll quote at length, as it offers a very fitting entry into this week’s episode on her life of action, solidarity, and identification with and attention to the affliction of others.“Simone Weil, one of the most brilliant, and original minds of 20th century France, died at the age of 34 in a nursing home near London. The coroner issued a verdict of suicide, due to voluntary starvation—an action undertaken at least in part out of wish not to eat more than the rations given her compatriots in France under the German occupation. The year of her death was 1943.“The willed deprivation of her last period was not new; indeed refusal seems to have been a part of her character since infancy. What sets her apart from our current ascetics with their practice of transcendental meditation, diet, vegetarianism, ashram simplicities, yoga is that with them the deprivations and rigors‐are undergone for the pay‐off—for tranquility, for thinness, for the hope of a long life—or frequently, it seems, to fill the hole of emptiness so painful to the narcissist. With Simone Well it was entirely the opposite.“It was her wish, or her need, to undergo misery, affliction and deprivation because such had been the lot of mankind throughout history. Her wish was not to feel better, but to honor the sufferings of the lowest. Thus around 1935, when she was 25 years old, this woman of transcendent intellectual gifts and the widest learning, already very frail and suffering from severe headaches, was determined to undertake a year of work in a factory. The factories, the assembly lines, were then the modem equivalent of “slavery,” and she survived in her own words as “forever a slave.” What she went through at the factory “marked me in so lasting a manner that still today when any human being, whoever he may be and in whatever circumstances, speaks to me without brutality, I cannot help having the impression teat there must be a mistake....”[Her contemporary] “Simone de Beauvoir tells of meeting her when they were preparing for examinations to enter a prestigious private school. ‘She intrigued me because of her great reputation for intelligence and her bizarre outfits. ... A great famine had broken out in China, and I was told that when she heard the news she had wept. . . . I envied her for having a heart that could beat round the world.’“In London her health vanished, even though the great amount of writing she did right up to the time she went to the hospital must have come from those energies of the dying we do not understand—the energies of certain chosen dying ones, that is. Her behavior in the hospital, her refusal and by now her Inability to eat, vexed and bewildered the staff. Her sense of personal accountability to the world's suffering had reached farther than sense could follow.”Last week, we heard from Eric Springsted, one of the co-founders of the American Weil Society and author of Simone Weil for the Twenty-First Century.Next week, we’ll explore Simone Weil the Existentialist—with philosopher Deborah Casewell, author of Monotheism & Existentialism and Co-Director of the Simone Weil Research Network in the UK.But this week we’re looking at Simone Weil the Activist—her perspectives on redemptive suffering, her longing for justice, and her lasting influence on feminist writers. With me is Cynthia Wallace, associate professor of English at St. Thomas More College at the University of Saskatchewan, and author of The Literary Afterlives of Simone Weil: Feminism, Justice, and the Challenge of Religion.This is unique because it’s learning how to read Simone Weil from some of her closest readers and those she influenced, including poets and writers such as Adrienne Rich, Denise Levertov, and Annie Dillard.About Cynthia WallaceCynthia Wallace is Associate Professor of English at St. Thomas More College at the University of Saskatchewan, and author of The Literary Afterlives of Simone Weil: Feminism, Justice, and the Challenge of Religion, as well as **Of Women Borne: A Literary Ethics of Suffering.About Simone WeilSimone Weil (1909–1943) was a French philosopher, mystic, and political activist. She’s the author of Gravity and Grace, The Need for Roots, and Waiting for God—among many other essays, letters, and notes.Show NotesCynthia Wallace (Associate Professor of English at St. Thomas More College at the University of Saskatchewan), and author of The Literary Afterlives of Simone Weil: Feminism, Justice, and the Challenge of ReligionElizabeth Hardwick, “A woman of transcendent intellect who assumed the sufferings of humanity” (New York Times, Jan 23, 1977)Of Women Borne: A Literary Ethics of SufferingThe hard work of productive tensionSimone Weil on homework: “Reflections on the Right Use of School Studies with a View to the Love of God”Open, patient, receptive waiting in school studies — same skill as prayer“What are you going through?” Then you listen.Union organizerWaiting for God and Gravity & GraceVulnerability and tendernessJustice and Feminism, and “making room for the other”Denise Levertov’s  ”Mass for the Day of St. Thomas Didymus”“Levertov wrote herself into Catholic conversion”“after pages and pages of struggle, she finally says: “So be it. Come rag of pungent quiverings,  dim star, let's try  if something human still can shield you, spark of remote light.”“And so she  argues that God isn't  particularly active in the world that we have, except for when we open ourselves to these chances of divine encounter.”“ Her imagination of God is different from how I think  a lot of contemporary Western   people think about an all powerful, all knowing God. Vae thinks about God as having done exactly what she's asking us to do, which is to make room for the other to exist in a way that requires us to give up power.”Exploiting self-emptying, particularly of women“Exposing the degree to which women have been disproportionately expected to sacrifice themselves.”Disproportionate self-sacrifice of women and in particular women of colorAdrienne Rich, Of Woman Borne: ethics that care for the otherThe distinction between suffering and afflictionAdrienne Rich’s poem, “Hunger”Embodiment“ You have to follow both sides to the kind of limit of their capacity for thought, and then see what you find in that untidy both-and-ness.”Annie Dillard’s expansive attentivenessPilgrim at Tinker Creek and attending to the world: “ to bear witness to the world in a way that tells the truth about what is brutal in the world, while also telling the truth about what is glorious  in the world.”“She's suspicious of our imaginations because she doesn't want us to distract  ourselves from contemplating the void.”Dillard, For the Time Being (1999) on natural evil and injusticeGoing from attention to creation“Reading writers writing about writing”Joan Didion: “I write entirely to find out what I'm thinking, what I'm looking at, what I see and what it means, what I want and what I fear.”Writing as both creation and discoveryFriendship and “ we let the other person be who they are instead of trying to make them who we want them to be.”The joy of creativity—pleasure and desire“ Simone Weil argues that suffering that can be ameliorated should be.”“ What is possible through shared practices of attention?”The beauty of vulnerability and the blossoms of fruit trees“What it takes for us to be fed”Need for ourselves, each other, and the divineProduction NotesThis podcast featured Cynthia WallaceEdited and Produced by Evan RosaHosted by Evan RosaProduction Assistance by Emily Brookfield, Liz Vukovic, and Kacie BarrettA Production of the Yale Center for Faith & Culture at Yale Divinity School https://faith.yale.edu/aboutSupport For the Life of the World podcast by giving to the Yale Center for Faith & Culture: https://faith.yale.edu/give

This episode is the first of a short series exploring How to Read Simone Weil. The author of Gravity and Grace, The Need for Roots, and Waiting for God—among many other essays, letters, and notes, Weil has been an inspiration to philosophers, poets, priests, and politicians for the last century—almost all of it after her untimely death. She understood, perhaps more than many other armchair philosophers from the same period, the risk of philosophy—the demands it made on a human life.In this series, we’ll feature three guests who look at this magnificent and mysterious thinker in interesting and refreshing, and theologically and morally challenging ways.We’ll look at Simone Weil the Mystic, Simone Weil the Activist, Simone Weil the Existentialist.First we’ll be hearing from Eric Springsted, a co-founder of the American Weil Society and its long-time president—who wrote Simone Weil: Late Philosophical Writings and Simone Weil for the Twenty-First Century.In this conversation, Eric O. Springsted and Evan Rosa discuss Simone Weil’s personal biography, intellectual life, and the nature of her spiritual and religious and moral ideas; pursuing philosophy as a way of life; her encounter with Christ, affliction, and mystery; her views on attention and prayer; her concept of the void, and the call to self-emptying; and much more.About Simone WeilSimone Weil (1909–1943) was a French philosopher, mystic, and political activist. She’s the author of Gravity and Grace, The Need for Roots, and Waiting for God—among many other essays, letters, and notes.About Eric O. SpringstedEric O. Springsted is the co-founder of the American Weil Society and served as its president for thirty-three years. After a career as a teacher, scholar, and pastor, he is retired and lives in Santa Fe, NM. He is the author and editor of a dozen previous books, including Simone Weil: Late Philosophical Writings and Simone Weil for the Twenty-First Century.Show NotesEric O. Springsted’s Simone Weil for the Twenty-First CenturyHow to get hooked on Simone Weil“All poets are exiles.”Andre WeilEmile ChartierTaking ideas seriously enough to impact your lifeWeil’s critique of Marxism: “Reflections on the Cause of Liberty and Social Oppression”:  ”an attempt to try and figure out how there can be freedom and dignity in human labor and action”“Unfortunately she found affliction.”Ludwig Wittgenstein: “Philosophy is a matter of working on yourself.”Philosophy “isn’t simply objective. It’s a matter of personal morality as well.””Not only is the unexamined life not worth living, but virtue and intellect go hand in hand. Yeah. You don't have one without the other.”An experiment in how work and labor is doneThe demeaning and inherently degrading nature of factory workChristianity as “the religion of slaves.”Christianity can’t take away suffering; but it can take away the meaninglessness.George Herbert: “Love bade me welcome / But my soul drew back guilty of dust and sin”Weil’s vision/visit of Christ during Holy Week in Solemn, France: “It was like the smile on a beloved face.”The role of mysteryWeil’s definition of mystery:  ”What she felt mystery was, and she gets a definition of it, it's when two necessary lines of thought cross and are irreconcilable, yet if you suppress one of them, somehow light is lost.”Her point is that whatever good comes out of this personal contact with Christ, does not erase the evil of the suffering.What is “involvement in contradiction”“She thought contradiction was an inescapable mark of truth.”Contradictions that shed light on life.Why mysticism is important for Weil: “The universe cannot be put into a box with techniques or tricks or our own scientific methods or philosophical methods. … Mystery instills humility and it takes the question of the knowing ego out of the picture. … And it challenges modern society to resist the idea that faith could be reduced to a dogmatic system.”“Faith is not a matter of the intellect.”“Intellect is not the highest faculty. Love is.”“The Right Use of School Studies”“Muscular effort of attention”She wanted to convert her Dominican priest friend into the universality of grace—that Plato was a pre-Chrisitan.” (e.g., her essay, “ Intimations of Christianity Among the Ancient Greeks”)“Grace is universal.”How school studies contribute to the love of GodPrayer as attentionWeil on Attention: “Attention consists of suspending our thought, leaving it detached, empty, and ready to be penetrated by the object. It means holding in our minds within the reach of this thought, but on the lower level and not in contact with it. The diverse knowledge we have acquired. Which we are forced to make use of. Above all our thought should be empty waiting, not seeking anything but ready to receive in its naked truth. The object that is to penetrate it.”Not “detached,” but “available and ready for use”Making space for the afflicted other by “attending” to themLove that isn’t compensatory“The void as a space where love can go”What is prayer for Simone Weil?Prayer as listening all night long“Voiding oneself of secondary desires and letting oneself be spoken to.”Is Simone Weil “ a self-abnegating, melancholy revolutionary” (Leon Trotsky)Humility in Simone Weil“The Terrible Prayer”Was Simone Weil anorexic?Refusing comfort on the grounds of solidaritySelf-emptying and graceAccepting the entire creation as God’s willSimone Weil on patience and waiting“With time, attention blooms into waiting.”“She’s resistant to the Church, but drawing from Christ’s self-emptying.”God’s withdrawal from the world (which is not deism)“A sacramental view of the world”“ The very creation of the world is by this withdrawal and simultaneous crucifixion of the sun in time and space.”(Obsessive) pursuit of purity in morals and thoughtIris Murdoch’s The Nice and the Good“Nothing productive needs to come from this effort.”“ She put her finger on what's really the heart of Christian spirituality. … We live by the Word … by our being open to listening to the Word and having that transformed into God’s word.”Production NotesThis podcast featured Eric O. SpringstedEdited and Produced by Evan RosaHosted by Evan RosaProduction Assistance by Emily Brookfield, Alexa Rollow, Zoë Halaban, & Kacie BarrettA Production of the Yale Center for Faith & Culture at Yale Divinity School https://faith.yale.edu/aboutSupport For the Life of the World podcast by giving to the Yale Center for Faith & Culture: https://faith.yale.edu/give

Yii-Jan Lin, an Associate Professor of New Testament at Yale Divinity School, dives into the intersection of immigration and the Book of Revelation. She explores why nations exist and how biblical concepts shaped American identity. Topics include America's portrayal as a 'shining city on a hill' and the implications of historic immigration narratives, particularly for Asian Americans. Lin critiques how scripture influences exclusionary practices and urges a compassionate rethinking of immigration within a contemporary theological context.

“For those of us who are drawn into church  history and church tradition and to reading theology,  there is very little as transformative as realizing that history is populated by women and men like us who tried to follow Christ in their own time and place and culture and circumstances,  some of whom succeeded. … Looking at the saints, they make me want to be a better Christian. They make me want to be a saint.” (Brad East, from the episode)In his recent book, Letters to a Future Saint: Foundations of Faith for the Spiritually Hungry, theologian Brad East addresses future generations of the Church, offering a transmission of Christian faith from society today to society tomorrow. Written as a fellow pilgrim and looking into the lives of saints in the past, he’s writing to that post-literate, post-Christian society, where the highest recommendation of faith is in the transformed life.Today, Drew Collins welcomes Brad East to the show, and together they discuss: the importance of being passed and passing on Christian faith—its transmission; the post-literacy of digital natives (Gen Z and Gen Alpha) and the role of literacy in the acquisition and development of faith; the significance of community in a vibrant Christian faith; the question of apologetics and its effectiveness as a mode of Christian discourse; the need for beauty and love, not just truth, in Christian witness; how to talk about holiness in a world that believes less and less in the reality of sin; the difference between Judas and Peter; and what it means to study the saints and to be a saint.About Brad EastBrad East (PhD, Yale University) is an associate professor of theology in the College of Biblical Studies at Abilene Christian University in Abilene, Texas. In addition to editing Robert Jenson’s The Triune Story: Collected Essays on Scripture (Oxford University Press, 2019), he is the author of four books: The Doctrine of Scripture (Cascade, 2021), The Church’s Book: Theology of Scripture in Ecclesial Context (Eerdmans, 2022), The Church: A Guide to the People of God (Lexham, 2024), and Letters to a Future Saint: Foundations of Faith for the Spiritually Hungry (Eerdmans, 2024).His articles have been published in Modern Theology, International Journal of Systematic Theology, Scottish Journal of Theology, Journal of Theological Interpretation, Anglican Theological Review, Pro Ecclesia, Political Theology, Religions, Restoration Quarterly, and The Other Journal; his essays and reviews have appeared in The Christian Century, Christianity Today, Comment, Commonweal, First Things, Front Porch Republic, The Hedgehog Review, Living Church, Los Angeles Review of Books, Marginalia Review of Books, Mere Orthodoxy, The New Atlantis, Plough, and The Point. You can found out more, including links to his writing, podcast appearances, and blog, on his personal website: https://www.bradeast.org/.Show NotesLetters to a Future Saint: Foundations of Faith for the Spiritually Hungry  by Brad EastThe importance of being passed and passing on Christian faith—its transmissionSpencer Bogle, the reason Brad East is a theologianThe post-literacy of Gen Z and Gen Alpha and the role of literacy in the acquisition and development of faithThe question of apologetics and its effectiveness as a mode of Christian discourseThe need for beauty and love, not just truth, in Christian witnessChristianity pre-exists you, and pre-existed literate society. So it can survive post-literacyTik-Tok and getting off it“We have to have a much broader vision of the Christian life.”The Doctrine of Scripture, by Brad East, Foreword by Katherine SondereggerCartesian Christianity: me alone in a room, maybe with a flashlight and a bibleSpiritual but not religious (H/T Tara Isabella Burton)We’re not saved individuallyAlice in Wonderland and “believing 17 absurd things every day”Is Christian apologetics sub-intellectual and effective?Gavin Ortlund, taking seriously spiritual and moral questions with pastoral warmth and intellectual integrity—”a ministry of Q&A”Bishop Robert Barron and William Lane Craig“People are not going to  be won to the faith through argument. They're going to be won by beauty.”Beauty of lives well-lived, integrity, virtue, and martyrdom“What lies beyond this world is available in part in this world and so good it's worth dying for.”Is Christian apologetics actually for Christians, rather than evangelism?“A person’s life can be an apologetic argument.”James K.A. Smith: “We don’t want to be brains on sticks.”“You’re just going to look bizarre.”“Come and see. … If you see something unique or uniquely powerful here, then stick around.”Saintliness and a cloud of witnessesWhy do the saints matter?The protagonist of Augustine’s Confessions is actually St. Monica.“I want to be like Monica…”“For those of us who are drawn into church  history and church tradition and to reading theology,  there is very little as transformative as realizing that history is populated by women and men like us who tried to follow Christ in their own time and place and culture and circumstances,  some of whom succeeded. … Looking at the saints, they make me want to be a better Christian. They make me want to be a saint.”How to talk about holiness in a world that believes less and less in the reality of sin.Is holiness just connected to purity culture?Holiness is very difficult to describe.Hauerwas: “Humans aren’t holy. Only God is holy.”Holiness as being like God and being set apart and conformed to his likenessHoliness is, by rights, God’s alone.Appreciating the “everyday saints” among usSanctification as an utterly passive actThe final words of Joseph Ratzinger (Pope Benedict), “Jesus, ich liebe dich!” (”Jesus, I love you.”)Peter and JudasLucy Shaw poem, “Judas, Peter” (see below)“There is a way to fail as a Christian. It’s to  despair of the possibility of Christ forgiving you.”What it means to journey as a pilgrim towards holiness is, is not to get everything right.Shusaku Endo, Silence“What I say is we're all Kichichiro. We're all Peter and Judas. We're all bad Christians. There are no good Christians.”Kester Smith and returning to baptism“Sometimes it might be difficult for me to believe that God loves me.”“Judas, Peter”by Lucy Shawbecause we are all betrayers, taking silver and eating body and blood and asking (guilty) is it I and hearing him say yes it would be simple for us all to rush out and hang ourselvesbut if we find grace to cry and wait after the voice of morning has crowed in our ears clearly enough to break out hearts he will be there to ask us each again do you love me?Production NotesThis podcast featured Brad East & Drew CollinsEdited and Produced by Evan RosaHosted by Evan RosaProduction Assistance by Zoë Halaban, Alexa Rollow, Emily Brookfield, and Kacie BarrettA Production of the Yale Center for Faith & Culture at Yale Divinity School https://faith.yale.edu/aboutSupport For the Life of the World podcast by giving to the Yale Center for Faith & Culture: https://faith.yale.edu/give

"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life.” (Henry David Thoreau, Walden)In 1845, when he was 27 years old, Henry David Thoreau walked a ways from his home in Concord, MA and built a small house on a small lake—Walden Pond. He lived there for two years, two months, and two days, and he wrote about it. Walden has since become a classic. A treasure to naturalists and philosophers, historians and hipsters, conservationists and non-violent resistors. Something about abstaining from society and its affordances, reconnecting with the land, searching for something beyond the ordinary, living independently, self-reliantly, intentionally, deliberately.Since then, Thoreau has risen to a kind of secular sainthood. Perhaps the first of now many spiritual but not religious, how should we understand Thoreau’s thought, writing, actions, and way of life?In this episode, Evan Rosa welcomes Lawrence Buell (Powell M. Cabot Professor of American Literature Emeritus, Harvard University) for a conversation about how to read Thoreau. He is the author of many books on transcendentalism, ecology, and American literature. And his latest book is Henry David Thoreau: Thinking Disobediently, a brief philosophical biography and introduction to the thought of Thoreau through his two most classic works: “Walden” and “Civil Disobedience.”In today’s episode Larry Buell and I discuss Thoreau’s geographical, historical, social, and intellectual contexts; his friendship with Ralph Waldo Emerson; why he went out to live on a pond for 2 years, 2 months, and 2 days and how it changed him; the difference between wildness and wilderness; why we’re drawn to the simplicity of wild natural landscapes and the ideals of moral perfection; the body, the senses, attunement and attention; the connection between solitude and contemplation; the importance of individual moral conscience and the concept of civil disobedience; Thoreau’s one night in jail and the legacy of his political witness; and ultimately, what it means to think disobediently.About Lawrence BuellLawrence Buell is Powell M. Cabot Professor of American Literature Emeritus at Harvard University. Considered one of the founders of the ecocriticism movement, he has written and lectured worldwide on Transcendentalism, American studies, and the environmental humanities. He is the author of many books, including Literary Transcendentalism, The Environmental Imagination: Thoreau, Nature Writing, and the Invention of American Culture, Writing for an Endangered World, and Emerson. His latest book is Henry David Thoreau: Thinking Disobediently, a brief introduction to the thought of Thoreau to his two most classic works: Walden and “Civil Disobedience.”Show NotesHenry David Thoreau: Thinking Disobediently (Oxford 2023) by Lawrence BuellRead Walden and “Civil Disobedience” online (via Project Gutenberg)Production NotesThis podcast featured Lawrence BuellEdited and Produced by Evan RosaHosted by Evan RosaProduction Assistance by Zoë Halaban, Alexa Rollow, Emily Brookfield, and Kacie BarrettA Production of the Yale Center for Faith & Culture at Yale Divinity School https://faith.yale.edu/aboutSupport For the Life of the World podcast by giving to the Yale Center for Faith & Culture: https://faith.yale.edu/give

Has modern humanity lost its connection to the world outside our heads? And can our experience of art and poetry help train us for a more elevated resonance with the cosmos?In today’s episode, theologian Miroslav Volf interviews philosopher Charles Taylor about his latest book, Cosmic Connections: Poetry in the Age of Disenchantment. In it he turns to poetry to help articulate the human experience of the cosmos we’re a part of.Together they discuss the modern Enlightenment view of our relation to the world and its shortcomings; modern disenchantment and the prospects of reenchantment through art and poetry; Annie Dillard and the readiness to experience the world and what it’s always offering; how to hold the horrors of natural life with the transcendent joys; Charles recites some of William Wordsworth’s “Tintern Abbey” and Gerard Manley Hopkins’s “The Windhover”; how to become fully arrested by beauty; and the value we find in human experience of the world.Production NotesThis podcast featured Charles Taylor and Miroslav VolfEdited and Produced by Evan RosaHosted by Evan RosaProduction Assistance by Emily Brookfield, Alexa Rollow, Kacie Barrett, and Zoë HalabanA Production of the Yale Center for Faith & Culture at Yale Divinity School https://faith.yale.edu/aboutSupport For the Life of the World podcast by giving to the Yale Center for Faith & Culture: https://faith.yale.edu/give

St. Teresa of Ávila (1515-1582) was a sixteenth-century Spanish nun and one of the most influential mystics in all of Church history, writing two spiritual classics still read today: The Way of Perfection and The Interior Castle. Her autobiography (more accurately, a confession to Spanish Inquisitors) is The Life of St. Teresa of Avila, detailing her spiritual experiences of the love of God.In this episode, Evan Rosa welcomes Carlos Eire (T. Lawrason Riggs Professor of History and Religious Studies at Yale University) for a discussion of how to read St. Teresa of Ávila, exploring the historical, cultural, philosophical, and theological aspects of her life and writing, and offering insights and close readings of several selections from her classic confession-slash-autobiography, known as La Vida, or The Life.About Carlos EireCarlos Eire is T. Lawrason Riggs Professor of History and Religious Studies at Yale University. All of his books are banned in Cuba, where he has been proclaimed an enemy of the state. He was awarded the 2024 Harwood F. Byrnes/Richard B. Sewall Teaching Prize by Yale College, received his PhD from Yale in 1979. He specializes in the social, intellectual, religious, and cultural history of late medieval and early modern Europe, with a focus on both the Protestant and Catholic Reformations; the history of popular piety; the history of the supernatural, and the history of death. Before joining the Yale faculty in 1996, he taught at St. John’s University in Minnesota and the University of Virginia, and was a member of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. He is the author of War Against the Idols (1986); From Madrid to Purgatory (1995); A Very Brief History of Eternity (2010); Reformations: The Early Modern World (2016); The Life of Saint Teresa of Ávila: A Biography (2019); and They Flew: A History of the Impossible (2023). He is also co-author of Jews, Christians, Muslims: An Introduction to Monotheistic Religions (1997); and ventured into the twentieth century and the Cuban Revolution in the memoir Waiting for Snow in Havana (2003), which won the National Book Award in Nonfiction in the United States and has been translated into more than a dozen languages. His second memoir, Learning to Die in Miami (2010), explores the exile experience. A past president of the Society for Reformation Research, he is currently researching various topics in the history of the supernatural. His book Reformations won the R.R. Hawkins Prize for Best Book of the Year from the American Publishers Association, as well as the award for Best Book in the Humanities in 2017. It was also awarded the Jaroslav Pelikan Prize by Yale University Press. The Life of Saint Teresa of Ávila by Carlos Eire (https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691164939/the-life-of-saint-teresa-of-avila )The Book of My Life by Teresa of Ávila (https://www.icspublications.org/products/the-collected-works-of-st-teresa-of-avila-vol-1 or https://www.shambhala.com/teresa-of-avila-1518.html )A long confession to the Inquisition which had placed her under investigation and read by those who were curious and believed her mysticism might be a fraudThe Spanish Inquisition in the 16th CenturyAutobiography v. Auto-hagiographyThe chief virtue of sainthood was humilityMedieval mysticism in the asceticism of monastic communitiesThe Reformation’s rejection of monastic communities and their practices“You can fast as much as you want, and you can punish yourself as much as you want. That's not going to, uh, make God love you any more than he already does. And it's not going to wipe out your sins. Christ has wiped out your sins. So, all of this, uh, Oh, self obsession and posturing, uh, the very concept of holiness is redefined.”Direct experience of the divine in mysticism: purgation (cleansing), feedback from God (illumination), and union with the divine.On Loving God by Bernard of Clairvaux (https://litpress.org/Products/CF013B/On-Loving-God)Surrendering of the self in order to find oneself, and in turn GodInterior Castle by Teresa of Ávila (https://www.icspublications.org/products/st-teresa-of-avila-the-interior-castle-study-edition)Recogimiento - a prayer in which one lets go of their senses; a form a prayer in which you are just in a chat with a friendThe Cloud of Unknowing by Anonymous (https://paracletepress.com/products/the-cloud-of-unknowing )Meaning that is found without words - recollection and recogimientoFrancisco Jiménez de Cisneros, Archbishop of Toledo - translation of Rhineland mysticism into SpanishStaged approach and a development of spirituality“You're doing some transforming of your own, of course, by, you know, being engaged in this, but it's, it's really a gift from God progress and progress. Uh, progress and progress, or, uh, pretty much like an athlete whose skills become better and better and better. Or any artist whose skills improve and improve and improve and improve.Except in this case, there's someone else involved. You're not just working out or rehearsing. It's the other party involved in, in this, uh, phenomenon of prayer.”The Four Waters as an image for the progression of prayerThe irony of Teresa’s writing and her nods to the inquisition found within her writingsThe experience of mysticism and God cannot be understood - it is beyond languageRepetition in prayer and meditationEdith Stein was inspired by Teresa of ÁvilaMonastic life was very isolated and was filled with hard workThe doubt of her confessors that her visions of Jesus were realResponding to the devil with crudenessMystical marriage with ChristThe Life of Catherine of Siena by Raymond of Capua ( https://tanbooks.com/products/books/the-life-of-saint-catherine-of-siena-the-classic-on-her-life-and-accomplishments-as-recorded-by-her-spiritual-director/ )Physical visions and intellectual visionsHer visions were beyond her controlTransverberation - a vision of an angel with a spear that she is struck with; pain and bliss simultaneously in the woundingGod as a very clear diamondTeresa of Ávila and the Rhetoric of Femininity by Alison Weber (https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691027449/teresa-of-avila-and-the-rhetoric-of-femininity) - Constant self-humbling of TeresaDevotion to heart imagery in mysticism, Catholicism, and Teresa’s spiritualityThey Flew: A History of the Impossible by Carlos Eire (https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300280074/they-flew/)The bodily effects and physical nature of Teresa’s mysticismmysticism for the masses and books for the laityMysticism is a double edged sword - this is also what makes Jesus threatening in the gospelsSteven Ozment (Mysticism and Dissent: Religious Ideology and Social Protest in the Sixteenth Century?) https://archive.org/details/mysticismdissent0000ozme/page/n295/mode/2upHuman nature and our potentialGreat detail and charming in her writingProduction NotesThis podcast featured Carlos EireEdited and Produced by Evan RosaHosted by Evan RosaProduction Assistance by Alexa Rollow, Emily Brookfield, Kacie Barrett, & Zoë HalabanA Production of the Yale Center for Faith & Culture at Yale Divinity School https://faith.yale.edu/aboutSupport For the Life of the World podcast by giving to the Yale Center for Faith & Culture: https://faith.yale.edu/give

History reveals a lot of things about human nature: our innate drive towards progress, discovery, relationship, community. Often motivated by a drive to feel safe and flourish. But despite this instinct, history also shows that we’re prone to inflicting and being complicit to grave and violent injustices. We fail, regularly, at living well with our neighbors.In his new book, The Spirit of Justice, Jemar Tisby opens the centuries long history of resistance to racism in the United States through the mode of story, and with the lens of the Spirit moving for justice. He asks, what manner of people are those who courageously confront racism? Presenting the lives and witness of over 50 individuals, Tisby examines the way faith threads the life work of these advocates together: not only inspiring their resistance in the first place, but continuing to move through the weariness that so often arises in this work.In this episode, Jemar Tisby joins Macie Bridge on the podcast to discuss the manifestations of the Spirit of Justice in figures such as H. Ford Douglas, Sister Thea Bowman, David Walker, Myrlie Evers-Williams, and many more; the problem of historical appropriation with figures such as Martin Luther King Jr.; the women whose stories too often fall into the shadow of their husbands’ legacies, like Anna Murray Douglas or Coretta Scott King; and the ever-present question of why we might look to history as we determine our own ways forward.Jemar Tisby is the New York Times bestselling author of The Color of Compromise and How to Fight Racism. He is a public historian, speaker, and advocate, and is Professor of History at Simmons College, an HBCU in Kentucky.Photo Credits: Fannie Lou Hamer, Phyllis Wheatley, Charles Morgan Jr., Anna Murray Douglass, David Walker, Sister Thea Bowman, Myrlie & Darrell Evers.Where to Find Jemar Tisby's BooksThe Spirit of Justice *Available nowI Am the Spirit of Justice *Picture book releasing January 7, 2025Stories of the Spirit of Justice *Middle-grade children’s book releasing January 7, 2025Production NotesThis podcast featured Jemar TisbyHosted by Macie BridgeEdited and Produced by Evan RosaProduction Assistance by Alexa Rollow, Emily Brookfield, Kacie Barrett, & Zoë HalabanA Production of the Yale Center for Faith & Culture at Yale Divinity School https://faith.yale.edu/aboutSupport For the Life of the World podcast by giving to the Yale Center for Faith & Culture: https://faith.yale.edu/give

In our American quest for a more perfect union, we often mistake unity for sameness. We mistake unity for conformity. But the functional unity of a system—seems to actually require diversity, distinction, and difference.In this episode, Christy Vines (Founder/ CEO, Ideos Institute) reflects on the problem of division today; how we increasingly invest our identity in politics instead of faith or spirituality; humility and privilege; the definition of unity and the assumption of diversity in it; the centrality of empathy; and how to cultivate an empathic wisdom grounded in the life and witness of Christ.The Ideos Institute is currently sponsoring 31 days of Unity leading up to the 2024 election. Visit thereunionproject.us or ideosinstitute.org/31-days-of-unity to learn how to participate.About Christy VinesChristy Vines is the founder, President and CEO of Ideos Institute where she leads the organization’s research on the burgeoning field of Empathic Intelligence and its application to the fields of conflict transformation, social cohesion, and social renewal.Prior to founding Ideos Institute, she was the Senior Vice President for Global Initiatives and Strategy at the Institute for Global Engagement (IGE) where she served as the managing and coordinating lead for the development of strategic institutional partnerships and global initiatives in support of the IGE mission to encourage flourishing societies and stable states, and promote sustainable religious freedom, human rights and the rule of law globally. During her tenure at IGE she helped expand the organization’s Center for Women, Faith & Leadership which supports, equips and convenes religious women peacemakers around the globe.Christy has held senior roles with the RAND Corporation, where she worked with the RAND Centers for Middle East Public Policy, Asia Pacific Public Policy, Global Risk and Security, and the Center for Justice, Infrastructure, and Environment, finally transitioning to interim project manager for the RAND African First Ladies Initiative (now located at the Bush Presidential Center). Christy also held the role of senior fellow at The American Security Project and served as an advisor to the Carter’s Center’s inaugural Forum on Women, Religion, Violence and Power.Christy is a published writer, speaker, and the executive producer of the 2022 documentary film, "Dialogue Lab: America," a moving take on the current state of division and polarization in the U.S. She has appeared on podcasts like Comment Magazine’s “**Whole Person Revolution Podcast”, “**How Do We Fix It” and Bob Goff's “Dream Big Podcast”. She has published numerous articles and op-eds with news outlets and publications, including the **Washington Post, Christianity Today,** and Capital Commentary.Christy received her Master's Degree in Public Administration from the Harvard Kennedy School. She attended both Stanford University and the University of CA, Riverside where she received her B.A. in Sociology and Qualitative Analysis. She currently resides in Pasadena, CA.Show NotesHoward Thurman on Unity, Meditations of the Heart (Beacon Press: 1981), 120–121“Plotinus [205–270 CE] wrote, “If we are in unity with the Spirit, we are in unity with each other, and so we are all one.” (Plotinus, Enneads, VI.5.7.)Sign up for 31 Days of Unity https://www.ideosinstitute.org/31-days-of-unity(Re)Union Project and Ideos InstituteChristy Vines’s experience with diversity and unity in her family: differences in faith, race, gender, sexuality, and religionHow Christy Vines came to faithThe problem of divisionHow neuroscience illuminates scripture and offers insight into empathic wisdom“There are so many ways to love God.” (David Dark)How we invest our identity in politics instead of religionMoral absolutism vs moral relativismAbdicating our faith identity for a political identityTechnology and relationships“Loving God differently”“In the cosmic Christ, you have all of the space you need for the kind of diversity in unity that you're talking about.”“It's the expectation that in order to work together, we really do have to look exactly the same, that we have to think the same things. That's the only way to collaborate. So until we can get past those of disagreements, there's just no way to work across the aisle. And that is disastrous to the concept of a democracy and the concept of the church.““There’s so many ways to be an American. There’s so many ways to be human.”Humility and privilege“There is something about desperation and need that brings, that illuminates God's beauty, majesty, and importance in such a powerful way that I think so many of us that are born into plenty will never experience until the other side of heaven.”The definition of unity: grounded in empathy“Unity is about finding ways to be the body of Christ with all of our diversity and difference and saying that with humility, Here is my perspective. Here's how I understand God. Here's how I live out my faith. Here's what that might mean culturally or politically and all of the other ways we express our faith. And to be unified means maybe we can all be moving in the same direction on different paths, coming at it from different directions, but recognizing we're all trying to reach the same goal. And that maybe in that shared experience, And that rubbing against one another is, our pastor used to say, heavenly sandpaper, refining one another. We may never be on the exact same path, But over time, you find that we get closer and closer together as we share our lives with one another and we influence each other from a position of trust and care. And that can only be done when we actually show up recognizing with humility that we can learn and benefit from others.”Empathy and how to build itEmpathic Intelligence Dr. Rosalind Arnold (University of Tasmania)Empathic intelligence (empathic wisdom) is the lived experience of JesusJesus’s empathy“Most of the time we take our own understanding of Jesus and try to impose that on somebody without ever knowing their story.”“What is it like to be you?”“Why is this so hard to do?”Jesus and the woman at the wellAsking questions and listeningEmpathy is contagiousVulnerability, openness, and a space of relational trust(Re)Union Project for Churches—Building unity in the church across lines of differencethereunionproject.usideosinstitute.orgProduction NotesThis podcast featured Christy VinesEdited and Produced by Evan RosaHosted by Evan RosaProduction Assistance by Alexa Rollow, Emily Brookfield, Kacie Barrett, and Zoë HalabanA Production of the Yale Center for Faith & Culture at Yale Divinity School https://faith.yale.edu/aboutSupport For the Life of the World podcast by giving to the Yale Center for Faith & Culture: https://faith.yale.edu/give