Ep 151: Paul Vander Klay & Heather Pollington: Finding God in Nature and Culture, the Saints, & More

Added: 2026-06-02

[00:00:00]Praise him. Praise [singing] him. Praise him in the morning. Praise him in the noon. Praise him. Praise him. Praise him till [music] the sun [singing] goes down.

[00:00:19]Praise [music] him. Praise him. Praise him [singing and music] in the morning.

[00:00:25]Praise him.

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[00:00:53]Good evening, folks. Welcome Christ.

[00:00:55]Today's discussion is something slightly different from usual. It's really a kind of door, hopefully a kind of wardrobe door at that into our upcoming gathering in Kilder on Saturday the 27th of June.

[00:01:05]It's entitled Finding God in Nature and Culture. Basically the idea behind the day is simple enough but is several layers. want to gather people together to experience a very living Christian faith, a sense of place, beauty, story, pilgrimage, all these wonderful things, and the unique Christian inheritance of Ireland in particular, especially maybe at a time when we're feeling spiritually tired, disconnected, maybe unsure in our quest for ultimate meaning. So, I'm delighted to be joined by some of the wonderful guests who'll be with us for that special occasion. First, Paul Vanlay. Paul has become one of the key voices online helping people to think through Christianity, symbolism, technology, meaning, modern life. Then Heather Pington is also with us.

[00:01:46]Heather's an artist whose work explores beauty, imagination, the sacred, and the recovery of older ways of seeing the world. Father Connor will also be with us, Father Connor Mcdana, but he can't join us this evening, unfortunately.

[00:01:57]He's a Dominican priest and a theologian with the deep love of scripture, the church, and the Christian inheritance of Ireland that I mentioned. So I suppose to begin folks um maybe we'll talk touch upon some of the themes behind the day itself and I might begin by asking you what maybe uh made you feel that this gathering in Caldera was worthwhile in the first place and why did you want to be part of it then? Start with yourself Heather.

[00:02:24]>> Oh thanks hello. Um well I really couldn't resist joining because um there's a few reasons. First of all, um I'm I'm working on a project painting um saints of Ireland and the British Isles and I'm working on a sketch of um St. Bridget of Kildair at the moment and it just seemed like the perfect um opportunity to go and be in the place because I I I made a rule that if I'm going to paint someone, I really need to to visit where they're from and kind of try to understand as much of the story as possible. Um so that was really the first reason. But also, I mean, I I really love Ireland. I haven't been there for a long time and um I'm I'm fascinated really to see, you know, what's happening in Ireland because obviously uh I I kind of see things from an English perspective over here, but you have quite a different history that I find very fascinating. So, um I'm I'm excited to meet people over there and and see kind of what conversations are happening.

[00:03:21]>> Brilliant. Thanks, Heather. And yourself, Paul?

[00:03:24]Well, I this is my third uh Marcus adventure that I'm coming on and I had I've had great fun on the first two and so why would I say no? So, >> and I I also love the theme because one of the one of the things that I ponder a lot is that the vast majority of human beings have lived much closer to just what would be simply the assumed cycles of nature. the seasons, um, what's going on in whatever, um, climate or location they live in, desert, forest, what have you. And I think part of what's happened in the last few centuries is that we have we have sort of receded from that environment for a variety of reasons.

[00:04:16]Some of them good. Nature is is rough.

[00:04:20]Um but and then and then and then and then and then and then and then and then and then and then and then and what's happened is sort of I think this is in some ways kind of seen in what's happening with AI is we get into these recursive loops. cities sort of took on their own weather and increasingly people are living in a world of screens and then AI sort of continues to ramp this up and speed it up and I think that's part of the reason that there's a deep hunger for a steep search for the natural and the natural has become almost divine for some people, which is a a bit of a I mean, we see God through nature, but nature isn't God. And I think what I see happening with, you know, some of the with the um what I call the orthodox moment that's happening right now with a lot of people interested in orthodoxy and listening to a lot of those conversations is people are sensing that they want to get back to something. They're not quite sure where they're going. It definitely involves nature. And so, for example, when I watch Paul Kings North write about his uh visiting 50 Wells in Ireland and um Martin Shaw's Liturgies of the Wild, I think people are responding to a hunger. And >> so, as a pastor, I pay attention to those kind of things.

[00:05:52]>> Brilliant. Thanks, Paul. And I [clears throat] suppose connected to that maybe one of the wonderful blessings of these gatherings is that they do take on a spirit of their own and it's not always predictable but maybe in very broad strokes. I wonder what each of you were hoping that might come from a day like this. Um before we started recording we were chatting about the wonderful symbolic world conference that Heather was at recently and um the potential for some of those in the future. And then obviously Paul you've got these wonderful estry gatherings across the states and so on. I suppose where is it all going? Um now we had this wonderful energy from the Jordan Peterson phenomenon and so on. But what would you like to see come of such things? I suppose return to you Heather.

[00:06:41]Well, it seems to me in this space that we've all been in for a few years that there's a kind of, you know, um, specification happening. You know, I think things started very very kind of broad with with Jordan and now now you see things becoming much more articulated and and specific um, as Paul was explaining there. Now, you know, there's there's new things emerging and expressions and then actually events happening now, which is exciting for me because then you see a kind of, you know, an actual kind of physical manifestation of ideas because it started off with podcasts and conversations and now is actual places.

[00:07:19]And I think again that's why it's important to actually meet in Kildair in this place in person, you know, in a church together. again, we all went through COVID and we understand, you know, what life's like without that. And so since then, I think we none of us have taken it for granted and we all want to come together. And there's just these extraordinary people kind of spread out across the globe. You know, I I was in Ohio and it's like a family for me because, you know, we all got so much in common. We in fact, we all listen to the same things, reading the same books.

[00:07:54]Um and and and maybe that's strange and you know you've got to be careful with that and you've got to stay rooted to your own physical community but at the same time it is very nourishing to meet with these people you know every kind of few months and and and then you know friendships happen and you stay in touch and I mean just the conversations I had this week just been been absolutely amazing. Um so yeah just more of it really and and and uh and in special places I think that's the key you know.

[00:08:25]>> Beautiful.

[00:08:26]>> Yeah.

[00:08:28]>> Yeah. For for me so estuary has been my focus and estuary is a a space where people can have very open uh conversations. they usually sort of drift into the most meaningful things that the people are wrestling with. And we've had a lot of success getting groups going in the United States and in Canada, but I know that Europe is has been kind of an interesting case with that where we had some we had a very strong group start very early in Germany, but we've um we've been struggling um in other places in Europe.

[00:09:11]And I'm not I haven't sort of figured out why Europe has certain roots and settings that are really conducive to this. And yet um I don't know why we've we've had such a difficult time sort of getting this kind of community rooted in Europe. So, and and so I always make it a priority to to come to Europe to um do whatever I can to to help. And hopefully, again, for me, it's it is as Heather said, it's about meeting the people and learning from each other. And really estuary is is is is all about sort of listening to each other and not just we can hear people talk on YouTube. You know, I'll be at the Ark conference.

[00:10:01]We'll hear speeches from stage on ARC.

[00:10:04]But for me, the more meaningful gatherings tend to be small. They tend to be persontoerson. They tend to be things that are shared in a small group of people that isn't necessarily out there on the internet for consumption.

[00:10:19]>> 100%. It's the bits in between, isn't it?

[00:10:23]>> Yeah.

[00:10:23]>> Yeah.

[00:10:25]>> Excellent. And speaking of the bits in between, um part of the theme is obviously this finding God in nature and culture. And like you describe Paul, often times people maybe deify nature.

[00:10:37]Um, mother nature is our goddess, so to speak, but she's such a cruel mistress.

[00:10:42]You have like David, one of David Atenburgh's biggest reasons for not believing in God, I believe, is that the the little worms that burrow into the eyes of children and so on. So, that's part of nature, too. So, we can't make it a god. But yet we we read in the Psalms and so on that the heavens declare the glory of God. The earth proclaims the work of his hands and we can know God through this original creation and through the cultural creations that we co-create with God in some sense. And I think what I enjoy and appreciate about both of your works and Father Connor's work is that wonderful intersection that betwess. I wonder if we might speak a little bit about that in um in a sense and how might we help people to encounter God more deeply in some of these areas in a kind of distinct Christian manner even though this event is open to seekers and so on.

[00:11:38]So Heather, I remember you mentioned recently about the kind of naturalistic patterns in some of the lurggical works of the the earlier middle ages and so on. Does that come in here for example or >> I think it does. I mean I was thinking about you know what I'm going to talk about at the um event. I can't I don't want to do it now but I can sort of suggest where where I'm at at the moment which is I think there's amazing people to talk about uh you know experiencing God in nature as such and I was thinking my angle possibly would be um there's a kind of c circularity when you're a iconographer because the idea is that you that you use gifts so you know pigment so the icon is made of um uh animal, vegetable, and mineral because it represents all of creation. Um so you have the egg, the wood, and then the the mineral pigments. And it's really about re receiving those gifts and then really um you know through through work, through skill, through attention, offering them back up for his glory. So it's it it's this kind of receiving and then and then giving. And I think it got me thinking about you actually find God in the materials, you know, in the gold and things like that.

[00:13:02]>> And um and so it can be it might not necessarily be wandering in the forest, but it might be how we how we treat things, how we treat food, you know, and and and and what we do with that just in our daily lives, you know, um you know, making bread for your family, for example, and give it giving the ingredients the proper attention, you know, it's it's the same principle. um as as when you're painting an icon. Um so so yeah, I've kind of thought of how my role is different to someone like Martin in that my job is to kind of I I love nature. I experience it, but then I have to interpret it because I'm a visual artist. So quite often it's about um certainly in the English tradition experiencing nature as we call it and then interpreting that back into you know aspects of church design or iconography. Um so for example I've been thinking a lot about you know the orthodox revival that's happening at the moment and how um how a lot of communities now new communities in the west are kind of looking at ways to find a kind of indigenous expression and so there's going to be a big challenge in uh church design I think in the in the next 50 years to kind of look at that again to to root design back into place um because obviously in the Orthodox tradition you have a lot of communities that kind of they come and they plant their church, but it has their kind of their um particular ethnic expression, you know, Greek or whatever. And now I'm meeting Americans saying, I want an Orthodox church that feels American. Um and I know, you know, people like Andrew Gould have have kind of been answering to this for a long time and it seems to be, you know, the the the kind of the talking point now um that's happening.

[00:14:51]So, you know, in that process, you would always look at landscape, you would look at materials, you would look at foliage.

[00:14:59]Um, and really, you know, these designs kind of grow out of of of that sense of place, which is another reason why I saying it's important to go to go to these places and and see, you know, observe details. If there's anything there that you can that you can kind of sketch, remember um because these these is we we connect through we connect to things we connect to memory through through objects I think and and places.

[00:15:28]Yeah.

[00:15:30]>> Thanks Heather.

[00:15:32]Well, Heather's Heather's making me think of my God number one and God number two, >> which [laughter] because God number God number one is arenic. And you know, Heather's work is it's arenic. Um this is the setting. This is the context. And when when people get together, they they create an arena. just the community of people coming together creates a spirit between them which is arenic but then the agentic you know begins then to take place within that arena and one of the things that I years ago when this when this whole YouTube thing started for me uh I was I spent quite a bit of time rereading uh CS Lewis's book Miracles and one of the things that I I picked up from Lewis was he kept talking about nature as our sister. And I don't know if I hadn't seen that before in Lewis, but that has that has helped me um to understand this very strange quality that human beings have where we, you know, we are both arenic and agentic as God is.

[00:16:54]And um we have this tremendous capacity I think as imagebearers of God to create arenas and then act within them. And and so then our relationship with our sister and I love the way Lewis phrased that.

[00:17:10]It's interesting because of course Lewis didn't have any sisters. Uh he just had his his older brother Warney. But this this stands in such contrast to kind of the rapacious posture of modernity with respect to nature. And Heather, it's so interesting when you talk about um when I think about Orthodoxy coming to America, a lot of the different Orthodox communities come from other places, which has been the American story. uh everyone comes to America from another place, even the indigenous people that came a very long time ago, and there's no written record of it. And so part of what has happened in America is that it always keeps getting written over. Um everything in America comes from somewhere else. And I think that might feed into this um this disorientation that Americans have every everything here is new and it's I live in the American West and part of why I love the American West is if you step just back from California and just outside of Kansas, you have this massive desert area where there's there's not a lot of water and so there's never a lot of population and it's that sort of becomes the setting for of course the the western tropes but it also I think pushes on the sense of place for Americans which is I think partly why we keep going over to Europe because Europe has a sense of place that American Americans seem to long for but can't quite put their hands on.

[00:19:09]>> Thanks [clears throat] Paul. So yesterday I had a conversation with a Valentin Jalier who's taken over from Martin Shaw at Shoemaker College in England and um he's a very interesting character, very eclectic, a mixed European background, Italian, French and so on. But he has decided to make his way to Ireland. I think in part for some of those reasons he sent this profane spiritual um call to East Galway, funny enough, where Paul Kings North is too.

[00:19:42]So it's it's fascinating to me that how this is playing out. But Valentin is a professional musician, wonderful writer.

[00:19:49]He's a book about Shakespeare [clears throat] and it's about the grace of words in contrast to the kind of um disintegration of language and modernity where we reduce things maybe to power games and so on that we can experience the gratitude and there is this grace with language built in uh because of the centrality of God's word and it's a wonderful theology that places speech and nonviolence at the center but He's been really influenced by folks like William Blake alongside Shakespeare and uh we touched upon this idea of the imaginal. So sometimes people outside of the Christian tradition like some Muslims before I became a believing Christian I was really interested in mystical Islam and there's this idea that you don't have this space for the imaginal or the imagination to the same extent in Christianity which as I've learned over the years is [laughter] complete nonsense. And I think that's part of why I love your work so much, Heather. I wonder if we might talk a little bit about that and how we might understand the imaginal and imagination not as escapism but as a way to see reality more clearly and um I wonder how your work at the moment is fitting into that in terms of the scenes of the British Isles and some of these wonderful things that we've spoken about.

[00:21:10]>> Yeah, thank you. Um well it's really interesting because I did a talk at the symbolic world summit um and it was called ways of seeing and it was really about um sort of trying to understand the Christian vision is the best way that I can describe it. Um and I told the journey of me starting as a fine artist in the postmodern world. Um, and you can imagine like uh do you remember the show Sensation with like Damian Hurst with the shark and everything? Do you remember that? It was like 30 years ago. Anyway, so the postmodern art world um that's where I started out and then I went into movie making and then um my um my career kind of got sidelined by postmodernism kind of coming to the film world. And so I started I I went and relooked at postmodernism at the same time I was becoming Christian. And I realized actually uh long story short that there's a kind of similarity between premodernism and postmodernism. There's a kind of return to form in terms of in terms of art. So so some of the things we see now in galleries actually are like kind of preodern or pre-reformation pre- Renaissance art. Um so I've been studying medieval art for about sort of eight nine years now. Um, and to me that that period of art is really the the kind of truest visual expression that we've ever had of the Christian kind of heart and the Christian imagination. Um, which is why I'm leaning into it professionally. Um, so I'd say that that kind of art, I mean, it's it's a vast subject. It's characterized by um a kind of immediacy of experience. Um, if you like I'll give you a a kind of easy example would be um the icon of John the Baptist. So, I don't know if you've ever seen one, >> but it's the best way to learn about the sort of medieval vision or the or the Orthodox icon vision. So John the Baptist is shown um quite often with wings because he's a messenger of God, but also he'll be holding his own head on a plate and then at his feet he will have um an axe and a tree. So basically in and he's wearing his camel hair coat.

[00:23:34]So basically in one image you have everything that we know about John the Baptist. So it's a kind of correlation or a condensation of a person. And my talk was really about when when we see people when we meet people, we see all of them, you know, especially if it's your spouse or your daughter or whatever. You see, you really see them when they're a baby. You see them you see them in the future. You see all the things that have happened. So as as we see we we see a whole person and and the kind of the vision that the Renaissance and modernity has encouraged is kind of the snapshot, you know, something that led to the invention of the camera, etc. So, um, I was showing this this evolution from around kind of 1460 of losing lenses in in Renaissance painting that really changed the way that we look at at things and and make paintings and saying, you know, it's all fine, but it doesn't really correlate with the way that we see each other and actually how how God sees us as well. Um, and so I don't know if that makes any sense to you because I'm still like thinking out loud, but um, but really that's what I'm my area of interest is looking at the medieval vision, seeing those aspects that I think are still really relevant to the Christian life today and and exciting um, and and really wanting to be uh, in that tradition [clears throat] because like I said, it it feels contemporary um, to the to the moment we're in. Um, and that might be iconography or it might be, you know, church design, [clears throat] whatever it is that I'm kind of called to do. Um, but it's not I was I was clear in the in the talk, it's not nostalgia. It's not like a kind of medieval reenactment um, exercise. It's I'm I'm I'm trying to let allow people to look at this work again and see what it's what is exciting about it right now in 2026.

[00:25:32]um in terms of you know how we see ourselves and h and our relationship to to God. So yeah [snorts] >> that's class. Thanks Heather. Yeah I think that even from my perspective I'm I'm not an artist in the same way but even as a kind of um consumer of such things. I have been blown away by the idea in some sense that all these different stages in history are mapping on to the life, death, resurrection, ascension of Jesus. This dynamic picture, it's not plonism. It's like you described there's a kind of there's a dynamic element to it that you're taking different parts of Christ and he plays in 10,000 places in that sense. and um the Gothic shows us a certain side of him and you have the these other pieces in history that show us certain sides of him, but it's not exhausted in that sense. I find that really refreshing actually and I'm really glad that you're um you're serving in that wonderful way. I hope that makes sense.

[00:26:37]And Paul, so from your perspective, there's maybe a bit of a stereotype against reformed Christianity generally when it comes to the arts and so on, but there there are wonderful riches. You have um Lutheran and Johan Sebastian Bach in music and all these wonderful figures in America.

[00:26:56]You have the great African-American Tanner, some of those folks doing different things. I wonder what what your experience has been like as a Dutch reform Christian at this kind of um in this area of the imaginal an imagination and do you think there's potential for revival or what does that look like in distinguishing reformed Christian way of engaging these things versus secularist and so on. Does that make sense?

[00:27:23]>> Yeah, that's that's an excellent question. I remember when I was at Calvin College in the 80s. Um, you know, I think a lot of the the art department at Calvin was wrestling with and Heather and I had a conversation about this when we were at the last arc.

[00:27:37]You know, my tradition tends to be very well, see this is difficult because the if you look at if you look at the Dutch reformed churches in the Netherlands that were wealthy, they were not uh Spartan and spare like let's say the churches I grew up in. And so I think part of this has to do with this American dynamic of of a a dislocation from roots.

[00:28:14]I think some of this has to do with when I last time I spoke with Jonathan PJO I I put this question to him. I'm not sure he saw it coming. But when we look at let's say what orthodoxy did and what the medieval church did. So so so the church of the east figured out how to absorb its world. And so Lewis of course calls these good dreams. And so it fills it finds a way to sort of accommodate the Greeks um some of the other aspects of the ancient world. and it and it figures out how to bring it in and synthesize it into the church and make it a part of the church. I think in many ways the medieval I'm by no means an expert in any of any of that but I think that the medieval to do that also with let's say the Germanic the Norse managed to bring it into the church in a way that could it could Christianize it >> and I think part of what we see happening now I've been developing this thesis about this orthodox moment if I say orthod Orthodox revival as an American that's just a little because a revival is like a tent and sawdust and and that's you know that's not exactly what's happening and so Orthodox moment whatever's happening with orthodoxy now but I see that as sort of what came after this this collision with postmodernity that's in the first time I talked to Jonathan you know seven eight years ago to get into his story you know he's an arts school. Um, and and and this comes and this comes out and the more interviews I do with a lot of Orthodox converts, I'm I'm going to be in Austin um in a couple of weeks and doing an adult ed talk for an Orthodox church, which kind of blows my mind. But I I see I think what we're seeing now is the digestion of the modern period into the church and a lot of that is happening with um in in terms of a response to postmodernity and we don't have the language for it but when I listen to Heather talk and actually you know I have a number of friends who went to the symbolic world summit and the only the only talk that I've gotten that someone has unprompted said, "Oh, the only talk I've heard about is Heathers." So, that's a good uh indication that your talk really landed someplace for some people.

[00:31:06]>> Well, it was interesting. Sorry. Sorry.

[00:31:08]Finish.

[00:31:09]>> No, but I think you're right.

[00:31:11]>> Well, so the first person to speak was Mary Harrington and she did an absolutely amazing talk that if anyone can get a hold of it, please watch it.

[00:31:20]It was about rebuilding the monasteries and um it was really uh the headline of it was she's mourning the end of the the print era, the literary era. Um and it got me thinking that you know if you think about the English Reformation, it really ushered in us as a as a literary nation. We we're loved all over the world for authors, poets, um playwrights, but what got kind of subsumed was was obviously the artistic tradition in England. Um so there's this strange movement going on. Um and there was lots of literary types kind of saying, "Oh no, you know, the the print era is over." And I I obviously feel that way as well because I'm British. I you know, I love the culture that I was that I was raised in, but I can see kind of the price of that. And I think that's why all of this is very complicated.

[00:32:11]It's like, you know, just just with you talking about your tradition, Paul, um my favorite artist in Vang who's a Calvinist, right? So how, you know, how do I square that? And it's um so that there there's I think all of us are kind of looking around and going there's this kind of picture and it's not about I'm on this side or that side or winners and losers or anything but more recognizing things that have happened and maybe there was prices for certain things and is there a moment to analyze you know where we're at now and can we bring some of the things that were lost back and you know Mary made a really good point which he said whatever comes next that will have its price too right you know That's true because nothing comes nothing comes without the price. So, but I think they're the kind of conversations that were happening. Um, and it it was it was really really fascinating and um but everyone's noticing the shift.

[00:33:08]>> Um, and then yeah, I spoke, as I said, very directly about postmodern art in particular and what what the signs there were. Um, and how that kind of might relate to what what we're going to see going forward. So, so yeah, it's but it's yeah, fascinating time for sure.

[00:33:25]>> Yeah.

[00:33:26]>> Yeah.

[00:33:27]>> So, Paul, I want to ask you a little bit about um the Christian vision of nature again given the fact that in some ways maybe um America [sighs and gasps] there has been in the USA this a sort of strict separation from nature in a sense. Even like Alan Watts whenever I was listening to him as a teenager used to talk about how they used to put um the grades down, you got the the road system and in the cities you have these straight lines but nature is kind of curvy and there's lots of wiggles and if you're making a map of the US and you got to Kansas you would have no clue how to deal with what was going to come with the Rocky Mountains and so on. I always thought that was a really cool image. But somebody that's really been meant a lot to me over the years and influence on Paul Kings North too is Wendel Bry. And um there are these wonderful figures and Christian figures who wrestle with some of these deep questions about what it means to think Christianly about nature and so on. And I know you spend time out at Euseite in some of these places. I wonder if you might speak a bit about that and what that means to you and maybe the on the flip side of the darker side of the of what's happening in America some of those virtues and potential opportunities and so on. Does that make sense?

[00:34:48]>> Yeah.

[00:34:50]Well, I I will always tell people that the God of redemption is the God of creation.

[00:34:59]And it's important that these two things stay.

[00:35:05]Um the I know Calvinism gets a bad rap sometimes, but in in at least the tradition I was raised in, it's always creation, fall, redemption, restoration. And so there is an implicit cycle in there. And I my my corner of Calvinism emphasized the um redemption, renewal and basically the completion of creation in this process.

[00:35:39]I think the I I think the tradition struggled with images partly out of you know partly that's well founded given the the the very unusual imagistic prohibition on divinity given by the Hebrew you know given by Moses.

[00:36:08]how um the goddess's world is cannot be portrayed as any individual aspect of this world and that's a very strange thing in the ancient world where you just have all these imagistic representations you know the northern kingdom has a has a golden calf at at Bethl and Dan um after they break from Jerusalem so you My my people come by this my people come by this instinctive pause honestly with respect to the power of images. Now in all fairness I don't think the uh my tradition was honest about the fact that when you read Exodus and the or Exodus or Kings and the creation of the tabernacle and the temple they're full of images. you have these massive cherubim over the ark.

[00:37:10]It's just one very specific exclusion.

[00:37:14]And so I don't see um I I didn't find the ideas of the redemption of creation to be alien to the Calvinism that I was raised with.

[00:37:31]I think there are certain brands of it and and this sort of happened in America where things did get gnostic for certain traditions. And I think I think that actually is is sort of as as most heresies eventually do. They just run out of steam after a while because they're not true enough to last long enough. new heresies get developed and old heresies get repackaged but uh heresy does run out of gas.

[00:38:05]>> And also what comes to my mind in part are the folks behind the Hudson River School and things like that. Heather will know more about that I'm sure than I do. But I've been blown away by um reading and looking at some of these wonderful works of art. There's a Scottish theologian David Brown who looks at the different schools and how imminence will be uh emphasized in one place trans God's transcendence will be emphasized in other places. So on again it's like that I describe that God or Christ playing 10,000 places. It's really um it's wonderful that you have that those American riches but people maybe don't know about them. So I'm actually I'm enthused to share that with people who maybe do just have stereotypical views about Calvinism and what have you. And um one another thing that I wanted to talk about today with you folks is this importance of modeling and um in some sense how the saints are wonderful models for us.

[00:39:05]Especially Baron talks about they're like spiritual athletes like we might look up to our baseball players or football players or what have you and we can treat the saints in some sense like that models of what we might be and we're all called to be saints in a sense from your perspective Heather I wonder if you might tell us a bit about that sort of how they've been understood historically uh not just looked at as historical figures put in a box somewhere but living um spiritual spiritually with us today an example for us and maybe how how that been made manifest in monasteries and churches and so on.

[00:39:42]>> Yeah, it's a it's a really nice point to think about. Um I mean the way that I look at it as someone who didn't grow up with the saints and then has kind of come to them through orthodoxy is actually we we're talking about this process of indigenization and it's almost like you know the gospel made real in Britain for example through the saints. you know, obviously they're not Christ, but they are Christ's people in England. So, in in a way, it's like they're they were a a means by which things could become uh you know, part part of the lands where it spread. You know, Christianity got planted here and then there was a physical expression through the people living out their life with Christ. And so, that's that's really been my um appreciation for the saints. And then um you know through studying the icon like I said before the idea that there you're not painting you know someone on a Thursday in the fifth century really you're painting uh you know uh the spirit of a saint and and how you understand their you know h how they lived in the hearts of the people who came here. A lot of the British saints you know they weren't properly canonized. They were they they came from the people and you know pretty much you just drive around the UK it's like I'm sure it's the same in Ireland or every second place is named after a saint.

[00:41:06]>> We don't even notice anymore because we don't see it. But they you know you almost can't imagine these lands without them because they literally defined the topography and and uh and geography of our of our towns and cities. Um, so, so yeah, that was really my entry point and, um, yeah, I've just become more and more interested really. I'm trying I'm trying to to learn. Um, because it's still quite new, but but but like I said, just through visiting, that's that's really the the key for me is is to go to these wonderful places and I've I've I've [snorts] been to some amazing ones already. So, >> I'm excited for Kildair >> class. Thanks, Heather. And uh so I had a conversation there this week with Dr. Gary Burge. And Gary Burge is a scholar who looks at um the ancient Israel and how we might understand Israel in a biblical way and so on. and he talked about leading pilgrimages to the Middle East and how some folks from the states and Britain actually it was London would go out to the Holy Land with a kind of view that as kind of a magical place and they have to be baptized in the river Jordan and all this kind of stuff and then they were so downtrodden after nothing magical happened. So I guess there is this healthy suspicion towards treating holy places in this way and it can become the way I framed it with him and he he agreed was that it can become like an idol but yet we do have these set aside places we do have wal we do have places associated with St. Bridget or St. Patrick and so on.

[00:42:50]And I'm kind of curious to hear your perspective about this, Paul, given maybe in some sense, maybe I'm wrong, that there's not that same focus in the USA on holy places or set aside places for Christians. And you mentioned this return to Europe. Is this part of what we're seeing? And um how might we get that balance where these places can be iconic in a sense, but not idolatrous?

[00:43:16]Does that make sense?

[00:43:18]Yeah, Winston Churchill had this great line about the Balkans that they make more history than they can digest. Um, and I think that to a certain degree is true of Europe in America. You know, I talked I think one of my first conversations with Richard Roland, he just made the plain observation that growing up as a um as a fundamentalist Baptist, they had saints. They just didn't call them that. Just recently in California, we've had um a rapid iconoclasm of Cesar Chavez because um it was it became revealed that Cesar Chavez, this union organizer, had been um you know had basically been uh sleeping with underage uh migrant workers and things like this. And what was interesting is that there had been Cesar Chavez parks, Cesar Chavez building, Cesar Chavez Plaza, and then when this revelation came, it was within weeks that you'd see these hastily um hasty covers over monuments. And I mean it was it was amazing how fast the culture tried to erase Cesar Chavez because they had canonized him as a secular saint and now you know had to you know take him down and the it's I think it's just simply natural within us to see ourselves through exemplars.

[00:44:56]People take take pilgrimages to Atlanta to the Dr. King sites.

[00:45:02]>> Mhm.

[00:45:03]>> You can when you go to Boston, you can walk on the Freedom Trail. America, you you go to Graceand, Memphis, Tennessee to visit Elvis's home.

[00:45:16]Americans are so hungry for saints. we make them fast and then you know we have to tear them down down just as quickly and then but there'll be someone else to fill their slot. So I think again there's an exhaustion there's an exhaustion of the speed of our culture and I think for that reason to go to Kildair and to learn about Bridget and the fact that well this has survived centuries now and Cesar Chavez you know didn't survive 30 years so maybe That's worth a little bit more attention than the uh quickie saints we have in North America.

[00:46:02]>> That's great, Paul. It reminds me actually, I mean, I don't know if you know, but I started my film career on the Harry Potter films and um so I was in this like airfield in Watford, you know, making Marauders Maps on a photocopier. That's that was my first job.

[00:46:17]>> And now that office is basically a pilgrimage site in the UK. People coming from all over the world.

[00:46:25]My dad works on a vintage railway and people turn up to see where, you know, Harry met Hagrid, you know. So, I think because I've seen the fictional world become kind of, you know, celebrated in this strange way and things that I might have worked on have become kind of relicike, I realized, well, you know, people accept that, but then they'll be hostile to the idea that we might go and talk about Bridget of Kildair. And I was like, the only difference really is that she we think existed and certainly a lot of the saints we definitely know existed. So how is it more how is it?

[00:47:03]You know, we could talk about Harry Potter and how that's meaningful. Um, so I think that really that that really turned it up and upside down for me and and made made me more open to this idea.

[00:47:13]Um, so yeah, it's really interesting you say that. I think they're kind of inevitable. That's what you're saying.

[00:47:19]>> Yeah. Um and and like you say it's in a way that the sort of the Europeans have the aristocracy as a kind of ladder to the monarch you know that that's kind of the same thing I think. Um so it has it has that kind of function.

[00:47:35]Yeah. And certainly as as a female, it's been amazing to find, you know, this legacy of female saints that again, like you say, just been preserved over centuries. And you just think, wow, these like Hilda, you know, Hilda of Whitby, I mean, she was a powerhouse.

[00:47:53]Um, and that's really interesting. You know, we live in a world of uh obviously of kind of fe feminism and you kind of think, well, what's going on there?

[00:48:01]Because that doesn't really fit the narrative. um that there's there is these ladies. So um so yeah, very interesting. I think yeah, like we say, the postmodern moment has kind of opened all this up again >> um and kind of allowed a way back in for lots of people. So >> really cool.

[00:48:18]>> So I um am from the Christian capital of Ireland in a sense at Arma and there's lots of connections with St. Patrick and there's two churches. There's an Anglican one and there's a Catholic one and a host of wonderful sites around that area. You've got a or you've got Navan Fort also which is a kind of pre-Christian.

[00:48:40]But I'm kind of curious from each of your perspectives in terms of places of pilgrimage or places you've been to you've had powerful spiritual experiences if if you're happy to share maybe where if there's anywhere stands out for you and why they've been especially powerful.

[00:48:59]Does anyone think come to mind for you Paul? Boy, >> I I I think probably it's not a you know, we in America have to deal with what we have to deal with. I'm not interested in finding I'm going down to Los Angeles and finding the place where McDonald's started. It doesn't really grip me, but I you know, you mentioned already, Marcus, that that for me, Yoseite is a is a really special place. It's about three and a half hours from my home and and I get there semi-regularly and it is I mean it is it is a holy site in many ways. Um America's national parks for me are I I think that's sort of what America has in exchange for what Europe has in that and especially out here in the west when I moved to California.

[00:49:53]Oh my word. In California, we have we we just have a an embarrassment of of riches in terms of national parks. And I've, you know, I I've taken my children to these national parks. That's that's what we do every year.

[00:50:10]>> And and some of them we go repeatedly like Yusede. It is a sort of pilgrimage.

[00:50:15]And you know, I've never found it to be a pagan pilgrimage because I believe in the creator of the world. And I think what the gospel says is that the the author of Yoseite cares about human beings, which is which is a a miraculous claim and it's one that that people rightly struggle with. And so for me in America, national parks are sort of pilgrimages and we and we go there, but they um you know, so then so then there gets to be like a layer like John Mure is is sort of an American saint attached to national parks and and there are attempts in many national parks to sort of um canonize him, but the the um the parks You know, John Mir can't shine like the parks. In fact, he's sort of iconic in that he points to nature and there's just so much of it out here out west. So, you're giving me ideas, Marcus, about running some of my own events out here. So, >> I I would I went there 20 years ago and I was just blown away. came on a road trip to the states and mainly thought, you know, was excited about the cities and actually it was the natural landscape that really took me by surprise. I just couldn't believe it.

[00:51:42]So, you're absolutely right. Yeah. If if you organize something, Paul will all be coming over to [laughter] um Yeah. Amazing.

[00:51:53]>> And do any other places speak powerfully to your heart in that way, Heather?

[00:51:59]>> Yeah. Um mainly Wales is where I've been so far.

[00:52:04]Um so sort of Pemrookchshire. Um West Wales. So few of the saints there. David Nona. There's the St. Gins's cave. I don't know if you've ever seen that one.

[00:52:15]That's just amazing place. It's like a beach and then there's like a tiny chapel kind of hun into the rock face.

[00:52:22]Um, and no one really knows who Govern was, but there's, you know, some connection with the Arththeran legends, of course, and it's just it's just a incredible place. I mean, you can't really explain why these places feel the way they do. Um, but, you know, they are special and and quite often quiet, you know, because there's not a massive interest in these things yet, but I I believe that there might be going forward. So, um, yeah, I'd love we should have an event in Wales. That be My husband's Welsh, so that's one of the reasons why I love I love Wales.

[00:52:58]>> That's the class.

[00:53:00]>> Yeah.

[00:53:01]>> So, we're going to come to a close shortly this evening because I really want to just wet folks appetite and um we are going to explore some of these wonderful themes in more detail in Kilder. So hopefully this will serve as a little entry point for folks. Does he say maybe they've entered the Narnia in some sense, God willing. Um, so as we look to go there, maybe just to recap, maybe you've touch, maybe you've dealt with it already, but just to give you another opportunity to say what you're most looking forward to for the day personally and with the time that we'll get to spend together.

[00:53:38]>> Paul, I I I don't know. I'm super excited. I was, you know, in the planning of this when you when you decided to locate it, you know, we're not going to be in we're not going to be some banquet room of some Hilton somewhere. I mean, heaven help us all.

[00:53:55]Um, but going to this place, I've never been here. Um, I know some people will just be waiting to watch me instantly convert to Catholicism or orthodoxy. So, if you want to come and and and watch and see if he pops. [laughter] Um, see if [snorts] I get oneshotted by Bridget. Um, but I'm but again, you know, I like I said, when you know, Marcus Marcus hasn't steered me wrong.

[00:54:22]Um, we've done these tiny little events in Ireland. This is my third. And they've been, you know, it's just been so much fun to to meet people and to and to just taste the culture. I got to know Father Connor, you know, last time when I stayed at his um at his place in in Galway. So, I'm I'm just really excited about it.

[00:54:46]>> Wonderful.

[00:54:47]>> Thanks, Paul. And Heather.

[00:54:50]>> Yeah, same. I'm really excited. I mean, just the opportunity to come to Ireland.

[00:54:54]Um and and and with you, too, who I think I think I said earlier, you know, I met you both at ARC and you were my favorite people at that conference. So this this happening and a kind of opportunity to continue conversations um and you know I just I just love Paul's angle on things and and yourself Marcus. So to to have that gathering in in a place like that I mean it's it just sounds very special. So yeah I'm really excited.

[00:55:20]>> Glory to you guys. Yeah this is the mutual appreciation society. [laughter] So, thank you so much for joining me this evening, folks. And for those who are watching, we'd absolutely love you to join us in Caldera. As say that's Saturday, the 27th of June for Finding God in Nature and Culture. And God bless you both in your ministries. And I look forward to seeing you both soon.

[00:55:43]>> Thank you.

[00:55:43]>> Thanks very much.

[00:55:51][singing] >> I'm going there.

[00:55:55]Nobody can stop me. I'm on [singing] my way. I'm going there.

[00:56:01]>> I'm going there.

[00:56:03]>> No.

[00:56:09]I'm going there.

[00:56:12]>> If you'd like to join us in the More Christ community, you can do so by becoming a patron over on Patreon, or you can support by becoming a member on YouTube. Either way, you'll get early access to new episodes, receive free ebooks each month, and are able to ask more Christ guests some of your burning questions. Thank you to my sponsor, Sher Blooms. Sher Blooms provides flower hair across Britain and Ireland.