Speaking with Joy

We come to an end.

Renée makes her first real friend. Paloma begins to despair.

Monsieur Ozu causes a stir with the inhabitants of 7 Rue de Grenelle. Is it because he can truly see people?

Week one of a summer book club on Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery.

Carvings from the Southwell Minster chapter house, described in this episode.

Dear Friends,

I am delighted to share this final episode in my series on You are a Tree: and other Metaphors to Nourish Life, Thought, and Prayer, a rich and warm conversation with the wise and lovely Alison Milbank. Alison Milbank is Professor of Theology and Literature at the University of Nottingham as well as the priest vicar and Canon Theologian at Southwell Minster, the cathedral of Nottinghamshire. Alison is a leading scholar of religion and literature and has published many books including God and the Gothic: Religion, Romance, and Reality in the English Literary Tradition and Chesterton and Tolkien as Theologians amongst others. Alison has been a great inspiration to me in my own writing and I often teach her work!

A beautiful image of Alison from a feature of her in the New Statesman!

In this episode Alison and I discuss the metaphor of life as a journey, and in particular the double longings of Psalm One: to be a tree, planted, rooted, and nourished, and also to journey, to reach upward and beyond ourselves to the transcendent beyond. These two desires are captured in the operative metaphors of Psalm One: the blessed person as a traveler and as a tree. These seemingly contradictory metaphors capture much of what it is to be a human being. It reminds me of a line from a Rich Mullins song: “Nobody tells you when you get born here how much you come to love it and how you’ll never belong here.” The journey metaphor is the final metaphor I explore in the pages of You are a Tree.

Alison and I discuss these twin desires through the architecture of the Chapter House in the Cathedral for which she cares, which features intricate leafs and branches alongside mysterious green men which some argue harken to a pagan past, but Alison believes to be embodiments of Psalm One. We also talked about why so many of the great works of literature are concerned with journeys, from the Odyssey to Divine Comedy to Lord of the Rings. Many of these stories feature journeys people did not want to take, and yet through which grace is experienced and the longing for home evoked— a mirror of our journeys in life. Finally, we ended with discussion of life as a gift, embodied for Alison in this painting:

Chalk Cliffs on Rügen (1818) by Casper David Friedrich.

Alison is a wealth of knowledge and graciousness. I hope you enjoy listening to this conversation as much as I enjoyed having it.

Warmly,

Joy

Order a copy of You are a Tree today!

A conversation with Christopher Tin about how music and metaphor help us express and share our deep, ineffable experiences, how different ways of speaking about love informed his compositional approach to Turandot, and some bonus chat on Aruthuriana, courtly love, and chivalry

Dear Friends,

I am so excited to share this week’s episode in my series on You are a Tree: and other metaphors to nourish life, thought, and prayer. In this week’s episode, I speak with one of the scholars whose work informed my writing: Lydia Schumacher, Professor of Historical and Philosophical Theology at King’s College London.

This week’s conversation can be paired with the chapter “Wisdom is (not) Light.” People sometimes ask me which chapter was my favourite to write, and upon reflection it is this chapter. It was, to borrow the metaphor, illuminating to meditate on how often our language of wisdom draws on metaphors of light: a young student is bright, a particular author is lucid, when we have an idea its like a lightbulb going on. And on the opposite end of that, we speak of people being a bit dim or of keeping people in the dark, as though ignorance or foolishness is darkness. Writing this chapter invited me to meditate on the experience of light and darkness, and also to trace the rich history of this metaphor poetry and theology.

That’s why I was so delighted to be joined by Lydia Schumacher to discuss the idea of divine illumination in in Augustine and through the ages. We discussed some of the ideas in her book Divine Illumination; The History and Future of Augustine’s Theory of Knowledge, which I consulted in writing this chapter. This book looks at St Augustine’s ideas of the involvement of divine illumination in human knowledge, how it was received down the ages in philosophy and theology, and how it is relevant even today. Lydia is a deeply knowledgeable scholar but also warm and poetic in her capacity to express herself, showing the relevance of illumination in spiritual life. It was such a pleasure to speak with her. I hope you enjoy listening to the conversation as much as I enjoyed having it!

As is my custom, I asked Lydia if there were any works of art she would commend to readers who wanted to meditate on the metaphor of light as wisdom. She recommended Rembrandt’s etchings —one of which is on the cover of her book! I hadn’t spent much time with Rembrandt’s etchings, but Lydia noted how beautifully they use light and darkness to engage the viewers. I particularly loved the one below, The Student at a Table by Candlelight (1642). It reminds me of Seamus Heaney’s wonderful translation of “Pangur Ban,” an old Irish poem about a cat and a scholar hard at their various work (catching mice and finding wisdom):

Practice every day has made

One final artistic recommendation (and a bit self serving) is this choral setting of a collect from Compline by my brother Joel. Self serving because we actually recorded it together (all the parts!) during the covid lockdown. I am not a natural soprano, but it was really lovely to get to create this together. (Though, of course, 95% of the credit goes to Joel who composed the thing!). Here are the words:

Lighten our darkness, we beseech thee, O Lord;and by thy great mercy defend us from all perils and dangers of this night;for the love of thy only Son, our Savior Jesus Christ.Amen.

Well, friends! That’s all for today. I hope you enjoy the conversation with Professor Schumacher, the art, and that you will notice the light in your life today.

Warmly,Joy

Order your copy of You are a Tree today!

A conversation with Jennifer Banks about natality.

A conversation with Brian Zahnd about The Wood Between the Worlds: a poetic theology of the cross.

On this week’s episode Joy talks with author David Zahl about the inevitable heaviness of life, whether or not trauma dumping is a thing, the refreshing power of humour to remind us we’re not alone, and the efficacy of Thomas Aquinas’ remedies for sorrow (spoiler: tears, the truth, friends, and baths).