https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=qE0ptTJVOKA
You know, we tend to say the beauty is harmony and beauty is symmetry and all these things. And but then my experience of that was that it’s just, that’s not true. Like it’s not completely true. It’s partly true. But it seems like, my perception of it, it seems like what we find beautiful, even visually, aesthetically, is something like symmetry adapted to a particular. It seems to be something like that. It seems to be something like balance that is well suited to a particular situation. And therefore it has to encompass some type of play with its environment, whether it is the dings and scratches of use, or whether it is a beautiful church that is laid in a slope or whether it is, you know, so there’s always this sense of order, but that is embedded in a particular that is more chaotic or more, yeah, that can be a little, that can be off even, you know, and that seems to be part of how we experience beauty. It’s, you know, it’s because, I mean, it’s because in the kenosis of the logos, you know, which brings about the creation of the world, the kenosis is so complete that it’s continually adapting to the creature or to the situation of the creature. And this is fractal order, right? That in fractals, everything is exactly to its place. And by the way, that’s the Plato’s cave answer too, because within the cave is another kind of, you know, it’s at every scale. And one of my former students, Georgia Williams, you know, she said, I think that, she wrote an article about this somewhere, but she said, I think that what we call fractals is what Dionysius called the hierarchies. Yeah. And once you realize that the celestial hierarchies and the ecclesiastical hierarchies are fractal shapes, then everything, you know, just a lot more things make sense. And first of all, hierarchy is not a dirty word anymore. It’s just fractal structure. This is the way the world has to be because what’s being given is so infinite or beyond infinite and what’s receiving it is so, you know, we’re so weak and we need, and that’s another reason why, you know, go film. Look, not everything, we can’t, I cannot be in liturgy 24 seven. So what about, you know, what fills the space fractally, other things, you know, the other times and… Yeah, that’s, I mean, I think that that’s the, some of the things that I’ve been talking about in terms of, you know, I use the family meal as an example of, you know, a type of liturgical act, which is not strictly liturgical, but participates in the same structure. And you could bring that all the way down to having coffee with a friend or a conversation or breathing, right? It’s like these structures of kind of moving in and out of the mystery is there at every level. And, you know, the Jesus prayer, for example, as like the basic liturgical structure for your thoughts, you know, kind of expands and, you know, and can be seen through all aspects of life and then into the grand cosmic liturgy of the angels. And I think your perception about how our, I was fractal, obviously, very akin to the things that I talk about, but the idea that that hierarchy is actually just the way the world works. It’s not a, and it’s not, it actually is condescending. People always think of hierarchy as something which separates, but hierarchy is also something which unites because it adapts its glaring light to the particular situation, you know, and sometimes, you know, we don’t understand that even in our lives, you don’t understand that we’re not ready for the vision of the divine logos. You know, it’s like, you don’t want that actually. And so you have to, when you receive the little graces that you receive, this is God loving you, right? Even if it’s the smallest grace, it’s God loving you because the reason why you receive the grace, the small graces where you receive them is because that is your capacity to receive them. They’re the ones that can provide fruit, you know, if the faucet was open and the grace just fell on you, you’d burn, like you’d burn in hell. Like you would be overwhelmed. And so that’s why I think hierarchy is so, if we can help people understand how hierarchy, what it is actually, and that it’s not just like, you know, authority and power coming down, but it is this condescension of authority down to the level that’s appropriate, you know. St. Silouan, you know, he had a vision of Christ when he was still a novice at Vespers. He said afterwards, if that vision had lasted even one more second, I would have died. And so that is that we, and I’m thinking of a recent elder in Russia who, a man came to him, said, I’m dying of cancer. I’ve heard you, you know, you’re a miracle worker, heal me. And he said, do you believe in God? He said, no. Then the priest said, do you want to believe in God? He said, no. And so the priest, without really, you know, missing a beat, he said, well, do you want to live? Do you love life? And the man said, yes. And so the priest healed him. And this is a true story from the 90s. And I think, look, I know in the film, you know, some things happen and are said that, you know, are, you know, like that. People like to mock the thing about babies that won’t nurse on fast days. But Mother Nectaria, my other great mentor, you know, this was said about some elders that, you know, we knew, and she went to Cyprus and talked to like the women of the village. And they didn’t, they just said, hey, it was the darndest thing. Really? It made you feel out of it. But it’s amazing. It still continues to happen that, you know, some kids are just born with that much grace, but it’s not something I think about a lot because that’s not my reality. Yeah. Well, that’s why I loved it when you put it in there. Cause I think like a more, I think like a more modern type of person, like a modern type of filmmaker would have not put that in because it’s so counter the way that our lives are because our lives are so mundane to some extent. But like you said, you know, the medieval world was full of these stories and to think that they’re all made up is ridiculous. It’s just the world was just, you know, some people live in a world that is more like more of a dance than ours. And in the moments where you actually experience that dance, you should understand that maybe that dance could be 10 times more than the one that you’re experiencing right now in this, these little moments. It is a thing, you know, but I think that the danger is, you know, to like chase those things for themselves. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The thing is, you know, the first command that Christ gave us in his incarnate ministry was repent. And St. Paisios said, just pray for a spirit of repentance. Don’t ask for anything else because you won’t be able to handle it when it comes. And that’s the fact. And if we can just pray for a spirit of repentance and then miracles can come and go, or, you know, people can tell stories. And sometimes, you know, people tell stories and they do seem kind of made up and, you know, you let that go and it’s not a huge thing. The point is, you know, to have your own, hopefully, you know, dynamically alive relationship with Christ and to let that, you know, hold these other things along. Yeah, yeah. And so the biggest affront, at least on its face, to beauty is the cross, you know, because the cross is, it is the most horrible thing. You know, it’s presented that way in scripture. It’s presented that way in, you know, it’s an object of torture and Christ is tortured. But nonetheless, we have the intuition and we hear it in the church and that in fact the cross is beautiful. And so how do you square that? Like how do you see that coming together? Oh, I don’t know. I mean, I certainly- I love it when he says, I don’t know. I certainly find my cross is hard to bear, but I find yours very beautiful. I find, you know, meeting someone who’s willing to risk their lives for me. You know, I was in a fiery car crash in 2017 and thank God the car didn’t tip, but you know, it was really on fire. And, you know, as I emerged out of the fire, there just happened to be a fireman getting off duty. And, you know, when I thank God that the car didn’t flip, you know, cause then that might’ve just either been the end of me or I would be even uglier than I am. No, just kidding. I would’ve, you know, really been, you know, had all kinds of things going on. Would be hard row to hoe and my faith is not infinite. But my main reason I’m happy is that that poor guy, he was just coming home from work on a Sunday morning. And would he have had to go into the flames for me? That would be awful. I mean, but had he done it, yeah, it’s just beautiful that God put in there and that, you know, that he was ready, seemed ready. So certainly, and when we encounter in a relationship that the other person is unwilling or unable or psychologically unready to bear even the smallest cross for us, that’s really sad. You know, that’s really, that’s much harder, you know, than and then we realize, well, we’ve got to up our game and we’ve got to carry a few more crosses for the life of the world and stop trying to be so pretty and focus on being beautiful or on being good and letting the beauty come out of that. Yeah, because, you know, it was interesting, you know, I’d never had that experience before, but I was at Monathos in, I mean, you actually helped organize my first trip there, by the way, thank you. I’ll say that in public. That was wonderful. But I went back again, as you know, with Jordan Peterson, you know, and we met the abbot of the Xenophon Monastery where we were and to me, that was really something of an experience of the deep beauty because he was a broken old man, you know, I mean, his back was out and, you know, he had all the characteristics of a very elderly person who’s had a very full life, but, you know, it was impossible to stop looking at him. Like it was some, there was something more than just the usual advertisement, you know, Hollywood aspects of what we find to be beautiful. And it was a visual thing. Like part of it was visual, not just visual, but part of it was visual is that I really, he was hypnotizing. Like it was difficult to stop looking at his face because there was so much simple joy and, you know, and the kind of presence that was exuding from it. And so I think I did have like a little bit of a vision of how the cross can be beautiful, you know, although we, you know, when we make icons of the cross, we’re careful, you know, we try to make it in a way that won’t attract to the kind of torture aspect of the cross. And I think it’s good that we do that, but we also know that that’s what it was. I mean, we know that Christ on the cross visually did not look the way that we represented in an icon. You know, we’re trying to represent the inner aspect that that kind of transformed aspect, but the outer aspect would have been horrible. But that was a moment where I felt like I was able to see a surprising, you know, in someone who is, you know, old and close to death and has had this full life of sacrifice that there was something shining. So anyways, I’m sure other people have had experiences like that, but to me that was helpful to help me understand what beauty is, you know, in the deepest way.