https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=wmRGpq9H2PI
All right. Is everybody there? Let me see. That was my dad. All right. I’m looking a bit scrambly. I don’t know that the word. All right. Okay, here we are. All right. So there’s light coming into the camera for some reason. Okay, this is as good as it’s going to get, guys. So if there’s a technical problem, please, please tell me. Hopefully it will be okay. So to be honest, I don’t know how long I’ll be able to go and do this tonight. We’ll see if I can get through. I get through all the questions. My I spent spent all day, a large part of the day, both waiting on government and government lines and waiting through ice cold water. So that’s pretty much my day. Plus, on top, I have some kind of weird, some kind of weird virus bug, some kind of stomach bug, stomach flu or something. My daughter has that as well. So so, yeah, all good things going on. All right. So I’m going to start. I’m going to talk a little bit about. So for those who don’t know, I guess most people that are here, at least the people that are there know that that we were flooded that my house flooded. I live in a in a town that’s near a lake. I live about about 400 meters from the from the lake. And there’s a dike which goes around the city, which which protects the city from the lake. And the dike is there just for, of course, for springtime when when the water starts to, you know, when the snow is melting and the water starts to go up and. And so two years ago, the water came right for those who’ve been following for a little while. For two years ago, 2017, the water came up all the way up to the dike. There was just, you know, a few, few inches left before the water went over the dike. And we had barricaded our house with sandbags and plywood. Because our house, the way the way that it’s made, it’s kind of weird. Our house is actually a very low point. The the road goes kind of straight and and up slightly going towards the the dike. And so we’re one of the lowest points in the in the on the streets. So even though we’re far, it’s so pretty, we’re still pretty low anyway. So last year, so two years ago, you know, we worked and and barricaded the house and then we worked and put sandbags on the dike. Of the city and the water never came over. So we thought, OK, that’s good. And they said, you know, this is the flooding of us of the century. This is the most water that has been in in the lake since, you know, 100 years ago. So so that means that the century went pretty fast. So two years, 2019, it was more than two years. It was more than 2017. And so the same thing, we know we spent several days during the weekends putting sandbags on the on the dike, trying to raise it up because it looked like it was going to go over once again. Like it was there was just a few. It was it was really close to the top of the dike. But instead of it going over. It broke, so the dike busted in a certain place and water just started pouring in. It was pretty crazy. You know, it happened very fast. We were I had worked on the dike the whole day. And so the dike was really mushy. You know, you’re standing there on the dike. It was really mushy. And you can see the water was right there at the at the at the top of the dike. And so when I got back home, I thought, OK, we should at least bring things up to the first floor. So we started kind of bringing stuff up on the first floor, just, you know, just casually. We weren’t we’re in a hurry or anything. And then all of a sudden we started hearing sirens and police just sirens and sirens from so many all of a sudden. And our neighbor just came running across and, you know, knocked on the door and said the dike is broken. The people in the street next to us are being evacuated. And so I ran outside and I got in with with another one of my neighbors. We drove down the street to see what we could see. And then we saw the water, the water just coming towards us. So we drove right back home and went inside. My wife told my kids, you know, imagine it’s a fire. You have you have a few minutes. What what are you going to bring? What are you going to what you can only bring a few things. You have 10 minutes, you know, pick the things you are precious to you. So so it was pretty crazy, actually, because my my son, good, responsible young man, he is he, you know, he brought like three pairs of clothes, three, three chains of clothes. And he he had bought he had spent two years saving up to buy a small drone that films. And so he grabbed that and his schoolwork. And that was it. And my daughter, it was so touching because my daughter, my youngest daughter was baptized. In the Orthodox Church two years ago. So was it a year? Yeah, two years ago. And so she she brought this little box of things that she got at her baptism, this little box of icons and crosses and things that people had given her. And then while I was downstairs, I still had this hope that I could put another pump and, you know, it would be fine. And I was kind of working on this pump. And my daughter was just kind of spinning around in the basement. And she said, I was like, what are you doing? You need to you need to move. What are you doing? And she said, Dad, I’m looking for my my baptism certificate. It’s here in this one of these boxes. And I was like, what? OK, so I know that don’t worry. The church will make another certificate for you. It’ll be it’ll be fine. So. So we rushed. So then finally, we ended up going outside and the police were coming up the street with with a fire truck. And the sirens were blaring and the police were announcing you need to go now. You need to leave. And behind them, the police, as they were walking up our street, they had water. The water was just following them off the street. So they had water behind them. So the water started rising behind my house, too. We have a little wooded area of water started rising there. And then all of a sudden, they started rushing across the street or just kind of coming across the street from where the dyke had broken. And so all we could do is just get in the car and and and go. And we just left with water kind of under our wheels just coming up. So it was pretty nuts. And. And so, yeah, today we went back for the we went back several times, but we couldn’t access the house because everything was quarantine, everything was closed off. And so just today, the the city said if you have your own boat, you know, if you have a way to go, then you can go and you could just have to show ID to the police that are guarding the whole city and they’ll let you go. So a friend, one of our neighbors called us and said, I have a I have a boat if you guys want, you know, meet us there in an hour and we’ll try to get stuff out of the house. So so we got there this afternoon. And mind you, I woke up this morning just just I threw up all night and I barely slept and I had chills and just, you know, muscle pain. And so then I was like, OK, you need to go and get your stuff in the house. So so we put up so so we went down there and then they had extra, you know, those like long boots, those long like fishermen boots that go all the way up to here. So I put those on and a few families we drove, we kind of dragged the the the boat down the street to our houses. And so my wife was there as well. We went into the house. So luckily, when you walk into the house, the first floor, you go upstairs and then there’s the first floor and we have a basement. So the first floor, it’s fine. Like there doesn’t seem the water for sure didn’t reach the first floor. But, you know, we opened the door to the basement and there was water, you know, eight inches lower than the floor. And so we don’t know if the water went into the floor itself, into the beams of the floor. All that is kind of cheap press wood or whatever. And so we have no idea. We have no idea. I went into my workshop, which is behind my house and in the workshop I had water about up to my knees in the workshop. And the problem, this is what had happened is that in the kind of chaos, my wife, she told me, she said, Jonathan, I had several carvings that I had finished or were close to being finished. Carvings worth that I’ve been working on for months. So it’s like it was almost like twenty thousand dollars worth of carvings and some that I weren’t totally finished, but we’re kind of, you know, in the next one or two months I was going to finish. And so she said, you should put all the carvings in the car, but then in the chaos and the running and, you know, I ended up going to the workshop and just saying, OK, I’m going to put them up at the top level of the shell that I have in my workshop. So I did that and then we left. And when we were at my parents’ house, you know, kind of shell shocked and dazed, my wife said, you know, you know, the workshop isn’t pinned down. It’s just it’s just kind of laying down on these cement blocks. And so then all of a sudden, my fear became that the workshop floated, you know, and then the carvings would come tumbling down. So luckily, I went today and that did not happen. So I was able to get all the carvings out of the workshop. I was also able to get some tools, carving tools so that I can, you know, wherever we end up staying, I can I can carve somehow. So it’s going to take several weeks before the water goes away and then it’s going to take several months before we can actually go back into the house. So right now, we’re kind of in a nomadic in a nomadic state. We’re staying at my parents, but I don’t want to stay here too long. You know, we’re five people and so we’re looking for we’re looking for some kind of long term solution for a place to stay. We were not insured for flooding. Seems most most how homeowners are not insured for flooding. So we might have access to some kind of government indemnization program that we have to kind of apply for and see what happens. But there are over 10,000 people who have been evacuated from their houses in Quebec right now. Ten thousand people in my in my city, it’s six thousand people to twenty five hundred houses are underwater. And so and so I mean, obviously, I mean, the government can want to do all they want. It’s going to take it’s going to take a while. So so that’s the situation. And so, you know, being being who I am, I guess, and just kind of being myself, I just couldn’t help thinking about the symbolism and the symbolic structure of what was happening. And it’s so funny because, you know, I talk about this stuff with you guys all the time and sometimes I’m really able to perceive the symbolic structures in. In what’s going on around me, but it’s sometimes you know what it’s harder to do when it’s yourself. It’s easier to see the structures of what’s happening when you’re watching a social phenomena or if you’re looking at some political event. But when it’s yourself, it’s as if you’re kind of you’re in the you’re in the life, you’re you’re blinded a little bit to what’s happening. And so that’s all the sudden it just dawned on me, you know, being at my parents’ house, obviously not sleeping, you know, for that first night, just kind of laying in bed. And all of a sudden, it just all started to. It just all started to make sense that this what what you know that the structure of what was happening was just what I’ve been talking about with you guys for years. You know, I talked to you guys about the the garments of skin all the time, you know, this idea of Adam and Eve. God gave Adam and Eve these garments of skin and the garments of skin. Are there to protect Adam and Eve in the world of the fall? So there’s a world that is hostile to them. And so what they need to do is they need to cover themselves in order to protect themselves. So it’s a supplement. And what happens in that process of supplement is that it kind of it increases, you know, and so that’s what you see in the story, the genealogy of Genesis, where at first it’s garments of skin. And then as we move forward in the genealogy up to the flood, we have different technologies. We have the city, which is invented and then different arts. And then finally, weapons, you know, weapons of war and tools of steel. And so they these tools grow, increase in order to stay off the chaos in order to stay off the effects of a hostile world. But the problem is that as you as you move out and as you add layers to yourself, then you start to do things and live in a manner which you wouldn’t without them without those layers. You know, I always use the example of a book of matches. You know, a book of matches is great. You know, I can just can just go like that and I have fire. But because of a book of matches, nobody knows how to start a fire without without matches. And it’s the same for a lot of things for so many things. You know, when we when we exteriorize through technology, we get stronger, but we also get weaker because we are more fragile. So this city, this whole town basically built a dike in order to be able to live in a place where you shouldn’t like you shouldn’t live there because every year before the dike, you know, you’re going to be able to live in a place where you shouldn’t. And so we lived there because every year before the dike, people told us that every year it would flood. So every spring, the water would just come up and people had built their their their houses and their summer. It was it was a summer summer houses were there before, like in the in the 60s, 50s and 60s. And people had built their houses in a way that, you know, in the springtime, they would flood and water would come in and then the water would recede. And that was it. Like they they didn’t they didn’t build their houses in a manner which it didn’t matter because they built their houses appropriately. But now because we have this dike, then we all built these houses with basements, you know, and like, why would you build a house with a basement in a place where there should be water? But you do because you at some point you take for granted the garment, take for granted this layer that you’ve added to yourself and you you you don’t understand how it makes you more fragile. And so and so that’s what happened. You know, this dike was there and everybody trusted this dike. Everybody trusted on their technology, everybody trusted it. And it it didn’t hold, you know, it just couldn’t hold the chaos. And the other thing about this is that one of the things about the garments of skin, too, is that it also it also because it moves further and further out into chaos or into. Into difficulty or into challenge, you end up getting a bigger and bigger challenge. You kind of build up the the bad thing. You know, the example that I always use is the example of antibiotics. You know, so we we create antibiotics in order to stop these these bugs. And it’s super powerful. It works amazingly. We we heal all these diseases. But then what we end up doing at the same time is we we make the bugs stronger. And so we it becomes like an escalation on the on the edge. Right. So so on the periphery between the between the antibiotic and the bug, there’s this escalation. And so the bugs get stronger and then the antibiotics get stronger and it keeps going up like that. And at some point, you know, at some point, the antibiotics can’t hold. And so now we have all these superbugs, which that they think they have no solution for. And so if if we have some epidemic, which would be one of these superbugs, we would that’s it. We’re done. You know, we would just all die because we don’t have we have we have created this superbug through our our. Through our increasing of the supplement, you know, and it’s something I say all the time. I always say something like you have to be careful when you get rid of the monsters on the edge, because those monsters are also protecting you from bigger monsters who are who are further out. You know, it’s like they’re interacting with those as well. And so, you know, if you if you Cerberus is a big bad monster, but he’s he’s guarding the doors of hell. And that’s why in stories, monsters are often guardians. You know, they often guard a treasure, they guard something because they’re they’re acting as a protection against something worse. You could say something like that. And so and so, yeah, so and so now what happened is all of a sudden, so the dyke breaks and this water comes pouring in. And and all of a sudden, everything makes sense, right? Everything there’s a loss of meaning. Totally. There’s a total loss of meaning, a loss of stability. For those of you who have read Matthew’s book, you know, this idea of flooded land is that’s it. You know, it’s not it’s not a metaphor when the land gets flooded. All these different things start to manifest themselves because we become nomadic. We lose our own home. And all of a sudden we fall into this weird this institute. We don’t have power. We lose our power over our circumstances. We become totally you know, we move left and right depending on what presents itself to us. We lose our capacity to have to exert our will, let’s say in a in a in a usual manner. And so that’s what we that’s what we saw, you know, until everything was there. You know, the danger, the fear, all these irrational emotions kind of came flooding in panic. And then this loss of meaning, this loss of purpose. But then because it’s chaos, all of a sudden, it’s like we’re looking for answers. We’re looking for answers. And you can see it happen really fast because I’ve told you guys before, you know, the the potentiality or chaos, you know, whether you see it positive or negative, when you kind of fall into that world, it’s also a question, right. It’s also it’s also a problem which is asking to be solved. And so that’s what happens. We have this problem, you know, this massive problem. And now everybody is looking for answers. And the until what and so it’s interesting. There’s so many things I just started noticing so many things. First of all, the rumors, you know, I told I made that video about conspiracy theory. And so because we don’t we don’t know what’s going on, you know, we’ve lost our bearings. We’ve lost in a certain manner trust in the authorities which were there to keep us safe with this dike. All of a sudden, there’s this this rumor mill that goes and everybody’s wondering, OK, what’s going to happen? This is happening. You know, somebody said this, somebody said that. And so everybody’s looking for information. And so that so that that was very fascinating to see happen. And then, you know, just the just the just the feeling of of death. I mean, going to our house today, you know, walking into the house, all of a sudden, it hits you. You know, it’s like all these things, you know, where you usually see me getting filmed down in my office is gone. It’s gone. It’s gone forever. It’s not. It’s never going to be back. You know, I had I brought up some things like my computer I was able to bring up. But then I have you know, I have hundreds of books that are in the water now that are just there. And then I realized my identity to, you know, these things that mark my identity. We were able to save some pictures, but some some things like I had a little box of things that I kept from childhood drawings and things that I slowly weaned down to this one box of kind of these childhood memories. And so then realizing that, you know, that’s gone, that’s down there in the water right now. And so. And so then then then there’s the other part, which is really fascinating because. Then there’s the part where there’s this this problem, this question. You know, this this challenge, this whatever this this small death, it also asks for unity. It’s asking. It’s it’s because it is a loss of unity, a loss of of cohesion. It’s asking for unity. And what we saw in the last few days, which has been really crazy, is, you know, our our neighborhood is just a suburban neighborhood, just like so many suburban neighborhoods where people barely know each other. We kind of we kind of know our neighbors, but just the very close ones. And we talk, you know, once every few weeks, we say hello from afar. That’s about it. And then all of a sudden, it’s as if this disparate group of people becomes a become a community because of this call to be one. This like this this this need to be one. And and it’s been amazing to watch because we would go every day, we would go down there and just see what’s going on. We’re about half an hour drive. We drive down and then we just kind of go and then we would just see all our neighbors that were there with us. And, you know, everybody would hug each other and everybody would ask how the others are doing. And and then one of our neighbors was able to get this boat and he called us and it’s like he’s not a friend. He’s just he’s just this neighbor we have. And he thought of us that, you know, since he had this boat, maybe we could use it as well. And then everybody’s asking about the other people, those we haven’t seen. And and so out of this death is comes this strange unity, you know, this this out of this call for unity is that’s what ends up happening. And so it really shows you I mean, it kind of shows you what adversity is for, I guess. It shows you what chaos is for, what it what it can give you. And it can give you that question. You know, it can give you that that need. To know when they talk, people talk about that, you know, in terms of someone who’s, let’s say, an alcoholic or a drug addict. And they say he has to he has to reach rock bottom. You know, he has to reach rock bottom. He has to go all the way down to the bottom. And then that lack, you know, that that that the fullness of this lack that he can experience will will almost push him or force him then to find purpose. Because because the lower you go, the bigger the question becomes. At some point, it’s like either, you know, either it all falls apart or. Or we come back together and when we come back together, it really does have this strange resurrection feeling to it. At least we’re not done yet. I mean, this these moments with our neighbors and and this sense of of community all of a sudden in some suburban neighborhood, you know, in Quebec is is is pretty is pretty astounding. So so that’s that’s the symbolism of this flood, guys. Like I said, on top of it, I’m sick. And so today, oh, my goodness. I mean, today I woke up with all these shivers and then I find myself wading through water all the way up to my all the way past my waist like I had water all the way up to my chest, just kind of walking in this cold water going towards my my house. And then I had to then I had to wait. And I think that’s also part of this. Waiting is part of this this moment of question, right? Like you’re waiting for an answer. So we went you’re waiting for something to come and take you out of the of the chaos, kind of pull you out. So we had to go to, you know, we had to wait in line at this refugee center where they were giving out information and telling people how to to apply to this indemnization thing. And they were giving vouchers for clothing because most people don’t like everybody just left without clothing. They were feeding people. And so. Yeah, this waiting and this neediness like you’re needy. You don’t like nobody likes to be needy. Nobody likes to to not be in control. But then all of a sudden you can kind of see the weird, salvatory effect that it has on you to have a need to need others, you know, because unless you need them, they don’t care. And so this this lack and this need that we have, this this this frail body, you know, this this this body of death. You can kind of see now I can kind of see when I talk about how death changes into glory, you know. You know, I mean, I had intuitions about it before, but. But all of a sudden I could see it way more clearly because I could see that this death brought about more love in the world. I don’t know what to say. All right, guys, so enough about this flood. So I don’t know if any of you have questions about that before I move on to some of the. To some of the. Some of the questions in the subscribe star and all that. I’m going to move on, and if I see questions pop up. I will I will answer them. All right, so I’m going to start with the website. I might not be able to answer all the questions, guys, because I had like I have this I have this pounding headache. And so we’ll see if I if I’m saying stupid things. Hopefully you’ll have mercy on me. By the way, everybody, Christ is risen. I can’t believe I didn’t start with that. That happened. But it all happened on Easter Saturday, which, you know, I’m not. Not naive about the meaning of that, you know, and we didn’t we weren’t able to go to to Basque. We weren’t able to go to the service, the past the service. So, yeah. All right, here we go. All right, so Connor Magger asks. Is there such a thing as Western iconography seems that the Renaissance is the clear breaking off into humanism and the trope of liberation that you have described prior to this. However, you notice a breaking off from the canonical forms in the illuminations of high middle ages, frangelical, for example. I love that many of the images, the manuscripts look indistinguishable from those of the Orthodox tradition, bringing to mind an Anglo-Saxon collection that looks like it could have been made in Greece. What are your thoughts on what was going on and what it might mean? Thanks. My prayers are with you, sir. Thanks, Connor. Yes, I totally agree. I agree that there should be such a thing as Western iconography. I think that as you watch the Middle Ages kind of go manifest itself, manifest themselves, like kind of move forward, you see a very strong sense of iconography. There’s a there’s a more looseness to the Western iconography than Eastern iconography. And it’s almost as if you would almost expect that to happen in the West just symbolically. Wait, are you guys still can you still see me? Yeah. All right. OK. And so you would almost expect that to happen. And there was also it seems like there was really this discussion going on, this kind of this invisible discussion. We can’t totally identify between the artists of Constantinople and the artists of France and Italy, which kind of brought about this common language of iconography. And then in and then in the late Middle Ages, the late Gothic, it seems to start to break down and we start to to get a sense of a loss of structural meaning. You know, I always talk about iconography being a kind of algebra. And it’s not only that, you know, it has also a looser aspect to it, a more human aspect to it. But it definitely is, to some extent, a kind of algebra. And then what happens is you that starts to fall apart, it seems, in in the late Gothic and then in the middle in the Renaissance, for sure, in the Renaissance, which you have is a desire to impose the individual talent. You know, artists are more preoccupied by showing their own genius, their own capacity to to surprise, to innovate all that. And then what happens as that is going on is we get a diminishing in that symbolic or. You know that. Algebraic aspect of iconography. And so the idea now is there are some iconographers, for example, someone like Aidan Hart in England, who is trying to restore a Western iconography is trying to kind of imagine if the Renaissance had never happened, I guess, and things have continued an iconographic tradition and continued in the West, what would that look like? And so trying to recapture some tropes of Western medieval art and include it into the icons. I do that all the time. I mean, it’s part of what I’m doing as well. So my work in some manner is trying to be a synthesis, a kind of synthetic approach to iconography, where I do want to include some of the best of early Gothic and Romanesque, of course, with the the Eastern icons. All right. So, so Jacob, I imagine that’s Jacob Russell asks, Do you think there are means outside a church but within a community in which a person can begin to heal their heart? Is it possible that every person’s heart, even those on the fringe and periphery can be a dwelling place for truth and life? Or is it true that truth and life and love are always calling us and drawing us to the church, a societal center being, and only then can the heart, human center being truly begin healing? In less cryptic and metaphysical language, I’m trying to understand what church is and what salvation is and how both are connected and why. And so, you know, I, I really see I see things in the hierarchy. I guess you guys are going to get bored of hearing me repeat that over and over. I see things in a hierarchy. And I think that there exactly what you said is very much possible. It is very much possible that Christ, you know, that the logos that the Logie can be encountered, that people’s spiritual intuition can be awakened, even if they’re not in the church. They can get glimpses of something and they can move forward and they can move closer to God. But having said that, I also do think that the fullness of that is is the image of the church because the image of the church. You know, it exists at all the levels, you know, it does what a person who’s healing their heart as an individual would do, but it also does it for the community and then ultimately does it for all of the cosmos. That’s harder for people to maybe perceive. You know, if I say something like the sacraments are the foundation of of the of the cosmos, that’s a lot harder for people to to understand. It sounds just like magical thinking. But for those who have watched some of my videos where I talk about sacramentality itself, I think you can understand that the world exists through patterns. It exists through coming together through things joining and becoming one while remaining multiple. So that means in time, it means cycles and space, it means hierarchical space, but also not just hierarchical space and but also room for the messiness as well. And so and so I think that I think that Christianity gets that in a balance. And I think that traditional Christianity gets that in the highest balance when it’s done properly. And so what is salvation? Salvation is is becoming that it’s becoming that tuned being who becomes transparent to God. People see God in that person because their being is fully aligned with the logos, is fully aligned with the reason for things and the meaning of things. And so because of that, then they become luminous. You know, they become luminous in the sense that they draw people. Sometimes they push them away as well, because sometimes light can create animosity and frustration on the part of those that see it. But it also brings together, so it kind of does both at the same time. It also it also brings together into this communal to this communal thing. So I hope that answers that. These are not going to be the best answers that I’m giving you guys. I should have to warn you. All right. So Jonathan, have you read the novel The Place of the Line by Charles Williams? This is Gabriel Melati. I have not read that book. And so he asked if I have opinions on the way the principalities are portrayed in the book. So I have not read it. So I’m sorry. I cannot answer that. If I if I have time, maybe I’ll look at it and hopefully at another Q&A. Maybe I can I can answer. So Aiden Paisley asks, Hi, Jonathan, could you speak about the symbolism of the Sabbath being switched from the last day of the week? Saturday, day of Saturn to the first day of the week, Sunday, day of the sun. And so what’s important to understand is that it didn’t switch. It’s not the same. Christians don’t celebrate the Sabbath. These are not traditional Christians. In theory, we celebrate the Sabbath once a year. That is on Holy Saturday. And then what we celebrate is the first day. Right. And so the first day is the eighth day. Also, St. Maximus the confessor talks about the day of eternity. And so in a certain manner, the day of the resurrection of Christ, which is Sunday, that day is is the day which is not is not Sunday. It’s the day of days. You know, it’s the principle of all days. It’s not it’s not in the normal cycle. And so when we celebrate Sunday, what we’re doing is we’re participating in the connection between heaven and earth. We’re participating in the manner in which in which the world is is luminous and full of of logos and meaning. Whereas the Sabbath in a certain manner is the opposite of that. The Sabbath is the day where things are left alone. There’s actually a link between death and the Sabbath. There’s a link between rest and the Sabbath. There’s a link. This idea of the fringe of leaving the fringe alone, of leaving the the the field not labored for after the seventh year, the Jubilee. It’s the restoration. It’s a restoration of things to their primordial state. And so in that way, it’s kind of it’s kind of like the it’s kind of this little breakdown of the of the hierarchy for a moment. And so it’s a day of rest. Whereas on Sunday, for example, in the Orthodox Church, there are there are now different traditions, but the oldest tradition was that on Sundays you cannot kneel. You only stand. That’s why in Orthodox Churches people stand a lot, you know, not like in Catholic churches. I don’t tend to kneel so much, although some practice, some churches will do it during when the hosts come out of the altar. But the oldest tradition is actually not to kneel and to stand. There are some there are some text from the Church Fathers where they defend they defend people to kneel during the during Sunday because it is the day of the resurrection. It is not the day of lying down. That’s the Sabbath. I hope that makes sense. All right, so Vladimir Batshu asks, Hi, Jonathan, I love the video you did on Batman. Could you do one on the Joker too? What would you think portrayed him the best? Personally, I think it was Mark Hamill hands down. So could you shed some light on why it’s that it is that so much of how good a story is. I don’t think this is correctly correct. How good a story is. Sorry, this might I didn’t read it right. Depends on why it is that so much of how good a story is depends on how the villain is in terms of writing, obviously. So the reason why the villain is so important in the story is because the reason the villain is the reason for the story. Reason in the sense of the question to be answered. The villain is the is the problem. You know, you have stable you have a stable situation. You have a problem. Then you answer that problem. That’s pretty much all stories, all especially those types of stories. And so the the the villain is the is the is the secret reason for the story, especially in those types. And so that’s why the villain is so important. And that’s why sometimes in movies, the hero is actually secondary to the to the villain. The hero is is not as complex and interesting because his role is to resolve the problem. Whereas the the villain is subtle and complex and all of this, all of this kind of and conflicted and all of this. So, I mean, obviously, there are grades because we have antiheroes and we have heroes who have all kinds of existential questions, of course. But I think that that’s why the villain exemplifies that more. And that’s and that’s because of what I just mentioned in terms of the Joker. You know, if you watch my videos on clowns, I didn’t go too much into the idea of the killer clown. But I was hoping that people could extrapolate from what I said and understand the also the dark side because of what the Joker represents. This uncertainty and, you know, this this little dose of upside down. Then that also has a it also has a very dark side. And that’s why clowns, I think, have always been meant to be scary. I don’t think I don’t think this is a recent thing. I think the clowns have always been on the cusp of both, you know, on on the this kind of ambiguous face that could make you laugh. Or make you run away. And I think the Joker for sure. I mean, when I was a teenager, the Joker was my favorite character because I felt like he embodied this whole notion of madness and of and of. And of. Shifty Ness, you know, and it’s also not having purpose, this nihilism like he’s a he’s a nihilist. And he’s and so because of that, he constantly there’s a there’s a thing that really struck me in the there’s a comic book. It was called Arkham Asylum. I think it was written by I forget his name. It’s been so long anyway. So it was like this painted graphic novel. I read when I was a teenager and in that graphic novel, the Joker wears high heels. And this was a long time ago. This was in the 90s. And so I always felt like they had really caught something. And the guy says about him in that comic book that he reinvents himself every day and that he’s actually super evolved because he reinvents himself every day. And you can see what people’s values are today is this idea that that somehow the capacity to change constantly changes somehow a societal value in itself, changing even without purpose. You know, and so the Joker was the greatest example of that. All right. So Luke Fleishman asks. What do you think of the symbolism of the first real black hole photo that popped up earlier this month? I don’t really think much about it. I don’t I mean, I think I think what I think what’s interesting about black holes is the language that has been used to talk about them. The idea that we talk about a black hole as a black hole. Obviously, it’s not a black hole, you know, but the fact that that language stuck to it, that name stuck to it, I think is interesting for our imagination. This idea where everything, you know, where space time breaks down basically. So I think that that’s interesting in terms of the idea of a black hole. But. Yeah, whatever. I mean, the picture, I don’t know. I don’t I don’t find those things. I don’t find those things that interesting. Thoughts on the symbolism of simulation theory. I think I think simulation theory is just Plato’s allegory of the cave. It’s just a modern version of Plato’s allegory of the cave. And so when people talk about simulation theory as if it’s it’s somehow this crazy idea, I was I’m always surprised because it’s like language is a simulation language itself. Our categories are in the world that they are talking about language itself as a form of simulation and the categories we use are are forms of simulation. And so and so because of that, I always kind of I would kind of wonder why they need why they need. I mean, I think I think that most people don’t have a the type of simulation theory versions, which is where which are kind of science fiction like I think are really just people’s imagination going wild. I wonder I’ve never read theorists talk about simulation theory, but I’m sure that it has more to do with with the effect of language and how language shapes phenomena. But I mean, our answer to that in my answer to that is that there is no other there is no phenomena without language. There is no world without logos. And so there’s potentiality and that’s it. And so the simulation the like simulation theory, which posits that that there’s this that there’s this line of reality outside of the system. I don’t know what that reality would be because there’s always needs to be a system for there to be reality. There is no there is no base reality that you can name because as soon as you name it, then it’s part of the interaction between heaven and earth becomes a becomes a representation of the relationship between the spirit and matter between logos and phenomena. So that makes sense. So question number three, could you explain a bit more on the relationship between entertainment and the end and how oversaturated the West is with entertainment? Well, I think my theory really describes that in his book, the best way he talks about entertainment is what you do when you stop working. So, you know, you work during the day and then at the end of the work day, then you entertain yourself. And if you watch the video on the carnival I did, those are really the archetypal versions of entertaining, which is, you know, the turning, turning and turning the the games of chance, you know, snakes and ladders. You throw a dice, you don’t know what’s going to happen up and down. Reason, reason falls apart. And we we have pointless activities, activities which do not have purpose. And so I think that because that’s what entertainment is, then when entertainment takes over our horizon, you could say when we have become an entertainment culture. You know, for example, you know, in my in Montreal, the most center center part of town, like the most downtown part, they developed it as of something they call the place of shows. Place of spectacles. And that’s that’s it. That’s the center of town that the most center of town is, is a place where they have festivals, music festivals, all this kind of entertainment stuff. And so, and so I think that when that becomes the center of your town, you know. Yeah. And then I think that’s what happened in Rome as well. I think that the thing that the circus and the hippodrome became the center of Roman culture. And when that happens, you know, if you’re not if you’re not pointed towards the divine, which brings you together, but rather your focus on being titillated by, you know, shocking things are titillated by by laughing. And laughing is a great example of what it is. You know, laughing is an is involuntary reaction to a stimulus. So laughing is you losing control. That’s what laughter laughing is laughing is always losing control. And so you don’t expect to laugh. And then someone says something and then you it’s an involuntary reaction. And I think that that laughter. That’s that’s it. That’s that’s it. Like that’s part of the that’s a reaction to the upside down. There’s a there’s a really interesting Indian myth. I forget the name of the character in the myth, but it’s the origin of laughter. And it says that the woman, this goddess or whatever, she was sitting there and then she saw a squirrel coming down the tree with their with its head down. And then she started laughing. And that was the origin of laughter. And so I think that’s part of the that’s it. That’s it. That’s it. Upside down world. That’s what makes you laugh. And so what I’ve been focusing on recently with these new videos is to also show how laughter can also flip things back. And I’m going to make some more videos about that. I’m going to make a video about a medieval romance called Silence. You have Merlin who’s who laughs uncontrollably almost during the whole the whole part that he’s in the story. And he does it to reveal the hidden truth, to reveal the hidden scandals. So I think that that’s so the whole clown world meme, I think, is a is interesting in that sense, because that’s what it seems to be doing. Not all of it. Some of it is really trash. You know, all mean to have trashy aspects. But some of the some of the clown world memes are just just veiled Nazi Nazi references. And so we can just discount those and focus on those that are more subtle and have more understand this this cycle. All right. So could you go into the biblical symbolism of birds and how this might tie into Twitter being the chirping of birds, if at all? So I think that’s a really interesting idea, because the idea of birds, birds really do represent in the Bible. And I think most traditions, I think birds seem to represent spiritual reality. They’re up in the air. They fly there. You know, there are all these traditions about how Solomon learned secret languages. He learned the language of the birds. And so it seems like birds represent angels represent represent spiritual realities. And so but there is also a negative aspect to the bird. And it is a kind of disconnection. It could be could be this is all this is the problem with spiritual spiritual things in themselves. They have they can be problematic because if they’re disconnected from phenomena, then they go in all different directions. You know, it’s like they don’t if they don’t need to connect to the actual world, then it becomes this chirping becomes this this ringing in your ears, you know. And it seems like that’s what Twitter has become in the sense of talk about these echo chambers where people are just in ideas. They’re living in these ideas, but these ideas are incestuous and are just kind of, let’s say, feeding on each other and they’re not connecting. They’re no longer trying to connect it to phenomenological world. And so then you have the craziest things that we all see it on Twitter, all the insane things people are saying where it’s like it can become a lie. You know, when a spiritual pronouncement doesn’t connect with the phenomenological reality, then it becomes hypocrisy, becomes a lie. That’s what Christ criticized of the Pharisees all the time was that they say this, but they do this like you have to say and do together. If you say and you do the opposite, then you’re disincarnated, you’re a disincarnated being, whereas the incarnation pushes towards the say and the be together. Right. That’s the creation of the world. That’s why hypocrisy is so important in the story of Christ. All right. So, so Jacob asked this is always Jacob Russell, our great Facebook moderator. Here’s a thought I’ve been rolling around in the old noggin taboos are like walls that protect a society’s moral and ethical sensibilities. Victims are oppressed by walls because they are keeping them inside when society has deemed them outsiders. So they break taboos because freedom to be me. FYI, this has stemmed from the article about the mother who gave birth to her grandchildren. What do you think? Can you expand on this? Yes. Yeah, I think so. I think taboos are usually there to prevent the flood. You know, this example is a perfect example. The example of the mother who gives birth to her grandchildren is a perfect example of what happens when those taboos get broken. Chaos just is let loose because, you know, once again, if you read Matthew’s book, he talks about this at length, this notion of normal causality. So you have a father, you know, and then you have you have a father and then you have a mother and then you have a child. The child descends like comes down. It’s like a tree. So child has a child and this child mirrors someone else and then there’s another child. So there’s this clear descendants like it’s like a branch. You know, we see it like a family tree. Whereas if the grandchildren, if the grandmother gives birth to her own grandchildren, then there’s the circularity of causation. Whereas she she’s breaking apart the normal causation of things. Right. She’s breaking about the normal tree. She she’s giving birth to to to the child of her son. And then it’s like, that’s it. That’s that’s that’s a perfect example of when that breaks apart. Now, this is going to be difficult for people to understand that that’s not always bad. Sometimes it can be good. And the mature points to that in his book as well. I think he’s going to write probably more about it in his further books. But the the Leverett in the Old Testament, this notion that you if your brother dies, then you marry your brother’s wife and then you have a child with her in order to give a child to your brother. And so that is a form of breaking taboo because it is it is a taboo. It is a it’s against the rules of the Bible to to sleep with your brother’s wife. But then when your brother dies, then it becomes a manner in which your brother is his line is resurrected. So this circularity is can also be a form of of resurrection. That’s a little bit more complicated, but I think enough on that. These are difficult subjects that I shouldn’t be talking about with the flu. All right. So, all right. So Jacob asked another question. He says, Could debating be a form of idea of interation mixed with individualism, all the while comparing sizes or maybe principality swordplay or an ideology show down at noon? Help me understand why so many want to attack and defend. You know, I think there’s a place for everything. You know, I think I think there is a place for debate. I think there is there’s a place for that kind of intellectual swordplay. I don’t have a problem with it in in itself. I think that it it can sharpen, you know, it can sharpen things. But like you said, sometimes it can also be a tool for pride. And it can also be a tool for right right hand sin, whereas the opposite, let’s say the idea of, you know, everything is fine. It’s not a big deal. Why are you arguing about this? Just let it be, you know, just let it be. That can also be a place for kind of left hand since since of dissolution. And so I think that I think that it has to be in a balance. You know, if there’s too much debate, we’re going to dry up the world. You know, at some point, some of these theological debates became so pointed that there’s no room for breathing. You know, like there’s some questions that maybe sometimes you don’t necessarily need to answer. You can just leave unanswered. If you leave questions unanswered too much, then you have chaos. All right. All right. So David Flores asks, I loved reading Arthurian legend growing up. Can you do a video on a symbolic interpretation of Sir Gaiman in the Green Knight? Also, have you thought about doing a live stream of your carbon? Yeah, not now. I’m not doing a live stream of my carbon now. I’m going to struggle just to make these videos. But yeah, I’m not against the idea of doing a live stream of myself carving. I haven’t done live streams really like public live streams yet. It’s like a whole other thing with all these weird. Is it called the super chats or whatever? All that stuff? I’m not sure I want to get into that. So so we’ll see. We’ll see. But I would definitely love to do a video on Sir Gaiman in the Green Knight. It is one of it is a story that I like quite a bit, but I won’t go into it now because man. All right. So Eddie T asks, what are your thoughts on the trope of possession? In particular, do you think principality or demon would target certain types of individuals and to what purpose? Is there an acknowledged remedy for this sort of ailment within Eastern Christianity? What stories, if any, should light on how we should think about possession, symbolically speaking? Of course. So possession, possession is just because we all have. So imagine imagine a person, imagine a person as as being surrounded by demons constantly. You can imagine it. You can imagine outside of the person, you can imagine within you. You have all these demons that are pulling in different directions. You know, you have desires. You have you have all these different desires, which the cosmic, the cosmic version of those desires is a demonic being, if you call it. And so let’s say you have a. You have the demon of gluttony, so you have this desire to this insatiable desire to eat. You have this desire to find meaning in food to to kind of you kind of throw yourself into this one thing. And that’s that that’s what it means to be. I think that’s what it means to at some point become possessed. That is that your entire being is taken by this one thing or maybe sometimes many, sometimes many demons, but it’s taken by these these these desires, these kind of wild principalities that I talk about. And then it kind of takes up and you you’re you become a slave to that to that demon. And the reason why we don’t see it only in individual terms, that it really is a cosmic phenomenon is that it’s it can be diagnosed. It’s not it’s not like everybody who deals with the demon of gluttony is going to live in a different way. It’s like, no, if you if you’re possessed by the demon of gluttony, here are the characteristics. This is what this is what this is what it does to you. You know, and this is how it takes over you. And these are the prescribed, let’s say, solution, prescribed prayers, prescribed practices. Sometimes we talked about this before, sometimes some kind of object, you know, to to focus the the effort to to kind of get rid of this demon. And so it has to do with putting things back in their right order, putting things back in their place the way they should be. And that so that happens with things like like speaking, you know, like praying, like rituals, all of these things are bringing order back to some chaotic state that people are in. And so. So, yeah, so so I mean, I think that that’s what that’s what possession is. And I think that I think that, you know, when people talk about how how possession is is maybe just a form of mental illness, I’m not totally it’s like I’m not totally hostile to that idea. In the sense that I think that what we would we call mental illness today, not all, but some of the mental illnesses we call today are what the ancients would have called demon possession. I think it’s just the difference is that we just don’t one is seen phenomenologically and the other is the other is seen scientifically or just quantitatively. And so there’s one which is trying to bring about a solution to the problem by meaning and the other which is trying to bring a solution to the problem by adding a garment of skin, by adding some supplement, by taking some medicine, by doing some, you know, especially the medicine part, you take medicine to to protect you from it, create a layer around you from that from that demon. Now, the problem is that when you do that, then you become dependent on the medicine. And I think that the ancients had possibly had more permanent solutions to those kinds of problems than it had to do with reintegrating of meaning. All right. So we had a lot of we had a lot of questions on the website today. All right. Let’s see what we got on. Subscribe star. OK, so we have two questions by Christian Chat. Favorite name, favorite person, Christian Chat. I just can’t get over how cool that is. All right. So hi, Jonathan. How do you feel about Orthodox chants or music being performed in English? I personally feel like a lot of the magic is lost in translation. The Greek or Arabic hits me even if I don’t understand them very well. The same goes for the Catholic performing in English instead of Latin. I can understand that. I can understand that to a certain extent in in the sense that. When you’re listening to Greek and Latin, even if you don’t know it, you are you’re listening, you’re listening to. Imagine think of it like a language which is higher up in the hierarchy of languages. And you’re listening to it that way. So it’s like Latin unites all the Romanesque all the Romanesque languages. So you have Latin, but then you Latin holds together French and Spanish, you know, Portuguese and then to a certain extent, not not in its structure. You know, English is not a Latin Latin language, but still a lot of the words are Latin eight. And so it’s the same when you hear Greek. And I think it’s probably also similar when you hear Arabic. Arabic is a very ancient language as well. That’s the impression that I get in terms of it’s like you’re faced with something which is higher up. So you’re you’re you’re intuitively hearing connecting to something which is which is higher up than your common day language. Now, having said that, I think that we always run a risk. And this is the risk of of not translating. It’s the same risk that I talked about in terms of when heaven and earth don’t connect, that if you go too far out and you don’t translate, you’re rigid in terms of the terms of the center, let’s say that at some point people don’t know what you’re talking about. People stop remembering what it is that’s going on. And so when that happens, we’re in a we’re in a difficult, difficult situation. And I think that that’s when you need to translate. And we have to remember that Christianity is a is really is really the religion of fire as well. You know, it’s it’s a religion of the cross. It’s the religion of the center of the heart of all that. But it’s also this religion of fire and this notion that God will reach to the ends of the world, that Christ will be with us until the end of the age. And so it means that translation is also part of that, that we can find the logy even in the darkest places, we can find little glimmering light there. So but I think that it’s still I think despite that, I think it’s important to remember. So that’s the that’s the challenge is this is one of the things that I was thinking for the Catholics, especially that because I was talking to some Latin, you know, like a Latin freak Catholic, like, you know, a triad, crank triad Catholic, which is a great guy, by the way, awesome guy. But he was telling me about Latin and Latin Latin and his arguments weren’t wrong in terms of why he wants to preserve Latin. But it was like, are you really going to have Latin mass in the Philippines? Are you really going to have Latin mass in Vietnam? And so how does that make sense to to to people there? And and so my solution would be that all it seems to me like the solution would be that all clergy would need to master Latin, for example, that all the clergy would need to master Latin and be able to do the Latin mass, but then then also have masses in the in the regular language of the people so that as the priest is doing the mass in in Vietnamese or whatever, he remembers the Latin. He knows where he’s coming from, the line between him and his fathers and the line between him and the authority is clear. And so he can he can he can act with in full consciousness. So anyway, that seemed to me to be a solution to that problem. All right. The Christian Chad also asked, what do you make of the phrase atheism is another branch of Protestantism? I’ve heard some people say that and I see where it is going, but don’t fully understand it. Care to explain? Well, I think that I think that it’s inevitable to see that obviously atheism was born out of Protestantism. Protestantism, you know, it was born out of this. It’s not just Protestantism Catholicism as well, but most Protestantism seem to have it’s like God started to be pushed, started to push God up higher and higher in the heavens, you could say, and to disconnect God from from the earth. And and so that happened. What that what that did is that at some point God became, you know, the clock maker. God became this reference reference was not involved in human affairs, who who is so far away that at some point, you know, he just ceased to to exist. Or at the same time, then God became the sentimental uncle, you know, this like God is your buddy. God is Jesus is my friend type idea. So God both on the in the same time frame as a starting the 12th century, but then increasing as as the centuries went forward. There was one pendulum swing pushing God up higher and higher, making God into a distant, you know, completely transcendent being that had no connection with reality with manifest reality. And then at the same time, bringing God down to basically be, you know, the cliche God on a cloud, you know, bearded bearded dad who who. Yeah. So so I think that that’s why people say that. And I think there’s also part of the whole individualism. There’s a flip that happens not in all Protestantism, but in some Protestantism. There’s a flip that happens where at first it’s like we’re worshipping God. And so it’s all we’re all turned towards God together. And the purpose is the worship. And then at some point, it starts to to become about about me, about how I feel, what I like, you know, and then you have all these churches which cater to people different interests, churches for hipsters, churches for, you know, older, more concerned people, churches for all these different things. And then it fragments the church because the church ends up being about about you. And so instead of being about this common center, it becomes about what it gives me. And so you see it. I see it in my own church where I grew up in when I was young, even the church where my father was a pastor when I was younger. They they started a you know, like a sister, what a daughter church or whatever. And this daughter church was the new this was a Baptist church, a conservative Baptist church. And then they started this new hipster church, you know, with everything in the coffee house and the light show and the smoke machine and the the the the pastor sitting on the side of the stage with ripped jeans and all that all that stuff. And so what happened is that the whole community split and the old people stayed at the old church and then the young people went to the young church. And for the old people, even the level of sound, the decibel level in the church was unbearable. They had to give people earplugs. They had earplugs available for people who were too old and would go to this church. Like you’re really going to go to a church where you need earplugs, really. And so you could see this fragmentation happening as as the desire became not proper worship to God. But how can we get people into church? How can we get these kinds of people into church? How can we cater to their to their own needs or whatever? So, yeah. All right. Let’s move on to Patreon. And a lot of questions this this time. Feeling a little bit better. I think talking to you guys is helpful. Today was just crazy. So it’s actually kind of nice to talk about symbolism instead of instead of carrying heavy things to to a boat, you know, in cold water. All right. So Mark Peters asks, Hello, Jonathan, you had speculated that fairies were possibly leftover members of a old hierarchy, almost orphaned. Was this hierarchy part of the created order? And it’s something someone in the created order bring it and so then them into being. How can a being of our own intellect and will like Santa Claus now have his own agency? And so then he says that his post also vanished. I don’t know what happened to your post. Look. Did someone in the created order bring it? And so, you know, and brought them into being. So this is complicated. It’s like, you know, it’s like, you know, it’s like, you know, it’s like, you know, This is complicated. It’s like, can a being of our own intellect and will like Santa Claus, like whose intellect and will is Santa Claus a product of? Can you find that person? It’s different if you find someone, if you take someone like like a Batman or Superman. But even then, now, by this time, the story of Batman has accumulated so much from so many people that you can’t really say that it is the product of our own intellect and will. And I don’t think that Santa Claus is fully a product of our own intellect and will. I think that Santa Claus is a being which manifests itself in the world through different particulars that obviously relate to us, you know, that obviously relate to us. And I think that that’s the same with fairies. You know, I think that the problem with fairies is exactly that they’re not attached to the hierarchy. They’re like a remainder. You know, they don’t fit in the Christian story fairies. Like, where do they come from? Where are they in the story of creation? And so because of that, they play the role exactly of that. They play the role of these remainders, these strange remainders, which are still there. But tees, you know, kind of act as a somewhat, somewhat, let’s say, curiosity inducing, somewhat fascinating, but somewhat subversive aspect of reality. And it’s not a surprise that fairies have become so popular in the past, you know, 15, 10, 15 years, where all of a sudden there are fairies everywhere. I think that just like there were monsters everywhere and fairies and all this stuff, I think it’s part of the breakdown to see this take up so much space in the, in the, on the, on our cultural, in our cultural narrative. All right. So Anjo Terpstra says, Calvin once wrote that God decides what is good because he did, because if he did not so, God would be submissive to another principle which wouldn’t make him God. I was wondering how the Orthodox tradition regards this issue, because having listened to your talks, I’m more tended to think about God or the will of God as being good rather than deciding what is good, which would make God as arbitrary. Yes, exactly. You totally nailed it. The way that, the way that St. Maximus, for example, talks about the will of God is that it is one with reality. God speaks creation into being. So there’s no difference between, and so it’s not that God could do anything, that God, if God wanted, God could do this. That’s not, that’s not true will. That’s not true, the true free will. The true free will of God is that what God says is real. There is, it is, and everything that is not that is a misunderstanding, is a distortion, is a, is a twisting of, of reality. And so, so it’s not that God decides what is good and he could have decided otherwise. It’s like you have crazy, crazy quotes from Luther and some of the reformers where they say, no, from even Occam. Occam said crazy things like, if God decided that murder would be good, then it would be good. It’s like, that’s the problem. God would not decide that, that, that murder would be blanket good because it’s just, that’s just not reality. There is no other reality besides the one that God created. I don’t know if that makes sense. And this, this brings us to the whole God number two that, that Paul VanderKlay talks about. Like, I think we should, maybe we should make a video together, Paul and I, to kind of talk about that because I, to me, God number one and God number two, there’s no, there’s no God number one, God number two. It’s just, there’s just one God and, and they’re both the same. There’s no, God deciding something is just the structure of reality. You know, but then part of that, that’s what, that’s where it gets complicated. Part of that also includes the possibility of this breakdown of that. That’s more difficult. Part of that also includes the possibility of God repenting. It’s as if the whole pattern to manifest the total possibilities of how being manifest itself. On the edge of that, there’s also this, this circle, this circle of, of, of, of these moments where it says that God, God changed his mind, you know. But it has more to do with showing the totality of how things manifest themselves. This idea of union of heaven and earth and then this, this disjoining of heaven and earth, and it does with positing God as this arbitrary being who could just decide anything and, and we would have to accept it, you know. So, yeah. So, John Case Tompkins asked, Jonathan, have you talked about the symbolism of the hermaphrodite? I know that it’s an alchemical symbol, but I’m wondering why the hermaphrodite as a pattern seems to have arisen so regionally in the West. Well, a good way to understand that, let’s say that the, the hermaphrodite is, you could see it as the two figures that say that one is the androgynous, the androgen, how do you pronounce that in English? Anyways, in French we say l’androgen, so the androgynous being and the hermaphroditic being. And so the androgynous being is a being that transcends sexual difference, whereas the hermaphrodite is a being which confuses sexual, which confuses sexual identity. And so they’re in a way they’re opposites. Yeah. And I think, I mean, it’s not, I don’t know, like I’m wondering, are you really curious about why their hermaphroditic symbol has become, you know, has become such a pattern in the West is because that’s where we are. I mean, that’s, we are, we are in a culture which loves mixture. We view mixture as a value in itself. We view the crossing of categories, the genre, genre, what did they call it, genre twisting or whatever, all of this in genre bending. And so all of this, everything is always there to challenge, you know, the coherence of anything and trying to show the exception, trying to show how, how, how mixture has value. So the, the, the arising of the hermaphroditic symbol is, is just part of that. It’s just one aspect of that. So, all right. So Drew McMahon talked about, can you talk about the dark night of the soul, the phenomenon, not the poem? Many saints, most recent famous being Mother Teresa, talk about the complete lack of experiencing of the transcendent that they felt completely separated from God. I only have a mental or conceptual understanding of God and it feels impersonal and not intimate or real, even though I believe I’m wondering what I and others who feel this way are doing wrong. Yeah, for sure. I don’t, the Orthodox don’t really have a, I shouldn’t say that. I shouldn’t say that. They don’t have exactly the same idea about this idea of the dark night of the soul. They do have a notion, which is the remembrance of death, where the mystics are meant to remember their mortality constantly. But the remembrance of death and the, the take to plunging yourself in your own mortality and always meditating on your mortality is meant as a kind of safe gap. Like a way to prevent yourself from going there, like prevent yourself from from letting yourself fall to your passions and stuff. And the Orthodox spirituality is based on, on concentration, on memory, on attention, on entering into the heart and encountering light, divine light. And so that’s, that’s really the mystical experience of the Orthodox. You know, I’m not saying that I’ve experienced that, but I think that once, once you also start to see that when you, when you experience love in the sense, not of just the feeling, but when you see the world come together, like I talked about this. When you see, when you get these intuitions where things kind of pop together, you know, that is a little glimpse, right? That’s a little experience of, of your noose, of your, of your intellect kind of grasping a little bit of light, you know. And the idea, of course, in the New Orthodox tradition is that this is something which can happen, you know, like a kind of cascade of that, where all of a sudden the world becomes full of light and you see God, you know, shining through. So, yeah, so they’re, yeah, all right. So Michael Parsons, hey Jonathan, a friend of mine recently shared an article on Lilith as the first wife of Adam. In my interpretation of her and the article it seemed she represents a very negative view of the feminine, or the fullness of the negative aspect, but of course the article framed these qualities positively as powerful. Yeah, wow. IE modern feminist type framing. Yeah. I linked the article below if you care to take a look. I did not take a look. What can you glean from Lilith symbolically? Which specific traditions did she come from? What credence can we give to a secular person that wants to deconstruct Christianity or Eve being in the Bible and not Lilith? Well, you know, that’s exactly, Lilith is a great example of, you know, you remember when, you guys are younger than me probably, when I was young there was something called Lilith Fair. And they had this feminist concert and then all these women would have this, you know, female power concert. Now, Lilith is the image of the feminine not joined properly to the masculine, right? That’s what Lilith is. So the Lilith is when potentiality is not properly joined to the Logi. And then what that does is it spawns demons. It spawns distortions of reality. So it’s not just Lilith, you know, it’s also this whole, little traditions of the incubi and succubi, you know, the notion of these demons that have intercourse with you in your sleep. And then they spawn all these kind of monstrous figures, these monstrous aspects of you or whatever. And that’s also it’s also the same. It’s also the same. The same image. And so the idea would be that Lilith didn’t properly manifest Adam in the world, but rather just created all these monsters. So it’s not surprising that that feminist would take her as an image today. You know, I mean, I’ve also seen feminist, you know, what is it the bishop, one of the Anglican Archbishops, who’s a woman saying that we need to grab the apple, you know, and take divinity for ourselves. Like, what? Crazy. You know, and so, yeah, I mean, we all know that it’s part of that the desire for the feminine to not be unified with the masculine and not be in partnership with the masculine is part of the collapse. So. All right. So Nolan Watson asked, Hello, Jonathan, I’ve heard you use the term Christ in you or something similar before. Morning, if you could elaborate on what you mean by that and perhaps explain how it differs from the Holy Spirit. Thanks. So. So Christ, the idea of Christ in you is the idea that we are. That all of phenomena that everything that exists. Is connected to Christ is connected to the divine logos. And so to live in that right to live in that place is is for Christ in you to live. So it’s not me that lives, but it’s Christ in me. And so. What that ends up being is to a certain extent, it ends up being your true, your true self. But this is this is also the problem that we have today is that. We think that ourself is is these thoughts that we have. We think that ourself is these desires. We have these emotions, these things. Whereas the traditional vision of a human being is not that at all is that your true self is that which connects you to do the logos, that which connects you to Christ. That’s what that’s your true self. And it doesn’t fuse you like it doesn’t make you disappear as a as a particular, but rather it fills all your particularity with with life. And so, yeah. And so the term Christ in you actually comes from St. Paul. And so and so the spirit, I guess this is complicated, but the spirit is. The spirit is is you could say like some you could say that when Christ is in you, then the Holy Spirit is in you as well. The father is in you. The father is in you. You know, the Christ by Christ being in you, then you also participate in the life of the Trinity through Christ. So you get all these kinds of things which are said, trying to figure out what what all of this means. But the Holy Spirit seems to be more. It kind of. Kind of power, you know, kind of power to. To fill the power to fill the world with Christ, you could say it that way, you know, as if Christ is the seed, you know, is the is the logos and then the is the the word and the Holy Spirit is that which pushes the word right at the breath, which pushes the word. And so the Holy Spirit seems to the way that we like our dwellings of the Holy Spirit seems to be more to do with the power to be filled with Christ. Hope that makes sense. Might not be enough for you, but hopefully that’s enough. All right, so I’m going to. I’m going to look at some of the questions in the chat. I’m working on a small screen guys. I couldn’t look at your your comments in the chat as I was looking at the other questions. Let’s see what we got here. So David Flores tells me to bring shovels when the waters leave our basement floods tend to bring mud along. It’s going to be crazy. It’s going to be crazy when you go to that to that basement. My goodness, like, you know, the freezers there. Oh my goodness. All right. That’s a Luke Fleishman remind you that Grant Morrison wrote Arkansas. I should have known that. All right. Okay. So. So there Derek Joel says, What do you make of the structure within that which represents chaos, recreation and time like music within music? For example, we find meter, measure pattern, et cetera. Yes, that’s really important. I think what you’re bringing is very important in the sense that. So there’s the equivalent of there is the equivalent of space. You could call it in time. This is using my brother’s my brother’s terms. Just always remember that these terms are terms. You know, they don’t they have to be careful not to be too attached to them in space. There is the margin, right? There’s the place where the identity breaks down. You could say that that’s the taking over of time. And then in time or in music or in cycles, there is also a regularity. There can be a regularity, which, for example, the seasons, the liturgical year, like you said, meter rhythm in terms of beat, which is that stability within time. Okay. So in space, you have the breakdown of space. And then in time, you also have the stability. Stabilization of time. Right. So those two things kind of interact with each other. Hope that makes sense. All right. Okay. So I think we’re done guys. So yeah, don’t get me wrong. That’s it. No, it’s great. I think that’s it. I think that’s it. I think that’s it. And I think that’s that. So, yeah, so as I finish, I just want to thank everybody. Like so many people have written me just great messages of encouragement and I know that a lot of you guys are praying for me and I want to thank everybody who has done that. Some people have even sent me money through PayPal, so I just want to thank everybody who is thinking of us and who is thinking about how to help us. And it’s very heartwarming to know that this is happening as we’re dealing with our own little chaos. And so this little moment for me guys doing this Q&A, even though I was so tired, I was just so dead, is a little moment of stability in my mad situation. So I really appreciate you guys being here and interacting with me. So I will keep everybody posted about our situation and what’s going on. And yeah, guys, thanks and I’ll see you soon.