Milo, Jordan Peterson and The Symbolic Worldview. Discussing with Rachel Fulton Brown (aQSLPmZQ8sI)

https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=aQSLPmZQ8sI

So, hello everybody. I would like to present to you Rachel Fulton-Brown. She’s a professor at the University of Chicago. And we met through Facebook and through being interested in Jordan Peterson. And we realized that we had a lot of interesting things in common, including our interest in medieval theology, medieval symbolism, arts, so many things. So we’re going to have an interesting discussion about all that. So maybe Rachel, you can introduce yourself a bit more in more detail. Well, thank you Jordan, Jordan Jonathan. Yes, I have Jordan and Milo on my mind. So some of you may know me as Fencing Bear at Prayer because Milo has been sharing some of my blog posts about him over the last year. I’m also a great fan of Jordan Peterson because I’m very interested in the way in which he talks about mythology and religion and psychology. So I’m really excited to have this conversation with Jonathan because I’m very interested in the way in which his art matches with the kinds of storytelling that I see Jordan doing and Milo actually portraying and living. So I’m happy to be here. Thank you for having me. So I’ve been, you know, as most people who will be watching this will know, I’ve been friends with Jordan for almost two years now. And I have been paying attention to Milo Yiannopoulos ever since the UMass event with Triguli Puff and all that. I’ve been following and being very attentive to what he’s been because I saw in him a lot of the symbolism of marginal symbolism that I’ve been interested in for the last few years. And so maybe you can, when I heard that you were friends with Milo, I was extremely surprised. So maybe you can just quickly tell us how you met him, how you’re in contact with him. How exactly did a history professor at University of Chicago become friends with him? So tell me, why were you surprised when you heard that I was friends with him? Well, just because he’s, I mean, I don’t, like, how can I say this? I think that I see him, I see him as being, maybe I’m wrong. And I saw him as being maybe more unconscious than what I thought. And so when I saw what you were doing and the type of symbolism that you’re talking about and your understanding of kind of the types of patterns that exist in the medieval worldview, I was like, huh, maybe he’s more aware than I think. And so it got me really curious about how you met him and kind of what type of discussions you’ve had with him and everything. Because I’m very fascinated by what he kind of represents. Well, that’s interesting that you say that what you were startled by is that he seems, you’re wondering whether he’s conscious of what he’s doing and why I can see it. Well, I’d say one of the things that absolutely fascinates me about Milo is how well he embodies that archetype that Jordan recognized when he was interviewed about Milo in February, that Milo is this trickster figure. And, you know, I think if Milo were actually, I think he’s conscious of it and unconscious of it at the same time. And it’s sort of amusing for me as the medievalist to be watching him and then seeing the symbolism that he’s playing out. Because I think if he were doing it in a more sort of conscious way, it wouldn’t be quite as effective. But maybe you want me to tell my story about how I got in touch with him. Yeah, just briefly, that’d be interesting. So back in September, I was finishing up the book that I’m working on and that I hope you and I get to talk about on the symbolism of the Virgin Mary. So I guess my head was just absolutely full of all of the kinds of symbolic resonances that medieval Christians used to use. And the deans of our college sent out a letter to our incoming freshmen saying that when they come to the University of Chicago, they should not expect to find safe spaces and trigger warnings in their syllabi or in their classes, but come to the University expecting rigorous debate and challenging arguments. Over the last, over the previous winter, I had been involved in a kind of online, a smaller online argument with some of my colleagues in medieval studies over a post I had done back in June 2015 that I labeled three cheers for white men, purposefully to get everybody’s attention, to make an argument that there are very positive elements of the Western Christian European and therefore also American tradition that we in our culture would do better to actually acknowledge rather than simply saying all white men are potential rapists and that they’re the problem. And my three cheers were the idea of chivalry, the idea of marriage as something that involves the consent of both the man and the woman, and the political right for women to have the vote. And I reminded my readers at the end of that little post that if you want to argue with me, remember that one of the great freedoms that we have in the West is the idea of freedom of speech, right? Well, so that post from June 2015 sort of sat on the internet being ignored for six months until one of my colleagues in medieval studies found it for a book that she was writing on digital whiteness and thereafter history is made. She found my post and a bunch of my colleagues in medieval studies got very excited about the fact that they found a real white supremacist. They thought they found me, right? So they left on Twitter and they left on Facebook and in that moment a friend of mine mentioned to me that my post was getting some attention and I sort of lept into the fray on the Facebook group in the happy warrior guise that I’ve been trying to cultivate and said, hi everyone, I hear you have some problems with my post. Let’s talk about it. And by the end of that afternoon I managed to change the conversation sufficiently that the only person left really arguing with me was the original poster who was set with me. And I realized in that moment that, you know, this is what I’ve been waiting for, right? I needed to make these arguments for our culture. So I did a long series of posts on chivalry and on different ideas of freedom in the United States and the sort of larger arguments that I wanted to start making about the value of Western civilization and the problems that we’re having in the academy. So in September when our dean sent out that letter I was already kind of primed to be in that aspect of the culture war. I was a little bit aware of Milo from the previous spring because another colleague and I of mine had also gotten caught up in the white supremacist misogynist labeling at about the same time the feminists found me. And he actually, Alan Franzen, my good friend, got shamed much more effectively than I did. There were some conference sessions in his honor that were canceled and a feshrift that was pulled from publication. And because Alan himself is gay, we were both sort of aware of what was going on with Milo, but we weren’t really sure like who is he. And so I was mildly aware of the uprising at DePaul when Milo was prevented from speaking by the Black Lives Matter protesters. But I hadn’t really properly paid attention to it. So September comes, I’m sort of in a good place with my book to be paying attention to some of the other things that have been happening. The letter come out from the dean and I say, fine, I’m curious. I, as a medievalist, think it’s a bad idea to condemn someone as a heretic without a proper inquisition. So I went and watched as many of Milo’s talks as I could in like three days, all the ones that have been posted from the previous spring. And at the end of those three days, I wrote to him because I labeled that post Three Cheers for White Men. I thought that would work to get his attention. And I said, dear Mr. Yiannopoulos, I teach at the University of Chicago. I’m sure you’ve heard about this letter that our deans have just sent out. I’m in this and I put some links on from the chivalry post that I’d done. I admire you greatly, as does my dog. I didn’t mention the dog. And, you know, thank you for doing what you’re doing. Well, he wrote back immediately. And after that, we stayed in contact over email with me sending him things to read, suggesting further things that I thought he might find useful to look at. And from my end, watching all of his talks so that I really knew everything that he was saying. And, you know, it’s been the most wonderful experience for me over the last year because it’s been wonderful having a friend who was as fully engaged in the fight as I knew we needed to be in order to really make the cultural arguments that we have to. And so here’s my big question for you regarding that. Because I’ve been thinking about him and kind of what he is or what he represents and everything. So the question is, if he’s a trickster, how does that work? Like how is he a trickster on the conservative side? Like how do you see that happening right now? It seems like usually, let’s say in mythological images, the trickster is there to unbind, let’s say, or to loosen things that are too strict. Whereas in his case, it’s very ambiguous. So I like to get your take. I have my own ideas about that, but I’d like to get your take on that. Well, I think you’re right. It’s ambiguous, which is the role of the trickster, that he is standing on the border between all of the different sides. And as he said quite well, I think in his little panel discussion on the Bill Maier show, that the alt-right hates him just as much as the alt-left does, if you say it with a coin of phrase, right? But the extreme right and the extreme left both find him problematic. And the trickster needs to be the one that stands on the borders and shows up the sort of rigidity of both sides. Now, it’s interesting to me that, of course, Milo initially was being invited to give his campus talks, primarily by student groups. He always did his talks for free for the students who invited him. And the groups that were inviting him to the campuses were typically the college Republicans and the young Americans for Liberty. So, you know, politically, they were what we tend to think about as at least more conservative than not. And of course, because he had the good fortune of doing this campus tour during the election year, it meant that the country was quite excitable as we get in election years. And he came out very strongly for Donald Trump, primarily, he said, because he thought Trump would be… I think he sees Trump as another kind of potential trickster character, that he always liked Trump as someone who was going to break down the political correctness that had been stifling everyone’s speech. Now, what I think… I think you’re saying he’s ambiguous. He is… His primary mode of engaging with people is through humor and jokes, right? And he loves saying that nobody can resist the truth wrapped in a good joke. And his motto, as it were, which he gets from GK Chesterton, in fact, is… Rhesus et Bellum, laughter and war, right? That if we’re going to win the culture war, you win with joy, not grimness. And I think what the conservatives who… Of the kinds of political conservatives that originally invited him to CPAC and then got cold feet when the videos came out in February about his adolescent sexual life showed is, you know, they are as scared of a joke as the left has been typically proving itself to be. And so what Milo… I’ve written a lot about what I think Milo shows us in terms of the importance of humor and the way in which humor is sort of scary. Milo also likes talking about how the thing that tyrants… I apologize for my dog. She’s just going to do that. The thing that tyrants hate most is the sound of laughter because it’s the place where people are actually… And I have thought about this a lot. It’s like you need structure in order for society to exist, right? Societies can’t exist without some kind of order. And you and I both know that Jordan talks about this regularly, that you need the structure of the walls and the hierarchy and the ordering institutions in order for anybody to be able to live. Otherwise, just we’re in chaos, right? But structure itself can become… So rigid as to become itself tyrannical. And I think what Milo is doing with his laughter and his willingness to stand there… You can imagine standing there on the city walls and pointing both inside and outside and saying, those of you who think you’re safe inside need to loosen up a bit and have some fun and be able to make jokes at yourselves and recognize that the more you try to be morally pure, the more risible you’re going to become. But likewise, those who are saying they’re standing on the outside of the city and saying, we don’t want any structure and we don’t want any laws, need to be able to laugh at themselves. And what I have just… Milo, I did a blog post just from this last weekend. I got to visit with him in person. He’s just a joyous, delightful person to be around because he’s filled with laughter, right? And it’s not just… It’s not vicious laughter at other people. It’s laughter at himself. It’s laughter at the idea that… It’s possible to have fun as well as recognize the importance of our traditions. And so, I mean, I think the big question that I’ve seen people around me, let’s say, ask is what… Because he obviously says he’s Catholic. And sometimes it feels like he’s saying he has all these different identities. And so, depending on the situation, he can point to one identity and then kind of like a snake, like he can slither out of a difficult situation. So, he can say, I’m Jewish, and then kind of get out and then say, I’m gay, and then get out, but then also be like a white man and then get out. And then… But then he also has this one which is like Catholic. So, sometimes he can… But I’m being cynical when I say that. But my question is, to what extent do you think that his Christianity, let’s say, or his Catholicism is part of his identity, or is not part of his identity, is part of what he’s trying to do, let’s say? I think it’s everything. I think that the one thing that if you watch him, and obviously I’ve watched him pretty carefully, if you watch him, the one thing that is absolutely utterly consistent about his costume is his cross. He always wears it, and he has several crosses that he wears, the necklaces, but in every photograph that he’s ever taken, except for when he’s wearing a suit and tie, but I think the crosses are underneath. He’s always wearing a cross. That’s invariable. He used the thing about being Jewish most strongly over the summer and into the autumn when Steve Bannon, his former boss at Breitbart, was persistently being called an anti-Semite, and Milo was trying to help Steve in that context saying, well, look, he hired me, and if you’re going with Nazi levels of what counts as Jewish, I’m Jewish because his mother is of Jewish descent, that he’s gay and yet recognizes or feels that it’s complicated is of course not something that the strong left LGBTQ activists will admit because Milo says, well, on the one hand, it seems that being gay is something that I am, and on the other, it does seem to be something that, now that we know how he grew up, was, as it were, encouraged into by other people. So he’s saying in that, he thinks being gay is itself a kind of liminal status, whether it’s nature or nurture, whether it’s born this way or something that you can actually change, and he has said quite poignantly a number of times how he wishes that he weren’t gay because being gay means, and he does actually, he has, as he said in one of his interviews recently, have love in his life. He does have very deep friendships with some of the men that he’s been with, but that means he’s not going to have children, and he is also very fond of children and the idea of having his, he says, little Milo’s. So I think the ambiguity is his acknowledgement of what it means to be human and what it means, in fact, to be truly Catholic, that you’re, I mean, when people push him on it in his Q&A, he says, well, why are you Catholic? How can you be Catholic? And he said, well, what else would I be? I’m a sinner, right? And it’s very interesting how hard it is for people to hear someone just simply say, I know I do things in my life that are sinful, and I celebrate them or I behave in these riotous ways, but I also recognize that they’ve been damaging to me in my personal life. So I keep getting in trouble for making comparisons of him to Jesus, but in the sense of the sort of one who is dangerous because he comes into the middle of the culture and challenges its authorities. I think there’s very interesting resonances, but that he is willing to take on the insults that everybody throws at him for actually pointing out the ambiguity of all of our situation. I think he’s setting himself up as an example of saying, well, you think you’re so pure on the conservative side. He’s a number of times said, if this were 20 years ago, I’d be arguing against the conservative right. And he’s showing how the conservative left, whatever it is, the rigid left, both sides, as I see it, they’ve met at the back and they’re just standing with each other at the back, each insisting on their own purity. And Milo is showing you, no, that purity is a fantasy and also sinful because it’s making this claim that you can somehow be purer than God. Well, there is such a large strain of puritanical Christianity in the US. It’s very strong. So there’s a vision of Christianity, which is, you know, just the fact that there was prohibition in the United States, kind of shows you what type of vision of Christianity is underlying the culture. And so I can understand how that would definitely, for him saying, I have this in my life that I’m struggling with. I know that it’s a problem. It’s there, you know, deal with it. You know, it’s like, I still believe and I’m still Catholic. I still believe in these things. I’ve got this thing. I’ve got these things around me. It’s like, so I can understand how that would be extremely problematic for both sides because the debate about homosexuality, especially in the church, has been like, do we reject them or do we accept them? It’s like, that’s not the answer. That’s not how it works. You know, it’s anyway, like you said, it’s complicated. And I think that that’s interesting. Yeah, I think I agree with you that that seems to be what he’s doing at least. So yeah, so thanks for that. I mean, it’s helping me because obviously I’ve been paying attention to him. And then since the fallout and everything, I would, like a lot of people, I kind of pulled away. And then when I saw that you were still writing about him and that you were still talking about him, like, okay, maybe I need to pay attention again. I haven’t read his book, but I guess I still need to keep my eyes open on what he is and what he might, what he’s possibly doing. Well, I’m happy to hear that it was my blog that kept, because I had, so if you all look back at the week in February when I was writing about him, it was quite a week for me, right? Because he had, well, I had become infamous among my academic colleagues because an article had come out in the Divinity School newsletter, Sightings, on Thursday of the week that was two weeks after the Berkeley riot. And the editor at Sightings had asked me to write a piece on what I thought was Milo’s significance for American academic culture. And I’d said, well, you know, he shows us the importance of thinking about religion. And that made them all upset. So from the Thursday through that weekend, my colleagues had spent that time on a listserv that I was actually party to, which they should have realized, talking about all the terrible things that I had said. I did a blog post on that. And so I’d spent the weekend sort of ramping myself up to be, you know, kind of public when my support for Milo. And that Monday was when the video dropped with the clips of his, talking about his sexual upbringing. And so then I was suddenly there, public, on Milo’s side. And there was absolutely no way I was going to betray him. He had just been betrayed by absolutely everybody, including people in the conservative media who had been, you know, very supportive of him and had had him on their shows and had talked to them. And then suddenly it was like that week, everybody dropped him. And I spent that week that the post started out pretty emotionally heavy, including the one where I simply posted a quotation from my first book on when Mary is wishing to suffer with Jesus, the suffering that he… And one of my readers, no, it was good. It was called Mother and Son, the post. And one of my readers wrote to me in an email saying, was that for Milo where you said that? And I’m like, yeah. And she said, thank you. Okay, wow. And no, because then she proceeded to tell me about her own son and the struggles that he had had. And I’m like, this is a moment. This is the moment I must stay firm. So if you want to know where my Mary and stuff comes from, I learned a lot about what it means to be a church that week, right? Because I suddenly had people, floods of letters coming to me saying, thank you so much for standing up for him. I’m so… I admired so much what he’s done. I’ve been encouraged by it. I’m feeling so sorry for him. All these Catholic grandmothers. I had a whole posse of Catholic grandmothers writing to me saying, that poor boy. And he’s so lucky to have you. And in the middle of that week, I wrote the famous post where I called the conservatives that had itched him a bad name, which was one that he had called them in one of his talks. And that got shared by Rod Dreher on American Conservative and that got media’s attention. Over the course of the week, I explained a few more things, including what I meant by saying he’s a holy fool and how I think he’s modeling not only Jesus, but Francis in the kinds of jokes that he plays and things like that to point up the absurdity of the culture. So I thought that was my role. That was the thing I had to do this year, was be there for him when it all went terrible. And it encourages me greatly to hear that it helped you. And I hope it helped others just sort of step back from like, wow, what just happened here? Someone who actually is an abuse victim was suddenly the bad guy. And that was very… It was fascinating and horrible at the same time to realize that someone who refused to turn what had happened to him, real abuse, into his identity, right? He apologized for it on the Wednesday, said, I’m sorry, I appreciate the things I said. Out of context and certainly out of his context and out of the context of everything else he was doing, could be taken to mean something I didn’t mean. I’m sorry, now we’re back to work, right? He’s never going to turn himself into a victim, either of the media or of his own childhood, because he thinks that that’s not the way… He’s doing what Jordan says, right? Sort yourself out, recognize what you can do to make things better, tell the truth and get on with things. Don’t spend all your time making yourself out to be the victim. Well, one of the things about what you said, the fact that people only see it in one way, see him who was a victim of abuse still as an oppressor, it has to do… There’s two things. One is the cognitive dissonance which comes from extremes, and the other has to do with himself, because the thing about chaos and about someone who stands in a space in between other things is that… I talked about this in my video with Jordan, is that they act as a mirror. And so when you look at them, all you can see are the things that align with whatever you want that person to be. And you can’t see that… Let’s say, for example, Milo, that he’s on all sides and no side at the same time. So you look at… People will look at them and what they say that he is, it ends up often being a mirror of themselves. Like it ends up being what they want him to be. And so if he’s the white oppressor, that’s what they’ll see. And they’ll never see that he’s… They won’t even realize like gay is not part of it anymore. It’s not part of it anymore. He’s only that thing. He said something, whatever he said about his sexual adventures, they’ll only interpret it in whatever frame that they already have for him, because he’s breaking out of all the frames. So you have to frame him. You have to be able to put him in the category. And so I think that that… I mean, there’s been a lot of that happening and it’s been fascinating to watch. The same with Trump. Trump is the same thing. Trump is not… It’s so funny because Trump is not really a right-wing person at all. I mean, but he is… People are so crazy that they look at him, he’s too all over the place and he’s actually not something. And so they want… They just push… The fact that they would make him into an anti-Semite is the most insane thing ever. I mean, his daughter converted… I mean, it’s crazy, but it doesn’t matter. It’s like, you know, he doesn’t fit what a president should be. We don’t know how to deal with that. So let’s… We need to make him something. Like let’s make him whatever we think. And it has to do with also the pathology of extremes, which is this cognitive dissonance, the capacity to only see what’s negative in your opponent and only see what’s positive in yourself, even though, you know, and never be able to see whatever you’re doing that’s exactly the same as your opponent. I mean, we saw that in the debates with Jordan Peterson. It was really fascinating. I mean, the one they did at the university, they had two people against Jordan, one person saying, you’re exaggerating, you know, you’re blowing this out of proportion. It’s not a big deal, you know. And then the other person saying, you’re the devil, you’re Hitler, you’re the worst thing that ever happened and you’re being abusive and horrible. And they could maintain those two discourses at the same time and not realize that it’s an absolute cognitive dissonance. And the people that are watching it and that are, you know, extreme left, will just eat it up and they’ll say… They can accept both extremes, both, like both that contradiction, they can just accept it because of their extreme position. So it’s a frightening time to be in. Like, I can never understand revolutions because we lived in a democracy. And, you know, I would read about the French Revolution, I would read about what happened in Russia and I’m like, how can people, how could people, normal people, end up the way that you would go out in the street and guillotine women and like, how is that possible? And now I’m starting to understand how that works and I’m starting to see how you can become so pathological that you’re incapable of seeing that you’re doing the same thing that you’re criticizing your opponent of doing. So it’s a bit, yeah, it’s a bit of a frightening moment right now. It’s very frightening and you could say, I mean, going back to the mirror, people could certainly argue that I’m seen in Milo myself, which, like, that’s lovely if I see someone who’s so lovely. Um… That I’m seeing him in Christian terms because I’m Christian and I want to see him in Christian terms. Yeah. But I’d say, you know, the huge test, and this has always been for me what was so different about Milo and was really important. I talked about how I responded to the original attacks on my Three Cheers for White Men post. The thing that I knew I needed to be was the happy warrior, right? That at any moment, if I turned into someone who was throwing the same kind of insults that were being thrown at me, I lose, right? And I actually did, I’ve done several posts in my blog, not just about Milo, about the issues, but also the how-to’s, right? How to be a happy warrior, how to answer the offense, how to stay calm when all of these kinds of attacks are coming at you. And that’s why, you know, it’s like of all the things I love about Milo, it’s his example that no matter what kind of insult gets thrown at you, you transform it and turn it and give it back with love, in fact. And the first post I did on him in these terms was called Kung Fu Milo, because I was playing off the image of the Kung Fu Panda in the Kung Fu Panda movies. This fits with what Jordan does with all of the superhero movies, right? This is the Panda. So in the Kung Fu Panda movie, the idea is the musk ox, the evil musk ox is going around collecting up all the chi of the animal warriors and he’s sort of colored all green with envy, right? Because he’s envious of the energy and power they have and he’s capturing their golden energy and turning them into little jade ornaments that he can wear on his belt. And so Po, the Kung Fu Panda, has to figure out how to fight him and I detail exactly, if you haven’t seen the movie, all the ways that he finds his own people, the Panda people, and he realizes they’re not really warriors and so they have to become the kinds of warriors that they can be. Which movie is this? This isn’t the first one. This is the third one. Okay, yeah, I didn’t make it to the third one. I saw the first one. There’s the sort of climax moment, spoiler alert, is when Po ends up having to take himself into the spirit realm to fight the great musk ox. And what the musk ox has been trying to do all along is like steal the other animal warriors’ life. And Po has this moment where he’s supposed to be the dragon warrior, which is a lovely Petersonian image too, right? When he realizes that to be the dragon warrior, it’s not that he tries to hold on to his chi and protect himself, but that he has this wonderful moment when he says, you know, you want my chi, okay, take it. And he’s the dragon warrior at that point. He sends out this great beam of golden energy into the musk ox, which explodes the musk ox, right? Yeah. And it’s, that’s what I said Milo does, right? He takes all of the insults that everybody throws at him. You’ve seen it in the posters that he’s putting up for his book right now, most hated man on the internet. He’s like, great, I’ll use that as my banner. Yup, boo gross, Sarah Silverman, cool, I’ll cite that, right? That anything that people throw at him, he does what Christians are supposed to do. He turns the other cheek and I… He does even more than that. He’s actually very, it’s very, it’s, you know, when you say Kung Fu Panda, I was thinking about the first movie and in the first movie, it’s very similar structure where he, you know, during his training, he’s unable to master himself. Right. By the end, he realizes that no, it’s his very unwieldliness that was going to be kind of higher than, let’s say, the masterfulness. And so he lets himself go to his, you know, to the fact that he’s huge, that he eats and all this stuff. And you can kind of see it as he’s fighting at the end. It’s like he’s basically using his weaknesses as, and inverting them, like using them against his enemy in a really direct way. So, I mean, that’s definitely, that’s definitely been what Milo has been doing. It seems like that’s, I’m trying to understand this thing. Like that’s why when I tried to understand Pepe the Frog and all that, I’m trying to understand this character that is an inverted character, but then restores order. And that’s been like my focus on for a while now. I’ve been focusing, I’ve been writing about Saint Christopher and about those types of liminal characters. And I, like this is maybe why I think I need to keep paying attention to Milo somehow. It has to do with King David. I mentioned this to you in a private discussion, but I’m just going to lay it out now is that we have this image of King David as a king. And often we ignore his actual story because his story is very disturbing. King David during his whole life until he becomes king, he is an inverted character. And so he becomes a refugee and he becomes a criminal and he lives in a cave. And King Saul is hunting him down and he actually had some, he does everything. Like he acts, once he acts insane, he’s taken away. And then he associates with the enemies of Israel. And even in Israel, people think that he’s fighting for his enemies basically. And so, but we know that, we know because we know the whole story, let’s say, you know, we’ve read it before. We know that he’s secretly still working for Israel. So it’s like he’s acting completely inverted, but he’s the secret king. Like he’s secretly trying to build the temple. That’s the best way to say it. Like he’s, what he wants to do is establish the ark, build a temple. But to do it, he goes through this whole strange inverted process. And that’s why also why he can beat the giant because he has in himself something similar to that giant. Like he has a liminal quality that makes him able to stand on the line and be able to fight the opponent. And so I’ve been really, really thinking about that. And so it’s interesting because like Milo says he’s Catholic, says he’s Christian, but then his behavior is so outrageous. I mean, the behavior and the things that he puts forth, like I saw recently when he did this thing with like these women in hijabs that strip and stuff. It’s like, oh my goodness, like what are you doing? And so this like really, yeah, like he really pushes the limit and he just inverts everything. And so, I know it’s so so the idea is, is he secretly, I mean, I think that you’re telling me he is, but I still need to, I think for me it’s still like the, how can I say? I don’t think it’s that secret. I think it’s obvious if you see, but you know, we’re talking about, you’re talking about the frames that we see through, right? It’s like, it, that you and I both see through frames that a lot of people don’t have, right? That both you and I are fascinated by the way in which, again, as we’ve talked about, you know, Jordan and Milo are playing out these very symbolic roles. And it’s, to me, it’s like, it’s so obvious. I love your David comparison with Milo because I think that fits perfectly, right? David humiliates himself dancing before the arc and makes his wife upset with him because he’s willing to expose himself in front of the handmaidens in this ridiculous way. And it’s like, niqab-y strippers? Okay. I mean, that is obviously Milo saying, look, you know, Western women can do this, right? The women in the Islamic countries that are forced to wear those niqabs cannot. And so, that’s a celebration of the West and our willingness to, you know, allow female beauty to be something that my arguments about chivalry, right? That the only reason that I can walk down the street alone in Chicago with, you know, a fair degree of confidence that nothing’s going to happen to me is because most of the men around me are going to respect that. And, you know, I think that that’s an aspect of our culture that is amazingly easy to take for granted because it’s like air until it’s not there anymore. And then you’re going to suffocate. So, you know, they were just dancing. They, you know, they took the bottom parts of their niqabs off and kept the veils on, which was kind of funny. You know, to me, there’s no question at all that Milo is Christian. But it’s interesting to me that it’s still difficult for you to be confident. I think, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I think, I mean, like, if he is, well, that’s the, it’s, okay, so this is going to be a bit extreme. I’m going to say something that’s a bit extreme. But it’s like either, so either he’s a King David type figure or he’s a Nero, right? Well, that was his Twitter handle before they kicked him off. That’s why I say that. And so either he is, so I don’t know. For me, I don’t, it doesn’t, I don’t, I don’t have to judge anyways. Like I, who am I to judge? It doesn’t matter. But I’m just saying that those are, that’s the question I’m asking. Like which way is his ambiguity going to, going to, going to play? Because there’s a, you know, there’s a very strange tradition about Nero, by the way. There’s a very strange tradition in early Christianity, which is that Nero is going to come back and come back as this like vengeful angel that will like restore this weird kind of justice. And so, and then some people think that like the, like in the, in the, in Revelations, when it talks about the beast that dies but then kind of comes back, that that’s Nero actually. Right. And then, and then, you know, the early, like the early Christians interpreted Nero’s name as… I’ll tell you this, when I changed my Facebook profile to have the picture of Milo and me that we took on Sunday together, I had, I suddenly had 666 followers. Oh my goodness. So, you know, you could be right. No, I don’t think so because one of, so one of the things that Milo is, is often accused of doing is, is outing people for either being gay or being anything, right? He’s just that they’re all, there’s a persistent claim, I mean, including the claim that got caught up with the Twitter thing, that he himself is starting whatever bad things happen to people or the doxing or things like that. And of course he hasn’t. It’s incredibly difficult to convince people of this if they’re seeing him through the frame where he’s Nero. But one of the things that’s impressed me throughout the year that I’ve been in correspondence with him is how incredibly careful he is at who he names under what circumstances. You can see it, quite frankly, in the way that he deals with his own staff, right? How many people actually know who is working for him? Well, only if they’re actually already public, like Pizza Party Ben, will you know their names. And otherwise, he’s very protective of his own staff. And he’s been protective of me all year. It’s been interesting what he will and won’t share on his Facebook feed that I give him. And I’m like, oh, come on. And he says, well, no, that’s not necessarily good for you. That he has, he was trained as a journalist and he knows the kinds of things that are actually already public and the kinds of things that you simply don’t say. Right. And what I find interesting is how CNN, well, they’re getting in trouble for that, but threatened to dock someone. And Milo would never do that. Right. He’s going to make fun of CNN as much as he can. But it’s interesting what people count as what belongs already in the public sphere. Lena Dunham and Amy Schumer are out there publicly saying what they’re saying. So he’s going to talk about that. And that I followed him in my writing about the people who have been responding to me. That if someone publishes something out there, I’ll talk about it. Right. But I’ve had things that have happened to me as it were behind the scenes that I won’t write about because they’re behind the scenes and they’re not on the public record. Right. And Milo is always very careful about knowing what things are on the public record and what aren’t. So all I can say is that I’m very happy that he has a medievalist on his team. I think that’s great. I think it’s a good sign for sure. So this is like, so what’s fascinating for me is our kind of strange position, both of us. Because I met Jordan Peterson through things that were completely unrelated to his, to what happened to him that has to do with free speech and all that. And dealing with this question of the marginal and the in-between spaces. You know, the whole question is also has to do with these undefined spaces that happen in this chaotic time that we’re in. And so at some point I realized, wait a minute, like we’re both these kind of medieval type Christians, let’s say, or at least we see the world much more through a kind of medieval ontology, I would say. So I just find it interesting that we’re both kind of there with these two characters. Because, yeah, like, because I mean, for example, I was curious to know because we’ve never heard him speak about it. Does Milo know about Jordan Peterson? Like, has he ever heard of him? Has he ever seen some of his videos? Oh, yeah. Well, I was talking to him a little bit on Sunday about it. Yes, he knows who he is. And I mean, my Facebook friends are all saying, no, you know, we’ve got to get the two of them to talk. I think they’ve talked maybe a little bit, but not not substantively yet. Okay. All right. And so then so then maybe I could ask you that. So we met through your kind of interest with Jordan Peterson. You did you did the his program. And so maybe you can tell us a bit about how you see that, like how you frame because I’ve seen that you’ve been more intense pretty intensely now into into Jordan’s material. And so so I mean, I know because I’m coming from a more I see in Jordan a lot a strange resurgence of a let’s say a traditional hierarchical ontology. Let’s say something that you would find in Dante, let’s say, but presented presented through a Darwinian frame. And so it’s I mean, for me, it’s very fascinating to kind of be part of this and be and so maybe I’d like to get your take on, you know, what what is drawn you to Jordan and how you how you see that in relation to what you’re interested in terms of medieval history and everything. Okay. I was interested what you were saying about we as you and I as medievalists watching these people and I’d like you to come back to that, but I’ll answer this question first. So I was I was aware of it’s like it’s funny how you’re sort of mildly aware of these things in the middle of other things. I listened to Jordan’s first the first video about Bill C-16 while I was decorating my Christmas tree, which I’m sure was symbolic in some ways. But I didn’t really that that was not an issue that I was immediately interested in. I was sort of aware of him as oh, yes, another professor who has been going through, you know, the adventures this year. I really became fully aware of him when some of my friends posted the comment that he made at the Manning Center speech when first he was asked, you know, he’s talking about talking so beautifully about, you know, how important it is to speak and how as professors oh my goodness, you’ve got to be speaking because who is going to otherwise and that was obviously something I’d been doing all winter with the support of my own Dean and president. So I was like, wow, okay, I like this and then in that same Q&A someone asked him about Milo and he came out with this thing about Milo is a trickster and I’m like, oh my goodness, that’s what I’ve been saying. I’ve been saying holy fool, but you know, trickster, jokester exactly right that that clearly we Jordan and I were seeing things from a very similar perspective. So I started watching his courses. I read his book, The Maps of Meaning. I in the course of all this whole year, not only did I finish my book lose lots of weights because Milo’s fat shaming helps but I also converted to Catholicism and So this is this year that you converted to Catholicism? Yes. Oh my goodness. Wow, that’s a big year for you, I guess. It’s been a huge year. Nothing’s the same. This time last year I was like, oh my goodness, if I’d known what was coming, it’s been the most exciting year of my life or one of the most exciting years of my life. I’ve had a few others similar, but this is this is pretty much of the number of things that have changed in less than 12 months. It’s intense. So I spent the winter going through the the Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults and was received into the church and at Easter and Jordan had been talking in his lectures about the self-authoring program as I well I very much believe in writing yourself into understanding because that’s basically what my blog had been Fencing Bear actually started out as my prayer to be able to talk through some of the things that I was learning through my fencing, which I think is also one of my sympathies with Milo, right? I had to do something to really learn it right is physical and bodily but my knowing that writing things out through the blog had been so helpful. I was I was really drawn to Jordan’s program of writing yourself into solutions. So after Easter I did the novena of the present authoring faults, right? And then after Pentecost I did the the present authoring virtues and I was I’m really impressed with the program as a structure of writing one because it’s so contained right? You can only write a certain amount before the text box shuts you out and that helped me I had to be really like crisp and yes crisp and concise and and also that the structure of the exercises that you tell a story then you think about what you would have done different to make it better and then you think about it in a general terms and Jordan obviously talks about that as this is you solving finding the answer in yourself right finding the answer through your own your own thinking about it. One of the things I found most curious about all of it was one it was easier for me to do the devices than the virtues. I’m clearly more comfortable telling myself how bad I am than I am giving myself credit for having virtues in the first place. I also sometimes found it hard to tell a story and I did a blog post on that about this experience of you know how much the few times I was really able to tell a story it was like blew my mind right? It’s Jordan’s right that all of these emotions and problems are just tangled up in the stories that we haven’t been able to tell and I started I think I started the he’s he Jordan has shared some of these in his Twitter that one of the most powerful ones that I did was admitting my own adultery. So if you want to know from back when I was in graduate school and still with my second husband but it was an adventurous some time. So you want to know why I’m so sympathetic to Milo it’s like maybe I’ve been there I know what it means to sin and I when I sent that one to Jordan I’m like you I beg you to tweet this for me. I need everyone to know tell the truth right and it was sort of interesting thing because it wasn’t really when it happened back when we were younger. It wasn’t like everybody nobody knew it because it was in the town and everybody knew in the town but then we moved for when I took my job here in Chicago and then nobody knew except for a few colleagues and it’s very easy to let that kind of thing just go away right? It’s like and you end up you realize you end up pretending to be more virtuous than you actually know you were or maybe you you know I spent too much time not letting myself forgive myself for having made a mistake and I can do better now right and so all of that was just exactly as as mind-blowing as Jordan promises it is that that if you finally start telling the truth it’s it’s amazing the things that will open up to you that are you know that you’ve been shutting out because you haven’t been able to even admit to yourself that this is something that you need to be able to express. Yeah. Yeah. So what is the question you had about medievalist that you said you wanted to get back to that? So so you know I think that to me this is this is just so amusing right because as a medievalist you know in academia particularly as a historian I’m in a department that’s largely modern modern historians that work on the period from about the French Revolution to the present or about the American Revolution to the present most of them work on 20 19th and 20th century or now 21st century history and for 20 years I’ve been the one sitting on the side going we knew that or you know arguing the periodization problems like modernity always used the Middle Ages as its foil right? The Middle Ages are always what the modernity didn’t thought it wasn’t. Yeah. And and you know the postmodern is interesting and this is where I’d like to talk to Jordan more intensively about this a lot of postmodernism comes out of the fact that those French philosophers whom he rightly deplores were trained as medievalists. Yeah. And and and particularly that that training in in polysemy that he talks about they’re saying you know they see many layers of meaning in text and multiple interpretations. Well that is that’s medieval lexigetical practice right? That’s the way medieval commentators read the scriptures. But of course what the postmodernists do is unmoor it completely from flatten it especially that flatten it right but but Roland Barthes is Jordan doesn’t mention him but he’s he’s the great exponent of this idea of polysemy. Yeah, I read you know Roland Barthes mythologies is really was my introduction to symbolism. Okay. Because I was reading I was reading theoreticians and I read and when I read his mythologies I thought wait a minute. He’s doing something more than the others. And so I realized that he was doing it as a critique like as a Marxist critique of these structures, but I quickly quickly realized no no no this is everywhere. Like it’s not just in the things you don’t like it’s also in the things that you like and so I that was like my that was one of my first like awakenings to this notion of symbolic structures was reading Roland Barthes which you know, then I never read again, but Well and so Barthes was reading Henri de Lubac’s Medieval Exegesis. Right and and so there’s there’s a there’s a very clear lineage. My colleague Bruce Holzinger has done a book on this although I’m the person I are on politically opposite sides. We co-authored a volume together. We never learned this until recently. That Bruce shows very clearly that Barthes was reading de Lubac and got this idea of the you know scripture having multiple senses and Barthes then translates it into will all texts have multiple senses? But of course what he doesn’t carry over is the reason that scripture has multiple senses and and and the reason that I mean Jordan is being able to do the lectures that he’s doing now and the psychological significance of the Bible stories because the Bible carries that kind of multi multi-layered understanding and so it’s you know, it’s it’s interesting a Facebook friend today was asking sort of does Jordan understand postmodernism like well what he needs because isn’t there something good in it? And it’s like well the good in postmodernism is actually what it carried over from the ancient the medieval and ancient tradition. But the bad in it is that of course it tried to make it independent of the the theological mythological grounding that those insights grew out of so that you and I see what what Milo or Jordan is doing within that that symbolic frame means that we also see the postmodernist more clearly because we understand why they were able to make the kinds of arguments that they were I have I did a post back in in in the winter on why Marxism is actually Christian heresy. I called it the Church of the Left and it’s incredibly and it’s like the reason the reason that Mark and Roger Scruton has written well about this too that you know that there most of the things that people are drawn to have some truth in them and there is a there is a truth in in Marxism about you know concerns for for community and concerns for well-being and so forth. But of course it’s a heresy because as Jordan likes to say, you know, these ideologies are what is the word that he used? They’re imperfect, right? They put the absolute at a lower level instead of and that’s why that’s why to me the problem with with a lot of the postmoderns and that type and and let’s say that the modern world is that they they they’ve abandoned the idea of an ontological hierarchy like they’ve abandoned this notion that and so what they try to do is they try to fully fit the absolute at a low level of the world and so they try to fully fit the absolute within the political sphere let’s say and that that that is a crushing thing. It can’t work that way. It has to resolve itself as it you move up the mountain and you enter into the divine darkness, you know, it’s not it won’t it’ll never be fully let’s say fully realized in the in the in the political sphere. So I think like I always think that Derrida is really is really like an upside-down medievalist and I use I actually use a lot of his I use a lot of Derrida’s ideas. What I do is I just I just tap them and then I just watch them flip back and then I’m like, okay, I’m fine with that now as long as I can just just tap that idea like, you know, there’s a lot there’s and there’s a lot of there’s a lot of his ideas of Derrida’s ideas in Jordan. I’ve tried to convince Jordan of this. I know he’s going to watch this. I tried to convince them that you that there’s that you have to be careful because they’re that this idea of of of of let’s say encountering monsters on the edge and this notion of of facing the future and that you know facing the unknown of the future and then taming it. I mean, that’s that’s really there in Derrida. The difference is that I think that’s why why I like Jordan more and I think that Jordan is more balanced is that is that Derrida only wants to join with the monster like he just wants to to sleep with the monster like he wants to have this full this like union with the with like the chaotic unknown whereas Jordan is saying, you know, sometimes the unknown is this potential like like you’d say like a mother but sometimes it’s also Tiamat and it’s not you have there are different sometimes you have to kill the dragon. Sometimes you tame the dragon. Sometimes you have to to to just leave the dragon alone and just let it do its thing as long as it’s not bothering you. So you have to you have to it’s a there’s a hierarchy. It’s always about hierarchy. Like there’s a hierarchy in the way you address these things depending on on how they they present themselves to you. So I mean, that’s what I think like I’m going to work. I’m going to I’m going to keep playing with this and I know even in my discussion with Jordan, I’m going to push him a little bit on these ideas about how to to flip things to flip things back on their feet. And I think that’s what my that’s why one of the reason why I like Milo is I think that’s one of the things that he’s able to do something upside down and to kind of flip it back, you know to just kind of tip it and then it comes back into order. And so it’s like that it’s a good side of the Joker. Let’s say the good side of the of the of the like a yeah, like an Elijah figure Elijah does right. He comes into an inverted world and then he he’s able to kind of tap it and then it comes back into somewhat it starts restarts the cycle. Let’s say we start the the order process. So yeah, anyways, yeah. So there’s something you said back about the political and pushing the political that that was the other thing that I got that I you asked me why I was sympathetic to Jordan. So on the one level that he recognized Milo is a trickster, which I totally like he was the one other person that was saying that I was like, this is brilliant. And and to that I really appreciated his psychological discipline because that’s another thing that I’ve been very, very interested in this, you know, training training in virtue training myself as a fencer training myself as a as a writer training myself in in sort of just simply self-discipline. So I was very drawn to that. The other was that that when he talks of when Jordan talks about that the sort of layers of understanding it was like that was exactly what I was trying to say in this the sightings piece that excited my colleagues so much that Andrew Breitbart, which Milo likes to to quote like like to say politics was downstream from culture. And I said, well, culture is downstream from religion. Yeah, exactly. And right. And when Jordan says and you know, then I didn’t have space in that. And I think Jordan has also given me the language over the last few months to articulate what I think I mean by religion. And I think it’s very close to what he means by it. It’s the stories that we live. And you know, it’s I’ve been talking about Christianity as a mythology for a while now because I think it’s it’s it’s not just ritual or or creed, right? It’s it’s these embodied stories that you you take on and become and Milo does right. He’s embodying Francis or Jesus or Kung Fu Panda or David, right? But you’re you you live the story. You don’t just believe something abstract about God. You have to, you know, incarnate it and take it into the world and and and and perform and you know that Milo goes off into campuses and gives these talks in front of these kids that, you know, may or may not want to listen to him. Jordan did the same thing, right? That was so impressive. I’ve watched most of Jordan’s a lot of Jordan videos in the last few months to when he that first free speech protest on campus and when he couldn’t talk inside, he just went out in the middle of the courtyard. And when the kids pulled up, pulled off his his mic, he just says, OK, I’ll you know, I’ll talk right. That Jordan clearly understands like Milo the importance of being there in body, right? That your speech is one thing academics are great at abstract speech and we write it and stuff and and and and you know, don’t necessarily perform it publicly that much. Both Jordan and Milo are willing to do that put themselves physically at risk, which they have been. Milo travels with bodyguards. I don’t know whether Jordan does yet and and be willing to be there in in in their bodies. But that Jordan also understands that what’s happening to us, what the crisis that we’re living through and this is very much what I said in my sightings article is religious. It’s a crisis of what stories are we going to live by? What what truths are we going to embody? And when when I heard him say that I was like that’s this. This is the one other person I found in academia who seems to understand what I was trying to express about what was going on in our culture. Yeah, I see it. I see it like I I usually use I like to use the word pattern because the patterns embody themselves in stories obviously, but also in images also in rituals and then also in in in social structures. And so the same the same pattern, let’s say that’s in the beginning of of of Genesis and the creation of Adam and Eve and heaven and earth and these opposites that that then come together, you know, that’s the same pattern. The same reason it’s the same structure that makes our society be based on marriage, let’s say. So the story the story becomes the story is there. It’s like there’s an invisible pattern behind the story. Then the ritual then the you know, then even in music and all these things and it’s all the same. It’s all the same pattern. So I kind of like to see that. I mean, that’s what I’ve been trying to do is trying to connect those things together and say, you know, like the reason why, you know, like let’s say that that hierarchy of being that we’re talking about like that’s why we say God is in heaven. And that’s why we say, you know, that that person is above that other person. It’s like, you know, they’re not physically above that other person. There’s a whole structure of patterns and the same structure that makes us think that God or makes us say that God is in heaven is the same reason why we talk about a glass ceiling or like it’s completely infiltrated into our into our thinking this idea that something which is more refined than us would be above us. It’s so obvious. It’s like one of the things that we use all the time in language is the most obvious thing ever, but it’s not it’s an image that we constantly use the image of hierarchy is an image that that we that is embodied in a language and in stories and all these things. And so so yeah, so I like that. I kind of like to see it as these as these patterns that that that that just structure the world basically. I think like I think I mean for me, that’s that’s how I see myself as a as a medievalist and my I mean my art and everything that I’m doing is trying very hard to live that in a world that is at the margin of that that’s that it’s on the edge of that and is watching that was those patterns kind of become fragile and dissolve. But I mean there’s hope like there is this there’s there’s a hope that if the patterns are real they can’t dissolve. It’s just we dissolve if we don’t recognize right and it’s and it’s like a part of the pattern is is that that’s what that’s why for the last we know 20 years of my life. I’ve been trying to understand how the end becomes the beginning like how does that happen like how does something end and then how does it turn into a new beginning and so all these images of monsters and of and of all that like that’s what that’s why I’ve been so focused on that is because I know that it’s the secret is in that question question of the of the buffer like what happens in the buffer zone. How does that turn so I haven’t completely figured it out yet, but I’m watching as I watch it happen. I’m it’s helping me to understand it. Right. So yeah, so I it’s very it’s very fascinating for me what’s happening in terms of I mean I just like I said I find the situation very interesting that you’re there with Milo and kind of walking with Jordan and and this is my theory like I told you my theory about about Milo as being kind of King David. So this is my theory about Jordan is I think Jordan is kind of like King Cyrus a lot of people don’t know the story of King Cyrus, but King Cyrus was a foreign king in the Old Testament and when the when the Hebrews were were out of their promised land that they had been they had been you know exiled out into into the Middle East King Cyrus is the one who sent them back and said no go back home rebuild your temple rebuild the walls of Jerusalem, you know, like basically you have the right to be what you are right until then like the idea of dispersing a people is to make them cease to exist to dissolve into like you if you disperse the people then you dissolve them into the water is like you just spread them out and they stop to exist as a unified thing right then Cyrus says no go back, you know and and and and build your temple and so what’s interesting about Jordan is that he’s very he’s very standoffish about saying whether he’s Christian or not. He’s not he’s not part of any church. That’s for sure. He said he was that he said he was the Church of Yolkima Fiore. Yes. Yes. We all heard that and so he kind of stands outside Christianity somehow and then he’s saying he’s basically telling Christians go back like go go back to your thing like you are you’re allowed to be Christian you’re allowed to to to to to believe that to and here and you’re allowed to rediscover how profound and how how true it is but he and the reason why he’s able to do that is in a way because he’s standing outside. Yes. If he if he was at this moment in time, let’s say if he was something like if he was if he was I don’t know like a Presbyterian or if he was a Baptist or a Catholic or an Orthodox then people would the people that are listening to him would would stop listening to him. I well I agree that so just as Milo standing on the border by saying he’s Catholic but gay Jordan is really interested in religion and believes religion is necessary for us as human beings but is a scientist and so you have these two it’s interesting because the two the two extremes are really opposites. You have someone who’s who’s on the inside like King David. Let’s say King David is the secret King of the of the of the Jews. But he’s acting in a crazy kind of foreign he’s he’s uniting with foreigners. He’s acting in all these inverted and in liminal ways right to have the liminal King who’s not at all part of the inside who’s on the outside but who is sending people back towards the inside and truly interesting. It’s kind of interesting what’s fascinating is is that I realized that there are actually only two characters in the Old Testament that are called like Messiahs and those are the two King David and King Cyrus and so it’s like these it’s as if Christ what Christ does is takes those two extremes and unites them in one person. Yes, he takes like the you know and then if you look at Christ story, you’ll see that he he actually does that he takes the yeah and Christianity is kind of that story of the two extremes of how the inside and the outside can can come together somehow. Right. And so and so yeah, it’s interesting. It’s interesting. It’s well for sure. It’s hopeful that maybe these two extremes are there and are helping to reestablish something that is holding like that’s something that is that makes sense. Hopefully that’s true. I hope so. Hope so. Okay. So so one of the things I wanted to talk to you about is I know that you’re that you’re going to publish a book very soon on on on Marian symbolism. So maybe you can tell us a little bit about that. I’d love to so the book is called Mary and the art of prayer the hours of the Virgin in medieval Christian life and thought and its focus is this cycle of prayers that most people know now is the little office of the Virgin or it’s the hours of the Virgin because their prayers that are said throughout the liturgical day in honor of Mary the most famous part of that hours most people know although they don’t necessarily realize that they know it. It’s the Hail Mary or Ave Maria which was in fact technically the the invictatory for this office. It was the opening chant that was used with the opening song and in the Middle Ages because the ideal was everybody is involved in this service to Mary everybody is involved in praising Mary. But if they didn’t know the full hours all of the Psalms and all of the prayers and all of the other chants they could they could serve Mary appropriately simply by saying sets of Ave Maria’s or Hail Mary’s and and obviously that practice turns into things like the Rosary and even you know even today that’s that’s still very popular practice. But what’s curious about the hours of the Virgin is although there’s stories about it being sort of mandated for everyone to say that was in fact never the case in the Middle Ages that it started as a kind of additional practice that monks and nuns were doing in the 11th and 12th centuries and lay people over the 12th and 13th centuries because they modeled their prayer life on that of the monasteries started asking to learn the hours of the Virgin is as the way in which they could also sort of serve in the regular prayer of the church and it like I said it was always a voluntary practice by the end of the Middle Ages. There’s a whole new kind of book invented so that people can say these hours they’re what we call books of hours and most people if they’ve seen a medieval manuscript they’ve seen a book of hours because those are some they have beautiful pictures and and things and and so my book is my book is about the way in which this practice developed the kinds of things that we know from the stories that people told about their experience of saying particularly the Ave Maria and then getting deep into the actual symbolism of what the office was about. And so what what was I mean what drew you to that subject right now? What was the thing that made you want to write about this in particular? Well, so I’ve always been interested in prayer and I’ve my whole career has also been working on devotion to Mary. I have a big beef with the feminists who I think have badly distorted the importance of Mary in the Christian tradition in the Western tradition and I love to talk about that. I got to this particular project through the first book that I wrote which was on commentaries on the Song of Songs in praise of Mary and Christ and if you know the Song of Songs, it’s the the dialogue between the bride and the bridegroom and what’s very interesting about the way that book was used in in the Middle Ages in the liturgy. It’s it’s primarily used for the offices of the Feast of Mary that the chants particularly for the the Feast of the Assumption are taken from the Song of Songs and in the 12th century there were commentators who were curious about this. Why in the liturgy do we say this text when as they said in one of the commentaries it doesn’t seem to have anything to do with her in the 12th century. There are a number of monastic commentators that use this that use the fact of the Song of Songs being used in the Marian liturgy to make the Song of Songs into basically the story of Mary’s relationship with Christ. So back when I was talking about the the post that I shared about Milo and in February on the mother mother and son that’s taken from one of these 12th century commentaries that transforms the Song of Songs into the conversation that Mary and Jesus Mary and Christ have as as I mean lovers because Mary is both the most perfect soul in relationship to God and of course the mother of the incarnate son and that love that they have is beautifully expressed through the Song of Songs. So in the in the present book it’s like I’m taking that out a further frame and showing not just the way in which one book of the Bible the Song of Songs is used in a Marian context, but in fact the way in which all of the scriptures were read through a Marian frame and in the Hours of the Virgin this this is made that sort of performative by way of the framing of the Psalms. The Hours if people are familiar with the Hours it’s the the practice of saying in the monastic traditions the practice of saying the Psalter three once a week right and in the Marian office there’s a selection of Psalms that are used some of them taken from the fact that they’re used for her feasts and others as I explain in my book for a variety of reasons, but all of them are are said in the Marian office framed by chants that basically show the understanding that the medieval Christians had of her as the frame for God. Right. Right. This is that she that the antiphon frames the Psalms the antiphon will be about her blessed are you among women let us sing the sweet songs the drama before the couch of the Virgin and then the song will be about her son Christ and of course that involves reading the Psalms as in fact about the Lord. I don’t I who with whom Jesus is identified when when early Christians say Jesus is Lord they mean he’s God and they mean therefore he’s Yahweh. They mean he’s he’s he’s the one whose name cannot be pronounced. So you say Lord instead of Yahweh. And and so Mary framing the Lord in the Psalms is Mary framing God in the way in which he became incarnate through her. So my book is about sort of it’s also got this experimental level in its methodology that I set up each of the different chapters by inviting you as reader to imagine yourself saying particular elements of the office. So first the inventory of a with its song then an antiphon the first antiphon blessed are you among women with its Psalm Psalm 8 and then the lessons that are largely taken from Ecclesiastica. So they’re all about Mary as wisdom and then the prayers and the idea is you as reader get to be to kind of step inside this practice just as medieval Christians used that practice and we have pictures of them doing this in their in their books of hours to step inside into the sacred space with Mary by way of their service to her and praising her through through this office. Yeah, what’s interesting about what you’re saying is that in your own methodology you’re reproducing you’re reproducing this the feminine symbolism in in this invitation because that’s that’s a strong part of of the feminine symbolism is this idea of inviting like you said inviting the believer to step in and to participate. And so it’s like that’s the that’s exactly that frame. You know, the invitation is the frame that that leads you in let’s say to the service. So I don’t know if you did that on purpose but well now I can think I did but now you just did to me what I used to keep doing to Milo. It’s like did you realize that this is what you were doing? Oh my gosh, you’re right. Yes, that makes that makes sense. Yeah, but I think you know, one of the things that I’ve been I’m realizing and I think that it’s actually it’s actually obvious is is one of the problem of the age right now one of the problems of the ages is is a proper engagement and a proper understanding of of the feminine. It’s like the fight the fight that’s happening is is over. What is the feminine and one of the problems about that is that the feminine is how can I say this the feminine is a question like the feminine. Is the is that invitation is that question and so it’s it’s actually very difficult to answer the what like if you say what is the feminine it’s really hard. It’s hard to do it to do it precisely because it’s the feminine asking the what like it’s the feminine asking for let’s say identity to manifest itself. It’s the feminine. That’s that’s like that’s it’s the feminine that is that let’s say is that opening for for something to happen and so it’s like it’s very it’s very difficult. I’ve been I’ve been wrestling with this myself when I when I talk about feminine symbolism. It’s like I’ve been really wrestling with how much do you you say how much do you imply like how much do you suggest it’s like sometimes if you there’s some things that if you say too too explicitly you make them false. Let’s say I don’t know how. Yes. Well, yes, that sometimes I mean that you and I both appreciate the deep power of metaphor and that I think the things the things that you say you articulate to to metonymically or descriptively to use Northrop Fries language since we’re thinking about Jordan’s reading to they kind of lose life right and that that is a problem that the the truths that are embedded in the stories. It’s like the more you unpack the stories for there’s this moment of understanding but then it needs to still be in the story. It needs to still be something that you can live or act through for it to continue to be alive. Otherwise it turns into this dead thing that you you you kind of write long academic books about with lots of footnotes, but it doesn’t activate anybody’s understanding anymore. It’s it’s it’s this so I what you’re saying about the problem the feminine this is this is where my beef with the feminists came in that I actually started working on devotion to Mary in college basically and I’ve been that’s 30 years ago. So I was very frustrated. I read a lot of feminist theology back in the 80s and a lot of Mary Daly and Rosemary Reuther and Marina Warner’s book on on Mary and all of them had were just angry at the way in which they they thought Mary had been designed or imagined in Christianity and Mary Daly had was with well, it’s all of them. But you know the primary way of thinking about Mary that they they came up with was that she was basically raped by God which goes utterly against the medieval tradition, which is that as Bernardo also the scripture because there’s this there’s this more like you. Yeah. And like you said even in the tradition they people really go into that moment when the when Gabriel announces to Mary right that she received like it’s really important in the tradition and even in the text really I mean implies that she that she accepted like that she accepted that this was going to happen to her. Well, you remember in my three cheers for white men consent was one that the tradition of Christian marriage being constituted by consent is a what the huge change. It’s a huge change. Yes, it is. And in in in in the Western tradition that the argument that the canon lawyers make is developed in the 12th century and it’s it’s deeply embedded in arguments about what happens to Mary at the moment of the Annunciation and Bernard of Bernard of Clairvaux has a wonderful passage in one of his homilies where he has you know, the whole world lies prostrate at your feet waiting for your consent right for Mary to say yes and that you know, God did not want to take flesh from her unless she was willing and so, you know even embedded in that marriage tradition. There’s a sense that God is not God could have raped her but that’s not what that’s not how God wanted to work salvation. And so her her consent was was very important. So on the one hand, the you know, daily and company of the feminists were you know trying to make this into a you know, the God the Father rape story. The other is an artifact of the the 19th century focus on the search for the historical Jesus right and and you know now we have this culture of sort of what would Jesus do and this that feeds into my reading of Milo is Jesus to that people have this this image of Jesus now as he’s well, he’s either I did a blog post on this called signed with the cross where I’m talking about Jordan’s reading of the hero mythology to that Jesus is either the sort of vagabond socialist which is a kind of interesting late 19th century image or he’s just sort of saccharine and and and you know, too sweet for good, you know kids book, you know, he loves little children and lambs and stuff like that and like, you know, seriously, this is a guy went into the temple with a whip and drove out the money changers and made everybody so mad at him that they killed him. So there’s a what we’ve done with that image right with that there are theologians in the in the mid 19th century. They’re very interested in recovering what they think is the historical Jesus and of course for them the historical Jesus probably wasn’t God probably could have been a little crazy was probably you know, and strana does this in his life of Jesus, which is a very important watershed in this kind of thinking. Modern Christians tend to have nothing of the mythological layer of who Jesus who medieval Christians say Jesus was which was the Lord the monster Slayer the Lord of the Psalms who killed you know, cat draws Leviathan out with a hook and you know tramples on behemoth right all of the all of the Marduk imagery that Jordan loves talking about is embedded in the Psalms as well that he’s the one who sits in his throne sits on the waters. He he tames the flood. He is the one who you know overcomes the forces of evil and and that image of Jesus as Lord is very much alive throughout the Middle Ages and into into into the early modern period and imagining Jesus not just as this man who had a historical existence which again, I’m thinking about the lectures that you and Jordan both gave on the logos that it matters that he had a historical presence right. It matters that he becomes incarnate in a particular historical moment, but it also matters that he was the transcendent Lord and and and you know the the great hero who transcends transcends all of the hierarchies that level in orthodoxy. It’s still this main image of Christ is right Christ as this judge that stands above in the dome. I mean you can’t you can’t avoid it but but it’s been lost in the West right because the exegetical tradition the commentary tradition of Western theologians has been much more focused on this this historical person and even Pope Benedict whom I adore in many ways for his his theology in his Jesus of Nazareth series talks about needing to recover the older exegetical tradition, but doesn’t do it which I found just fascinating right. It’s like where’s all the medieval tradition where you’re talking about you know the great mystery of the incarnation is that God so humbled himself right God entered into his own creation through Mary and I’d like to talk about that. It’s an artistic problem as well, but this is sort of the level of the the mystery of the divinity incarnate is something that I think most modern Christians have a lot of difficulty with and certainly in the church that I converted I’ve been attending an Episcopal church for 14 years and you know the the sermons that you hear in the Anglican Church of the Episcopal Church have very little actual doctrine in them and very little wrestling with this problem of how can you say God was in creation? Yeah and so if he that’s all you should be talking about and and and you think about that’s why that’s why modern feminists don’t get married right because just as Jesus is reduced to this probably crazy guy fraud, fooler what how did CS Lewis put it either he’s a he’s he he well I don’t remember what it is but either you believe him or he’s crazy right. Yeah that that Mary’s similarly ends up diminished by that right. So she all she can be under those circumstances is is a sort of good model woman right and of course so if that’s what you grew up with in the mid 20th century, then you’re not going to get the Cosmic Mary that the medieval Christians are describing. It’s greater than the heavens. Right the way it’s like she who contained in her womb he whom the heavens could not contain exactly and and and that that medieval imagery you know it’s it’s the most ancient and I in my book I talk about how that that imagery probably goes back to the ancient temple. It’s it’s not just that and this I’m relying on Margaret Barker’s work and her temple theology that it’s not just that the Christians claim that Jesus was Lord. They claim that Jesus was Lord because they’re expecting the fulfillment of the scriptures and what they expect to be fulfilled is the return of the Lord to his temple. Right and so but I think that that’s the main thing to understand is that just as the Old Testament has has structures and has images which point to what Christ is all through the Old Testament there there are all these stories and images that point to what what Mary is right idea everything that that is the underlying support the frame the the the Ark of the Covenant, you know, the Noah’s Ark all these things that act as the as the vessel for the logos. I mean they’re everywhere in the Old Testament, you know, so it’s interesting what you’re saying is interesting that you’ve yeah, and I think I agree that that a lot of modern Christians would never even think to read the Bible like that. No, because the modern the modern commentary practice cannot support that right. The Old Testament is one thing the New Testament is another Judaism is one thing Christianity is another and these two things don’t you know and and of course medieval Christians and this is I think this is important culturally and politically and socially for us in the 21st century post Holocaust and whatever else that means to understand why Christianity and Judaism have the historical relationship that they do because it’s a real argument over how to interpret the the the you know, the claim of who’s fulfilled the prophecies and you know, it’s it’s not it’s not that odd in the sense that you know, even modern let’s say more mystical modern Judaism. They they they they have this whole feminine aspect in their in their vision of like in their mystic vision and let’s say everything that they would say is the feminine aspect in their mystic vision is everything that we would point to Mary and so it’s really interesting like all the same stories that they we would interpret as being as being let’s say an image of what Mary will be they’ll show that they’ll use it at the same in the same way but but in a maybe in a more abstract way to talk about like this kind of feminine container for the divine. And so so it just yeah, it’s very fascinating. And this is that exactly and the kinds of it Mary Mary the primary image of Mary. In the medieval West and I they’re getting a lot of this from the Orthodox tradition because they get it through the the well one through the liturgies of Mary which come from the East particularly in the the seventh and eighth centuries with the Greek and Syrian popes in Rome. So there’s there’s a period in Rome when much of the papal liturgy is in Greek and the Marian feasts seem to come they come into the West at that point and as I read it they come with the scriptural associations that they had in the East and we definitely know that for example, Andrew of Crete is very closely associated with some of the popes in the day and he is the author as I’m sure you know of some of the most important and beautiful Marian homilies and those homilies are just stuffed full of all of these places that Andrew finds mentions of Mary in the Old Testament. And so it’s it’s it’s this great mystery of God’s presence in his creation over and over and over again and the in the core place where she become the Lord becomes present is in the temple. And so Mary is the temple she’s prepared as the temple in which the Holy of Holies in through which the logos comes into the world and what’s lovely for the practice of the office the Marian office is that in the in Chronicles it’s described how it’s the singers who sing the Psalms on the temple steps and the temple fills with the light and the incense and such in the presence manifests itself. That’s why that’s the way medieval Western Christians describe the importance of singing the Psalms in honor of Mary. It’s that they’re it’s like you’re singing the presence you’re singing you’re singing before the Lord before the throne of the Lord with the angels. But it’s also the service that that is important is is critical to the temple because it’s through that song that and you can say you know experientially this works because people singing often do experience that sense of the Lord becoming present for them. Right. And it’s experiential and symbolic at the same time. Yeah. And I mean it has to do with this idea of the of the invitation and that’s part of you know you can kind of see this this this whole image you know in Revelations of the Church you know chanting and singing. Yes. Come Lord Jesus and you can realize that that’s what it is. That’s that’s the the feminine aspect you know that is inviting that is asking for the for the lover to come like you see in the Song of Songs like this call and this this invitation. You know there’s a there’s an interesting aspect let’s say in Orthodox in the Orthodox liturgy which is you cannot have a you cannot have communion without someone in the the nave saying amen. Like it is impossible. It is there is no sacrament. There is no there is no church service without someone in the nave saying amen. And that amen is that is let it be like it’s that right. That yes that the same yes that Mary gave to to the Archangel. It’s like it’s like yes here is here comes the light here comes this this strong you know powerful thing and and it’s not going to happen unless I say yes unless I unless I let it happen you know and so so there’s yeah so there’s really a lot of I think it’s just a key it’s the key thing to understand right now. Oh I love that and so this is what we talked about one of the things I wanted to talk about is that image that Jordan always loves to show in his lectures of Mary as the container for God right and that it’s it’s that that’s an image that’s it’s a 15th century image that’s in the Musée du Cluny in Paris and when Jordan shows that he’s usually just showing the open statue right but it has both a closed and an open it’s like you’re talking about the invitation and the opening right these these these little opening virgins sometimes are called shrine Madonnas there we have about 40 of them extant from from the later Middle Ages that you know they’re sort of performative as a piece of art as well that that closed they show Mary holding the child and the Cluny image he’s standing on her knee and she’s holding a little ball which could be an apple could be a globe could be a symbol of his power could be a sense of like this is the globe that he’s going to enter into the world that he’s going to enter into the way that she’s the globe really but that she is and then then she opens and you know the the mystery great mystery is God is fully incarnate through her and there’s a phrase that she’s called the the the triclinium of the Trinity in one of Adam of Saint Victor sequences. So she’s she’s somehow the resting place of the Godhead which for some later medieval theologians was heretical because saying no she’s just the mother of the second person but well that how are you going to be talking about the Trinity because there’s also people like Hildegard of Bingen has wonderful imagery in her visions that Mary is basically the one that makes God visible to the world not just through the incarnation the Sun becomes physical and and and visible but because the Sun becomes incarnate and visible to the world that makes God know. I mean I think that image that image that Jordan shows at least I mean I have a lot of sympathy for it but for sure for sure from an Orthodox perspective. It’s it’s heretical. It’s it’s a yeah, it’s a problem. Heretical in several ways, especially since there’s a really strong emphasis right now and in this kind of rediscovery of Orthodox iconography that that this tradition of showing God the Father as a as a person problematic and so we don’t we don’t do that. We would say for example that that that that Mary made the Trinity incarnate in Christ right right. And so so what you see is always Christ and in Christ you see the Trinity. So you don’t actually have to like visually show the Trinity right. But I think that this the image itself and I’m going to and I’m going to put up that one of the I just got I’m going to put up that earlier image that you that you mentioned as well like an earlier medieval image that shows Christ in glory inside her. Yes. So that one that one is lovely. It’s in Baltimore. It’s at the Walters and I think that one’s probably more Orthodox in many ways. Because it shows it shows Mary Holt. Well, it are not Orthodox in a way because closed it shows her holding Christ in Majesty. So not not as the baby and then open it shows in her body the events of the passion and the resurrection which is therefore much more the incarnation. Yeah, the embodiment of the incarnation. But but what I love is in her head is still Christ in Majesty. So it’s it’s an understanding that there’s a whole tradition that also comes into my book of the Mary in contemplation sees sees God even well, I mean she doesn’t have the beatific vision in her life but that she sees God face to face and understands it fully in her mind and I think that ivory is trying to show that sense of her contemplation of understanding the divinity even as she she participates through the incarnation in her in her in in in her body and the song of songs commentaries are that I worked on in my first book are full of that kind of of understanding of she’s the her flesh is Christ flesh but their relationship is that it shows the divinity as well as his humanity. Right. And so that’s why we say that she’s she’s our hope because she’s the promise of what we can be like she’s the promise of what she’s that she’s the you know, in a way she’s like the as the church as the receptacle of God as the place where God can manifest and transform us like she is the she is the one we need to to see as our hope like and so and in the Orthodox tradition we I mean we believe that she was the first to be deified that she was the first right to be fully and completely united in the manner to which that’s possible for a creature to be united with with with with her creator and so so they go as far as to say that she is you know, the distinction is that she remains a creature but that but that she’s fully participates in in in God to the extent that it’s possible. So so so she is like this she is the one who invites us as well to do to to to become that she’s the first you know, you know, she’s that she’s the she’s the first. The most this is this is this imagery is this is what I love about the medieval tradition. It really is Orthodox. Yeah, just that most modern Christians don’t know it. So they don’t they don’t recognize that the traditions are much closer that in the the commentaries that I’m working on particularly from the 13th century of all of her names in Scripture and all the places that they find her in Scripture that they get to the place where saying she is most like God, right? She’s she’s deicimus deicima at which sometimes they fall into saying she’s a goddess. But what they mean is she’s the perfect reflection of God. She they like the passage from wisdom where she is the mirror of his majesty and the unscathed, you know, the that should be able to quote that perfectly, but I can’t the unspotted mirror of his majesty, right? And so she is the most perfect reflection of the image and likeness in which she was made and that that reflection of the image and likeness is always so very very important that she becomes she’s wisdom because she most perfectly reflects wisdom. She’s she’s God like because she most perfectly reflects God. So she is the human soul as it was made in its in its perfection, which means it has nothing to do with whether she’s feminine. It’s it’s it’s much more important that she’s the creature of the creator and therefore his most perfect work. Hmm. I mean she is feminine in the sense of that of that idea of of the water like of this idea of the water is the is the potential and so it can be chaos, but it can also be the the the thing that like you said that is the pool on which you know, the the the the ethereal and the you know, the the thing that has no concreteness can be reflected. And so the the highest the highest instance of that would be the one that received all of all of it in her womb. It became I mean became God as we say so I mean it I yeah, I it’s very fascinating. I hope people I hope people will be reading your book. That’s for sure. When is it coming out? Well, so I’m working on the index right now and hopefully if that all goes to schedule the book will be out in November. What is it? What is the title again? Mary and the art of prayer. We’ll be definitely looking out for that. Thank you. Yeah, and I know is there something I think we could wrap it up. Is there something that you wanted to talk about something about there’s something in your book that you feel it’s important for people to hear. Well, I think we’ve given people a lot to think about so I hope you and I get to do more videos. All right. Yeah, we’ll definitely plan on that. I think I think that one of the thing I want to do together and I hope that we can get the chances to help people understand kind of the symbolic way of looking at the world. Yes, and the way that people in early Christianity were able to unite, you know, the concrete world with the spiritual realities and how they flowed out of each other like how the material world flows out of meaning. And so that’s how the medieval’s understood the world. And I think that that’s one of the thing that Jordan is bringing back. Strangely from the bottom up, you know, it’s as if the medieval’s would have understood it really as you know, like the as these spiritual essences that that come down and find bodies in the world. Whereas he’s strangely able to do it and kind of come from below and say, well, here’s the world. This is what it looks like. You know, I’m a scientist and then rebuild this hierarchy. From the bottom. So it’s something that’s very fascinating to watch happen. I agree. Yeah. All right. So I hope yeah. So let’s let’s let’s do this again for sure. Excellent. Thank you. Thanks a lot.