https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=fOZ3Zszn-Ps
I am standing here in the midst of Meteora. They are the most amazing places in the world. It really is a testimony to what the human desire to come close to God will lead to. So in this place there used to be over 20 monasteries up on these mountainous stelae. Now there’s six left after the different attacks by the Turks, by the Nazis. People tried to destroy that. But despite that we still have these monasteries up in the hills. They used to go up in baskets. People used to be taken up into these monasteries. And the monks wanted to come up to be closer to God. And we can think this is a superstitious thing. What is this silly idea of moving up a little higher to be closer to God? But there’s something about ascending the mountain. There’s something about going up on the hill, standing up in these monasteries and looking out over the horizon gives you this amazing perspective. This high perspective where you can see everything lay itself out in front of you. And in some ways you do feel like you have a little glimpse of the perception that God has over us. And so these monasteries were built starting in the 13th century. Full frescoes, amazing architecture. And it’s still alive today. The monks are still there. All the monasteries are inhabited by monks. And they still have services, still have liturgies. It’s really astounding. I was very fortunate to be here through Ralston College. We’re a little team here. Amazing people. Jordan Peterson is here. Stephen Blackwood is here. Some of you have seen us talk on the Exodus Seminar and had this chance to go through the history and the relationship between the spiritual tradition of the West and Greece. So we started in the pagan sites. We went to see where the Oracle of Delphi was. We were able to see the temple to Apollo. And now we’re moving into these Christian sites and seeing these high places dedicated to the one true God as both a break from the pagan past, but at the same time, very mysterious continuity of the human mind coming closer and closer to understanding its place in relationship to the infinite. And so the discussions have been just astounding. And meeting the students from Ralston College has also been, to me, very touching. Ralston is doing something, in this moment, is doing something amazing, which is rekindling the love of our ancient traditions, rekindling the love, the life of language, of culture, of history, and bringing it to young people and to just see their exuberance in discovering these treasures. It is something that gives me hope for the future. So it’s been amazing to be part of this. Why we need monasteries. So this is difficult for modern people to understand. The world exists through sacrifice. This is something that the ancients understood, kind of grasping at it, trying to understand what it is. Why is it that we get the sense that we have to give certain things up, and we give them up, abundance and life comes back down. And there was always an unease about that practice. At the same time, all the cultures did it. You can feel as you look at the thinkers and you look at the philosophers, they become more and more uneasy about this practice. But there’s something fundamentally true about it. What we discover in Christianity is this capacity to give ourselves up. And when we give ourselves up, it has the very same result in an even more powerful way as the ancient sacrifice. So these monks give themselves up to God, to prayer, to a life of asceticism, to a life that gives us an example of what is possible. Someone gives all their attention to God. And so on the one hand, they’re saving their soul. But on the other hand, they are also acting as living sacrifices for us. Examples. The lights at the top of these hills that people can look to and see what is possible and in their little way make the right sacrifices. Not necessarily ever coming to being an ascetic and to living celibate. But in those little moments when we have to give up our time for our children or give some time to help the church, to the local community, it can have these little lights showing us a direction to take. And so monasteries acted like fulcrums for society. They acted like these pillars for the rest of reality. And so there’s this weird intuition that even here, you know, being in Meteora, you can see that the monasteries literally go up on these pillars and are at the top of the world so that people that come by can look up and see that living sacrifice happening in front of them. What does it mean to you to be here? I wanted to come here for 20 years. And I am ecstatic. I just feel so much gratitude to have the chance to be here. And to stand here and watch the sun go down and see these monasteries struck by light. It’s one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen. And also as an artist, some of these frescoes and these churches are painted by famous iconographers. The only place where you can see these images. You can look at these. Pictures of churches and pictures of frescoes in books. But it’s nothing like standing in the space and being surrounded by the space. So standing there in those chapels surrounded by the frescoes, you know, is to me, it’s really one of the closest things I can imagine to being in heaven. And so yeah, it’s been astounding. And also being with friends and discovering this wonder together. You know, my wife is here with me. Like I said, Jordan is here with Steven. And I met some amazing new people that I’m coming close to. And so there is this sense of being together and participating in something that is unquestionably one of the most beautiful things we’ve ever seen. You know, it also brings us closer together, strangely, because we can share that wonder and that joy together. In what sense people watching this around the world on the Internet can and are participating in the life the monastery is here. So, you know, there’s a hierarchy of participation in the Rensokun. When I saw these pictures in books, there’s something about even these videos online, they’re like little scenes, right? They’re like little scenes that are planted out into the world that can pull us in a little war. And hopefully, you know, seeing even online, seeing, hearing my story, seeing these images in books or on the Internet can give you that little glimmer of hope so that you can yourself move into those beautiful spaces, not necessarily here. It could be here, but there are many places where this beauty is given up to God. Churches all over the world that have this like insane exuberance of energy and time and people dedicating their lives to something which for a secular person looks like a waste of time. How efficient is this? Why would you build this silly thing at the top of a hill and you have to pull up rocks and pull up things? But that’s people that will understand the power of participation and they’re putting our attention to the highest. You know, it can be a little thing to pull us in to those spaces and then appreciate our church and even those that we have in America, in Europe, appreciate our public spaces and work to making our lives even in the common as beautiful and as transcendent as possible. These were partly built in defense against the the Ottmans, the occupying forces. Now today, as we think about what it might mean to live the monastic tradition in today’s world, how can we how can we live that? How can we create these moments of defense that will become those beacons you’re talking about? And so I would say what’s interesting about this space, these spaces, is that they are fortresses, right? They are definitely high places that to protect ourselves from the enemy. But they are not only defend our place. They are not only places to defend ourselves. They are also celebration of all that is most precious to the people built down. So in defending themselves, they’re not just doing it out of a reactionary desire to stop this or stop that. But the real highest aspect of what they’re doing is the celebration of all that is true and beautiful. And I think that that can help us understand what it is we have to do now, which is that if we complain about the madness of culture, that has very little effect. What we can do and what we shouldn’t is rather enter into it, enter into the memory of our ancestors, into the memory of our own cultures and the beauty that has brought us where we are now and now make it alive again. Not as something that’s just seen in a museum, but that’s something that participates in life. That’s one of the things that Ralston is doing. These classics, these old texts, this analogy, this Homer, it is not just something to be analyzed like an anthropologist or some cold desire to break it down in its elements. But it’s rather something that’s food. It’s food for the future. It’s something that you can take, that you can bring into yourself, digest and then produce new things, new beautiful things that are deeply connected to that whole stream that has brought us to where we are now. Any final thoughts you want to share? Thank you is what I want to say. Thank you for letting me participate in this.