https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=ky4MIftjUDE
So I’m going to talk about the inversion of masculine and feminine symbolism in popular culture. Just looking at the title, it seems very polemical. And in a way, I guess there’s a part of it that is. But I hope that we can work through very quickly the polemical aspect of it and come to show the beauty of the symbolism of the feminine that we have in the orthodox tradition. And so if you bear with me, we will get through the difficult part at the beginning. So what’s happening today in popular culture is that there has been for several years, for decades even, there has been this call to have more what people are calling gender equality in popular culture. And so this call to have more female protagonists in movies and TV shows, even in video games and comic books, all of popular culture, there’s been this call to have these strong female protagonists. And so what has slowly kind of come out of that is exactly that. We have this string of manifestations, movies, comics, video games, all of this, that have the, what I guess we could call the badass, you know, feminine character, who she is strong, she fights, she beats up everybody. And so in a certain manner, the hope, the trope is that she, this character, which has all kinds of manifestations, is there to in a way manifest the same idea of the action hero, or the superhero, or the military hero, but as a woman. And so we see them, we recognize them, we saw just, I think these are from just this year, from just this year. Marvel Comics, Star Wars, all these feminine characters who are strong, who are fighting and who beat up all the guys around them. Now the thing I want to point attention to is that as we watch this, as we watch this characterization, there’s something that’s happening also at the same time. What we’re seeing is not only the representation of these feminine heroes, but at the same time we see a strange demeaning, or a strange mocking, a strange humiliating of the masculine characters within those same stories. And so at first you would think that this is a question of parody, right? We have these masculine heroes, it would be good to also have feminine heroes that we can look up to in the same way that we look up to these masculine heroes. But what’s strange is that in the stories, many of the stories have this other trope, which is to step on or to mock. So for example, they did a version of Ghostbusters, everybody has probably seen this, they did a version of Ghostbusters recently that had an all-feminine cast. And in the story, which was in a way not necessary that they did so, there’s a scene where the old Ghostbuster, who was a man, Bill Murray, he’s sitting there in a room and they blow him out of the building and he dies, lands on the hood of a car and he dies there. And you see the ladies come up to the window and say, I guess he was in Ghostbuster material. And you think, I mean, it’s a joke and it’s fine, it’s a joke. The problem is not that one joke, the difficulty which appears is when it becomes a pattern. And that’s what I’m sensitive to, is to be attentive to the pattern. There’s a recent video game that came out and it’s creating a lot of controversy. Because the video game is supposed to be a historical, very historically accurate representation of World War II and the fighting in World War II. And in the video game, it’s like 50-50, they have women fighting in the World War II, then they put a woman on the cover, she’s got a mechanical arm and she’s fighting in World War II. And so people are wondering, this is obviously not a historical representation of World War II. Not that there weren’t women involved in the war effort, of course there were. But, you know, 95% of the, maybe 99% of the people who actually held a weapon in World War II would have been men. And so what is the impetus behind that? And what I want to suggest to you is there really is this strange inversion which is setting up. Where we do want to have this feminine character, but we want the feminine character to embody all that is masculine. We are looking, and so it’s basically, if you look at the superhero characters, it’s the same superhero character that was Superman, Batman, all those masculine characters. It’s only that it’s physically a woman. Now, one of the examples of the, everybody has seen the Star Wars, the latest Star Wars movie. So if you look at the cover of the magazine, you get a sense, the cover of the magazine itself, it’s telling you what it is that they’re hoping to accomplish. And so you have up there, it says, right, can Poe get along with his new boss? And in the movie, you have this scene where this character who just appears in the movie is humiliating the male character. And the trope repeats itself in the movie. Several times you see these characters being humiliated, given a lesson, taught something. And like I said, it’s not the act itself, because in a story you can have all kinds of things happen, and it’s okay to have variations that have this. The problem, the question that is brought up is when we start to see it as this constant pattern, which appears over and over in stories, that’s when we start to wonder what exactly is happening in these stories. Because of course there are always exceptions. There is such a thing as a extremely strong woman that could probably beat up anybody in this room that does exist. The question is not whether or not there are exceptions. The question is what is the pattern? What is the social pattern that is trying to be shown to us? So in the latest movie, The Incredibles 2, you really see this inversion played out completely. They have the female character. We are told that the male character is too reckless. He’s too chaotic. He can’t control himself. He breaks everything. And so we are told that it’s her. She has to be the hero now. And he has to stay home and take care of the children. And what’s fascinating, and this is going to be important as we move forward in the story, is that in the story itself, the lady is amazing. She’s an amazing superhero. I actually enjoyed watching the movie because it was so well done, so well put together. So the woman is amazing. She’s doing all these amazing things, visually impressive and everything. And then the masculine character is taking care of the kids, but he can’t. He’s completely useless. Everything is crumbling around him and he doesn’t sleep and he’s become a total wreck. And so you really have this dichotomy where you have one character which is shining, which is amazing, and then the other character, the father, who basically can’t do it. He just can’t hold it together. We’ve seen this character in television and in movies now for the last few decades. It’s Homer Simpson. It’s the family guy. It’s all those idiot fathers. They’ve given them to us piece by piece. So when we see this now, it’s almost as if we’re used to seeing this trope in stories. We’ve seen it now for so many decades that when we see the idiot father who can’t do anything right and is kind of breaking everything and can’t get his act together, we think that that’s the normal, let’s say, pattern of a story. Now, a lot of people will think that obviously I am exaggerating. A lot of people will think that I am seeing this from a certain angle, maybe from a traditional angle, however it is. But you have to pay attention to what’s going on because what you find is as these stories come out, the people who are promoting the stories in the media, even in journalism, they’re celebrating what I’m showing. They’re actually celebrating that this is happening. So it’s not just that it’s happening, it’s that it’s being celebrated. For example, in a recent movie called Ant-Man and the Wasp, you have this very pattern happening. So they made the first movie, it was a male character, and then the second movie you have a feminine character which usurps his place in the story, and not only that, but the male character becomes this kind of idiotic, everything that he does is kind of, he succeeds only by chance, he has no skill, he’s kind of the goofy idiot. And in the press, I’ll read you a, this is from this article that I put up here, the author of the article, she lays it out herself. She said, we asked for more powerful women, so here we are. So the Wasp is the best hero, her mom is smarter than everyone, the villain is a girl too, the dudes in this movie are hapless and only succeed by accident. And every one of those sentences has an exclamation point. And she is celebrating, she is celebrating the fact that the masculine hero is being demeaned and is being kind of set aside for this kind of assent of this feminine superhero. And so I think that this is really the ultimate version. So in Marvel Comics, they created this character who is Captain Marvel, she’s quite recent in Marvel Comics, and they’re making her out to be the most, so she is the most powerful character in the entire universe. And if you look again at the magazine cover, you can see that this is not, they’re not, this is purposeful. Can you see up there it says, the future is female. So there’s this celebration, and the celebration is not of a kind of equality, of a kind of parody, which is what we were told that what it was supposed to be. It was supposed to be a world where men and women are equal, where men and women work together, where we don’t differentiate the gender so much, but that’s not what’s happening. What we’re seeing is rather a revolutionary trope, where one is trying to supplant the other. So why does it happen that way? Why does it have to become upside down? And the problem is this, is that we believed, we were told that equality means the same. That if we’re to believe in the equality of the sexes, we somehow have to believe that they are the same, that there’s no difference between the two. And that is not true, right? I mean, the entire tradition of human existence has shown us that all societies at all times from the beginning have in different ways, but have always demarcated the masculine and feminine, and have had gender roles in society. They have been different. I’m not saying that all societies have had the same role, but they’ve always had that distinction. And it’s been, you know, the difference was acknowledged, and actually the difference was celebrated. And so in order to, you would say, overcompensate, so in order to say we can have women who are as badass, as tough, as much a fighter, as much a killer, as a man, the only way to do it is to flip it, because you have to overcompensate for the illusion, because we know that that’s not the case, or at least has not been the case in the entire history of humanity. So there’s this desire to overcompensate, and that overcompensation creates this inversion, where it’s not only the ascent which is needed, but it’s also the demeaning which is needed too. So the pattern of masculine and feminine is one of the most permanent patterns in all traditions, you know, in all cultures. It takes different forms, of course. Everybody will know this symbol. So the yin-yang symbol is a symbol of heaven and earth. It’s also a symbol of masculine and feminine, a symbol of that duality, but a duality, of course, which is together, right? It’s not an opposition completely. You know, you could see that the complementary relationship. And in so many traditions you have that played over. You have it in Greek mythology, you have Gaia and Uranus, you have in Mesopotamian mythology, you have Tiamat and Apsu, these kind of primordial, either it’s heaven and earth, or sometimes it can be fresh water, salt water, but this relationship of two complementary opposites that come together to then produce something, to produce the world. And in the Bible we have a similar pattern. We have this set up at the beginning of Genesis. We have heaven and earth, this kind of primordial duality. And this kind of primordial duality in the creation story itself, you see how it’s coming closer to each other. You see these different separations, but we’re coming closer. We have the heavens and then we have the water, then the separation of the waters, the earth comes out of the waters, we have fish and birds. If you always wondered why we have birds and fish created on the same day, it’s because it’s to repeat that same pattern, heaven and earth, below and above. So it keeps repeating and then it comes down to the human being and then God takes the dust of the earth and then blows in the air into his lungs. The spirit, when we read spirit, we always have to remember that spirit, wind, it’s the same word. So you have this union of heaven and earth which appears in man and it said that man was created, male and female. And then we have Adam and Eve as the result of that repetition of the basic pattern which was there right from the beginning. And so there’s something that is extremely primordial about that relationship. And if we completely set it aside, we are going to miss a very important aspect of who we are as human beings. In the Gospel, there is a call. There is a call for us to transcend the opposites. We see it in St. Paul’s, St. Paul tells us, there is neither male nor female, neither Greek nor Jew, neither slave nor free. And there is this call to transcend the opposites. But there’s a very big difference between transcending something and confusing something. And hopefully, if you look at what I’ve been telling you about, to have this, let’s say, ascendance of a feminine character which wants to take all the masculine qualities while at the same time demeaning the masculine characters of a story, what you have is not, you don’t have this transcendence. You have confusion and an inversion and you have a conflict, right? You have this perpetuation of a fight and now it’s just one side that’s losing. There were times in history where maybe it was the other side that was losing. And now we have this other situation. And we can see, we can see in the imagery that St. Paul uses about marriage, we can find a glimpse of what it looks like to transcend the opposites. Because in the union of male and female, in the union of masculine and feminine, St. Paul tells us we are one body. There’s an actual unity which is created in that bond of marriage. And that unity, which in a certain manner transcends the duality because it unifies them together, it is, it’s productive. It produces children, produces community, produces family. And so when that happens, there is a productive result. Whereas when we have this inversion, the result of that is the opposite. It’s conflict and it’s also sterility. And once we understand the basic elements of, let’s say that basic opposite of masculine and feminine, once we understand that it does in fact set itself up in society as male and female, we can then also see that it is of course more than that. In a certain manner, we are called to play those roles in our lives as well. As the church, I would tell people like, I am called to be the bride of Christ. I’m called to also participate in the powerful and beautiful symbolism of the feminine. And then encounter my Lord in that manner. So it’s not just about polemics and about complaining about some political change that is happening in front of our eyes. There’s something much deeper there and something much deeper which needs to be understood. Now, the problem, the trick in this, this is really the thing that I think is in a way unexpected by many people, is that when we look at the trope of the badass feminine character, what seems to be happening is that in fact what we’re praising, what we’re celebrating, is actually not the feminine. What we’re praising, what we’re celebrating is the very classical masculine traits of being strong, of being tough, of being able to fight, all those types of traditional male tropes, that is what we end up celebrating. And so the inversion actually creates this strange contradiction, which what is being diminished in the end or what is being put to the side is the beautiful and the powerful feminine symbolism which has been held by humanity for thousands of years. We are ignoring it. We are pretending as if what really matters, what’s really important is that we can embody those roles. That what matters is to be the CEO. All we want to know is how many female CEOs there are, how many female policemen there are, how many, that’s what we want to know. But we’re not, we’ve forgotten, we’ve abandoned a celebration of the beautiful imagery of the feminine. So this, I’m going to show you an icon. This icon in the Orthodox tradition could be the most, let’s say, celebratory of what we’d call kind of the hero type of behavior. It’s very, very, it encapsulates pretty much simply everything that’s going on. We have a princess who is in distress and there is someone who comes and kills the dragon in order to save the princess. And so it has its place, it definitely has its place. Now, the thing is that there is another version of this story. There’s another, it’s not the same story, but there is a feminine version of this interaction between the masculine and the feminine. So this is a version and I think it has some importance, but there is also a masculine version. And so in, for example, the story of Beauty and the Beast, we have a masculine character who is a monster, who is out of control, who wants to control everything, who wants to hold her, he wants to capture her, wants to control her presence there. And in the story, what happens is that Beauty is able to tame the male monster and she’s able to transform him into a man. Now, this story is, it’s not just Beauty and the Beast, there are many examples of this. One of my favorite examples of this story is, it’s called Howl’s Moving Castle. It’s by a Japanese director named Miyazaki. And in this story we have that very trope and the character, the feminine character is extremely powerful. She basically holds the life of this monstrous masculine character in her hands and she slowly brings him to transform and to open up a new space in which he can be more than what he was before. But think of, not just in popular culture. In the Bible we have the story of Queen Esther. And the story of Queen Esther is pretty much the same story as Beauty and the Beast. We have this foreign king who, everything is there set up to destroy the Jews. And then her, through her grace, through her manner in which she is able to approach the king and tame him, you would say, she brings the king, she invites the king to her house. And the king enters into her house and then she reveals to him the secret that in fact Haman wanted to kill the Jews. And in revealing this beautiful secret, this powerful secret, then the king changes and things flip over. And then the king turns against Haman. And there are many, many other stories. In the very, very ancient stories, in the story of Gilgamesh, we have a very similar story. We have a beast named Enkidu who is basically a wild creature in the forest. And the people of the city, they send this woman and then by encountering this woman and entering her into a relationship with this woman, he then learns to become a human being. So it’s a very, very ancient story and it’s a very powerful story which shows you the other side. Instead of just wanting to put a woman on the horse, St. George’s horse who kills the dragon, it shows another aspect, another very powerful aspect of what the flip side of that story is. So let’s look at this image again. Now, we have many images of what, of feminine symbolism in the church, in our tradition. And many of them, they turn around the mother of God. And the images that we use for the mother of God are images of her being the opening up of this place, the opening up of this possibility. She is the temple. She is the Ark of the Covenant. She is the dawn. There are all these images that we use of her to show her as this place in which something will happen, in which the divine will manifest itself. And so even in, so the mother of God becomes the frame, she becomes the frame into which the manifestation happens. And we can see that even in this icon here, right, we can see that even though we have this idea of the helpless princess, for example, that the princess is the one who is enticing, if you will, the hero to act. Without her, there’s nothing happens. There is no heroic action. And that can be good or bad. This is just a structure. It can be good or bad. If you look at the Trojan War, right, we have the same structure. The Trojan War is fought over Helen of Troy. She is the one who brings the Greeks together. That’s why the Greeks are called Hellenes, right? She is the one who actually entices the Greeks to join together in order to fight and rescue her from the Trojans. And so she becomes the space into which these Greeks can come and become something, actually manifest something, some identity, right? And so we have this image. We have this image of the mother of God, of Mary as this frame, as the space, as the opening up of the possibility. So you can see her in this. This is the most ancient tradition of the representation of the mother of God is to show her as the throne of wisdom, to show her as this throne. But if you look at the image, you’ll see that she’s also this frame. She is the space out of which the sun rises, the space out of which something is happening. And that pattern is going to be the pattern of this mysterious presence of the feminine always there in the church, always there and following the story of the church. And I’m going to show you this pattern. So this is the wedding of Cana. Now, in the story we see exactly, it’s one of my favorite stories in the Gospel, because Christ is hidden. Christ is not acting. No one knows. No one knows. She’s a secret. She knows the secret. She’s the only one. She knows the secret. But Christ is not acting. And so then there is a problem. No wine. So she goes up to Christ and she says, there’s a problem. There’s no wine. And it’s very fascinating because what does Christ answer? He says, my time has not yet come. You think, that is a crazy answer. She’s telling him there’s not enough wine and he’s answering, I’m not willing to die yet. How do those things relate? And they relate in the fact that she is inviting him. She’s inviting her son. She is saying, here’s the question. Show me the word. Show me the answer. Give us the answer. There’s that crazy scene in the movie My Big Fat Greek Wedding. I love that scene when everybody knows it. When the lady, she says, you know, the man is the head of the household, but the woman is the neck. And we think it’s funny and it’s hilarious, but I think there’s something very profound in that statement because the Mother of God is saying, this is the place where I’m asking you to manifest yourself. And then Christ has to decide whether or not he’s going to do it. Now think of that in our lives. Think of that as a church. What do we do? What does the church do? We ask, we pray. We ask God, we say, here is my suffering. Here is my sin. Here is my question. And we ask God to manifest himself in that space that we open up as the church. And what does the church say in the book of Revelation at the end? What do they do? They’re calling. They’re enticing. They’re asking. They’re saying, come Lord Jesus. They’re asking for Christ to return. And that is really the powerful symbolism of the feminine as it manifests itself in the church. Now this structure, I think it’s kind of the opening scene for this where we really see the Mother of God inviting Christ to manifest himself, him knowing that if he shows himself to the world, it’s going to lead him on this path to his death. He knows already that’s where he’s going. But this is the opening of that new space for him to enter into. If you’re interested, I wrote an article called Sacred Art and the Power of the Spirit. Sacred Art and the Power of Women. You can find that. You’ll find it. And one of the things I show is that Eve did that too. She enticed, she kind of opened up a space for Adam. And that space was a fall. And then the Mother of God does the same, but she flips it. She opens up the space again. And then she flips it so that now it’s to our salvation. It’s very powerful. I think it’s just one of those beautiful patterns in the big story. Now the pattern repeats itself over and over. We have, for example, in the judgment of Christ, there is Pilate who is there and has to judge Christ. But in the background of that story, there is Pilate’s wife, who we actually venerate as St. Procla. And she secretly, no one in the crowd knew, but she secretly, whispering in his ear, she said, This man, you know, he’s special. Be careful. Don’t mess with him. Then we have the same structure. Who is the first person to go to the empty grave? Who is the first person who alone in that secret encounter to encounter the risen Lord? It’s Mary Magdalene. And then she goes to the disciples and then the disciples will encounter him in the space. And they will also be the ones who will end up proclaiming the resurrection of Christ. But she is the one who opened up that space. Then we have all the royal women of our history. Every single royal woman, every time a nation, maybe not every time, maybe it is, but at least we know it. There are so many examples that when a nation converts to Christianity, what’s the trope? The trope is the same. There is a woman who converts and there’s this private secret encounter that we don’t even know. We don’t know what those women told to their sons or to their grandsons or to their husbands. But we see the pattern. We have St. Helen who converts and then Constantine. We have St. Olga, the grandmother of St. Vladimir, who converts and then St. Vladimir. But it’s everywhere. The first Frankish king, Clovis, the first Christian Frankish king who converted first, his wife. The first British king, King Ethelbert of Kent, it was his wife who converted first. His pattern is non-stop. We see it not only with the royalty but we see it with the saints too. We see St. Monica who converts and then we have Augustine who is the western pillar. He is that on which the west is founded. Then we also have St. Macrina, the sister of St. Basil of the Cappadocians who converts and then her family converts. The difficulty about this is that we often say in the Orthodox Church that the Mother of God is a mystery of the Church. We say that. We say we don’t have too many doctrines about her. What we have is that encounter, that secret encounter that as you enter into the life of the Church you discover the Mother of God. I have been hesitating to even talk about this subject because in a way here I am proclaiming something that is supposed to be this thing that you discover as you look. It is not there. This pattern, no one will say, oh look, the mother of Constantine Corrini before. It is something which is hidden and is this secret opening of a space. In a certain manner it is something that we probably shouldn’t be talking about but that we should probably be experiencing and discovering in that secret place. I think that the reason why I want to talk about it is that I believe that this beautiful symbolism of the feminine is something we have as this precious jewel. In a world where we are so confused about these questions, we think somehow that value is to be strong, is to be a fighter, is to be on top, is to be a leader. Then we forget the value of the private space, of caring, the value of caring for those that are there, of also discovering that mysterious opening of the place where God can enter into our own lives. There is this image, everybody knows about the Song of Songs in the Old Testament where it is this Song of Solomon where it is basically a romantic discussion between a lover and two lovers. The Church Fathers have always interpreted that as this relationship that we are meant to have with God, that as we need to be able to inhabit that feminine space of opening up the possibility of then encountering this light, this light that we saw on the knees of the Mother of God, the light that we see when we look in the apps of our churches and we see the Panagia with her arms open and Christ who is coming out of the dawn, who is showing himself on the ark, who is sitting on his throne. And so I think that we need to be aware of that and be able to explore and to celebrate that beauty and not let ourselves fall into the war of the sexes that we see raging around us. And so thank you very much, that’s what I had for you tonight. So if you have questions then I will open up the space for you. I’m ready for the arrows but I’ll hide behind the… Don’t we males, it’s sodomistic, patriarchal, sodomistic, don’t we deserve it though? Don’t we deserve all the arrows that we’re getting today? It’s kind of tongue in cheek. No, no, I don’t think it’s tongue in cheek. I think that, you know, I think, you know, there’s a saying of Christ which I love. Christ says, scandal must happen, right, but woe to those by who it happens. I always, I have this sense that when I think of the French Revolution or I think of the Russian Revolution, I think that the groans of the people were justified and real. I don’t agree with a revolution but I think that the king who does not listen to the groaning of his people, that it’s going to happen, right? And so I do think that we have seen even in the 19th, like since the Enlightenment I would say, since the Enlightenment kind of accelerated, we have seen a masculine tyranny I would say of the space. Whereas in the Middle Ages where in the traditional world there was this real celebration of the Mother of God. I mean even the warriors, right, in the West for example, all the Templars and all the knights who went on crusade, they were completely devoted to their lady. And it was this, there was this powerful relationship of relationships between the masculine and feminine. And I think that we have kind of seen with the Enlightenment and the primacy of reason over everything, all of that has led to this extremely masculine space in which it seemed like the only thing to be was that. And so I have sympathy for women who say, well, I want to have, where is the value? Where is the value of women? And they want to take that value from the masculine image. And we have not, we don’t celebrate. Do we celebrate motherhood? Do we celebrate caring? Do we celebrate the kind of the secret of the private space? We’re eliminating the private space. It’s almost gone. And so I think that, I think you’re, in a way you’re right. But I don’t think, I think that our reaction to that shouldn’t be to like to enter the revolution, but rather to rediscover the beauty and the power of this feminine symbolism rather than play along with this game that’s being played. Because it will make us miserable. Because we need each other. So if we play this war, who’s going to win? Nobody’s going to win. All right. Go for it. We’re making too much of this, the attendant world, for example, Incredibles, you know, setting up for the next movie to be the big hit. Right. So they’re always looking for it. They need to get set up. They’ve been male heroes, they’ve been female heroes. And, you know, are we taking something that is just pure entertainment and attributing underlying happenings of that industry? Well, I think that, I think that in a way, yes. I mean, obviously we need to not pay too much attention to entertainment. But we are, our world is led by entertainment. We are, it’s all bread and circuses for us pretty much. And so that’s where the patterns are going to appear. And so, like I said, I think that what we see is a pattern. And that’s what we need to see. And not only the pattern, but like I said, it’s not just the pattern, but it’s the celebration of the pattern, which both together make us see that this is not, this is not just something that is accidental, that there really is this desire to create this change. But I don’t think it’s going to, I think at some point it’s going to collapse. The thing I’m afraid of actually, if it collapses, is I’m afraid of the backlash in a way more than I’m afraid of this. I’m afraid that at some point some very angry people are going to start to be more aggressive about this question. And I, you know, like the backlash against this is what I’m actually more afraid of. So I love my, I think that my approach to this question has always been to try to say, to yes, point to the problem, but mostly try to point to the beauty that we have and that we can show people. Hopefully that’s what I’m doing. I don’t know. So what seems like an unstated pre-seposition of the presentation is some understanding of what masculinity and femininity mean. So I wonder if you could say a few words about where those ideas are coming from. I think they come, I think they come from Genesis. I think they come from that first setup of heaven and earth. And so we have this, we have this imagery that we use, which is our father in heaven. And so we have this notion, this association, let’s say with heaven or let’s say the spiritual world as being name, identity, qualities of things. And then if you see how the story lays itself out in Genesis, there is this, God said, let there be, it’s very beautiful, right? So he calls the earth to produce the different animals and different plants and everything. And so it’s like there is a name, there is a naming and then there is this work of bringing together and kind of producing the creation which comes out of the earth. And I think that that is our basic understanding of what masculine and feminine is. And then we also, then that is then understood in the, you know, the manner in which the ancients understood the sexual union of masculine and feminine as being a, as representing that same pattern, as playing that pattern over again. And so, and we can see it, you know, we always have to, we have to kind of interpret the world phenomenologically, not when we try to interpret it scientifically, this gets weird. But when we interpret it phenomenologically, we can understand that, you know, someone sees the seed which falls from a tree, there’s nothing, right? It’s nothing. It’s the mustard seed, it’s nothing. And then it falls into the earth and then it grows. And so the seed is giving that point, right, that pearl in the field, that name. And then the field and then the production of this life, that becomes the, let’s say the feminine answer to this relationship. And so then we continue on and we continue to see how St. Paul talks about the relationship between Christ and the church and how he also relates that relationship to the relationship between a husband and a wife. So you can see the same patterns being played out. And so the church, you know, if you look at the architecture of a church, you can see this, I mean it’s right there. We have in the apse, there’s a panegia, who is the dawn, right, who is the space out of which the sun is rising in the east. And then at the top of the dome we have the fully manifest, glorious Christ who is there in the dome. And then we go to the west and we have the falling asleep of the mother of God and we have this final coming together of the story where then she, just like he was, just like the yin yang symbol. I always tell people the apse and the western wall is like a yin yang symbol. You have Christ in the mother of God’s arms in the apse, then you have the mother of God in Christ’s arms in the west. And there’s this beautiful completeness of that relationship. So I think, I mean, I could go on forever, but I think that it’s out of the Bible, out of Genesis, St. Paul, and then, you know, I mean, obviously as an iconographer I get a lot of my cues from iconography. And so, you know, if you look at the image of the ascension, it’s a very powerful image of that basic relationship. So you have Christ up in heaven with the angels in this mandorla, and then you have the mother of God who is under him praying as this space, right, this space which is, of which Christ is the head, but who’s also waiting to once again be united with her son. And then out of her, you know, on the sides you have then the apostles and the church kind of manifesting themselves out on the sides of her as being this basic space. And in some of the icons of the ascension you see even, it’s very powerful because you’ll see the mother of God is standing on a little square footrest, right, and so Christ is sitting on a rainbow, he’s sitting on the heavens, and then she is standing on this footrest, and it refers to the Psalms where it says, you know, the heavens are the throne of God and the earth is his footstool. And so this relationship between the earth, the feminine, this footstool, the church, all of this kind of comes together. That’s kind of my answer. So just a follow up. So when these symbols are expressed in men and women, is that an expression of nature, of a virtue, or something else? What do you, I’m not sure I understand the question. Is the masculine an expression of what it is, of some kind of aspect of human nature, or is that an aspect of a particular set of virtues? I think it’s an aspect of the cosmos, but I think it’s there, right there in the separation of heaven and earth, right there in the cosmic structure. So I just see it as the basic pattern of reality manifesting itself at different levels, and then it also manifests itself in male and female. And so, like I said, I do think that Christ calls us to transcend that opposite. But at the same time, the transcending of those opposites is a, the image that we have of it is the marriage, and it is this productive union. And it’s not a kind of everybody can be whatever they think, which is what we kind of get in our culture today, which is that everybody can have, can just kind of play out whatever characteristics that fits their fancy. Not that these things are, these are patterns, right? They’re not absolute in every individual manifestation of something. I mean, like I said, we are called to play, I think that everybody sometimes is called to play masculine roles, and sometimes we’re called to play feminine roles, and sometimes we don’t ask ourselves that question. Like it’s not part of what’s happening. In the same way that you’re talking about how we have a strange inversion, where you have the females cast with male roles to kind of supplant the traditional male aspects, courage, bravery, strength, those kind of things. Not only as a way to make women more powerful, but also a way to make men less powerful. Do you think that’s not just, you know, maybe that’s step two, and I think maybe step three is just a complete decoupling of any type of gendered virtue, any type of trait, you know, so that we can just, we don’t supplant male or female, we destroy both male and female. I’m wondering if that’s where our cultural in game might be. I think that there’s some people who want that, it’s clear, and they say out loud, they’re not hiding it, I think there’s some people who want that, but I don’t think it is going to happen, and I don’t think it can happen. And we can look at revolutionary movements to see, like if you look at Marxist theory, right, there is this revolution, the proletariat take the role, they take over, there’s a tyranny of the proletariat, and then after the tyranny of the proletariat, everything disappears and we are in heaven on earth. I think there’s some people who think that that’s how it’s going to play out, but the problem is that it doesn’t play itself out that way. It didn’t play itself out that way in Marxism, and it’s not going to play itself out again in that way in this structure as well. Because the only thing that you can do, I think, is create an inversion. There’s no other way, because in the end, if you try to, like I said, if you want to suggest that, let’s say, women can be as much a warrior as men, then you’re going to run into a problem, which is that reality is going to resist that proposition. So the only thing you can do is overcompensate, and then that’s going to create that inversion. There’s no way to destroy it, it’s there. You can see it, even. Yeah. I probably shouldn’t talk about that, but let’s look at, we have the transgender phenomena now that’s very strong. And in the transgender phenomena, you have this idea, let’s say, but what we’re seeing is actually not that. What we’re seeing are, let’s say, people who are born masculine, who are celebrated for taking every single cliché trope of feminine representation. So we can criticize a woman for wearing high heels and lipstick and looking like that, but if a man does it, then we celebrate it. So it’s like, you can’t avoid it. It’s going to come back. So it’s going to come back in a strange, mixed up way, but it’s going to come back no matter what. And then the feminine tropes appear in the transgender movement as well. You can’t get away from it, I don’t think so. And it seems like even moving beyond masculinity and femininity, we have the same cultural war when we try to think about the modern concept of nations. Like you were talking about, we can’t really supplant it, we can only really transcend it. It makes me think about how a lot of people don’t want there to be borders these days. When you get to the biblical essence of that, that’s correct, we’re neither June nor Greek. But now we get to the point where it feels like there’s no sense of nation whatsoever. There’s no sense, we’re all just human beings in the same way that we’re not male, we’re not female, we’re just human beings. It feels like we’re kind of doing that among all the different patterns throughout humanity. And it just feels like it’s a war against humanity itself. We’re trying to erase all distinctiveness, to bring it back to the Incredibles, if everyone’s super then no one’s super. I think that the proper vision of hierarchy is always the right way to see this. Is that we are one, all one in Christ. And we are called to be that. But to the extent that we do have families, to the extent that we do have groups that we associate with, if we can do that in a manner which doesn’t compete with our one unity and our allegiance to Christ, to me that’s the goal. The problem is when you make a nation more important than God, when you make your gender more important than God, when you make any identity that we can have, when you put that in competition with the absolute, then we have idolatry. But it doesn’t mean that those different identities can’t exist. And I think that that’s the confusion we’re dealing with now, is that people want to abolish difference as if that’s possible. It’s not going to happen. It’s going to come back. It’s something that can come back with the Fuhrer. And we don’t want that. The proper hierarchy of knowing. I think that the orthodox structure of church, when it plays itself right, when it plays it, it can have very negative aspects as we were seeing recently. But when it plays to its strength, then it acknowledges the possibility of diversity of churches and diversity of identities all in communion together. So I think that that’s the ideal. I don’t think so. Well, no, I think there’s a lot of different revolutions going on. The invurgents are played out in different aspects of reality. But I think this one is one that we can kind of see very clearly. We can see it playing out and so we can point to it and say, I think we have a better answer to offer the world besides this kind of this revolutionary pattern. Just one aspect. Yeah. Would you say that part of the problem is that it’s like feminist are forgetting that women are biologically different from men? I think it’s part of it. I think there’s biology is part of it. But I don’t think it encompasses the whole thing, at least not in a biblical perspective. I think that because we have this, we have the we have images of this relationship playing itself out in our understanding of the church and Christ in our understanding of heaven and earth, we can see that we can’t limit this to to biology. But I think we’re not materialist. You know, with biology does play a part in it. Obviously, there is a biological difference between between men and women. I think that to me the day the error that feminists not all feminists, but let’s say the kind of feminists that would be pushing these types of agendas. The error they’re making is is thinking that what has value is only found in the masculine trope and then wanting to take that instead of exploring the exploring the other aspect of the world, which is beautiful and which is which is necessary for the world to exist. So I think that that’s the problem. Sorry. Society always use women in their their tax as lower and not important in our society. Yeah. I think I think I think you’re right. I think like like you were asking before, I think that one of the reasons why this happened is because we because we we developed a culture that did not celebrate. We didn’t like we celebrate the mother of God. We celebrate her constantly. And this we live in a culture that stopped to do that a long time ago. And I think it’s not just that, but there’s part of that which is playing itself out in. I would say I think that in Protestant ontology, I would say we they don’t know where to put this question. They don’t know how to deal with it. And so because of it comes up in all kinds of weird ways because they they don’t have a beautiful image to point to an icon to point to and to say, look, you know, and we celebrate her and we sing. And we so I think that that’s I think that that’s the I think that’s the root of the problem. Maybe we need more collateral. There you go. Yeah. John, I appreciate your ability to see patterns as an artist. I think that’s obviously what you do very well. So we talk about this inversion. You think this revolution or this inversion could have happened without the pill. And on that point, what in terms of looking at cartoons and video games and all these different symbols, what can we say is the symbol of the pill? The symbol of the pill. No, I think I think we need to seek out that we need to definitely need to seek out deception as part of a bigger pattern. You know, we we the technology doesn’t come before the desire. Right. Okay. Right. Exactly. The technology comes with the pattern playing itself out like the desire to to see to disconnect sexuality from procreation. Right. That that is an ideological move. Right. And that would happen before the technology that would then give people what they want. Right. Well, like I said, it does create a sterile, I mean, sterile world. Thank you. Thank you.