The Unconditioned Life
A conversation with Rowan Williams and lots of lovely news
With Rowan Williams at Skinboat
Brand New Jawbone: Disorder Is Not Initiation
NEWS OF THE SKINBOAT & THE STAR, AND A VERY SPECIAL TOUR
I’m especially delighted this Sunday morning: firstly because we are now receiving applications for the second iteration of Skinboat, my five-weekend course in Christian mythopoetics down in Devon, and that this autumn I will be touring Ireland – six nights a week for three weeks – with my friend Tommy Tiernan. I’ll start there.
Come to BETWEEN DOG & WOLF!
Tommy and I have been pals for about five years, sharing a love of improvisation, folk tale, and the appropriately troubling figure of Christ. We’ve decided to go all in to the ‘fairy-tale mind’ of what such wise old tales communicate. If you don’t know Tommy, he’s one of the greatest stand-ups walking the planet, and a real old-growth human being. We both love whiskey and cigars and going on and on and on about John Moriarty till even the dogs start whining.
Tommy says we’re dealing in stories filled with “drama and miracles” and he’d be right. We are going to do some warm ups in a holy old Irish place, then hoof into the tour. If by any chance you are intending to come, do get your tickets immediately. I think there was over 40,000 of them sold for Tommy’s last tour, and these are small old places. Who knows, if we took to it maybe we’d end up somewhere near you down the road awhile. Remaining tickets at: An Evening of Storytelling
Come to SKINBOAT!
Wild Christ, by our own Natasha Kozaily – a new teacher at Skinboat
Some Happy Skinboaters
Details here: The Skinboat & The Star
I’ve been in a quietly joyous frame of mind these last couple of weeks. The culmination of the last Skinboat was a warm, strange and wonderful occurring. We produced one final Mummers play, and even had a new player join us as Puck – one Baron Williams of Oystermouth, our beloved ex-Archbishop of Canterbury. Paul Kingsnorth read strange, mythological poems from his phone (and was first to laugh at the irony) as I inappropriately bellowed ‘the macccccchine’ from the safety of my seat. The whole thing (and the wonderful Skinboaters themselves) was something to cherish.
Deep into Jacob & Esau
I’m writing a bigger essay on The Merrie, the feel of which underpins Skinboat, and I’m going to include two brief excerpts here to give a sense of the kind of thing we are focusing on.
On The Merrie
Myth: A space to let the stories be the stories again. To be open to the mythological depth of the Christian tradition. A robust practice of storytelling and exploration. To bring closer traditions like The Grail Mysteries that evoke the best chivalric values. I think much modern Christianity has lost touch with its stories as living energies, and often seem trapped under glass. They can speak to us as dynamically as they did when they arrived – frequently as an oral tradition – two thousand years ago. They are about the eternal now and we could be more imaginative about how we tell them, and the depths of how we experience them.
There has been significant abdication on writings into Christian mythopoetics. Anywhere but there. Biblical stories, so heavy with imagery that speaks directly to the interior have often had their creative disturbances thinned out to a thinner, more cerebral interpretation. A younger generation is exhausted by this. They are ok with mystery, long for it, and yearn for a more apophatic experience. These stories are not just patterns, they are allies. They are maybe angels of a kind.
Our God speaks to us in stories, are we letting our side of that opportunity down?
Tempering: To track the rite-of-passage that is the core of Initiatory Christianity. The life, death and resurrection that underpins Yeshua’s life and can be found in myths and stories all over the world. That Christianity is a profound initiation experience. Christianity doesn’t shy away from grief: In his anguish he (Jesus) prayed more earnestly, and his sweat became like large drops of blood falling on the ground, Luke 22:44. Our own lives will see betrayal, triumph, wrong paths and unexpected blessings throughout, and we do ourselves a disservice when we don’t bring these stories as close as our own breath, because they are our own breath. They are the stuff of life, even holding clues towards what the Anglo-Saxons called the Heofonlic – heaven.
Christ is a God who doesn’t wander Olympus munching grapes; he’s down in the filth and camaraderie of it all, and drinks the sorrowing of the world as a sublime demonstration of love. The tempering is not just to have Christ as a pal to lean on, but to gradually behold the world from exactly where he stands. That’s overwhelming and we have to work up to it. Skinboat takes the Jonah road, the Jasconius road, down into the depths for the sacred mastication that ultimately leads to renewal. No dark night, no sublime dawn. Christianity often wants to skip to the nice part. The comfortable part. If Christianity refuses to descend, to ignore the meat the raven offers Elijah, then it remains hypnotised by a secular society that does not have its best interests at heart. I know I’ve said this many times. If it is thinned to ethical teachings, civic good and not much more, it has entirely lost its teeth. And something as wild as Christianity needs its teeth. Not to randomly snarl, but to stay vital. Snarling is tedious. The Merrie is interested in Christendom but only when it includes all four quarters of the earth that God shows his hand. A remake of the crusades is hardly the thing, it’s the opposite of the thing.
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I am delighted to say Rowan is coming back to join us, and we are lucky enough to have Frederica Matthews-Green to teach three sessions online. Two wise figures. We are also bringing in the talented Natasha Kozaily to teach some real time sessions on “Make a Joyful Noise” - a chance to sing and discover a variety of sacred songs, hymns and carols from the mystical heart of Hildegard of Bingen to the Merrie fields of Great Britain and Ireland.
God does wonderful things, and one of the wonderful things at Skinboat has been the presence of Mark Vernon. Many of you will already follow Mark’s work. A philosopher, therapist, writer, he’s coming back for each weekend, opening up the world of Blake, Dante and whatever else is alive for him at the time. He has a rare knack of never being boring, and I learn from him. His work is making appropriate waves. Here’s a glimpse of the two of us:
And here below is the conversation with Rowan, including the start-off question: was Christ actually wild?
And finally, I’m about to start the World Tour of Dartmoor on Wednesday. Final tickets here. A romp into the misty, springing moor. Please pray for me!
Listen to the audio of this post and the conversation with Rowan Williams: