An audio version of the conversation is at my podcast, Talks and Thoughts, available via podcast feeds.
A couple of years back, Martin Shaw had a visionary experience that led him to Christianity. We talked about it as the Mossy face of Christ.
So it was great to talk again about what’s been happening. Which is much.
The conversation ranges over what might be happening now with Christianity, Martin’s recent participation in the Symbolic World Summit, the strangeness, weirdness and terror of Christ, being in the world but not of it, and the importance of myths, stories and fairytales.
We mentioned Martin’s new course The Skin-Boat and the Star as a practical manifestation of what has been happening for him. For more on that see here – https://schoolofmyth.com/five-weekend-programme/
For more on Mark’s work see – https://www.markvernon.com
0:00 The reviving of interest in Christianity
2:53 Report from the Symbolic World Summit
6:53 Christ, fairytales and reconnecting with the source
14:21 How to keep Christianity strange
21:33 From ideas to encounter
24:11 Being in the world but not of the world
29:08 Passions of the soul and Rowan Williams
37:38 Knowing stories and inhabiting stories
43:48 From persona to presence
47:56 Good fruits not good works
49:26 Martin’s new course and the imaginative edge
52:44 What puts people off Christianity?
54:01 Proxies for the Spirit
58:17 Limits and more, growth and depth
01:04:21 Romanticism coming of age
01:12:13 Jonathan Pageau, Malcolm Guite, Iain McGilchrist and others on the new course