A lot of people at the moment are talking about some kind of revival or or reawakening in Christianity. Whether or not the statistics support it, it is absolutely happening. It is happening. There's no ripple of rage in a room now. If I say, okay, actually, I'll tell a fairy tale tonight, but tomorrow I'm going to talk about something called the Exodus from Egypt. People go, okay, in we go. Now, five years ago, that absolutely wasn't the case.
SPEAKER_01I think Protestants are feeling very edgy right now because we're recognizing that a lot of the vibe shift is ending up with people going to very traditional churches that aren't like the lowest common denominative Protestant sort of churches that we might be used to. Perhaps we can bless each other from across the differences without ignoring the differences.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, we're on a hiding to nothing if we ignore the differences. I think the one thing though, as Christians across the board, we should do is like, do not sell the farm at this point. Do not sell the farm. What do you mean by that? Uh what I mean by that is we should not be taking our tips from a culture that doesn't give a sh about us. Sorry to be so blunt. Yeah, yeah. You edit it out if you need to. When you are taking your cues from an entirely secular and fallen situation, you've made a horrible mistake.
SPEAKER_01And where where do we do that? Where are we in danger of and where are we actually doing that? Martin Shaw, in your book, the central concern is how to make a human being. So it seems like uh we're not human beings, sort of straight fresh out of the packaging. We need to be mage human beings. Uh in our culture nowadays, are there things that are dehumanizing us?
SPEAKER_02Yes, and ironically, they're stories. Right. Isn't that interesting? It's such a twist. For as long as human beings have been imagining, we seem to imagine in stories. We're storied creatures. Uh but recently I've said this a bunch, but I stand by it. It's the first time in my life I wonder if I'm experiencing too many stories rather than too little. Right. And so the first thought that I would then have is what is the ambition of the story that is being told? Why is it being told? And I think some stories, the ones that we can really hang our heart on, are ones that are trying to court us into you know what they call no bless oblige, you know, the moral courage to live well in the world. But there's a whole bunch of other stories that don't court us, they seduce us. Right. They seduce us, they anaesthetize us or they make us feel, and I'm thinking, of course, of sort of the blizzard of social media stories that we have, that maybe we're not quite enough, uh, maybe we're a little ridiculous, and sometimes we are, but there is a kind of a thinning out of the kind of depths that come from what we used to regard as the stories that made us. So, in other words, how do you become a real human being? Um I think I've been unconsciously sort of chipping away at that for most of my life. I I grew up in a house where on one level, you know, we didn't have a television, didn't have a car, didn't have a phone. So we were impoverished in one kind of 1970s way of looking at things. But on another level, we had poetry and we had stories, and my dad was a fine preacher, and my mum's a painter. So we were around the power of the word, we were around the power of language, and it just seemed to me whether it was the intricacies of the Odyssey or it was the uh centralizing power of the Arthurian stories, the round table, they're telling us about the complexities of life and what we're going to face, you know, and they do it. Myth works by amplifying things. I meet lots of folks that just say, I'm going through something, it's very personal to me. I could never tell anybody about it. And I say, Well, let me have a crack at it. And what you will find, and I think Christians will locate this immediately, is you can say, Well, this is reminding me of you know that moment with Ruth and Naomi. This reminds me of uh Esther, this reminds me of Kukullen, this reminds me of Finn McCall. In other words, there is a you know, there's a bedrock of stories that are are informing us about the conditions of living.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. But we've got too many stories. Yeah, I think so. And and perhaps we've we've lost touch with those canonical stories. Yes. And instead we're we're told stories by marketers a lot of the time.
SPEAKER_02Yes. Well, the thing is the canonical stories are actually quite complex, quite disturbing, and require uh more than one pass. You know, in other words, they ask something of us. Yeah. They actually ask something of us, and I think we feel uh safer when less is being asked of us. The image that I often have is of boats in a harbour going round and round and round, talking about knowledge of great storms, but they never set out on the ocean, they never cross, you know, the green teeth of the sea.
SPEAKER_01Yes. Yeah. And therefore, what is this story that modernity has told us? Um, that I I think we I think we can both agree that the world is not disenchanted, we don't need to re-enchant the world, the the world is already, you know, charged with the grandeur of God. Um the world is already that kind of mysterious place of meaning. Um but we've come to see as modern people that the world is a flat place and that we are kind of masters in a world that is much more mechanical. We can pull the levers and we can we can get stuff done in the world. That that sort of story, I think, has intoxicated us uh a bit more than than the than the older stories we're just saying. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02I've been thinking recently about a phrase to describe what, of course, we now, you know, most of us would call it, you know, we're living in a fallen world to some degree. It's still numinous at times, but I've been calling it the unworld because we, you know, seem to collectively a lot of the time we are turning our wave, deliberately turning from the grace-filled side of the universe, we're turning from God. And so you have what I would call the good world, which is this sort of identic promise of the early Genesis, but the unworld is a place where we think that we call the shots, you know, we're still babled in a way, we're still babling. Yeah, and uh the horrible thing is that we pretend we're Pentecosting. Right. You know, when I think about all of this, we we've got these little apps where we can hear each other's languages, you know. Uh and so on the one hand, it looks like communication is better than ever, but on the other hand, I don't think the soul is terribly convinced by much which is going on, hence the terrible cost for young people. You know, this is the age of anxiety. So, what is the story that we're being told? Well, I think it is one of relentless self-absorption, I think it's one where we're not really in service to anything other than our own ambitions, and we are on the one hand caught in a kind of um you know, a kind of hubris, but at the other set, at the other, in the very same moment, I suspect that our self-esteem is much lower than we might let on to.
SPEAKER_01Well, it's it's a mental health crisis, yeah. Um, precisely at the same time as we're told that we need to self-actualize and self-create, and and that actually positive self-regard is is sort of the highest ideal that we're chasing, and never have we thought less of ourselves. It's an interesting paradox.
SPEAKER_02I I was watching the um the MMA fighter. What's the name of the fellow? He's Irish, he's very famous. Conor McGregor. And I think Conor McGregor is he's dropping God a lot into the conversation now. Yeah, and uh they were talking to him about his past behavior, which has been pretty, you know, pretty reprehensible. And he said, it's fine, I've forgiven myself. Now, on one level, I knew what he meant, and I hope he isn't haunted forever, but but there's there are other people that need to forgive you. And you know, there's there's a whole process about the business of forgiveness. It's it's too easy to let yourself off the hook. We spend enormous amounts of money going to therapists to lose our sense of shame. But what we learn in the chivalric tradition, ironically, when you become a chivalric knight, one of the first things they say is never lose your sense of shame. Now, what does that mean? Right, it doesn't mean wander around feeling wretched and depraved and unworthy and wearing a nettle shirt, but it means be aware that there is a right and wrong way of behaving in this world. Yeah, and actually your capacity for awe, your capacity for beauty, how that sensitizes the heart. This again for me is part of the conditioning of what what how you know that lovely phrase, an old gross tree. Well, how do you become an old gross human being? Right. You know, how do you become an ancestor, not a ghost? That's been one of my questions. Okay, what does that mean? It means that you want to be remembered fondly, affectionately. It's great when there's someone in the family, a grandparent, a wild aunt, who did something, and there's some piratical residue of their, of their, you know, they're like, but if you're a ghost, you just chase the money. Right. You can't have two governors, you know.
SPEAKER_01Right, right, right, right. And so I I guess your your book is really about how you how you become an ancestor and not a ghost, isn't it? Yeah, it is. It is, yeah. How do you make a human being? Yeah. Story at the at the heart of it. Um how do you discern between a good story and a bad story? And I don't just mean like a gripping story and a boring story. I mean the sorts of stories that form you well and the sorts of stories that that might corrupt you.
SPEAKER_02Well, interestingly, I tend to go for stories where there's a bit of a pebble in the shoe. Or I go, I like that, I like, and I don't like that, and I don't know what that means, and I don't know what that is. Why is this happening? The irony is, you know, because of what I've done for a living, people come to me all the time and say, we need a new story, and you, Dr. Shaw, with all your mythological know-how, are going to uh cut and paste the new narrative. Uh and obviously, as a Christian and as a storyteller and as a mythologist, I'm saying I I have would have no interest in that. So I think that stories of pathos, stories of soul, stories of weight are ones, to use a strange expression, they trouble your soul into communication.
SPEAKER_01They trouble your soul into communication.
SPEAKER_02Yes, and and you can, you know, quite what the soul is is a big question for Christians. But I think we all we all have an instinct of what that means. Your your deep interior. In other words, they leave you with something to think about, something to puzzle over. Because say you're growing up in a culture where not everyone can read and write, you need a story on several layers to do its work with you because it might be the only story you hear over the winter. You're not going to be exposed to endless stories. Somebody coming into the settlement with a fairy tale, you'd say, Well, tell it slowly, yeah, tell it over several nights. Let's see how the story affects our dreams, see what's see what's happened in the dream world in the morning, let the story talk to us. I always say with my students, let the story have its way with you. Uh, as the son of a preacher and the brother of a preacher, um one of the things I think as a family we work quite hard at is allowing a story, not not to immediately tell it what it what it is, not to say, and of course, what that never was. Yes. Well, how do we know we're in a room with 60 people having an entirely different reaction? Yeah. It's like acupuncture points in the body. You know, we all twitch in different places. Um, and you want to make sure that the story remains holy spirited enough. Yeah, you're not shooting it out of the sky.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah. Was it T. S. Eliot who has once asked about the meaning of one of his poems, and all he did was read the poem again?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it's sort of it's all artists understand this. You know, it's it's like when you're standing next to one of your paintings and they say, What does it mean? And you go, Maybe not. Right. Yeah, just look.
SPEAKER_01Let the painting do its work on you. Um, tell me, like, what effects have your stories or the stories that you've told had on people? You you tell all sorts of stories about people who have engaged with you in your storytelling, you know, but there's like an assassin. I I'd love to learn more about this assassin. Um and step us through, like, give us an example of a way in which a story, a person has inherited a story and their their outlook has changed, their perceptions of things have changed, their life has changed. How does this actually happen?
SPEAKER_02Well, uh a typical example would be an incredible fairy tale called The Handless Maiden. The Handless Maiden is a young woman whose father makes basically a terrible deal. And the consequence of the deal that he's made is that his daughter loses her hands. And the story is the slow, difficult process of how do you grow your own hands back after a traumatic event, after being lost in the forest, what is the redemptive arc that is going to help you uh, you know, more deeply inhabit your humanness again. And the particular thing that's so lovely about the Handless Maiden is that she does it in the end in a community of women, because a lot of the stories in fairy tale, folk tale tradition, it's solitary and it's heroic. And I've got a lot of time for heroism in its most beautiful sense, its most efficacious sense, but I do like stories where there's a community that absorb what you're going through as well. I think that's wonderful. So over the years I have worked with yes, it's true, I would have worked with murderers and sex offenders, I would have worked with uh pastors, professors, boat builders, philosophers, uh jailbirds, uh actors, lots of actors. People are very interested in storytelling. And I think because I'm not aggressively prescriptive, because I am not giving you an A to B to C, a story is more like an atmosphere than a map. Uh I think people find that attractive, although initially a bit disorientating, because they say, Could you be a little bit more didactic? Could you and I will, because I have that in my pocket if needed, if I can steer us through. But um so I would listen to somebody who say, I'm going through something that's terribly personal, and as I I sort of said this a few minutes ago, I'll find a story that is walking alongside the dilemma, and then I'll start to tell that story back to them. And that is really worth something. Or you listen to their story and you tell exactly what they've just told you back to them using the third person. Right. So you say you hear the story, and you say, Okay, once upon a time, there was a fella in the middle of his life, and he came to a great forest. Boom, yeah, they are in. I mean, they are they never want it to stop. So suddenly they become aware of the mythic ground that they actually stand upon.
SPEAKER_01Oh, interesting. A friend of mine recently said to me, we hadn't seen each other in about a year, and he said, as a catch-up question, tell me, if somebody was watching the movie of your your life right now, what are they yelling at the screen? Did you have a response? Well, I said being on YouTube, there's lots of people yelling at the screen. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then in catch-lock, they're in the they're in the comment section. But but yeah, that that third personizing of it is is one of the one of the most powerful things about a story. I I I think of Nathan going to David, David has committed adultery and murder. How do you convict the king of this terrible crime? Because you would think that David must think that he's into real politics. He's in the real world where needs must, and he's done what he had to do. And so, how do you break through and tell him, no, you're living in fantasy land, David? You think that you can sin in a consequence-free way. So, what does Nathan do? He comes and tells this very heart-rending story. And it really tugs at the heartstrings. It's like once there was a little lamb and it went to sleep in its master's arms and it drank from his cup. It was like a daughter to him. And then the neighbor came and stole it and and killed it. And he he said, you know, that must them must pay. And of course, Nathan says, You are the man. You are that man.
SPEAKER_02And that's the third person I think isn't. It's brilliant. It's Stone Cold Genius. Yeah. And storytellers have understood this for at least 5,000 years. Yeah. So uh it's also something you find in Indigenous culture when they really need to give somebody a dressing down, they won't name them, but they will tell a story in public that everybody instinctively and immediately recognises is addressing the heart of a community crisis without saying, and it you are that man. But the person will immediately feel they're getting mojo'd. You know, they'll know it's coming to pass.
SPEAKER_01And I think the power of the story in that moment, I'd love to hear what you think about this. I I think part of it is because we we all live with main character syndrome. It you know, we might sort of name that as a as a uh a kind of uh a diagnosis that's that's you know is is is pathologized in that way. But we all we all sort of necessarily with ourselves at the center. And then what a story does, especially you know what Nathan does to David, is it kind of says, Can you see yourself like from a different perspective? Can you sort of shut up and listen to the story, sit and sit in the audience and and see what that person is doing in that moment? And I think suddenly David saw himself in a way he never saw himself when he was in the first person, but that third person perspective distances him from his ego enough that he can stop justifying himself and he can start actually seeing seeing reality.
SPEAKER_02Part of the wild genius of the Bible is how suddenly in a story you're hearing it from Hagar's perspective, for example. Yes. And it's so glorious that God travels with her out into the bush. I mean, that is a terrifying moment for that. She's pregnant, she's cast out, she's in the wilderness. And and so one of the things that I find so fascinating, especially about these, you know, the Old Testament, that's Bronze Age material, you see. That's what we sort of forget, that's how old it is. Um the the focus is not always entirely on the central character, the camera moves and shifts, and as we, you know, you know this better than I do, you know, the main character of the Old Testament is the mind of God, and and we're kind of surfacing around it and you know, in our own befuddlements. Yeah. But the thing that is so particularly strange about the Bible is how on one level, how often how within a story, characters can be come very befuddled, incredibly unheroic, and there's as a storyteller, there's usually almost no visual description. Yes. If you go to Greek myth, it's it's an absolute smorgasbord of description. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. And then suddenly, when you're dealing with Hebrew stories, it seems to me that the inner condition, although you don't get a lot of what was going on on the internet, but it it's it's inner journeying, you know, manifested in these things, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah, yeah. So uh help us to read scripture then, because I was I was uh recently with a friend who uh when we're discussing what the Bible was, he he said, I was always taught growing up that B-I-B-L-E spells basic instructions before leaving Earth.
SPEAKER_05Wow, okay.
SPEAKER_01Just uh a horrendous misunderstanding of the Bible. Help us, Martin. What how how should we think about scripture?
SPEAKER_02Well, I mean, let you know, of course, first of all, we're dealing, as far as I can tell, with something that is uh constructed, you know, divinely, I believe, over about 1400 years or so, uh with differing ambitions for different parts of the book. So it's a library rather than a book. Yes. And there are parts of it, as we know, that I think are designed to be read. I'm often more literal with the Bible than people may suspect. I'm like, well, I'm still open to the fact maybe it was maybe the world was created in seven days. Who knows? There are scientists that think things could have happened very quickly, but obviously my my condition is symbolic, you know, my condition is metaphorical, but the the genius of you know, especially the New Testament, is that it exists on all those levels, it can exist on a literal level. It's these are stained glass experiences so absolutely woven with meaning. On one day, you can look at it as a very rough de-tufty gospel of Mark, and then and then and then, and then you're into John, and you are you've gone from the what happened to the why it happened. So, all of that. So, my personal thought would be I would have a great love of the power of chapter and verse in the Bible, but gotta be honest, sometimes when I've been in the in the in church services and I hear these stories being told, the image I have is from the Narnia chronicles, where the animals are now frozen and you're desperate for the ruach, you're desperate for the breath of the lion to bring them to life again. So I'm wondering. if informally in churches I have a lot of I have a I'm an Eastern Orthodox Christian but I try and be as unsectarian as I possibly can and so I'll talk to anybody in and say look could you not could you not once a fortnight just light a fire in your back garden couldn't one of you take on the indignity of just telling this story as best you remember it and we know that it's not synagogue we know it's not Sunday we know we're not in church but but where two or three are gathered yeah something's gonna happen.
SPEAKER_01Yeah it's powerful it's powerful I mean I I can think of moments when I I'm often wheeled out at sort of university missions weeks and the and the Christians want me to you know speaking wheeled out that's a brilliant description we can get very tired I'm getting older I'm getting older Martin I you know I used to be one of the young guns and now I'm now I'm definitely when I go to the the universities I'm uh I'm one of the uh older uh the elders of of the room and and just and they want me to talk about you know science and suffering and truth and and apologetics kind of questions but honestly nothing beats just saying there was a man who had two sons. The younger son said to his father, Father give me give me my share of the inheritance. And just you've you've you've just got them like instantly. Yeah yeah yeah and and just trying as best I can to do it from memory as well and people kind of people kind of lean in and they inhabit the story in ways that you know I I could come up with the most brilliant three points all beginning with the with the letter P, but there's nothing like grabbing people by the scruff of the neck. And I I often think it's it's also the most aggressive form of communication in one in one sense, rhetorically because if I'm making an argument that I'm trying to take the intellectual high ground or the moral high ground but if I tell a story I'm taking all the ground. Yeah because I'm saying there was this man and he had two sons and you and Martin Shaw has no part in this story. Martin Shaw just needs to be a a an audience member who is who is brought into my world and I'm in charge of all the ground now for the next five minutes while I tell this story. And and then you disorient people and invite them into a strange new world and then you might get them to think a little bit clearer.
SPEAKER_02Yeah well you have what you've done is you've moved them into Ian McGilchrist territory you've taken them entirely into the right brain you've taken them into the place of you know that as Rome Williams would say actually your creature your Christian creaturliness your sensual experience where you you just have to surrender. As far as I can tell although I think that there is you know people always of course talk about Christ sort of front and foremost as a storyteller and he's phenomenal and I but I think sometimes there is a kind of there's a kind of philosophy of storytelling that is going on in his work and he he works in the classic Jewish storytelling tradition of hyperbole. Yeah you know ad absurdum is like the mess of and so he he shifts and moves depending on what is in front of him at any given moment. I know he's got a million different things different kind of moves you're you're you know so in other words it seems to me that we have a God that is heavily invested in story heavily invested in beauty and will talk to anybody but be careful because what he's going to ask of you is so absolutely extraordinary it's gonna feel like your whole world has been literally turned upside down.
SPEAKER_01Yeah we were we're we're actually right now in the middle of a conference that we're running here at Speak Life called the the the intensive and I was just next door teaching from Luke chapter seven and I often I often forget that the parables that Jesus tells it's not like there's an open mic night at the pub and he's been preparing this this sort of parable and that that's what everybody's expecting almost always nobody's expecting the parable it's usually it's in the middle of a conversation it's the in the middle of a controversy it's in the middle of a sex scandal. So so in Luke chapter seven there's a sex scandal unfolding right in front of everybody's eyes and Simon the Pharisee is hosting all the dignitaries and this woman who had lived a sinful life and traditionally people have thought her to be a prostitute that seems a a pretty good guess. And she's being very sensual, very familiar with Jesus and he's not kicking her to the curb and they seem to have a a a past shared together and all the eyebrows are being raised in the room especially by Simon the Pharisee and he says if Jesus were a prophet he would know what kind of woman she is that she is a sinner and Jesus says Simon I've got something to tell you there were two people who owed a moneylender well like and he just in the middle of a sex scandal he tells a story and it reframes everything. It's it's the most powerful kind of thing.
SPEAKER_02Now here's the question for you do you think that on the Sermon on the Mount because there's different accounts do you think he was sitting down or do you think he was walking about consideries consider this yeah the the sitting down business is rabbinical. Yeah when you sit down you take your power as a teacher four he's he does that in the synagogue however there are other accounts where he's clearly moving about yes and I just in my every follicle in my body tells me after a few minutes yeah once he's sat in after the beat you've got and and there's a lot of people man that's you know you've you've you've got to speak up um yeah my dad uh in church has always had a you know he's wonderfully clear he's as I say he's a preacher and there came a point once where I was talking to an old lady uh who'd come to see me for years and I said why'd you come she said well because I could hear you darling and that was it you could just sit at the back of the room and she could hear me it's clear.
SPEAKER_01So in other words I yeah I find it hard to imagine not impossible of course that of Jesus sitting down for hour upon hour upon hour as it's getting to we call it the Dimpsy time in Dartmoor the time of dog and wolf dark dusk you know and then everyone going hold on we're really hungry yeah you know yeah yeah yeah so tell me your story then so the the son of the son of a preacher man yeah I'm I want to turn you from from storyteller to to protagonist so to so tell us tell us the story where Martin Shore is the main character grew up the son of a preacher man but could have walked away from a teenage faith.
SPEAKER_02Yeah I I grew up in the Baptist church I grew up in quite a famous Baptist church Upton Vale in Torquay it's very well known it was a very um marvellous and substantial preacher there called Peter Barber that was a big influence on my dad uh but I would have to say that the kind of Christianity I grew up with was uh theologically robust but it was quite extroverted if you know what I mean it was you know very mission led very kind and my own nature is more merry than Martha you know I'm more contemplative and so actually by the time I was about 17 I'd come out of the we'd come out of the sort of really sort of nonconformist Baptists really and then into the total shock of the charismatic movement in the mid-80s. I mean goodness me you know the the tent was shaking my friend right so that was kind of refreshing okay and I have to say although I turned from Christianity when I was about 17 the impact actually of you know mid eighties spring harvest and things like that it stayed with me for anybody who said oh it's fuddy duddy nothing ever happens there's no real energy in the room I'd say well it's not for me but I saw some things yes I saw some things that sounded awfully like the Acts of the Apostles it sounded like early doors Christianity. Right so which is a lot of what they were attempting to of course yes yeah so anyway off I went though because I wanted to be you know I wanted to be uh as Billy Connolly says windswept and interesting and I didn't I so I I knew I always felt at the back of my mind that there was a creator of some kind I felt very moved by poetry and by story and by music um but I I I just couldn't quite wrap my head actually I could wrap my head around the stories of Jesus but some of the you know quite what the trilli trinity was and how that works all that all that sort of theological stuff I thought I have no great impetus at 17 to think anymore about this I want to think about girls. So off I went and played the drums and was a in musician. Yeah um and then in as life gets more difficult in my twenties and I went through a divorce and uh I have very bad tinnitus I have a ringing in my ears all the time. Okay. So that kind of began to pull me I I had to be retired as a musician really because because it I I was in so much distress. So I went back actually to the mythologies and the stories of my youth to get some kind of deeper anchor to the travails of my own life the tough stuff. Okay. Um and then to my astonishment that deepened into becoming a professor of mythology because you see a mythologist that's not just telling stories that's your capacity to unpick them at a doctorate level and all of that kind of stuff as well and so I've ended up having this for me a pretty glorious uh you know you know normal Baptist they you know when you're being baptized you're like oh it's just been dreadful and I'd be in jail I'm not I had a I've had a wonderful run. However at 50 things began to change but what happened is I learned the language of story I learned the language of myth I learned I suppose the language of you know symbolism and metaphor and how that all relates to creation and to my astonishment that became a way I was able to earn a living and raise a raise a young girl.
SPEAKER_01Okay. And you you you talk in the book about um the the wild and and the ways in which the wild tempers you and the the ways in which the wild kind of teaches you. Yeah um and you mean that quite literally you you will go out into wilderness places and live there for weeks months.
SPEAKER_02Well I lived in a tent for four years. Yeah I mean that's that's a good crack isn't it that's good. Why do you think I like orthodoxy so much? Because it's got a it has that it has that space in it.
SPEAKER_01You're basically Abraham you've got the beard as well and living in tents is kind of funny.
SPEAKER_02I I'd I'd have a love of Abraham in Ireland in that this is a great phrase I hope everybody watching remembers this if you if you have a crush on somebody but you don't want to say I'm in love with you but you you're testing the water you say uh I would have a girl for you I have a grow and it just means I'm attracted okay and it's kind of playful so there's no you can just say I have a girl for I'd have a girl for Elijah for sure. Yeah I'd have a girl for Elijah I'd have a girl for the forerunner I love John yeah you know uh so anyway yeah I I was always interested in uh to sound a bit conceptual for a moment the landscape of a mythology and the mythology of a landscape how do stories talk to places how do stories talk to places and in my late twenties and early 30s I lived believe it or not in a black tent on a succession of English hills it's hard for me to quite remember what I was up to because it's a I'm not that age anymore but I'm very glad the kid did it because when I look back and I sort of thinking of him as a third person in a way it was I wouldn't say I'm naturally monastic but I'd I'd have a bit of the hermit in me. Yeah I have a bit of the hermit and I think I wanted to get out of the I wanted to crawl out of the wires and lights of the late 90s and I wanted to listen deeply in a wild place to what I should be doing in my life. And in your 50s kind of having tried many other things um it it seemed like Christ was was getting a hold of you yeah yeah he kind of came from a variety of angles there's it there I know there's a lot going on a lot of people at the moment are talking about some kind of revival or or reawakening in Christianity whether or not the statistics support it it is absolutely happening it is happening it's happening in the weirdest unfathomable and unrational of ways it's just unstoppable yeah uh you you know I don't even have to name the names we have major musicians thinkers historians um I'm able to you know there's no ripple of rage in a room now if I say okay actually I'll tell a fairy tale tonight but tomorrow I'm gonna talk about something called the Exodus from Egypt. People go okay in we go now five years ago that absolutely wasn't the case so there's that uh vibe yeah there's a vibe shift um so but I was blissfully unaware of this in my late 40s so if we go back six years or so uh I knew I was about to hit 50 I'd lost touch in a way with the kid in the tent I'd now become in a very minor may minor kind of way a sort of you know celebrated professor I'd written a lot of books was earning a living and I thought you know I want to I want to get in touch with what that younger part of me was essentially looking for so I took myself it's gonna sound very dramatic well it was dramatic uh 101 day vigil in a darkmoor forest I wasn't there all the time but at dusk every day I'd go didn't really tell anybody about it and the book Litages of the Wild will tell you this in detail but an extremely strange thing happened on the on the final night it's so peculiar um it would be it's the kind of thing when people hear about it they're like I can proceed no further with you it's so odd. It was the final night I was going to do an all night vigil in the forest I was simply there to give thanks as a kind of full stop to this experience I I'd I'd gained immeasurably from it already. I had lots of things to think about I'm up in the woods it's about one or two o'clock in the morning I think um and I prayed and I praying is something that I never stopped doing. Okay. It just was I'd suppose in the language of Paul it would be praying to the unknown God but you your heart is still quite sincere I'm when anybody's spiritually searching I feel warmth towards them whatever even if it's misdirected I understand that so I just basically would have said creator here I am I recognize I am a a broken facsimile of a human being I'm very tired um if there's anything you really need to show me at this moment this has been the point of these 101 days and I am utterly at your I'm utterly present. And then this very very strange thing happened where I was looking up at the night sky which is something I don't tend to do because in forest there's a lot of action here there's stags and badges and things. But I was looking up you know just like just like God showed Abraham I only know that because I've been reading that story recently and I'm looking at these innumerable stars innumerable pale stars and then one of them catches my eye and I thought that's strange it's slightly changed its colour and it's it's gone from being a very distant star to something that sort of it it opened up this all happened within a matter of seconds it happened really quickly but I saw it begin to change its colour and the colours and the shape of the thing moved from what would look like a star into almost the tip of an arrow or a kite actually at the time I remember thinking oh that looks like a kite but the colours were similar to the Aurora Borealis and it fell it's it it's as strange for me to tell you as it is for people to hear it. It just fell into the ground about ten foot to my right in this forest and it was utterly silent and it wasn't scary. It's a funny little detail it just wasn't scary it was it was impossible I remember at the time thinking I've entered the realm of something I've never seen or experienced before it was like smelling a smell you've never smelled or a colour you've never seen or something but the conditions with which I asked for it that's the auspiciousness of it I wouldn't mind at all if a scientist came along and said well actually we've done a bit of research and on that night there were lots of things falling out it doesn't matter that's not the thing the thing is yes the moment it's the it's the the significance of it which is what John I mean John calls miracles signs.
SPEAKER_01Yes not because they're crazy not because of the spookiness of it because of the significance of it.
SPEAKER_02That's it that's it and so one of the things I'd be very uh wary about is I'm prepared to talk about that experience but I don't want to turn it into an app. Yeah I don't want to fetishise it. Yeah it was suitably in the best sense of the word awesome to get me to the work I'm doing now but I I I I would hate to I'd hate to fetishise it.
SPEAKER_01Well again why John calls them signs is you don't camp out underneath the sign you've you you follow it to where it's pointing right and nice you know that's why they pay you the big bucks and so and you and you heard a voice was it an audible voice no that was a bit later it was a bit later yeah the the two things so no it was utterly silent the sun just fell out of the sky and I I remember at the time thinking you know this is this is like something out of that old book that my mum and dad read.
SPEAKER_02Yeah I stayed up all night I I'm I think it's very admirable that I stayed I still stayed up in case it was like something else to happen. Well you would wouldn't you uh dawn is breaking yeah I go back to the house uh cottage actually and as I get into bed I closed my eyes because I was absolutely knackered and I saw in front of me nine words it's never happened before probably won't happen again and the words were this it wasn't a sound it wasn't a voice I didn't hear anything it was it was visual textual yeah interesting inhabit the time and genesis of your original home inhabit the time and genesis of your original home and I thought I don't know what that is but I know where that word genesis comes from and I feel very uncomfortable and then I fell asleep. And then we have lockdown. Right so I have 18 months to think and ruminate on quite what has gone and believe it or not I didn't immediately put it all together because actually those are some very strange encounters and they required a lot of quiet and a lot of thinking and actually after about 18 months I was almost 50 dreams started to come and I just realized that if ever I heard anything about the life of Jesus especially in the gospel of Mark that kind of storytellery urgency that Mark has I'd start crying. Huh I really and I really started to cry. Yeah and I couldn't talk and I'm not you know I'm not at the front of Greenbelt with with a with a light rig you know and and and a smoke machine I'm on my own and I cannot stop crying. Yeah and I thought whatever is going on is nearer than my own breath. Right and so after cosmic but also deeply from the from you know the macro to the micro and so something that was an enormous cosmological event for me gradually well as I suppose recently when I when I think about that thing falling to earth of course I think about you know I think about Christ you know falling into this baby. I mean you know what other god has a dog in the race like ours you know this this this fella goes okay baby born a fugitive is crucified as an outlaw comes back that is the wildest wildest of stories yeah so how come we've anesthetized it yeah how how how how have we pulled the stinger out of that yeah yeah yeah so so anyway I yeah around my 50th birthday I realized although I was almost unable to say it that there's a lovely phrase the indwelling presence there was something living in me now that wasn't there before and I liked it and I rang my mum and dad up one evening who'd been waiting 30 years for this call yes and said you know you you have three kids don't you and they said yeah I think we have three and I said you know you know you've had two of them that are Christians and they said yes and I said you have three now oh yeah they must have been it was good it was good you know yeah yeah one of the great the great blessings in this journey for me is is the is the the endless availability of my mum and dad because they've been they've been turning the Bible around orally read in the house now for you know longer than 50 years.
SPEAKER_01Yeah uh and that's that's a kind of road work that that you know yeah good so it's around lockdown time does does this send you back Scripture? Does it send you back to the Bible? Like, like what's the next step after you have these amazing encounters?
SPEAKER_02The next step, of course, is I have no desire to go to a church at all. Uh, I have various sort of trauma memories from the evangelical world. Uh, I'd much rather my instinct, of course, was well, God, God showed his hand in a forest. Could I not just stay in the forest for a bit? And actually, um I believe and take quite seriously the notion of you know um the indignity of a community is important. And it's it's the reversal of the it's the reversal of the windswept and interesting thing. I thought it you can have lots of big thoughts, but it's very different when you're pouring the orange juice with the old ladies and who's done the donuts and what's going on, and when's when's the worship band coming? So I went through a period of about six months, and I visited the Catholics, I visited the uh the Anglicans, visited the Baptists, uh, and then I I not quite by chance, but basically stumbled in on something called the Divine Liturgy in a little Russian Orthodox Church or Church of Russian tradition in Exeter, and that was an amazing fit for me straight away.
SPEAKER_01Because why?
SPEAKER_02I think uh to use the word again, I have a gore for beauty uh and mystery, and I liked the fact that the priest didn't engage with me whatsoever. I liked the fact that the homily was five minutes long, sure. Any longer than that, it's pain gloryly so uh I was tremendously moved by the I realized I thought, oh, in Orthodoxy a lot of this is a sung theology. It's a sung theology. So I was recognizing psalms, I was recognizing things from the Bible, but it was being sung. And actually, one of the things that frightens people about orthodoxy sometimes is it it just looks like lots of guys with beards and a lot of rules. Where are the women? You go into the church and you actually pay attention to the choir and you see the back and forth between often the women are leading the singing, the the priests are doing their thing back and forth. It's much more of a weave than you may expect. Yeah, yeah. So they always say if you go to more than five divine liturgies, you've had it, it'll never get out. Right. And uh that was the case for me. Yes. Uh so yeah, I've been ever since.
SPEAKER_01And how do you now think about um some of your best friends? It's some of the people you love most in life, uh Baptist Protestants, that sort of thing. You you've You've had experiences where you've seen works of the Spirit, it seemed to be at the time, things straight out of the books of Acts, possibly. Um are you able to look uh sort of across the way at Protestant expressions of the Spirit and Protestant expressions of faith and say, Yeah, I I think Jesus is at work there. Like how how do you how do you kind of process all of that?
SPEAKER_02Well, I with um with caution, you know. So for example, uh a lot of my Orthodox friends would not regard uh the modern phenomenon of speaking in tongues with being really, really uh choose my dad's phrase, kosher with uh with what was happening in the the in the Acts of the Apostles, they'd be like, well Plenty of Reformed evangelicals as well. So that there'd be I so I by no means I could sort of endorse everything all of the time, as we know. If we're looking at sort of 38,000 different variants uh of of Christian expression, but um I um I read across the board, so um I was thinking recently, I mean you know you don't get many Orthodox people saying, Oh, you must read Tim Keller, but Tim Keller recently was talking a great little commentary on the life of Samson, and he talks about the difference, and this is in Paul as well, of course, between gifts of the spirit and fruits of the spirit. And for somebody like me, I I have a few gifts, but do I have the fruits? Do I and that comes back to your original question about does the story have a fruit? I must tell you something that's just happened to me. I was in a church the other day, and I noticed I was there on my own, it was a little old chapel, and I noticed that the the pulpit didn't look like it had been built in the same era as the rest of the church, it just didn't look like a normal pulpit. And suddenly I there was a voice, but it really was it was an old fellow in the back row, and he said, Are you looking at the pulpit? And I said, Yeah. And he said, Uh, do you know what that actually is? And I said, It's a pulpit. He said, It's not. He said, It's a crow's nest. Huh. He said, It was taken from a Spanish pirate ship up in Torbay Harbour a few hundred years ago, and in a phenomenal act of upscaling, they moved it from the pirate ship into the chapel. Redemption.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_02But imagine what they've seen up in that crow's nest. Yeah. The vastness of their minds. They would have seen, yeah, I'm poeticising at this moment, they may have seen, you know, the deserts of North Africa, they may have seen the glowing dome of a mosque, they may have seen the fear the forests of the spear danes. In other words, they've they've seen big, extraordinary things, and I wondered, I thought, what would it be like to be in a church where you have a crow's nest as a pulpit? In other words, the pastor comes in and can crow's nest our head, show us the biggest possible pictures. In C. S. Lewis's book, uh, I think it's uh Is it the Pilgrim's Regress, I think, he talks about there's a notion in the book where Mother Kirk, the church, is almost almost designed to collapse every few hundred years, and then the the the landlord sends the big pictures. I call them dreams, but the big pictures that begin to each generation in a way has to go through this process of being big pictured by God again, so Mother Kirk finds itself, and something of the crow's nest for me has stuck. I thought that's where what I want to speak from, if I if I can, you know. So expansive vision. An expansive vision. Now that doesn't mean you can't say hard things. Yeah, it doesn't mean you can't be granular. There's a time to be prophetic and there's a time to be pastoral. And if it's all prophetic, you it's very hard to build a community on that. Prophets go from place to place, pastors have the indignity of sitting still, you know. Uh so anyway, these are the kind of things I'm thinking about.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, our last video, um, I sort of spoke about a conversation that uh Jonathan Peugeot and Gavin Ortland have had. Jonathan Peugeot of Orthodox tradition, Gavin Ortland's um evangelical, he's one of the Keller fellows. I'm a Keller fellow, um, trying to learn from Tim Keller and help one another to pass on the legacy of Tim Keller. And interestingly, in in that kind of conversation, C. S. Lewis comes up a lot. Yeah. As somebody who, in in mere Christianity, he he gives in the preface this vision of there's a hallway and there are rooms. And um the the different denominations are kind of different rooms, and but his book is going to be a hallway. And he says, You can't make a you can't make your your home in a hallway, but it is an entrance into a room. And and you need to come out of your room every now and again, and you need to shake hands with everybody else in the other room to to get that more sort of expansive vision. And I I think kind of we've gotten stuck in a post-war period of just trying to live in the room. Oh, just trying to live in the hall, right? Um, and and not press into the distinctives of our traditions at all. And everything gets sort of smooshed together in this sort of ecumenical kind of universal we're we're all saying the same thing, aren't we? Sort of thing. And I think I think Protestants are feeling very edgy right now because we're recognizing that that a lot of the desire, a lot of the vibe shift is ending up with people going to very traditional churches that aren't like the lowest common denominated Protestant sort of churches that we might be used to. And I guess the the challenge is can we bring the best of our distinctives from the room? Not so that we camp out in the hallway, um, but that's so we can bless one another. And I I think I think I hear you saying that there's a there's an expansive vision that you're you're bringing to us right now, and that perhaps we can bless each other from across the differences without ignoring the differences.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah. I don't think you I I think we're on a hiding to nothing if we ignore the differences. I think the one thing though, as Christians across the board, we should do is like do not sell the farm at this point. Do not sell the farm. What do you mean by that? Uh what I mean by that is we should not be taking our tips from a culture that doesn't give a sh about us. Sorry to be so blunt. Yeah, yeah. You edit it out if you need to. But but that that's I without hesitation, when you are taking your cues from an entirely secular and fallen situation, you've made a horrible mistake. And where where do we do that? Where where are we in danger of and where are we actually doing that? Well, I think when we start soft pedaling frantically half of what's in the Bible to make everything fit and feel cool and groovy all of the time, you know, it's the trendy vicar sort of scenario. Um actually, it is a gospel that is come, you know, it's it's it's a story that is completely filled with love, but it's filled with some very strange, difficult things. As you know well, Tom Holland has said repeatedly, and I think his legacy is going to be extraordinary in all of this. I think so. I think his emphasis on you know, we need we need to be unapologetically aware of the weird again. And let's be absolutely clear here, the weird didn't stop with orthodoxy, the weird has gone on. I don't think that the uh the Holy Spirit stopped functioning in AD 33, far from it. However, of course, there are things uh in as an orthodox person that I see, you know, from a distance that I'm like, oh, you know, but I I've just said them anyway.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah. No, that's good. Let's let's um sort of try and move towards a conclusion in that um a lot of our videos, most of our videos, we we at the end sort of uh reference 321, which is uh an evangelistic course that people can kind of do online that talks about the threeness of God where we talk about Trinity. Yeah. Um the two-ness of the world, where we talk about Adam and Christ as this sort of more holistic, ancient, embodied uh vision of humanity, um, our our ignominy and curse and shame in Adam, and then you know the salvation that is in Christ, and then one is union with Christ, right? We are we are not simply to uh receive a verdict from Jesus uh or an abstract forgiveness from Jesus, but we're called to oneness with with Christ. So three, two, and one as a picture of God, the world, and you. So let's let's think about, we'll do it in a different order. Let's think about your picture of the world because I I I love liturgies of the wild. I I love this idea um of the the world not as a wilderness, but as wildness that is out there, um, that we engage with, that is that is full of uh potential and full of mystery and that kind of thing. Um can you give us can you give us a vision of um what what is what is the world like such that we can learn from it, be tempered by it, be taught by it?
SPEAKER_02Well, I I sat there, I had the the the great good fortune to sit with Rowan Williams a few months ago and we talked about the wildness of Christ. Now, when you think about Christ, it's very obvious, of course, to think about something like uh the scene at the temple when he's got the belt out as an example of wildness, but he's also I don't think Christ is just angry at that moment, he's making an enormous metaphysical statement that has to be made with enormous repercussions and terrifying for the Pharisees, absolutely terrifying because they know they're rumbled, they know they're rumbled at this point, the fella has to die, and of course, at that moment, that's when his megalomania is at its height, you know. Before Abraham I Am. Yeah, yeah. What? Yeah, you you know what is happening here? So the the so the wildness of Christ actually for me is the fact that he's so incredibly hard to pin down. We they think he's a drunkard, they think he's probably a demon himself, or even the master of the demons. Uh he is here's here's my phrase at the moment Jesus is never where you last saw him. You know, when you put something down and you go, where's it gone? I think Jesus is like that for me in the gospels, he's moved. And so the wildness is not just wild in the sense of sort of being impetuous, it's to do with somebody somebody that is just saying, I want your attention to go this way. It's not towards being a zealot, it's not towards defeating Rome in the traditional way. I'm talking about something else that in itself is profoundly wild in a climate that wants us these days in a kind of trance state.
SPEAKER_01Love that. So let's now think about um humanity. I I know you've written a whole book to answer this question, How do you make a human being? But uh what what is your vision of the human being now and and and what are we meant to be?
SPEAKER_02Well, you know, to paraphrase Paul, we're we're really meant to be in a kind of slow theosis or maybe a fast theosis. We won't be falling into the mind of Christ. One of the things Theosis divinization becoming God. Yeah, yeah. I'm very careful with those kind of phrases because it's it reeks of the Gnostic if you don't if you don't handle it right. Yeah, what does it mean to you then? Um it's well the the the deep the most profound human being that we ever met was Jesus. Right. C. S. Lewis says we're barely personalities. So we are trying to, you know, we we have a clear, strange, complex picture of of humanity in its fullness. Um I I'm almost speechless because I'm I'm currently in these stories all day long. I've on the train up here, I just spent five hours reading about the harrowing of hell. Yeah. So you know that you know what's going on under the ground, you know, the five fathoms deep of the crucifixion and the resurrection and all of that. So uh so in in many cultures, when you really want to find out who you are, you have a brief period where, like Jesus, you slip away into the wild and you pray. And it's not that you never come back, but you are in dialogue with it. That's the root of wilderness rites of passage, which I've led for 30 years. And I think it's a very much part of you know early Irish Christianity, for example. Certainly, you know, it does seem around the time that Christianity becomes the state religion, you know, sort of 8300 onwards, there was a ripple effect in certain Christians who said, you know, might not be the best look for us, actually. So they start to go off into the desert, we get St. Anthony, etc. But there is there's a relationship to the you know, the fullness and the wonder of the world, not just the fallenness of it.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Great. So we've thought about the world, we've thought about humanity. Let's finish by um what are we to think of God? I mean, it's it's uh it can be spoken of so tritely. We're talking about the the the mystery of mysteries. But when we are called to to put words to what we say about God, what kind of words does Dr. Martin Shaw use?
SPEAKER_02Well, it's interesting, you know, I Jesus tells us to pray simply, doesn't he? Uh and not to trip over ourselves and not to be my language is in praying is is not ornamental. It's very, very simple. Uh you know, Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me. You know, that that is that is repeated in me all day long, every day. Yes. Uh so actually things have become very simple for me uh in a way when I when I approach God. I on this this journey with Rowan, we were we were traveling about in the back of a car. I said, Rowan, what happens when we die? What happens? And he said, he said, well, he said, I think we can stop pretending. Oh what an answer. Yeah. That's why he'll always be my Archbishop of Canterbury.
SPEAKER_01We've all got our favourite. Yeah, yeah. Roman is yours. Yeah, we can stop pretending. I love that. And that that sort of ties together so much of what we've spoken about. If we're merely personalities, constantly in a blizzard of stories that are about self-actualization.
SPEAKER_02I'll finish with this. What's happened, and this is a bit conceptual, but it's worth knowing. I think in the West we've become addicted to lyric, not epic Christianity. But what does that mean? Lyric poetry is very personal. I feel Jesus said this to me very close. It's all that lovely, warm, mushy stuff. He loves me and he's interested in me. That's a wonderful thing. That's romantic poetry, but epic poetry, which I would argue is orthodox Christianity, is when the little you is brought into the big we of a bigger story, and you are profoundly in service to something where you're only, you know, I'm telling you what you already know, what we all know, you know, you're only going to find yourself when you give yourself up. Right. And what's happened in myth and fairy tale in the West is through Jung and through therapy, we've in it's all about the inner journey to self-individuation. And whilst I get that, there's a deeper step than that. Right. And this is what we're talking about.
SPEAKER_01And on the far side of death to self, you lose yourself to find yourself. Yeah. But you you only find yourself in Christ, clothed in him and in his people. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Martin Shaw, thanks so much for joining us. Pleasure. Thank you. If you'd like to delve deeper into this picture of God, the world in you, it's Jesus' vision for life in 321. You go to 321course.com and you can figure out the threeness of God, the two-ness of the world, the oneness of you. What do the numbers mean? Go to 321course.com right now and you can explore together. That'll do for us for now. If you've gotten to here uh by now, I'm sure the video deserves a like and a share around the place. And why don't you subscribe to us so that you can catch us on the next video? God bless.