Crop Rotation - 003 - Tolkien - Leaf by Niggle

Tolkien: Leaf by Niggle.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:01

Let us pause in life's pleasures and count its many tears while we all stop sorrow with us. There's a song that will linger forever in our ears. Oh times come again. Tis the song, the side of the week. Hard times, hard times come again. Many days you have lingered around my cabin door. Oh hard times come again no more.

SPEAKER_02 0:47

Welcome to Crop Rotation, a literature, theology, and philosophy discussion podcast. A good farmer doesn't grow the same thing every year. For the soil to thrive, there needs to be variety. We're a group of friends who found that we missed the life of the mind that we were able to live together when we were at St. John's College in Annapolis two decades ago. This podcast is an opportunity to explore and discuss works of art and of intellect that we've each discovered in the intervening years. Before each meeting, one of us gives the group an assignment. This leader is also responsible for asking an opening question to begin the discussion.

SPEAKER_00 1:27

Hey, this is Sir Robert Burbridge with the exact same energy as before on the previous outtake. This is the best of all possible worlds.

SPEAKER_02 1:36

Everything always works great.

SPEAKER_00 1:37

Yeah, heard it from Spinoza. They're all intakes. Let's see. So I am Sir Robert, and I was the one who picked the reading this time. Our reading is a story by J.R.R. Tolkien called Leaf by Niggle, which small bit of fun information for that. The story is named after the title of a fragment of a painting. So it's got actually it's like kind of Leaf by Niggle by Jarr Tolkien with an extra layer of direction there. Anyway, that's just for fun. Okay. So my opening question, guys. I mentioned last time I really liked this story. This is my favorite Tolkien, let's call it imagining. I don't mean exactly like, you know, it's a different kind of scale of Lord of the Rings or something. But I wanted to ask about I had a whole bunch of questions that were great candidates for me for the opening question. But what I ended up deciding to go with was about the hospital. Nigel goes on his long journey and arrives at the train station into the hospital, or actually, I suppose strictly speaking, the either Nigel or possibly the narrator called it something like a hospital. We don't, it wasn't actually like formally stated.

SPEAKER_06 3:02

The narrator does call it a hospital.

SPEAKER_02 3:03

Workhouse infirmary, and then later it's called a hospital.

SPEAKER_00 3:07

Yeah. Yeah. And so, okay, fair enough. So my question is: Nigel is occupied by painting and you know, interruptions to painting, or vice versa. And then he goes on this trip, right? And he goes, and he's really especially occupied with, and maybe pre-occupied with the tree, right? The tree and its landscape and all of that. And then he goes on this journey. And if you were to leave out the hospital portion entirely, he's goes on this journey and ends up working on the tree, but better. Right. And there's a little bit you would lose if you leave out the hospital entirely, like the voices that are discussing him and things like that. I'm not saying it a little bit, meaning it's not worth anything. I'm just saying you would lose those. As well as what I'm talking about. But clearly the point of the hospital-y thing seems to be something like what it calls making him healthy in some other way of measuring health than he's used to. And then at that point, he's sent to work on the better tree. Or, well, that's not exactly right. He's sent to where the better tree, the better version of the tree is, and then he does things with Parish. Okay, so here's my question. It seems as though Nigel is something like a better worker, or it's probably it's probably a little too austere or, you know, Marxist to put it that way. But he's better at his work, or at least he does it differently and he has better skills post-hospital. Should he have, I'm gonna ask this from two two or three different directions real quickly, should he have done some of that hospital stuff prior to taking his journey? Or maybe I'll say this a different way, would it have been better for him, for the tree, for parrot, who knows, to do some of that hospital work, to use the resources of his time in his village that he wouldn't have been working, presumably, on the tree? That would have been time prior to his journey that he would have needed to take. Should he have used that on hospital-like things? Or what? Well, what's so really, and then this is the third way, this was the first way I came up with asking this, but I wanted to give those two context and framings for it first. But what's the relationship between the hospital and the tree?

SPEAKER_06 5:38

So my first cheap two cents is that there's nothing new under the sun, and the good place is ripping this off whole cloth, I think. The good place is a TV show on Netflix, it's quite good. The judge has some interesting questions to Nigel's advocate. He says it doesn't really seem as though Nigel was expecting anything out of this. He wasn't expecting to get something back from his neighbor, and I will give him credit for that. So they're judging him on his proclivity to virtue, his uh framework of judging uh how he gives of his time, and they are kind of wrestling through this question of is there virtue here or is there uh who is it, ro Robel Robert? Who is the uh French Baudelaire Baudelaire, who talks so much about how even the virtues that we like to put forth to people are really just kind of a twisted not Baudelaire, you're thinking of La Roche Foucault. La Roche Foucault, La Roche Foucault. You're right, you're absolutely right. So, Sir Robert, you're asking these questions about what should he have done. I don't know how quite to answer those because to me it feels like the story does not permit you to really deal in that kind of should because that's part of what they're already throwing a circle around and wrestling around inside of the story is this matter of should.

SPEAKER_00 7:30

So let me I think I see what you're saying, Josh. Let me frame this a little bit differently. My the articulation that I said is probably the most the more real articulation is what's the relationship between the hospital and whatever. And also in particular, the impact of the hospital experiences, right? If he had had, could he have had them? I don't know, if he had had them prior to his journey, could he have had them prior to his journey? I don't know. But disregarding shoulds, I don't exactly care about the should part. I mean, somewhat, but disregarding the should though, like what is that relationship? What would the impacts have been if it's even possible, that kind of thing? Well, would they have been? Okay, that's fair.

SPEAKER_02 8:18

I will give you the answer that I think the story itself gives, but I think these are worthwhile questions beyond the story, because Tolkien has included a very particular philosophical and religious opinion in this story, which is Catholic and not very Protestant. And that's what Sir Robert's really asking about. So if you start from the very last section and you go up a little bit, you have this part where Nigel and Parish have completed the work that they're doing together, and they're having and they're having this like long awaited for like conversation. They're actually talking about what happened between them. And so I'll read a little bit of it. Like they've just been told by the mountaineer that the country is called Niggles Country, and some of it is Parish's garden, and Parish is it's Niggles' picture. What are you talking about? You mean that that terrible painting that you were wasting your time on? And Niggles, like, Well, I thought you were wasting your time. I used to call you old earth grubber, but what does it matter? I'm quoting now. We have lived and worked together now. Things might have been different, but they could not have been better. So I think that the answer that Tolkien gives to the question, should Nigel have spent more time, should Nigel have spent all of his time obeying the law instead of painting, and thereby not gone to not spent as much time in the hospital, and maybe gotten out of the hospital sooner, and maybe the tree wouldn't exist, or who knows if the tree would exist. The tree seems to be self-existent, but that would have been different, but it would not have been better.

SPEAKER_00 10:26

So a couple of quick things. One, as far as my motivation is you're right that the question is very much like what you're asking, but if that's not my motivation for asking it, I don't care exactly about the Protestant versus Catholic whatever, although I obviously it's there. But in a certain way, I guess, and maybe this is the Protestant-likeness in me. You know, I'm I myself am always asking, how shall I then live, right? But my question here is something like, okay, let me ask this. It's not clear to me, I don't disagree with you, but it's not clear to me that what he was doing in the hospital was something like keeping the law or something. I could see that if I pull in knowledge of the real world, you know, theology of Catholics or something. I don't exactly know what he's doing.

SPEAKER_05 11:17

Yeah, that's not it.

SPEAKER_00 11:18

Yeah. I could read this as becoming disciplined and loving the good over some selfishness or you know, something like that. My question, though, is something like maybe also would he have been a better painter? Maybe. Or something like that. I don't know.

SPEAKER_02 11:34

So there's a there's an answer that I can give for that, which is something like, see, I don't know if this is it may not be what Tolkien intended, but in this story, sin is using your time incorrectly.

SPEAKER_06 11:50

Is it is it I I felt like that was part of the nature of what's being wrestled over is that you see this niggle guy who doesn't quite know how to use his time well, but he says yes to his neighbor when his neighbor is in need, and he has a vision for beauty that he's striving towards. And so it felt like the time management part wasn't the primary sin. It felt like it was more like this is about growth. It's not about sin, it's about growth. Maybe that's my challenge, is that I'm not sure that it's totally valid to talk about this in terms of sin because Tolkien is taking such a Catholic view of it, and it's so purgatorial, and it's so progressive. So it's he's grabbing the needle from you and moving it towards growth away from sin. That would be my argument.

SPEAKER_02 12:52

The second voice says, There's no note in the recordings of his pretending, even to himself, that it excused his neglect of things ordered by the law. And the first voice says, then he should not have neglected so many. All the same, all the same, he did answer a good many calls, a small percentage, mostly of the easier sort, and he called those interruptions.

SPEAKER_00 13:16

That language, Matt, I think is intentionally evocative of Jesus talking to the Pharisees, saying you ought to have, you know, the love, justice, and mercy, and not neglected the smaller things, right? So I think you're right. I personally agree with that. I also want to point out one piece of that same bit of the conversation. I'm just getting to that spot. One second.

SPEAKER_02 13:42

Well, can I hazard my answer? Just to put this on the table, there's something like discipline imposed from outside where you're not going to learn how to use your time. Okay. Or sometimes I have been at my job and I have coworkers and bosses who know better than me, and they tell me something to do, and I think that's terrible. That's a waste of time. I guess, and this is what I say to myself I guess if the company wants to pay me to waste their time and waste their resources, I guess I'll do it if I have to, just to be obedient. And then I do the thing, and it turns out that it's better and faster because I'm not very smart, and they know more than me. And so this is and then I learn, and I when it when that same thing comes up in the future, I can do it a better way that I didn't, you know, know how to do before, and time is not wasted, but it seems like I'm it seems like I'm having an interruption imposed on me. And what actually the result of that interruption and discipline, which feels like wasting time, is that time is spent better in the end. And so the hospital is a picture of sort of the ultimate interruption. You have been interrupted by the government and put in the poorhouse to learn to use your time well. Something like that. What a fantasy.

SPEAKER_00 15:28

So speaking of using time well, uh, Dwight, any time here, I'd love to hear also from you. But immediately before the part that you said, Matt, then he should not have neglected so many, that little portion. So in the paragraph right before that, it's the second voice. It would not do him any harm, perhaps, said the second voice. But of course, he is only a little man. He was never meant to be anything very much, and he was never very strong.

SPEAKER_06 15:58

Right. And yet he has a whole land named after him that he ends up in.

SPEAKER_00 16:02

Sure. I don't know. I don't know that there's anything that tells how much of well how to compare that to anything else by any what anything when anybody else does, except for Parish, I guess. What do you tell me what you mean by that, Josh?

SPEAKER_06 16:14

Miguel has such a worthy uh obsession in this uh tree leaf nature thing, this uh obsession with uh capturing uh the beauty of something in a way that when someone looks at it uh they observe and behold and experience the beauty of God and of the created order. So that's so worthy that it's the through line of the entire story. So you're talking about how he was never meant to be much, he was never very strong, and to me that language feels like a foil to the obvious fact of his domination of this story and the metaphysical shape of it.

SPEAKER_00 17:06

Let me ask you he's the these are a couple of thoughts about this that I have not thought before, so give me a second to formulate. So Nigel has been sort of enchanted by blowing leaves, especially. Like that's his kind of specialty. And in particular, I thought this was a neat little twist of Tolkien, but he describes Nigel's picture as having a few good passages. But um, aside from that, so Nigel is enchanted by leaves and things, right? Parish is enchanted by actual leaves and things, right? So Parish is looking at something really differently than Niggle is looking at the same kind of thing. It looks to me as Nigel has what's that?

SPEAKER_02 17:54

But is he?

SPEAKER_00 17:55

But is he, sure. Uh really quickly, for the size of the domains, Parish gets a domain inside of Niggles. I say domain, but you know, like a little piece inside of Niggles. And Niggles was certainly influenced by Parrish. But one of the things we do know about Nigel and Parish is that Parrish had very, very, very little to recommend him to the second voice, whereas Niggle had more, a bit, you know, and then Niggle vouched for Parish. Parish says, Thank you so much for vouching for me. Nigg says, Oh, it wasn't even enough. And Parrish stops him and says, No, it was enough. That's basically where I'm here. I would put out there for consideration that perhaps the size of the place they're attending is not related to the quality of their admiration of whatever it was, or his of leaves or gardening or whatever, but rather something more to do with the amount that the second voice found trustworthiness or something in him. I'm proposing that. Uh but uh I just want to throw that out there as an option.

SPEAKER_02 19:06

Um let me point to some very interesting language in the beginning. When we're first getting a description of the picture. This is like third paragraph, I guess. There was one picture in particular which bothered him. It had begun with a leaf caught in the wind, and it became a tree. And the tree grew. Not he painted more of the tree, but the tree grew. Yeah. Sending out innumerable branches and thrusting out the most fantastic roots. Strange birds came and settled on the twigs and had to be attended to, which is to say, the birds existed before he started painting them.

SPEAKER_06 19:49

Yeah, and so the kingdom of heaven is like a mustard tree that grows and the birds of the air come and roost in it. It becomes big enough that something else comes and lands in it and interacts with it and validates its existence. Right. The tree exists because he's been producing it throughout all these years of trying to get to his canvas, but actually being distracted and helping his neighbor. But all that time the tree was getting created, right?

SPEAKER_02 20:18

Then all around the tree and behind it, through the gaps in the leaves and boughs, a country began to open out. Not he began to paint a country, but a country began to open out.

SPEAKER_06 20:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 20:30

And there were glimpses of a forest marching over the land and of mountains tipped with snow. And Nigel ends by ascending up to the foothills of those mountains.

SPEAKER_06 20:41

And he only goes higher and higher and higher and higher. But what I'm saying is the Kingdom of Heaven stuff, glory to glory.

SPEAKER_02 20:50

There's a three there's a three-term ratio, which is that Nigel is attending to imaginary things while while. No, no, I'm gonna I'm gonna put forward the Platonist interpretation, which I don't think is right. This is an interpretation for you guys to shoot down. Nigel is attending to imaginary things while Parrish is attending to real things. And Parish is more accepted by the world than Nigel is. Nigel's very criticized by the world. You know, at the end of the story, his neighbors are saying bad things about him because of this. But actually, Nigel, by caring for imaginary things like art, is touching a pre existent realm that is infinite and immortal.

SPEAKER_00 21:44

Let me read you a parallel passage, Matt, all of you, a parallel passage to what you said. I think it's actually not exactly parallel, but it's really close. This is right towards the end when they find the spring. I thought the spring passage was particularly curious. Goes, they found so if you remember, they were given a little bit of tonic, and they were told to mix with water whenever they were feeling tired, or which when they felt tired, they were also feeling irritable with each other and had conflict. So they found the spring at the heart of the forest. Only once, long ago, had Nigel imagined it, but he had never drawn it. Okay, so we do get this, I'll call it ambiguity about the pre-existence of it, right? However, it then says, now he perceived that it was the source of the lake that glimmered far away and the nourishment of all that grew in the country. This is not something he had previously decided, right? This is he perceived this about it, and it makes imagination here seem like a form of perception rather than creation, or maybe a long with or something. And I want to throw out a second, a little second question here that we can get to or we can skip whatever, but I did I just noticed it as I read it here. He saw that the spring was the nourishment of all the grew in the country. The few drops from their tonic made the water astringent, rather bitter, but invigorating, and it cleared the head. And then this line after drinking, they rested alone. And then they got up again and things went on merrily. So I'm curious about that aloneness. I don't understand it. I don't know that it's related to what we're talking about right now, but they've they're doing everything together, getting some conflicts. They drink this water of life type of thing with this medicine in it, and then they rest alone.

unknown 23:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 23:44

And then they feel better and go.

SPEAKER_02 23:45

Yeah, so this I don't know what that's about. They're in. I think I can offer an explanation, which is that the tonic comes from the hospital. And the hospital is this discipline which is unpleasant and lonely, but which heals you. And so the tonic is like they had to get they had to get like the really big wrinkles ironed out in the hospital, actually, like constrained. But then now Nigel has grown up enough that he can go about on his own, and he gets a just a little flask of discipline, which he can self-administer.

SPEAKER_00 24:28

And at the end of the day, before the tonics were finished, they had ceased to need them.

SPEAKER_02 24:32

And the and by the time they have this is like the final finishing process of uh what's the theological word for becoming holy? Sanctification. Sanctification. So there's like 99% of the sanctification happens in the hospital, and then there's 1% that can't happen all at once. It has to happen more slowly. I don't know if it's that much, right?

SPEAKER_06 24:59

Because he talks about how he's amazed at how much better his time management is, but he but there's still work. I don't know. Well, uh yeah, you're right. Uh the tonics are super effective because they clear out seemingly they super effectively clear away the tier of immaturity and dysfunctionality that was pr preventing participation in whatever it is that there's you know, he's supposed to be doing this creation process, this delving into this real to me, you guys are talking about imagination versus perception. I call foul. I don't think that those two things are happening. I think that we're dealing with a tesseract here. Like those I I cried at the end because it was such an incredibly clear manifestation of this aspect of the father's heart, where the father likes to tell a story or create a thing and invite someone into it. It's a story about just how absolutely mother flipping real the things that we can be invited into are. Right? He imagined a spring one time early on, way back, and it's the source of all of the water and the life in this whole land. And so it's I to me, it seems like this is a story about God, about the power of how real the thing we can make is in this life, because God has ordained that it should be a reflection of something eternal.

SPEAKER_02 26:51

Um that's what I'm calling the Platonist view, which is that Nigel sets out to He sets out to just do a simple drawing exercise as well as he possibly can, and the better and better he does it, the more it conforms to the forms, like the heads which are pre-existent.

SPEAKER_06 27:16

But it's not conforming, it's incepting.

SPEAKER_02 27:21

The Platonist view is that there's no such thing as learning. All learning is recollection. You can't imagine something new, you can only recollect pre-existing forms.

SPEAKER_06 27:33

Which would be interesting. That coincides with it's happening in a different causal relationship, but there's a similar rhythm, there's a similar punctuation density of occurrence, right? Of niggle just one time thinking of a spring way early on. And that's it. It's and it's real and it's there. There's no continuous improvement and embellishment. It the spring doesn't become more and more and more like a perfect spring. It's just the moment he thinks about it. And so that spring, right? Isn't that kingdom of God language, right? The spring of life. You know, God is, I don't know. I this is Let me go ahead.

SPEAKER_00 28:17

Let me ask you so uh about this idea of the pre-existence of the thing and recognition. Tolkien goes to some length to point out that no one else can see it, can see any of the things. Parrish calls the uh canvas that daubing, right? As a matter of fact, he looks at it and can he says explicitly he can only see splotches and lines, right?

SPEAKER_06 28:45

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 28:46

Everybody else who's there sees other things.

SPEAKER_06 28:49

He doesn't even notice the painting that he was doing. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 28:53

And he says, What um really say it again? Say that again.

SPEAKER_02 28:59

What was sorry, Atkins can see it at the end.

unknown 29:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 29:05

Atkins can see it.

SPEAKER_06 29:06

But there's a very notable point where he's having a conversation with him. He's like, What? Where do you talk? What? I didn't even see that. Yeah, yeah. Anyway, keep going, Survivor.

SPEAKER_00 29:14

Well, I was just gonna say in the part where right before that, he's talking about the one picture that bothered him. Nigel has tried to capture some pictures that were beyond his skill, right? Yeah. Uh, where was that? It says he had a number of pictures on hand. Most of them were too large and ambitious for his skill. He was the sort of painter who can paint leaves better than trees. He used to spend a long time on a single leaf. And then there's that one that bothered him. And then it talks, and then it's that passage that Matt said. All of that's really interesting because it's a curious thing to talk about him having these pictures that he can't make, right? And the picture that he can make, other people can't see. And what he wishes more than anything were somebody would come in. No, sorry, that he would come in and say, what a brilliant job. And then we're gonna start the public attention. Yeah. I guess I'm just I'm on the side that the story says whether or not whatever interpretation we like, the story does say that the things have a pre-existence. The question isn't whether the story says it. The question is, what does one question could be, what does Tolkien or the narrator or whatever, whichever layer we like, mean by saying that the things are pre-existent. But it does say that they are.

SPEAKER_02 30:38

Dwight, I see you were flashing your mute button. Do you have something to say?

SPEAKER_00 30:44

Please do. We can't hear you if you're saying anything, Dwight.

SPEAKER_02 30:47

Dwight, text me if you're trying to talk and you can't. But maybe Dwight has just gone to the bathroom or something.

SPEAKER_06 30:55

Dwight, if you've been crushed by an enormous boulder and you're unable to reach any form of traditional media communication, please telepathically broadcast. So I didn't get anything, so he's probably okay. Well, hang on. We're talking about the pre-existingness of these things, but isn't that absurd? Isn't that nonsensical to even question? Because really they've just kind of Well, I don't know. I in a certain way, it feels like they have entered into a place, and the entering into that place, the fact that that's happening in time is really only an artifact of the way that they're experiencing being in the place here. We don't really know anything whether they are in that moment cotemporally with life, or if this is post.

SPEAKER_00 31:54

I'm gonna say, Josh, that the reason the fact that we don't know anything about it is why we don't call it absurd or nonsensical. Absurdity and nonsense presuppose sense, what is sensible, the rules by which we're told here in a sensible-like way, that they have a pre-existence of a kind, like narratively.

SPEAKER_06 32:16

That's fair. No, so I see what you mean.

SPEAKER_00 32:18

The goal isn't to say, at least I would I assert that.

SPEAKER_06 32:21

Yeah, the fact that his health is changing is an indicator of a fluidity of time. So that's fair. I think that establishes some amount of flow.

SPEAKER_00 32:31

So I'll tip the you know, the sort of poker hand of my heart here and maybe show a little bit of corruption of my soul. That the line where Niggle says things could have been different but not better. It's almost painful to me to read or listen to. It's something like, I get it, obviously. Like intellectually, I can grasp what he's saying, and I can come up with a world in which I believe that. And even probably something like think that that's the better way, but I don't quite believe that world yet. Maybe I should, but I don't. What do you mean by that? If things could have been different, but not better. So somehow we're living in whatever world we end up being in, is all things are worked towards good for those who love the Lord and are called according to his purpose, or something like that, right? And I think this is this is where I'm gonna, this is where I'm really tipping the hand to show the corruption I have. I think that's actually true. I think that I'm something like deeply skeptical of some kinds or some amount or some element of redemption. And I think I have some piece of my soul or something that still wants it to matter.

SPEAKER_03 34:06

Right. I was just gonna say you can't start at the top of the mountain.

SPEAKER_00 34:11

Say more?

SPEAKER_03 34:12

You can walk up the mountain a different way. You'll eventually get to the top of the mountain, but you can't start at the top of the mountain.

SPEAKER_00 34:21

I I want to tell a quick anecdote about that because I think that's really interesting for you to say that to me. I was in high school once, and a military recruiter came to our high school and happened to stop me walking on the way to the lunch line or something, and asked me if I had ever thought of joining the military. And I honest I said honestly, yeah, a little, but I don't really, there's some things I don't really get. And he said a few things, and I said, Okay, that sounds interesting. Well, what rank would I start as? And he did not respond well to that.

SPEAKER_03 34:53

You gotta sign up, you gotta sign up to the military in the middle of a war, and then he can then he can jump ahead.

SPEAKER_02 35:00

Yeah. Let me amplify Sir Robert's question or rephrase the question I think Sir Robert is asking. If imagine that there are two niggles, right? And one niggle is the one that Tolkien wrote this story about, and another niggle is the one who paid more attention to the things that the first voice is concerned about. And this niggle had a great idea for a tree painting, but in the same way that the spring and the lake that was fed by the spring were only an idea in his head when he was painting the tree.

SPEAKER_00 35:37

The whole tree was only an idea in his head in second niggle's life, because he spent all of his time attending to the matters of the law, and everything was an interruption, and he um But there was no hospital time, or very little or whatever.

SPEAKER_06 35:56

And there was very difficult time.

SPEAKER_02 36:02

He stored up treasures for himself where moth and rust do not destroy, and thieves can't break in and steal, and he arrived in the other country with those treasures and didn't have to be put into the storehouse, and he took the train to Niggles country right away. But there was no Niggles now There's no Niggles Country.

SPEAKER_06 36:24

Well, there is a Niggles country because it pre-existed, but in this scenario, I don't mean to interrupt you, Matt, but I need to ask you this before you move on. In this scenario where Nigel II is keeping the law, is he the same kind of artist and has keeping the law changed his passion or his activity as an artist?

SPEAKER_02 36:50

That's one question.

SPEAKER_06 36:51

That's a great question. Is he a painter?

SPEAKER_02 36:53

One way of answering it is that if he had attended to the law better, he actually would have found that he had more time for painting, right? And he would have been a better painter and he would have gotten more of the tree done.

SPEAKER_06 37:06

But that's a You're referring to the thought process that he has in the story where he says, if he goes back and if I had done this, then this wouldn't have happened, and that and that and that, and that would have saved me a bunch of time. Are you referring to that?

SPEAKER_02 37:18

Or are you referring to the that's that's explicitly that's explicitly in it. Yeah, I didn't realize that was explicitly in it. But yeah, that's absolutely right. Tolkien is thinking of that. No, but Sir Robert's asking, what I think Sir Robert's asking is if the niggle in the story is going to say that things could not have been better, then of what use is the law? If the law's actually meaningful, then it should have an eternal consequence. But if things could have been different, but not better, then the only consequence of neglect of the law is a different path to something that's just as good. Shall we not sin then so the grace can increase?

SPEAKER_00 38:02

I was just gonna say that.

SPEAKER_06 38:04

Doesn't that but hang on, up until the moment where you I'm not being mean, but said something stupid at the end, isn't that evidence that you're in the pocket of a thing of the kingdom? Because the father's grace is of a nature that it is tempting to philosophers and prigs to get it wrong, you know, get it deeply wrong and stumble over it. What were you saying, do I?

SPEAKER_03 38:33

In this parable, we're only given you know one path through life. We don't get the when you go on the journey, we're given one train trip, not uh not everybody gets sent in the same way, you know.

SPEAKER_02 38:52

That's true. I'm creating a thought experiment that is invalid. You could disagree?

SPEAKER_06 39:00

Go ahead. What were you saying to it?

SPEAKER_03 39:01

You could be sent to a you know a very different place. Not a hospital, but a prison.

SPEAKER_00 39:09

I find it interesting that the hospital, he there is uh ambiguity of a hospital like a prison. I mean, he's saying the same thing that, you know, inasmuch as he was not a lawkeeper, there's a prisonness necessary. In in you know, in this particular parable.

SPEAKER_06 39:28

So when we're talking about uh when Nigel says, uh, look, uh, could things have been different? Maybe, sure, but they wouldn't have been better, isn't that simply an outworking of the fact that what's at stake is this question of either circumstance or me? Right? When you talk about things being different, you need to be more precise. Do you mean uh the things outside of you being different, or do you mean you being different? And I think that's what Nigel means by that couldn't have been better, because he's I it to me, and maybe I'm wrong, you tell me if I'm wrong, it feels like he's going back and agreeing to one part of the conceit, but in my mind, he's not agreeing to the conceit of him being different in the past, because that's just absurd. That's a shortcut that's going against the whole point of all of this, which is that it's divinely by God's choice that what's at stake is what's inside of us, and the wrestling over it.

SPEAKER_02 40:39

He's talking about his relationship with his neighbor that might have been different, but could not have been better.

SPEAKER_06 40:45

Sure. I would argue that that's microcosmic. I I would argue that he is. That I would argue that he's talking about everything. He's talking about the entire freaking point of this human life that we get put on this earth in this current form in this body. Because we're gonna have another life later where we will be all about that art. And the lion will lay down with the lamb, the asp, the kid will shove his hand in a viper's hole and not get bit. We'll run around painting leaves and flowers. That feels like 2.0.

SPEAKER_03 41:24

The art the art ends. He's done, he's finished painting, he changes into a mountain climber.

SPEAKER_06 41:32

I think he's inside the art. He's a he is even more of an artist than he was before, because the whole point of the art on the other side of it was to paint it enough to see it, and now he's inside of it, and he can see it from the inside. So I think the whole time all he was ever doing was seeing and exploring.

SPEAKER_02 41:54

Ultimately, he thinks it's funny that Niggle's Parish should be named for him.

SPEAKER_00 42:00

Let me read a passage about that. Because they say at some point we told Niggle and Parish, right? We told them this. What did they do? They laughed, right? That's the end of the story. Yeah. Let me read a little passage here that is uh Sorry, just real quick.

SPEAKER_03 42:15

I only just because I'm seeing it, I was just listening to it. I didn't catch that the name of the place, Niggles Parish, combines their two names.

SPEAKER_06 42:26

I just yeah, yeah. Isn't that great? They that's yeah, they laugh and laugh. And by the way, do I I don't have the text in front of me. Can you do me a favor? Do you if you have it handy, if it's bothersome, don't. But the poor the passage where the guide, the female guide, shows up and is like, Well, do you guys want to keep going? She says to them, she says to the two of them, you could have. At some point, she does get like she speaks as a semi-omniscient narrator inside of the story, and gives at least a tiny bit of inside baseball to Nigel and Parrish and tells them what they could have accomplished and stuff like that. I feel like that passage has some real meat in it for us to kind of understand what's happening.

SPEAKER_02 43:19

Are you talking about the mountain climber?

SPEAKER_06 43:21

She's she's like she's a guide. She shows up and says, I'm a guide, and I can keep you, I can take you guys from.

SPEAKER_02 43:29

I can read the passage, but it's not a woman.

SPEAKER_06 43:31

Oh, maybe you know what? I listened to the thing on YouTube. Maybe they switched it to a looked like a shepherd.

SPEAKER_03 43:38

Yeah. He was walking towards them down the grass slopes.

SPEAKER_02 43:43

They set out next day and they walked until they came right through the distances to the edge. It was not visible, of course, there was no line or fence or wall, but they knew that they had come to the margin of that country. They saw a man. He looked like a shepherd. He was walking towards them down the grass slopes that led up into the mountains. Do you want a guide? He asked. Do you want to go on? For a moment a shadow fell between Nigel and Parish, for Niggle knew that he did now want to go on, and, in a sense, ought to go on. But Parish did not want to go on and was not yet ready to go. And then they have they have some conversation between Nigel and Parrish.

SPEAKER_06 44:29

And you've already hit the meat of it. To go on. I'm not cutting you off. I'm lamb to go on is to leave the land that constituted Nigel's original vision. What were you saying, sir?

SPEAKER_00 44:42

Let me let me jump into this real quickly, if you don't mind, Matt. Please. So I just want to read two passages. I was going to read one before, but here's two of them. This is the first one is after Nigel has gotten the voice, the first voice and the second voice are reviewing the case of Nigel. And the first voice concedes to the second voice. Okay, well, it's your job to, you know, you have the final say, right? And he says, I think you put it too strongly, said the first voice, but you have the last word. It's your task, of course, to put the best interpretation on the facts. What do you propose? Now the second voice says, I think it's a case for a little gentle treatment now. And then Nigel is favorable towards that. There's a silence. The first voice spoke to Nigel quite close. You've been listening. What do you have to say? Okay. The next day, Nigel's blinds are drawn, his cell's full of sunshine, no hospital uniform. After breakfast, his sore hands are treated, and he gave Nigel some good advice, a bottle of tonic, and then immediately off to the railroad station, railway station. So I'm going to say the gentle treatment is either healing the hands, giving him a better whatever, and a nice morning, or the entire time at the tree is still part of the hospital. It's the gentle treatment.

SPEAKER_02 46:03

That's passage number one. There's one more thing that they give him.

SPEAKER_00 46:07

The tonic? An advice? What was it?

SPEAKER_02 46:11

No, no, no. They give him a biscuit and a glass of wine.

SPEAKER_00 46:15

A biscuit and a glass of wine. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 46:17

And a ticket. And a ticket for the train. Um wait, let me read the second passage.

SPEAKER_00 46:23

Is that right? Yes, please. Yeah. This is right at the end. Right at the end. That's the last page. Oh, the last page. Okay, great.

SPEAKER_02 46:31

It is proving very useful indeed, said the second voice, as a holiday and a refreshment. It is splendid for convalescence, and not only for that, for many, it is the best introduction to the mountains. It works wonders in some cases. I'm sending more and more there. They seldom have to come back.

SPEAKER_00 46:50

And I want to throw out there, just as a possibility, parishes' entire world that he's in charge of exists within Niggles. It is a staging ground. The people who might need parishes go to parishes, maybe. They go to the parish. Niggle needed to do the niggle bit. I think that's gentle treatment. The mountains are either themselves already a thing. We don't know whether they have a name, but I suspect they do.

SPEAKER_02 47:20

Well, the mountains are like the, you know, Dante circle within circles within circles, the highest, the heavens of the heavens.

SPEAKER_06 47:31

Well, and Lewis incorporates this imagery and this language into Narnia when Aslan Aslan says to these kids, like, you gotta go higher up and further in, higher up and further in. And that's the same as this imagery of always climbing, climbing, climbing further and further and further up into these mountains. I think Tolkien and Lewis mean the same thing by them.

SPEAKER_03 47:54

I mean, and Dante.

SPEAKER_06 47:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 47:57

Yeah, I really do enjoy this story, but I do sort of struggle with it as a metaphor, as a uh I know that Tolkien really hated allegory, but the allegory that he's laying out, I think, is you're right, Sir Robert. This is purgatory, the whole thing. I mean not the not the pre-life, but as he goes on the journey, and until he's climbing the mountains of heaven, that's all purgatory. And I, you know, personally don't think that is necessary. I think the gospel is actually more powerful than that. I think it's interesting and interesting to think about, but I don't think that's how the world works. Well, you know.

SPEAKER_06 48:46

No, I didn't see purgatory in the story. That's what's so funny. You guys can't were you say Matthew? Yeah, I didn't. Uh to me, it wasn't because purgatory is all about after death, you have to keep earning. You have to keep suffering until he's if if there's any purgatory in this entire thing, it's the hospital. The hospital's purgatory. Because the whole point of Catholic purgatory is to purge you and make you pure.

SPEAKER_03 49:21

Well, that's in the story. Yeah, right. He's being purged of his inability to interact with his neighbor well. He's being purged of his inability to get tasks done that are necessary. He's being purged of his, you know, desire to sit around and do nothing.

SPEAKER_06 49:41

Um his story wildly deviates from purgatory in that, and then he gets out there and he really does the thing. And so it's all about life and eternal life, and about how God has all these different places for us to be.

SPEAKER_03 49:57

I think when Tolkien says he doesn't like allegory, he's talking about sort of the pilgrim's progress style. Oh, uh, here is Mr. Stinky Man. He is really stinky. And here is you know Vanity Fair, where all the vanities come out and have a fair. But right, so I think Tolkien is sort of being, wouldn't it be nice if this was what purgatory was like? But also I think he, as a you know, Catholic understands more about it than I do. You know?

SPEAKER_02 50:34

And yeah, that's all I really what I was gonna say, Dwight, I'm gonna I'm gonna add to your point, which is to, in order to make the purgatory part of the story believable, to make it feel correct, the story has to skip lightly over uh Nigel's death. His actual his the thing that is if we're saying this is his life, this is his death, this is purgatory, this is heaven, then the part of the part of his death he doesn't even notice.

SPEAKER_03 51:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 51:14

He's in a fever dream. He's coming in and out, he's hearing voices.

SPEAKER_02 51:18

Whereas in theology, death is an incredibly significant, you know, death removes sin. You die to pay for sin.

SPEAKER_06 51:29

But isn't this really good Christian theology? Isn't this just good fiction that implements what Jesus says robustly? If anyone believes in me, he will never die. You know, niggle doesn't die. It's just it's just life to life to life. And and that's the mystery of it. Is that uh death, like uh forget about death. Like, death is not an important part of this story because the point of the story is that uh Nigel uh his his his name is this horrible uh transitive verb. It's a terrible transitive verb for a name because it is an impotent uh attempt uh at dealing with something and engaging with something. It is uh ineffectual and small and uh uh trifling, right? And yet other people are able to come to this place that niggle has imagined and embodied and touched. It's like in a Linux command touch. You know, as you touch something, it comes into being horror, right? It feels like Nigel has Linux uh touched this place, right? And so a real realm of grace has been substantiated where other people can come.

SPEAKER_02 52:57

It may be that what Tolkien is imagining, and you can imagine that there is something like the Library of Babel, right, but for places where every possible place already is, and by following the rules of his art, which is to say the rules of composition, how to make things look real, uh Nigel has located an actual existing place out of all the possible existing places, and then the government builds a train to that place because they saw that Nigel had been working on a painting of it.

SPEAKER_06 53:35

Um How does that wait? The government builds a train to the place?

SPEAKER_02 53:40

Yeah, the train is new.

SPEAKER_06 53:42

It doesn't so post post-hospital.

SPEAKER_02 53:46

Yeah, the train he gets on to go from the hospital to Nigel's place is brand new. The seats are green, they've just been painted.

SPEAKER_03 53:56

There's a thing that I think about when I think about specifically the way Tolkien wrote, and I think other good writers write this way, but a lot of people don't. And it had to do with the spring and how he had thought of it a long time ago, but had never discovered it, or something like that. And it seems to me that Tolkien really was just describing a place that was fully formed in his head, and so he would never be like, and then they walked left and then right and then left, and then he could make up where they were. He would say they walked left and then right and then left, and then tell you where they were, because that's where they were, you know, in the world that he's writing about. And I think nowadays a whole bunch of people try to write, and they're just like, I want them to be here, so I'll describe them traveling, and then I'll have them be there. And that's a sort of sub-quality way to write. It's how I would it's how like the best I've ever written is that way.

SPEAKER_00 55:14

There's a great line in one of the Muppet movies where they say they're gonna travel by montage. Yeah. Yeah. You know, and then it's just like these action sequences of travel.

SPEAKER_02 55:23

Yeah. That's why realism is easier because you have a real world to move people through. You can just look it up instead of having to invent it.

SPEAKER_03 55:34

Realism not being like Tolkien, realism being about in our world or yeah.

SPEAKER_02 55:42

Like all the stuff that Tolkien did for his worlds, Wikipedia has done the real one. I was interested in I think Josh sort of has mentioned something like this a few times. There's a sense in which I imagine the real things that this is sort of a a parable about. I have this imagining that you sort of go to another dimension or another place completely, you like float out of your body, and you're a glowing blue force ghost, and then an glowing glowing yellow and white angel comes and wafts you out the window, right? And then there's like a a spinning tube, like in Donnie Darko, that you fly through.

SPEAKER_06 56:38

So, Robert, was that what it was like for you?

SPEAKER_02 56:40

But um, in this, it is all of the things are on the same plane. Like it's one plane of existence.

SPEAKER_06 56:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 56:49

Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. What's your what's the question you were formulating?

SPEAKER_02 56:55

Uh I'm not sure if I really have a question. Or I guess. Do you remember Flatland?

SPEAKER_03 57:02

Sort of Dante presents all of this too, right?

SPEAKER_02 57:07

Yes, exactly. So in like in Flatland, the two-dimensional characters cannot on their own power in any way get up into the third dimension. Because there's no combination of vectors on those two dimensions which can produce motion in a different dimension than the vectors exist in. Not with that attitude, but go on. If a third or fourth or sixth or whatever dimensional being wants to get a flatlander, they sort of reach down and they pick them up. Right? But which is sort of what we imagine, like going to heaven is like becoming a blue force ghost and getting wafted somewhere. And I guess part of that is because when you die, your body is dead, and nobody can see you anymore. So it actually is a really big transition, but none of the people who are alive can see you anymore. Right. But there's no real reason why like, okay, you have the story of the cosmonaut who went up into space and was like, I didn't see heaven, therefore God's not real. Right? But the story makes me think that there's no there's not really any reason why you couldn't take a train to heaven or climb a mountain to heaven.

SPEAKER_06 58:33

Elijah takes a chariot, like to somewhere.

SPEAKER_02 58:37

Or take a train to purgatory. From your town, there could be a train to purgatory. Like a three-dimensional being could pick a section of the two-dimensional plane that the flatlander is on and just put a ramp there.

SPEAKER_00 58:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 58:55

Just build a ramp, and then to the two-dimensional being, it's not different, but suddenly they're traveling in two-dimension, yeah, the third dimension, they don't even notice it.

SPEAKER_00 59:05

Yeah. So that happens actually in two places in the Bible, Matt. The ramp. Where? And they're actually the same ramp. It happens in both. It is in Ezekiel chapter two and revelation, I'm gonna say four or five. And the actually, nope, it also happens in Revelation 20 20, 21.

SPEAKER_06 59:30

Sorry, I just got a picture of Sean White and Tony Hawk being the two prophets, and they're on the ramp, you know, just carving the ramp. Sorry, go ahead, keep going.

SPEAKER_00 59:38

Yeah. The language of the ramp there is the sea of Christ. So Ezekiel is sitting by the Kabar River and he sees these this chariot of God, and the chariot is made of four angels, right? It's got four walls and four wheels, and it's moving around all over the place. And then he says, Ezekiel looks up, and the upness here is really interesting, right? Because it's different than when he talks about he looks out and sees the sky with the cherubim and such. And he looks up, this different kind of up, and he sees this great expanse, this crystal above him, and on the top of it is this throne where there sits this figure who is, he describes it and he says, This was the image of the countenance of the glory of the Lord, right? And there's a whatever. John gets the same vision later, except he's pulled up into the top of the to the door at heaven, looks down and sees the crystal sea, presumably with the earth below, and he sees the same creatures. I just want to throw that out there, Matt, because I really liked how you said that. And I wanted to I just want to throw out there that I don't know how common it is for people, but I myself have seen, as I as y'all know, have seen some things of spirit, some angels, demons, that kind of stuff, with I'm gonna say it this way, but I'm not sure if it's a metaphor or not, but with my own eyes. And I think that it's not quite like traversing a distance. It's more like an overlay or something like that, but it's very present, even though it's very imperceptible most of the time. Supremely missable. Anyway, just throwing that out there. I really like that. The fact that there's a huge expanse that separates heaven and earth, and then in Revelation 21 or 20 or whatever it is, he says, I saw the New Jerusalem, the holy city coming down out of heaven as a bride, beautifully adorned for a husband, and there was no longer any sea, right? So it's merging that gap between us and the spiritual is going away, and now the dwelling of God is with men. Okay, I'll see.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:51

I guess what I wanted to say was like contemporary scientific geographers think that there's no such thing as that because they can't find it. But of course they can't find it, they're two-dimensional.

SPEAKER_06 1:02:04

Yeah. It isn't here.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:06

They're extremely weak, they're like ants on the ground.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:10

Willfully two-dimensional. Right.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:12

They could develop their third dimension if they wanted.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:15

Yeah, they're actually three-dimensional and they're leaving a dimension off. Freaking got him. That's fair.

SPEAKER_06 1:02:22

Got him, dude. Blind. Get him. They've already been got, man.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:27

Stop, dude. Stop. He's dead. He's dead. I guess I'll reveal my corruption, which is which is I spent a lot of time this summer reading uh Deleuze and Guattari, and it's insane and wrong about a lot of stuff. But one thing that's really interesting about it is that Deleuze does not really admit the diff admit the existence of different kinds of things. He's basically like everything is machines.

SPEAKER_06 1:03:00

He must get really confused in the container store.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:03

He's like, everything is machines and flows. And sometimes there are strata. So how modern is he? The 70s.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:13

70s. Okay. So it that sounds very I mean this not as a joke at all. That sounds very DMT.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:21

I wouldn't be surprised.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:22

It really does.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:23

I wouldn't be surprised. But also, like. Is that a weird drug?

SPEAKER_00 1:03:28

The so-called spirit drug. It's and it's one of the ways you can get. I haven't taken it or anything, but I know of it from a lot of reading about it. And there's it's a really interesting thing. One of the important things is getting very far into that particular drug. Uh there's a consistent thing that people who go far into it towards ego death see, and it's the elves in the machine. It's the machine elves. Gremlins, the machine elves that kind of are the gremlins that operate the giant universal mechanisms. I just want to point out that sounds like what he's saying, right? It's all really fundamentally something like that, with illusions of thing.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:03

No, I almost. He would say something like, There are no illusions. Nothing is illusory. Because that would be a different kind of thing. Like, you've got flows of capital, you've got flows of money, you've got flows of urine, you've got flows of water, you've got flows of tectonic plates, you've got flows of astral dust in space.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:30

It's like modern Heraclitian.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:32

Yeah, there's nothing but flows, and machines are things that that cut off and enable, by which flows cut off and enable other flows. And and a story like this is makes me feel like, you know what, he's got a point. Because, you know, if we think of something like heaven or spiritual reality as being a different kind of thing, then it's very easy to not think about it during the day or not be present in it. But Nigel is not in a different place when he's struggling with his neighbor parish in the beginning versus when he reconciles with him at the end. Like they just walked from the place that they were to the new place and they spent some time in a hospital prison. Like, it's not anyway. It's nothing, nothing happens to them that couldn't have happened anywhere else.

SPEAKER_06 1:05:33

Would Nigel have gotten a place if Parrish hadn't been in his life? And I don't mean that in the sense of would Nigel have missed out on the opportunity to earn it. I mean, is it like in the sense that there can only be something between two people when you have like what's the difference between a rabbit? One ear is the same, pickles the minds of people because you can't have one ear like what's the difference between a rabbit? There's Only one rabbit, you have to have two rabbits. Like is it Niggle and Parish is the die is the tension between the two of them making the reality making the space of Nigel Parish.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:15

I mean, I think that what Nigel sort of learned is that community is required. He can't just sit there and paint. He has to Oh, interesting. Has to take in those uh what did he call them? Distractions. Interruptions. Interruptions.

SPEAKER_06 1:06:33

Interesting. What he calls interruptions is really living in community.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:06:38

But he's an artist living in community. Go ahead, Sir Robert.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:43

So Dwight, I'm interested in I I first thought you meant one thing, and then I thought you meant another by the time you finished talking. And so maybe you can clarify. As far as learned about living in community, at first I thought you meant when he was working on the tree later on, he realized that it was necessary to have parishes insight in order to complete them correctly. And as a matter of fact, some of the when he first got there, some of the leaves had, you know, influence of Parish there. But then when you finished talking, I thought, oh, maybe you're saying something closer to the about the interruptions and about how the law, or maybe not the law, but the kind of the important or relevant things were the parts about interacting with Parish. Did you mean either of those or a third thing?

SPEAKER_03 1:07:28

I think both. Primarily the first thing, but I think the interruptions, right? Like Parrish telling him about birds and flowers that he knows about would have been interruptions in the first part of the story.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:46

Let me ask you this because I think it's a really important to me question that I just came up. I just thought of. Let me formulate it. I'm back on that question of things can be different but not better. Um if Nigel is with Parrish prior to the train ride, so you know he's alive or whatever, if Nigel's with Parish and he finished some amount of the tree in real life, but it looks like maybe it didn't matter how much of the tree he finished, and so forth and so on, is there something appropri should Nigel, could Nigel have lived in community with Parrish and just been completely content not to work on the tree? Or was it important that he work on the tree? Is there some kind of faith issue here? Is there some kind of I d I don't understand this yet?

SPEAKER_03 1:08:42

I sort of think the tree was going to be finished as well as you can finish something that is alive, like that line says.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:52

And that You don't mean just finished with, like just because he ended, but you mean like something else.

SPEAKER_03 1:08:58

Yeah, he was gonna get to that point, and you can squeeze it around if you want. You could squeeze some back to the beginning, and it would be different, but it's not necessarily better that it happened before and that he was in the hospital for less time because the tree gets to that point. It is finished.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:20

So when Parrish comes round and says, Hey, can you go to town and get the builder and the doctor? A good response, maybe maybe a better even response from Nigel, I'm asking this. Is would that be something like, you know, well, good golly, yes. That's better than this tree thing. You know, I'm not exactly, but you know, I'm I'm what's how how shall I then live?

SPEAKER_03 1:09:49

I I don't know.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:50

I think I mean the best I can put forward is that I have seen sometimes in a mysterious way that if the parish in your life comes to you and says, Hey, can you catch your death of cold for no reason because my wife's not my wife is gonna be better tomorrow and you know it, and the builder's not even gonna come, and you say, Yes, by golly, I'd love to, then mysteriously, sometimes you get better at painting by doing that.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:30

I don't know what I expected, but I didn't expect you to say that.

SPEAKER_06 1:10:35

I would absolutely agree with you, real quick, Matthew. Throwing yourselves upon the vicissitudes of this life is a fantastic way to grow as an artist because it will plunge you into circumstances that you would have never found yourself in before, right?

SPEAKER_02 1:10:48

Well, we touched on this earlier, and somebody who's not me, either Dwight or Josh, found this passage where Nigel is regretting he's in the hospital prison and he's regretting that he had not obeyed the law sooner and gone over and mended. And this is a period of time we don't see him make this decision, which he regrets in the story. The story skips right over it. But he makes a decision at one point when a couple of tiles have blown off of his neighbor's roof, he could have gone over there that day and mended the roof when it was a simple, easy fix, but he was too busy working on his painting instead. He didn't even he decided not to. And so there is if he had been eager to obey the things of the law, if he had been eager to fix the wind damage to his neighbor's house, as soon as it happened, then he would have had more time to paint ultimately.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:52

But he wouldn't have to be a big deal.

SPEAKER_06 1:11:53

But he would have been the kind of person go ahead.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:56

Bigger, better tree. He would the tree would have been painted at in the end.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:03

The tree would have got painted in the end, maybe.

SPEAKER_06 1:12:06

What the heck does the relations what is what is him painting the tree have to do with the tree existing at all? I don't think I'm not convinced that those two have anything to do with each other. That tree exists in the place that it exists because he saw it and it became real, not because he painted it.

SPEAKER_03 1:12:26

I mean, at the end he's not even really painting, is he? He's doing other things. But it is quote unquote painting. Yeah, I'm Does it use any does it use any painting language post- No, in the end he's they're like walking around and digging and he's Well, before the mountain. When they're creating Nigel's Parish by the Sea.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:53

Yeah, uh Parrish has a shovel.

unknown 1:12:56

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:57

But I don't know what Nigel has and what he's doing.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:00

Here's a passage after Parish is spending a lot of his time wandering around looking at the niggly things, and Nigel is now doing a lot of gardening. One day Niggle was busy planting a quickset hedge, and Parrish was lying on the grass nearby, looking attentively at the beautiful and shapely yellow yellow flowers. They've traded tools, except that Nigel's tool, I don't know if they traded, but Nigel's tool, sort of, that Parrish took is looking and beholding the real things. And Nigel has taken out Parrish's gardening implement, but that's not painting that's happening. This isn't uh I'd get in a fight with you about that.

SPEAKER_06 1:13:39

I'm not sure that they're not fighting. Granted, he's doing gardening. He's obviously doing gardening. I'm not saying that he's not doing we're fighting when I say we're fighting. He's obviously gardening, but again, isn't he's I think he's still painting in the sense that uh Christ uh is doing a whole bunch of different things, and those transitive verbs that he's doing are working at multiple levels. Right. I think that uh Nigel has some sort of ministry uh that is uh uh borrowing from uh participating in uh this uh uh Christological, like he's doing something Christological. He's making a place that people come to and get healed. Uh he's making a kingdom of healing, isn't he? I mean that's that's how Revelation That's a like there's a tree with leaves for the healing of the nations, 12-folding. How is that in conflict with what I said?

SPEAKER_00 1:14:44

I don't understand.

SPEAKER_06 1:14:46

So uh you're saying he's not painting anymore. I think he's still painting. I think he's still in the painting.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:55

I'm saying the language that the story uses isn't painting verbs, it's other things. I'm not saying there's not, you know, other things happening, but I'm saying just the language. Yeah, I think he's completing Which is the best kind of correct.

SPEAKER_03 1:15:09

He's completing the painting, but he's using different tools. Yeah, I think that he could have painted more of it and then gardened less of it. And I think that gets to the different but not better.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:24

But the passage end result is the Nigel walked about, but he was not merely pottering. He was looking round carefully. The tree, capital T tree, was finished, though not finished with, just the other way about to what it used to be, he thought, when the tree was not yet finished, and yet he was finished with it. But in the forest there were a number of inconclusive regions that still needed work and thought. Nothing needed altering any longer, nothing was wrong as far as it had gone, but it needed continuing up to a definite point. Nigel saw the point precisely in each case. He sat down under a very beautiful distant tree, a variation of the great tree, but quite individual, or it would be with a little more attention, and he considered where to begin work and where to end it and how much time was required. He could not quite work out his scheme. Of course, he said, What I need is parish. There are lots of things about earth, plants, and trees that he knows and I don't. This place cannot be left just as my private park. I need help and advice. I ought to have got it sooner. He got up and walked to the place where he had decided to begin work. Check this out. He took off his coat. Then, down in a little sheltered hollow hidden from a further view, he saw a man looking round rather bewildered. He was leaning on a spade, but plainly did not know what to do. Niggle hailed him. Perish, he called. So Fascinating. So nothing is painter's coat. Nothing is wrong with it, but there's still work to be done to make each tree more individual. It is this is story.

SPEAKER_00 1:17:15

Which was his aspiration from the beginning.

SPEAKER_02 1:17:18

His aspiration was that each leaf would be different from all the other leaves, and yet still good.

SPEAKER_00 1:17:25

No, from the very beginning, yes, but not a successful one, whatever. And then he says, here it was, he used to spend a long time on a single leaf trying to catch its shape and sheen and glistening the dewdrops of its edges. Yet he wanted to paint a whole tree with all of its leaves in the same style and all of them different. And I think uh what I the way I heard that was he wants the ability to do that with trees.

SPEAKER_06 1:17:52

So and that's the point about skill. He's trying to do something beyond his skill. But by the end, he is able to be done to get the tree to the place where he's ready to be done working on it. And he's effective. So the skill comes to him in the end, presumably through collaboration with Parish. So it seems like if this is an allegory, then that means that there's to me, it feels like the first one of the first things that falls out is uh they're individual Christians that can uh really fancy their private uh pursuit of living out this itch that God has put in us. But we really hit our stride and we actually make things in the context of the body of Christ or perish. Right? So niggle and perish are an individual who's doing small fiddly things, a large thing that actually encompasses community and you know, an embodiment of the kingdom when the vision and the body come together.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:59

I think that's close to it, but it's not actually quite it. And I'll tell you why, because I think it's something like in the text, I mean in the story, something like I'm glad you're saying it's not that he does the tree better with Parish prior to his long journey. It's that the interactions with Parish change him such that he'll do the tree better. Because Parrish has no interest in the tree. I don't think he ever would. I think that I think it looks like, maybe not quite explicitly, but close to it, that Parish won't ever have any interest in the tree. It's those daubings, right? But something like that Nigel, had he been doing helping with the whatever, not only would he have more time to work on the tree if he had fixed the shingles earlier, the tiles, but maybe also something like had he been doing more for parish, he, as Nigel, would have had more parish influence on his life. He would have seen more things and made better trees already. He would be more satisfied. I don't know, something like that.

SPEAKER_02 1:20:07

I'll read the I'll read the paragraph. He went on looking at the tree, capital T. All the leaves he had ever labored at were there, as he had imagined them, rather than as he had made them. And there were others that had only budded in his mind, and many that might have budded if only he had had time. Nothing was written on them, they were just exquisite leaves, and yet they were dated as clear as a calendar. Some of the most beautiful and the most characteristic, the most perfect examples of the Nigel style, were seen to have been produced in collaboration with Mr. Parrish. There was no other way of putting it.

SPEAKER_00 1:20:52

Yeah, yeah, that's right. Okay. Interesting. If I were to well, I'll let some other people say things. I uh I you know I've been talking.

SPEAKER_03 1:21:01

It's interesting the Shepherd sort of pushes back on Mr. Parrish. He's the one who says that you called him those daubings. And Parrish is like, but it wasn't like that then. And I looked at it, it wasn't real. Um and Nigel immediately is like, oh, well, you know, I didn't really put it. Let me see where that is. So I can say the right thing. Uh I can read it. No, it was only a glimpse then, said the man, the shepherd. But you might have caught the glimpse if you had ever thought it were worth a while to try. So he's you know, he's I'm looking for the right word. He's uh saying something to Parrish, challenging him.

SPEAKER_06 1:21:46

Saying he's culpable.

SPEAKER_03 1:21:48

Yeah, and then Nigel immediately is like, oh, I didn't give you much of a chance. Never tried to explain. I called you old earth grubber. You know, Nigel's defending him. Even though back then he probably would have been like, Oh, I wish I wish people would look at it and not think of it as that daubing.

SPEAKER_06 1:22:07

But that tells you something that Niggle didn't know how to draw his neighbor in, and he didn't Yeah, I mean there was insufficient valuing of him. Yeah, he says, Oh, he gave me really cheap potatoes. You're like, oh, but but is is he appreciative and simple? Yes. But there are ways in which that simplicity is bred of simpletenness, not uh the simplicity of virtue, or it felt like.

SPEAKER_00 1:22:41

That potatoes line is really interesting in particular, Josh, because uh it comes right on the heels of the first and second voice having a conversation about Parish. And they say of him that he has Parish had done nothing for Nickel. Like Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Niggle here is doing this kind of interesting intercession where he says they're saying to him, look, this parish dude was this, you know, was a total leech. And that's coming from the first and second voices who have the records, right, to look at. Yeah, yeah. Niggle's saying, he gave me his potatoes. I don't know that that's something where Nigel is not able to see what Parrish really did. It looks to me more like Niggles doing what the second voice does and putting the best possible spin and interceding on behalf of Parish, who would have nothing if it weren't for this. Yeah, that's a very interesting thing.

SPEAKER_06 1:23:48

Yeah, that is part of the enough that he does for Parish. Yeah. Enough to get him included in his afterlife.

SPEAKER_00 1:23:57

Yeah. Um, let me read up to the interesting thing.

SPEAKER_03 1:24:00

Oh, sorry. Sorry, real quick. Go ahead, Dwight. What's interesting is the first thing Nickel Nigel says after the first voice says, You've been listening, is he ta he asks about Parish.

SPEAKER_06 1:24:13

He gets busted for laying there with his eyes closed. That's so funny. Keep going.

SPEAKER_00 1:24:18

Sorry, will you say it again, Dwight?

SPEAKER_03 1:24:19

I couldn't But he asks about Parrish. He doesn't defend himself. He doesn't say, Oh, you know, y'all have been uh misrepresenting it. It sort of feels like a Donrag because they're all talking and he's listening. Uh and he's like, Yeah, y'all, y'all got it all all right. He's come to the point where he he agrees with them. And so really, you know, the first voice says, Well, what do you have to say? He's like, Well, tell me about Parrish.

SPEAKER_00 1:24:53

I think also interesting about that, Dwight, is about the listening in. The paragraph where it talks about that is it says, Nigel was lying in the dark, resting completely. So that as he had not been either feeling or thinking at all, he might have been lying there for hours or years, as far as he could tell. And then here's this sentence. But now he heard voices, not voices that he had ever heard before. There seemed to be a medical board or et cetera, et cetera. He could not in any in the adjoining room with an also with an open door, possibly, though he could not see any light. It doesn't give any indication that Nigel made effort, particularly like he didn't go over and put his ear to the wall or anything like that. He just heard the voices. And when the second voice comes to him really close, he doesn't say something like, You've been eavesdropping, right? He just says, it it's almost as though he said, You heard the voices, oh, you were paying attention to this. I I think that's just a really neat uh about what you're saying, Dwight, that he's there's nothing to defend because he didn't exactly do anything. They weren't trying to be quiet and he intruded. He just heard them.

SPEAKER_06 1:26:00

Yeah. That this scene right here is part of why this story didn't feel like it had any purgatory in it at all. Because there's a judgment, and there's a thing that happens after the judgment. And purgatory is what you're doing and doing and doing and doing and doing, trying to get ready for the judgment. So, from that sense, zero purgatory.

SPEAKER_00 1:26:26

What's the judgment? Well, this is all after he's been doing a bunch of stuff.

SPEAKER_06 1:26:30

But he he gets sick, he's in the dark, he's laying there in the dark, and then he gets judged.

SPEAKER_02 1:26:40

But before that, he works for a century.

SPEAKER_00 1:26:44

More importantly, than the century. I agree, and importantly, he says he went on digging till his back seemed broken, his hands were raw, and he felt he could not manage another spadeful. Nobody thanked him. But the doctors did come and look at him and then said, basically, the doctor said, You've done enough. Go rest in complete darkness. And then there's the judgment voice. Got it. I'm just articulating, I'm just reading the actual paragraph sequence there.

SPEAKER_03 1:27:13

And and again, I will point out that I think Tolkien enjoys not making this an exact allegory. Like, I don't think Tolkien is saying this is what purgatory is a hundred percent. Yep. There's gonna be some things in there that don't quite lie that.

SPEAKER_06 1:27:34

I think the hospital could encompass both Earth and Purgatory, both life and purgatory. What were you saying, sir?

SPEAKER_00 1:27:39

I just said this last time, right when I introduced this, that one of the things I find interesting about this story is that Tolkien wrote in a letter to a friend about this story that it was the only thing he wrote without any pain. Everything else was a grind and grueling for him. This one came to him in a dream and with no effort. He just wrote it out. And it was his articulation of it was it was completely easy. It was just all there at once. I didn't do the work on it. As a matter of fact, he describes it like the tree that bothers Nickel. I don't know what to make of that. I'm just Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:28:16

Oh, fascinating. So you think that part of this is autobiographical and that he is Yeah, interesting.

SPEAKER_00 1:28:24

Well, the whole thing's I mean, the tree is Lord of the Rings, I'm assuming, right? Like the Hobbit and whatever. I could be wrong, but I mean it seems like it.

SPEAKER_03 1:28:31

Middle earth, you might say.

SPEAKER_00 1:28:33

Middle earth, yeah. Let me read another passage. I'm gonna commit a faux pas in it. Uh, this is just about the relationship between niggle and parish. The faux pas is that it's not from this work, it's from Ephesians. But this is just Ephesians 3 and the HCSB. First, like, maybe I'm gonna say nine, ten, ten verses. For this reason, and again, sorry, this is about doing work for your neighbor, knowing your neighbor, and that impacting you and the work that you can do, and things like that. For this reason, I, Paul, the prisoner of Christ Jesus, on behalf of you Gentiles, you've heard, haven't you, about the administration of God's grace that he gave me for you? The mystery was made known to me by revelation, as I have briefly written above. By reading this, you're able to understand my insight about the mystery of the Messiah. This was not made known to people in other generations as it has now been revealed to his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit. That is, the Gentiles are co-heirs, members of the same body, and partners of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel. There's flavors in niggle and parish of this. I was made a servant of this gospel by the gift of God's grace that was given to me by the working of his power. This grace was given to me the least of all the saints, this niggling lawyer, Paul, the least of all the saints, to proclaim to the Gentiles the incalculable riches of the Messiah, and to shed light for all on the abundant administration of the mystery hidden for the ages. Okay, so here's this part. To shed light for all about the administration of the mystery hidden for ages in God who created all things. This is so God's multifaceted wisdom may now be made known through the church to the rulers and authorities in the heavens. Um I just want to the really interesting thing about that is that through his multifaceted wisdom, through the interrelationship of the people, through the church interacting with each other, not a single power, not an angel coming and doing a thing or a demon or whatever, but through the interactions of the church, the other powers and principalities in the heavenly places have longed to look into this. What is he going to do? And what he did was he created creatures who, through our interactions, administer his kingdom in a wholly different way to manifest his multifaceted wisdom. Just throwing that out there because what Dwight said previously reminded me strongly of that.

SPEAKER_06 1:31:29

And the answer is no, because even if you physically kill me, I'm going to put my life into hundreds of millions of billions of people, and I'm going to spread my life across the earth in the church. So to me, that series of questions that Satan is asking before, I think that's exactly part of this whole thing that they're longing to look into. What on earth are you doing here? Can I kill you? You know, what am I up against? Well, what you're up against is God proving all these angels and demons wrong through the incarnation of the Holy Spirit and us. Interesting.

SPEAKER_02 1:32:13

I thought at first, Sir Robert, that you were saying that Nigel was the Gentiles and Parish was the Jews, but you're saying something different.

SPEAKER_00 1:32:26

No, I actually was at first saying I I think, by the way, that this is one of those places where there is a recursion, and or maybe a better way to say it is something like a hologram, is the language we like, which is where the same thing gets reflected at many layers. People like to say prophecies are fulfilled in many at many layers. I think the niggle is the Jews to perish as the Gentiles, that we're worthless, kind of mundane whatever. They're trying to glimpse these higher things, these oracles of God. I also think that niggle is the Gentiles and Parish is the Jews. And I also think that niggle is me and you guys are parish. And I also think that you're niggle and I'm Parish.

SPEAKER_03 1:33:15

That seems right.

SPEAKER_00 1:33:17

Well, though in my more lucid moments, I'm more niggle.

SPEAKER_02 1:33:22

Well, shall Dwight give us the reading for next week.

SPEAKER_00 1:33:27

Yeah, but let me do a salutation really quickly on this, and which is thank you, all three of you. This back when I was a person, I used to make all kinds of mistakes, but now I have things like regrets. And it is important to me to understand things like betterness and redemption and such. And so I really appreciate our talking through these things with me, and especially the just the opportunity to pick something like this and talk in a way that I don't normally get to with people. So thank you. Thanks for participating. And if anybody ever happens to listen to this thing, feel free to talk to me, find me, and talk to me about this as well.

SPEAKER_06 1:34:06

Do I and Sir Robert? I wanted to real quick, I wanted to thank you. This really, really deeply, deeply touched me as a piece of art towards the end of it. Like I literally wept as I read it because I it just so deeply made me feel that uh deep experience of someone else really deeply and richly describing what it's like to get someone else's vision and build it. And it that comes from, I think, such a deep part of God's heart that that was why it was so meaningfully artistically to me, is because it's such a real artistic thing to help give somebody a chance to really experience a little microcosm of, and I really appreciated it. Thank you.

SPEAKER_02 1:34:56

Can I add a little note? Here's a little this is just a little footnote to this reading. Anyone who's a literary person who's interested, I sent this PDF to these guys, but if you look at Nabokov's invitation to a beheading at the end of like the last half of chapter 11, there's interesting sort of comment or interesting resonance with this story.

SPEAKER_03 1:35:23

Dwight. Yes. Next time we meet in two-ish weeks, we will have read The Library of Babel by uh oh what's his name? I can see his name. Boris Borjaze. Yeah, Borja's.

SPEAKER_02 1:35:43

Thank you for joining us for this discussion. You are dismissed with the following valediction from Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. Now the hungry lion roars, and the wolf behowls the moon, whilst the heavy ploughman snores, all with weary task foredone. Now the wasted brands do glow, whilst the screech owl screeching loud, puts the wretch that lies in woe in remembrance of a shroud. Now it is the time of night that the graves all gaping wide, everyone lets forth his sprite in the churchway paths to glide, and we fairies that do run by the triple heckett's team, From the presence of the sun, following darkness like a dream, now our frolic, not a mouse, shall disturb this hallowed house. I am sent with broom before, to sweep the dust behind the door.