“Laughing, winking, and shaking her finger at the green spot, Varka steals up to the cradle and bends over the baby. After strangling him, she quickly lies down on the floor, laughing with joy that she can sleep, and a moment later is fast asleep like the dead.” – “Sleepy”, Anton Chekhov

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I’m good at fighting the wrong battles.

That’s not one hundred percent true – I’m actually pretty good at recognizing when a battle needs to be fought. I can easily see when situations are out of alignment or when something requires conflict to return to some sense of order.

The problem comes when I have to pick out the agent of chaos that is to be my opponent – quite often I pick the wrong one.

Here are a few examples of the (many) common imbalances I encounter, and instinctively or otherwise, confront with very little luck:

• I sometimes get stressed or anxious about things I’ve bottled up inside, whether it be school, work, money, or some internal dilemma. Though the conflict is easily recognizable, and the opponent most obviously me or the blatant stressors, I get snippy with whoever tries to talk to me, as if their interruptions to my brooding are causing all the stress.

• At times I grow too tired to do more work, even though there is more work to be done, and I blame my schedule or curse my to-do list, when, more often than not, the object of my blame should be my lack of good sleep and surplus of wasted time doomscrolling.

• I’m almost always hungry, as most close to me know, but at times I’ve been known to grow hangry… that nasty combo of hunger and anger that wreaks havoc all across the known world. I grow grumpy with everything around me, instead of recognizing that the problem is strictly the lack of food in my belly. My attention should be levered there, but more often than not I just grow quiet and irritated.

As you probably well know (after possibly being convicted by the same examples) this struggle in opponent picking is not special just to me – it’s a not-so-special attribute of our broken humanity.

You can probably see yourself, or those close to you, exhibiting these same behaviors.

The scientific minded among us may correctly point out that all this sounds a lot like displaced aggression - a psychological defense mechanism where an individual is not able to take out their aggression on the source of it, so they often lever their frustration at a weaker, less dangerous party. The classic examples of this are the abusive fathers who take out their bad day at work on whoever is closest once they get home, or the kid who doesn’t get any attention from parents which turns them into a bully at school.

In some cases, perhaps, it is easy to see that man turns from the true source of his aggression to protect himself from danger like the psychologists claim.

But I think, quite often, man is ignorant to the fount of his aggression. We’re blind to the source, but not to the recognition that things are awry, which becomes a real problem when we start shooting from the hip at every likely agent of chaos out there. The implications become much bigger than mere subjection of the innocent to your hangry mood.

The consequences become cynicism, despair, and death.

When we point to a crooked government, rotten economy, greedy organization, or a traumatic family as the sole cause for all our woes, we mistake that which is broken, for being that which broke.

After leveraging war on these false, false messiahs, we are left further helpless, anxious, and lost. For although they are parties in the conflict, they are not its primary source.

The primary source is sin and brokenness themselves, and the resulting cosmic battle between spiritual forces of good and evil. The broken parties we see in this world will no doubt hurt you, but blaming them alone, and killing them alone, only destroys us in a way he desires.

The early twentieth century Russian author, Anton Chekhov, was one who waxed poetic about the misattribution of evil in his stories, perhaps most poignantly in the short story “Sleepy”, from which the jarring introductory quote springs.

“Laughing, winking, and shaking her finger at the green spot, Varka steals up to the cradle and bends over the baby. After strangling him, she quickly lies down on the floor, laughing with joy that she can sleep, and a moment later is fast asleep like the dead.” – “Sleepy”, Anton Chekhov

The fourteen-year-old protagonist of the story, Varka, is a severely overworked and mistreated servant and nurse to an abusive master and mistress. She spends the deep abyss of night caring for a colicky baby, works all day around the shoemaker’s house, and all evening attending to his guests. Sleep is her long-forgotten friend, her only salvation, and yet she never gets the chance to enter into that Holy Land. At night, she rocks the cradle of the sleeping baby, staring up into a green light on the ceiling, cast by the icon in the corner. The green light casts a dancing highway upon the ceiling, stealing her away to a fairyland where her parents are still alive, her master’s don’t strike her, and babies don’t cry.

She hardly has a chance to slip into that peaceful dream before the baby starts crying (at the lack of being rocked), waking her up and foretelling a painful slap from her mistress for falling asleep. This terrible pattern of momentary bliss, painful shock, and never-ending exhaustion became a hell on earth – an unavoidable conflict. Something had to be done…

“Finally, worn out, she strains all her powers and her vision, looks up at the flickering green spot, and hearing the crying, locates the enemy that keeps her from living.

That enemy is the baby.”

- “Sleepy”, Anton Chekhov

You already know what happens next.

Obviously, Chekhov didn’t just write this story to expound upon the devastating effects of trauma, exhaustion, and sleeplessness. He shows us that man struggles to pinpoint the source of fruit, both good and bad, even when said sources should be apparent by now. And he shows that the effects of this mistake are catastrophic.

Varka’s enemy wasn’t the innocent baby rocking right next to her, but the cruel masters sleeping in the other room. On the savior side, you have the icon. Varka focuses on the green light reflected on the ceiling, distorted and shimmering as it is, when the unaltered view of the light lies right there in the corner – the icon itself. Her attention, and thereby her belief in the source of the good and evil, is misattributed to things in her environment that are downstream and altered from that which is primary.

How often do we believe that which is downstream is the source and wind up striking water that keeps on flowing by? Maybe the correct opponents aren’t the unethically wealthy, the government, the tech landscape, or the [fill in whatever you want]… maybe the correct opponent is the one that brings on their brokenness. Who brings on your brokenness.

Amidst these constant battles against wrongful sources, ask yourself:

Where has your restless delirium left you?

What places in your life are you busy killing glorious potential (the baby), intending to smite an agent of chaos, in an offering to your distorted image of God (the icon light) and the dreamworld it offers to you? What are you attempting to destroy because of its cries, only to reach the flawed fantasy cast by the reflection of that which you could just look at in the first place?

More on fighting the right opponent soon…

Many tend to think that in today’s day, you need to be some sort of professional academic, or a grade-one nerd, to recreationally read the likes of Shakespeare, Socrates, or even Steinbeck. This perception issue has gone a long way towards proliferating the literacy issues in our modern world, and making space for written trash to flood the shelves of many who do still read.

Reading, like every activity, requires a Goldilocks level of challenge to achieve peak fun – too hard and it’s not enjoyable, too easy and it’s not worth the time. Building a reading lifestyle is like choosing how you want to play, like being a team captain for a pickup basketball game. Games are most enjoyable when they’re a little competitive, so good team captains try to balance the teams out to some degree. It’s not fun for one team to get all the all-stars on the playground and the other team get all the scrubs, both for the all-stars and the scrubs. The scrubs get ran off the court, and the all-stars face no challenge in forcing a shutout each game. The games you remember are the ones that are hard fought – the ones you really had to try to pull out a win. Reading is no different – it’s most fun when it forces you to think and to learn. It’s grueling to not understand a single word you’re reading, but it’s also not that fun to only read what you know (at some point we have to leave Green Eggs and Ham behind).

Despite the complex language, hidden meaning, needed prior knowledge, and philosophical depth that are sometimes necessary boundaries to fully appreciating classic books and their great authors, these books are profoundly enriching additives to anyone’s reading life. The great authors are the key to unlocking the Goldilocks level of enjoyment in reading, and most aren’t nearly as untouchable as one might think.

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Sure, there are books that are too challenging for some readers (me included), but I’ve found that the challenge of comprehension rarely excludes a reader from an author’s entire corpus. Seldom have I found a meaningful writer in which one of their works, or portions of a single work, aren’t accessible to the general masses. This is especially true with fiction writers, whose work can be appreciated at and on various levels, simultaneously.

Leo Tolstoy is one of those greats who people too frequently shy away from because of perceived difficulty. That great Russian name sends shudders down the spines of countless laymen and catalyzes excuses galore:

I know nothing about Russian history, so I won’t understand any of his work.

Me, read War and Peace? Yeah, if I had ten years to devote to it and 25 extra IQ points.

All those Russian names? I could never keep them straight!

When I hear the name Napoleon the second name that comes to mind is Dynamite, not Bonaparte.

I don’t even know where to start with an author like that.

Some are fair points, but these fears and excuses overexaggerate the unapproachability of Tolstoy, and other great authors.

Of course, not every reader is ready for such vast undertakings as War and Peace or Anna Karenina, but we forget that Tolstoy was an incredibly prolific writer, who left hordes of accessible texts that almost anyone can love, appreciate, and glean wonderful insights from. His completed works alone span over 90 volumes! In an effort to shake up your reading list, I’ve listed a few works by Leo Tolstoy below that offer both valuable exposure to the great author and the chance at a challenge, while still being approachable to almost any reader:

• “Lucerne” (1857): The semi-autobiographical short story of an artistic/human experience Tolstoy had in Lucerne, Switzerland. This experience heavily impacted his artistic philosophy, which he explored in most detail in his work What is Art? Tolstoy points out the inherent absurdity within class relations, the infectious nature of true art, the equalizing effect of beauty on its witnesses, and points to children and peasants as moral examples. The latter point being an ever-present theme throughout his work.

• “Sevastopol in May” (1855): One of Tolstoy’s first stories, written during his time as a war correspondent in the Crimean War. Gives an early look at the psychology and sociology of his work, going so far as to take a peek into the moments during and following death, something Tolstoy would continue to explore the rest of his life. From this story, it’s easy to see why the censors came to despise much of Tolstoy’s correspondence on war, and life in Tsarist Russia in general: he illustrated the true realities of the empire’s “heroes”; realities that weren’t so honorable as they would like you to think. In keeping with the exposure of underlying motives in the hearts of important figures, Tolstoy chooses to recognize only one hero in the story: Truth.

• Master and Man (1895): A short story about a landowner and a servant pushing through a blizzard to make a business deal, neglecting plenty of opportunities to stop and rest in safety, before winding up buried and frozen. Beneath the surface, the tale is commentary on a life ill-lived, the necessity of voluntary sacrifice for transcendence, and the relationship between the real Master and Man – God and mankind. The focal point of the story is the Christlike sacrifice the landowner, Vasili Andreevich, makes for the peasant, Nikita. It may be one of the most blatant Christ allegories that I’ve been exposed to in Tolstoy’s works, but it’s a signpost to a sacrificial theme all throughout his corpus. Master and Man contains the heavy-handed moralization that turns some people off to Tolstoy, but which has gone a long way towards solidifying him as an important literary and moral figure in Western society.

• The Death of Ivan Ilyich (1886): This novella opens with the main character’s friends discussing the news of his passing. What follows is a powerful confrontation of said main character, Ivan Ilyich, with the lonely affair of death. Profound selfishness, superfluous concerns, and redemption through humility and sacrifice are present throughout this depressing tale of downfall. Perhaps one of my favorite stories by Tolstoy, The Death of Ivan Ilyich is an important memento mori on anyone’s shelf – a reminder that we too must die, and that this fact is one we should concern ourselves with. Tolstoy felt that confrontation with our inevitable death has a profound impact on how we live our lives, and this sentiment is at work in the story. Similar to Master and Man, this novella introduces readers to multiple themes present in Tolstoy’s works: his idealization of the peasant class, the necessity for willful sacrifice, death-bed reflection, a life ill-lived, and the disconnect between the individual and society.

Tolstoy is just one of the many great authors that a wide array of the population steers away from, to the detriment of their reading life. You don’t have to be a genius, an academic, or even a nerd to read the great works of our literary canon, but in a medium that is so strife with challenge, it’s helpful to have an idea of where to start. One needs not to jump straight into War and Peace to know Tolstoy, The Brothers Karamazov to know Dostoevsky, the Count of Monte Cristo to know Dumas, or East of Eden to know Steinbeck. For some readers, these works are best worked up to, and if you hope to work up to the best of Tolstoy, the four short works above are great places to start.

Believe me, I recognize the irony in writing this sort of article to share with a group of people who undoubtedly read more classic literature than 99% of the population. I’m probably not reaching the correct audience on this corner of the internet, but if I convince even one person to pick up something by a classic author in a literary world dominated by empty escapism and smut, then it’ll be well worth it.

I hope you pick up something beautifully fun and challenging today my friends, and happy reading to you once you do so!

Buy me a coffee

My wife and I were wandering aimlessly down the promenade, wishing we were visiting a month or two later, when the twisting elm trees would adorn the Literary Walk with a beautiful green canopy. Alas, we were there too early, and no false Springs were spreading their sweet lies in the city that morning. The brisk, humid air wettened our noses and chilled our ears, but we were comfortable in our sweaters, coats, and each other’s company.

The quiet respite of Central Park came on the perfect day in our itinerary. We were seeing New York City for the first time, and although it was an absolute marvel through and through, us simple-minded country folk missed the grass – even if it was just beginning to liven again in the Northeast. We breathed the fresh air contentedly as we pointed out the different parts of the park we’d seen in the movies and playfully planned out a life for ourselves in the city if occasion would ever find us living there. In reality, there’s a slim chance of that ever happening – the metropolis isn’t quite our speed – but that didn’t matter; even married couples like to play “house.”

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Our itinerary called for a waltz around Bethesda Terrace and The Literary Walk, then a reversal of course to hit the MET in the middle of the park. But by the time we made our way past the Bard and Scotland’s favorite son, we were searching for someplace warm to spend a few minutes before doing anything else. I checked my phone and realized we were near a visitor center, so with hopes of a brief refuge from the mildly uncomfortable outdoors and the chance at souvenirs we’d neglected thus far, we parted ways with Shakespeare and headed that way.

We crossed Center Drive, then East 65^th, and walked down a sloping path until we spotted the charming little building. The Dairy, as the visitor center and gift shop is affectionately known, was built in 1871 in the style of a Victorian country cottage. In its early days, it was an eatery that offered fresh milk for the park-going children, which was a rare drink for many in the urban thralls. We didn’t know about The Dairy’s history until later, but there was an enchanting quality to the pretty structure that was undeniable. It only made sense that we would find magical experiences, and people, harbored within.

As we approached the entrance, I spotted our titular stranger for the first time through the diamond-pane windows. Sitting alone at a small, circle table in an area of the shop void of merchandise, was an old man. He sat, upright and attentive, with his hands crossed in front of him over a set-up chess board. He had the worn, yet inviting, face of one who had weathered much but hadn’t grown cynical. Fair skinned with white hair to match; he wore his blue puffer coat inside, despite looking like he was a permanent fixture inside the room.

The moment we stepped inside I felt his green eyes looking at us from across the shop. There was almost no one there, just a few workers, another set of tourists at the checkout, and him. I shot a friendly smile at him – there was something so charming about seeing him sitting there without a phone, a book, or even a newspaper. Just a man, his thoughts, and a chessboard, patiently waiting for an opponent. Although it never crossed my mind while planning the trip, playing chess in Central Park had always been a little dream of mine. My skill at chess is nothing special, but I’m a real admirer of the game, nonetheless. It’s had longstanding importance as a metaphor for philosophers and theologians, a negotiation table for kings and politicians, and a worthy distraction for contemplative minds to brood over – and it’s held these roles for millennia. How could I not appreciate a game so romantic, symbolic, and stimulating? The chess that’s played every day in Central Park is amongst the best and most exciting in the world, so when I walked inside and saw a mysterious old Sage sitting in front of a board, I was quite delighted.

He must’ve caught my fascination, because without missing a beat, he opened his arms invitingly and asked loudly across the room in a gravelly voice, “Would you like to play?”

“Ah, I don’t know. I’m not that good,” I responded. My instant reaction being to make an excuse not to play. I don’t want to waste the guy’s time with unimpressive play; He’s a complete stranger, I doubt my wife wants to sit and watch me play chess and small talk with him; we were supposed to be at the MET already anyway; what if he’s some hustler, or a bit Loonie? So goes the internal wimp. The unadventurous part of me thought this was little more than a way to open myself up to unnecessary discomfort and possible embarrassment. The more ardent Mason reminded me that’s the exact reason to do it in the first place.

“That doesn’t matter, I just want to play,” he said softly. Nope, he wasn’t Loonie, but I could tell he wasn’t of the modern world either. A quiet and knowing confidence underlay his demeanor.

“Let let us look around a second then after we checkout maybe I’ll play. If we have time,” I said, inserting another excuse just in case I changed my mind.

He nodded and sat back patiently. By the look in his eyes, he thought I was as good as his: indirect, Midwestern denials mean nothing in New York.

My wife and I looked around the shop and whispered to each other. As I should’ve already known, she thought he was precious – her word of choice for little old men, wearing old men clothes, and doing old men things. Babies and old fellers seem to fall into the same cuteness category for her, so she wasn’t going to be scared off. Also, as much as I wanted to keep rushing around New York, pushing her towards historical sights and museums, she was seven weeks pregnant, and the first-trimester sickness and tiredness were hitting like a truck. She had no intention of turning down the chance to sit for a while and adore a cute old man. Using her as an excuse was out.

We picked out three matching Central Park T-shirts, one for each member of our little family, and headed for the checkout. I could feel his expectant stare as the worker bagged the merchandise.

I turned to my wife and shrugged. “Just one game.”

He nodded to me, pleased but unsurprised, as we headed to the table. I took off my coat and sat across the silicone board; my wife took the seat to my right. We shook hands and he jumped right into it.

“What’s your name and where do you call home?” He fidgeted with the white pieces, starting the conversation the same way he probably always did. A dozen or so times a day, for God knows how many years.

“I’m Mason, and we’re from Indiana.”

“Indiana!” He nodded his head up and down passionately. I could almost hear the whirring behind his eyes as his brain flipped through vast rolls of memory, searching for ‘Indiana’ in the index.

Like an encyclopedia, he spat out the names of a few Olympic swimmers and divers from the 70s that came through Indiana University. The names were unknown to me, but in an effort to help, he spelled them out, touching each letter in the air as he spoke them, then repeated the name again, as if he was in a Spelling Bee. That just tickled my wife pink. As helpful as that process may have been if I was up brushed up on my 1970s Olympic history, I was still at a loss.

I nodded, as if I was beginning to recollect them. “You’re a fan of swimming and diving, then?” I asked.

“Yes, I am. It’s a very difficult sport. You have to work really hard to be great at it. I admire that.”

“That’s one of those things you can’t take too many days off at, or you’ll lose a lot of progress. I heard that during Michael Phelps’ great run he didn’t take a day off for like five years,” I said.

“Really?” He asked with more surprise than I was expecting. “Where’d you read that?”

“I think I saw it on social media somewhere, though I don’t remember where to be honest with you,” I responded, unconfidently.

“Hm,” he grunted, dissatisfied. I suppose social media wasn’t a good enough source for his rolodex of facts – fair enough.

“Sometimes I think Chess is a little like that. You don’t play in a little while and it sets you back,” I said.

“Yes… I agree. I agree,” he said, with a hand stroking his chin, “When did you last play?” With this, he opened with pawn to E4. The game was on.

“Well, I haven’t played any serious games in a little while, but I did play a blitz game online this morning,” I responded while moving my pawn to E5.

“Really?” The thought of playing chess online seemed alien to him. “Who did you play against, the computer?” His knight entered the mix on C3.

“No, it was a real person, but I don’t really know who it was, exactly. They were on the other side of the world, I remember that.”

“What country?” He asked, with even more interest.

“I don’t remember, somewhere in Southeast Asia, I think.”

“Hm,” he grunted. I made a mental note to start paying a hell of a lot more attention to these things. The old Sage seemed to be losing respect for me.

It was quiet for a minute while we moved through the opening stage, apprehensive to start taking material. He lit up when I told him I was actually a student at IU, and that we lived in Bloomington. It prompted another rattling off of a few facts. I began to wonder about him, had he ever been to Indiana?

We jumped into everything so quickly I never caught his name, so I mimicked his question: “What’s your name and where do you call home?”

“I’m Matthew. I’m from here – the city,” he said. He didn’t dwell on himself for long, immediately switching the conversation back to chess and me. I guess he only wanted to talk about new and interesting things, and he already knew all about himself.

One thing he knew about me, with little doubt, was that I was no Kasparov – no fancy openings here, just developing pieces and trying not to make mistakes. Either out of kindness, or a desire to keep me around for conversation, Matthew followed suit and didn’t bury me early. Our moves largely mirrored one another’s while we got to know each other, as much as he would allow me to know, at least. There was no clock. The chess was important, but more so was the conversation. He obsessively touched each piece, making sure they rested in the perfect center of the square, absent mindedly centering even my pieces after I moved. It took me until almost the end of the game to recognize he always wanted knights at a 45-degree angle. I began to catch on that nowadays we might call Matthew some flavor or another of neurodivergent. I expect he heard nothing of the sort while growing up and was probably the better for it. We both castled, and I tried again to shift the topic to him.

“Do you normally play chess in here?” I asked.

“Most of the time I play up on the hill at the center, but the rain pushed me inside, so here I am,” he shrugged. Switching the subject immediately, he turned to my wife, “So how do you know each other? Are you friends?”

“Well, we’re married.” She said with a nervous smile.

“Then you oughta be friends!” He said, matter-of-factly.

We laughed, but the old Sage was spitting wisdom. I had only been married seven months at the time but already couldn’t imagine how much it would suck if my wife wasn’t my best friend. I wondered about his own relationship past; there was no wedding ring on his finger, but I doubted he’d ever let us get to that information.

“What’s your name dear?” He asked.

“Jadie.”

“JD?” He asked, turning to her again.

“No, but close enough. It’s like Jamie but with a ‘D’,” she responded. I’d heard her make this shpiel a million times to explain her name to new people. It always worked quite well, but I think Matthew would’ve preferred she spelled it out like the Olympic divers.

“What are your interests, Jadie?” He asked her, turning back to the board and surveying his bishop lines.

“Well, I really like music. I used to be in choir and theatre when I was in school,” she said.

“Oh, that’s good. So do you like poetry then?” he asked, curiously.

“Sort of, but he reads a lot more of it than I do.” She said, eager to turn the conversation away from herself. It seems she too, was more interested in listening to what Matthew had to say.

He turned to me, pleasantly surprised. “Really? Who are your favorite poets?”

I challenged his pawn on E5 with my own at F4, knowing he wouldn’t take it, because doing so would leave the E file open for my rook to take his queen. At best, I was hoping for a free pawn.

“Hmm, I’ve been reading some Longfellow lately, who I really enjoy, and I like Frost quite a bit.”

“Longfellow!? Longfellow… That’s an interesting taste for someone your age. Not a bad thing, just interesting. Longfellow…” his eyes lit up as he was thinking about poetry. My mind went back to the frozen looks of Shakespeare and Burns. See fellas, some of us still care.

With the distraction of poetry and the slips of mind that come when playing down to one’s competition, he took my pawn – a queen blunder. My rook reluctantly glided across the board, taking his queen.

“Ah…,” he sighed deeply, “I, uh, didn’t see that one.” He showed some visible frustration with himself.

It was a lucky move, a blunder, and I told him so, which seemed to help a bit. “A queen blunder is the only thing that might give me a chance right now.”

“Yes, yes, you’re right,” he responded, reluctant to admit the secret that he’d been keeping the whole time – that he was much better than me at chess. I laughed.

“Well, who are your favorite poets?” I don’t get to talk poetry with people in person very often, let alone with well-read old men, so I wasn’t going to let him slip by this time.

“Walt Whitman is my favorite. I also really like Robert Frost, like yourself.”

“Oh really? I just read a small collection of Whitman’s work last week! I like his poetry too. What an interesting character he was, huh?”

I don’t think he expected me to know anything about Whitman. He acknowledged the oddity of his character with a passionate nod, then immediately jumped into a conversation about his sexual tendencies at a volume level that would probably be socially unacceptable in my hometown. “The homosexual community always wants to claim him, but they can’t. We know that he was at least bisexual though!”

“I read that he kept people guessing, that’s for sure,” I said with a laugh, “He had his finger on the pulse of the American spirit in his writing though, didn’t he?”

“That he did. He was uniquely American, and wrote for the learned and the working man, alike. He was most prolific at a difficult time in the nation’s history.” He said, in a speechlike tone. On the board, he was playing defense, trying to keep me from picking off one of his rooks.

“What’s your favorite of his poems?” I asked.

“‘When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d’”, he said, then looking up from the board and into my face, “‘When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d’; it’s a beautiful poem he wrote following the assassination of President Lincoln.”

“Really? I’ll have to look into that one. That’s not the same as ‘O Captain! My Captain!’, right?” I asked.

“No, no, no. Two completely different poems,” he said, semi-disapprovingly, “you need to read When-Lilacs-Last-in-the-Dooryard-Bloom’d’,” he repeated, slowly. Once again touching the words in the air as he said them.

All this time we were trading pieces on the squares, the board was growing thin, and I was up quite a bit because of the queen.

He paused, sighed, and looked up at me. “Well, it looks like you’re good enough to not make any terrible mistakes down the stretch, and this game will last on. I will resign and give this one to you,” he held out his hand for a shake, “If you have the time, I’d love to play another game.”

“Ah, I would love to, but I think we need to be moving along. We have tickets to the MET this afternoon. I really appreciate you letting me play though; that was a lot of fun, especially cause I got so lucky.”

“Ok, ok,” he said, sort of sadly, “Yes, even the masters make mistakes. Even the masters make mistakes. If you would, please set up the black pieces for my next opponent.”

I helped him set back up, and he recommended a lesser-known painter we should try to make time for at the MET, named Juan De Pareja. He spelled the name out in the air, twice, and gave us a short lesson on why this painter was important to see, yet underrated. I wish I remembered more of it.

Eventually, we said goodbye and walked away from Matthew. He stayed put, waiting on his next opponent. There was no one else in the shop when we left, nor coming down the hill, but still I imagined him sitting at his table, in his puffer coat, waiting patiently. No distractions – just himself, the board, and the excitement of a future opponent. He probably did this ten times a day, and it was nothing to him, but we were content as we walked up the path away from The Dairy, having felt we made a true connection, and had a real human experience.

It was a simple interaction that couldn’t have lasted more than half an hour, but it felt so rich to my wife and I. Isn’t it those simple interactions that feel the most magical at times? To sit across from a passionate person, who listens, asks questions, and views silence not as something to be filled but something to rest in and behold, is something special.

With the extended reach we have today, I could interact, in some way or another, with a million people online. Yet those connections are so futile, so immaterial. The in-person, meaningful dialogue still reigns supreme, even if at times it feels like something of old.

Upon reflection, it struck me how old that specific mode of interaction really is – not just face-to-face connection, but meaningful conversation over a chess board, in particular. Ours was eerily similar to ones that have been happening over chess boards throughout history. Within the famous cafes of Paris, like the Café de la Regence, the likes of Voltaire, Rousseau, Napoleon, Robespierre, and even Benjamin Franklin sat over boards and spoke on matters of poetry, politics, and perhaps even athletics. Some things persist through time, regardless of outside innovations, and the chess board is one of them. For a short time, I got to enter into a moment above time, with a man who seemed to come from time past.

As we walked towards the MET, I thought about how blessed my wife and I were to experience such a thing together. We chatted about the other worldliness of Matthew and the story we’ll tell our baby one day as we got back on the Literary Walk. I smirked at Shakespeare and Burns as we moved past, feeling like I did alright with my vow.

Later on, at the MET, I saw some of the greatest works of art the world has ever known, but truly, the most beautiful part of my day was sitting across the chess board from a complete stranger, talking about poetry, sports, and life in the places we call home. Looking at Renaissance paintings is a great thing, but so is talking to Renaissance Men. Matthew from Manhattan has probably already forgotten about Mason from Boonville, Indiana, but I don’t think I’ll ever forget about him, or that game of chess we played on a cold and wet morning in March.

Each article is comprehensible when read by itself, but for those who may find them more valuable in concordance, I’ve linked each of them below, along with brief summaries to show what content you’ll find within each article.

Happy reading, and I appreciate your continued support!

Part One: Aims to describe the loss of accessibly observable meaning in ourselves and the world around us, due to the rise of positivist philosophy (materialism) following the scientific revolution. Draws heavily on Owen Barfield’s 1961 essay The Rediscovery of Meaning.

Part Two: A transition poem that summarizes the severity of the loss of meaning we discussed in Part One, then shifts to the content of Part Three – where we can look to find the meaning in a wasteland of murdered value.

Part Three: Finding meaning in a straying world starts with recognizing we’re lost. When lost in the physical world humans rely on landmarks to map our surroundings and find our way. The landmark we’ve been given that unites our physical and spiritual worlds is Jesus Christ. Relies on Christ’s role as the Logos to support the claim that we are endowed with inherent value.

Part Four: Leans on C.S. Lewis’ The Magician Nephew to better understand the Voice of Creation. Explores how we’re linked to the Logos through our use of language to create and unite our inner and outer worlds. Concludes with a call to action – create like the Logos to draw near to the Logos.

If these articles piqued your interest at all, I invite you to subscribe to read upcoming articles from Mason’s Narrations or share the publication with your friends!

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The Word, The Logos, The Lion’s Song

In Part Three, we talked about the Logos as the Divine Mind – the landmark that rises above everything else and makes sense of the world. We analyzed how the Logos gives indescribable value to you and me, as well as everything around us. In this post we will explore a characteristic of the Divine Mind that was only alluded to in Part Three – its role as the voice of creation and that fact’s implications in our own use of language.

You’ve probably heard the Logos being referred to as The Word before, most likely in the context of John 1:1-5.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

The same was in the beginning with God.

All things were made by Him; and without Him was not any thing made that was made.

In Him was life; and the life was the light of men.

And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.

In the original Greek the term “Word” was the one I keep bringing up, Logos. To those reading this during antiquity, who were knowledgeable about the Old Testament creation story, it was clear that John was identifying Jesus Christ with this beginning Logos. They knew he was saying that Christ is the word, voice, law, or thought of God.

While many books could be, and have been, written about these first five verses of the Gospel of John, we only require of them this one thing for our purposes – which is to know that Christ was the singer of the song of Creation in the beginning of time.

C.S. Lewis’ brilliant work, The Chronicles of Narnia, is chock full of digestible wisdom that describes, with fantasy, the nature of a Christian worldview, without doing away with the ever-important element of mystery. So, I’ll let Lewis transport you into such a stage of musical creation in ways only he could. The following excerpt is taken from The Magician’s Nephew chapter entitled “The Founding of Narnia”:

“The Lion was pacing to and fro about that empty land and singing his new song. It was softer and more lilting than the song by which he had called up the stars and the sun; a gentle, rippling music. And as he walked and sang the valley grew green with grass. It spread out from the lion like a pool. It ran up the sides of the little hills like a wave. In a few minutes it was creeping up the lower slopes of the distant mountains, making that young world every moment softer…

…There was certainly plenty to watch and to listen to. The tree which Digory had noticed was now a full-grown beech whose branches swayed gently above his head. They stood on cool, green grass, sprinkled with daisies and buttercups. A little way off, along the riverbank, willows were growing. On the other side tangles of flowering currant, lilac, wild rose, and rhododendron closed them in…

…All this time the Lion’s song, and his stately prowl, to and fro, backwards and forwards, was going on. What was rather alarming was that at each turn he came a little nearer. Polly was finding the song more and more interesting because she thought she was beginning to see the connection between the music and the things that were happening. When a line of dark firs sprang up on a ridge about a hundred yards away she felt they were connected with a series of deep, prolonged notes which the Lion had sung a second before. And when he burst into a rapid series of lighter notes she was not surprised to see primroses suddenly appearing in every direction. Thus, with an unspeakable thrill, she felt quite certain that all the things were coming (as she said) “out of the Lion’s head.”

- C.S. Lewis, The Magician’s Nephew

You maybe didn’t think that what many classify as a children’s story would help you understand the role of the Logos in creation, but here we are. Previously, I talked about all the cosmos as the thoughts of the Divine Mind (what Polly says is “out of the Lion’s head), but now we see that for these thoughts to be made manifest, they had to be spoken or sang. What a stirring contemplation that is – to imagine yourself a loving conception of God sang into existence along with all the melodious creation around you.

Even without analysis or application to ourselves, how freaking awesome is that idea?

*A great Substack-Poet by the name of , recently told me that Tolkien shared a similar music-creation for Middle Earth in The Silmarillion (which I hope to read sometime before I die). It helps the strength of the idea to know that these two stalwart supporters of myth, fantasy, and the Christian worldview both included it in their respective creation stories. (Go make a little less Unknown)

From Divine Voice to Human Language

Considering this identity of the Logos as The Word or the Voice of Creation helps us understand why it has so much to do with the conversation around our use of language.

When we utilize language, we mimic the Logos. Man uses the spoken or written word to Sub-Create, as the Logos first Created.

This desire to make comes from our design in the first place. We create because we are made in the image of God, and He is the Creator. It makes sense that the thoughts of the Divine Mind would think and do things following the patterns of said Divine Mind!

Tolkien so brilliantly illustrates that in this quote from “The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays”:

“Fantasy remains a human right: we make in our measure and in our derivative mode, because we are made: and not only made, but made in the image and likeness of a Maker.”

- J.R.R. Tolkien, “The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays”

Interestingly enough, we also make use of language to further make sense of Creation in the first place. Our minor voice beckons back to the original, poetic voice that rings harmoniously throughout all creation, and it is this that allows us to reconcile the inside and out; which means to explain what’s going on within myself (at least the intangible things we say are within the self) using the things outside of myself (living things, objects, natural patterns, etc.), and vice versa.

Owen Barfield speaks of this attribute of language being the tool for understanding the world:

“I have reached the conclusion that the natural world can only be understood in depth as a series of images symbolizing concepts; further, that it was out of man’s rich awareness of this meaningful relation between himself and nature that language originally came to birth.”

- Owen Barfield, “The Rediscovery of Meaning”

Language is used to connect the dots within the mysteries of the natural world. We embody this role of speech every time we speak; very explicitly when we use something like metaphor. For example, when I say…

“Just as one can wake up on the forest floor and look for the rising sun to determine the cardinal directions, so can we look to Christ and make sense of our heading in a seemingly drifting reality.” (a sentence I cut from Part Three)

…I’m making sense of the nature of internal and external reality with Christ using the rising sun as an explanatory symbol for this concept.

(Quick aside – are you a “Never Eat Soggy Waffles” or “Never Eat Shredded Wheat” type of folk?)

For a poetic example, look no further than Walt Whitman’s “O Captain! My Captain!”

O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done,

The ship has weather’d every rack, the prize we sought is won,

The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,

While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring;

But O heart! heart! heart!

O the bleeding drops of red,

Where on the deck my Captain lies,

Fallen cold and dead.

- Walt Whitman, “O Captain! My Captain!”

The anguish in Whitman’s heart after the assassination of Lincoln shows full force here, but not through mere explanation of the feelings and thoughts in his head. He couldn’t express those things just as they are. He had to use familiar, outside objects or roles to symbolize his mourning soul. The anguish around a fallen ship’s captain is used as a proxy for a great, fallen president. The captain is Lincoln, the ship the nation, the voyage being the Civil War, the prize being winning the War, etc. etc.

In other words, even the way we make sense of the world through language beckons back to Christ and His role as the Logos. Through language we’ve ascribed names and definitions to created objects which we then use to make sense of ourselves, which too, are created objects.

Imagine and create to grow towards the Logos

It is this exploration of the cosmos through language that gives us the tools to connect our inner and outer worlds and thereby find meaning in the things of this life. So, participating in that great tradition of finding inner meanings within the words that materialists only ascribe outer significance to, is essential.

When we participate with creation in creative exploration – reading, appreciating, or writing: fantasy, dialogue, analysis, songwriting, etc. – we live within the pre-Scientific man and escape the scientific dwarfism that has ahold of us. So, look to the Logos (make Christ your Landmark), and act like the Logos (create as He created you), to become more like the Logos intentioned you to be.

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Sources:

- Lewis, C.S. The Magician's Nephew. HarperCollins, 1953.

- "What Does the Greek Word “Logos” Mean?" Logos.Com, 27 Aug. 2025, www.logos.com/grow/greek-word-logos-meaning/#:~:text=Old%20Testament%20%E2%80%9Cword%E2%80%9D,wide%20range%20of%20general%20acceptance. Accessed 8 Apr. 2026.

- Barfield, Owen. "The Rediscovery of Meaning." 1961.

- Whitman, Walt. "O Captain! My Captain!." The Walt Whitman Archive. Gen. ed. Matt Cohen, Ed Folsom, & Kenneth M. Price. Accessed 8 Apr. 2026. http://www.whitmanarchive.org

- Tolkien, J.R.R. The Monsters and the Critics, and Other Essays. 1983.

The Situation

Something that is known forthrightly by Christians, and implicitly by others, is that we, as humans, are made for much more. And not only are we made to do and be much more, as can be felt particularly strongly today in our meaning crisis, we are made to be in and perceive some place that is more.

As I discussed in part one, and poetically referenced in part two, we’ve lost sight of the inherent value within ourselves and the objects around us. Our “scientifically minded” culture has placed value in the observable alone, leaving us to shift through a wasteland of murdered purpose that we once recognized as truth. Truth, Beauty, Myth, Stories, Faith – all have been stripped of their significance. As a result, the universe is less to us now than it was in ages past.

Pronouncing Ourselves Blind and Lost

We’ve become disenchanted. Our world hasn’t gotten less beautiful, but we’ve become less able to recognize its beauty. Our lives aren’t less meaningful, but we’ve become less able to recognize and live within the meaning.

What a load of sunshine and rainbows I’m spewing today, right? But the good news is, we aren’t lost forever – there exists a path to re-enchantment.

We need to see differently to better recognize meaning in the world and within our own lives. But what is the first step in learning to see? Recognizing that we are blind.

When I was in the first grade, I couldn’t see the board very well but didn’t know it. It wasn’t until I was prompted to read from it that I realized I may not be able to see as well as everyone else. I alerted my parents and was whisked away to the optometrist after school (when the optometrist is your grandfather, you get special perks like same day service; thanks Poppy - DrDave1111). Sure enough, I couldn’t see worth a lick. Subsequently, I got glasses, saw clearly, and learned more at school. If I hadn’t been alerted to my poor vision though, I wouldn’t have known that there was anything clearer.

I recount all of that to say this – clearer vision can only come after recognizing blurriness. Finding a path back to our intended home only comes once we realize we are lost. But once we acknowledge we are blind and lost, we can prescribe a solution and find our way.

Find a Landmark

Our prescription is found in our aim. Where do people aim when they are literally lost? To a beacon rising high above everything else. In everyday life, we find our way by landmarks, whether that be a river on our left, the tallest tree in the forest, or the mountain range we know to be in the west. We judge our relative distance from this thing to know where we are at in physical space.

Thankfully, in the space that unites the spiritual and physical we’ve also been given a beacon. This landmark that rises above everything else is Jesus Christ.

Christ is the unifier between the things seen and unseen. It was He who dwelt both in the flesh and the spirit, and it is He who gives meaning and direction to all things. He is not only the reference point, but the creation point that helps us map the world around us.

This is because Christ is the Logos – the Divine Mind. He is the very voice that gave birth to Creation, and thereby ascribed meaning to each thing. When our eyes are on the Creator of all, we see everything in reference to Him, which is the intention of everything in the first place.

In a recent article put out by The Ascent (a fantastic newsletter I learn from weekly), Dcn. Harrison Garlick penned this thought on our relationship to the Logos:

“You are a thought of God made flesh—and it is the Mind of God that gave you existence and continues to hold you in existence today.”

(Read the article here)

How meaningful would your life become if you woke up every day holding this reality to be true – that you’re a thought of the Divine Mind? Even more than that: this Mind willingly endured the sins of the world to reconcile YOU back to Him.

Everything within you, and without you, was willfully intentioned by God. The things of value to the Holiest of Holies were valued when creating everything. Thus, despite our being in a world of scientific realism, we aren’t empty vessels surrounded by emptier vessels, we are full to the brim with divine value – and so is the rest of Creation.

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Christ as the Beacon Changes Your Vision

Seeing the world in reference to Christ makes valuable what is not wholly known by human minds, which is everything: the simple, complex, non-sensical, beautiful, mundane, mysterious, etc. Seeing the world with Christ as a relative landmark changes everything – like putting on glasses for the first time. It doesn’t mean that everything suddenly makes sense, but there is an inherent recognition that everything was made with sense.

Using Christ as a landmark is acknowledging that all that is within us and within the world, has the touch of Him in it. Everything becomes more valuable when you acknowledge its Creator and know that in some way this particular thing points to said Creator. Consider art as an example…

In 1970 Vincent van Gogh’s painting “Sunset at Montmajour” was found in a Norwegian attic after more than a century of gathering dust. The owner had put it there after being told it was fake. It went to a new owner, then to the Van Gogh museum, and all the time was considered fake and rather worthless. It wasn’t until 2013 that it was determined real by experts analyzing Van Gogh’s own letters to his brother, amongst other pieces of evidence. Following the declaration of the painting’s creator, it went from worthless, to being worth tens of millions of dollars. It’s likely the painting would sell for hundreds of millions of dollars if it went on sale today.

Let’s recap – a seemingly worthless painting became priceless because of the magnitude of its creator. Is the story of “Sunset at Montmajour” so different than our own story? Prior to the inversion of reality in the modern world, the world’s cultures, almost without exception, held that man was created by God. Our society as a whole does not adhere to this belief anymore, but if it were to, if YOU were to, how much more value would we hold?

Understanding that everything is endowed with the poetic speech of the Logos asserts that the Great Creator’s brush strokes are within you and around you. How priceless then Creation must be!

The humans of centuries past understood this connection much better than we do today, and that’s even true of cultures that aren’t rooted in the Judeo-Christian tradition. Further elaboration on the higher-reaching attributes of “false” myths is an article for another day, but the idea of a unifying force between internal and external things, physical and spiritual worlds, deities and natural phenomena comes up everywhere.

We can steer clear of this for now and still point to a Christian life in the not-so-distant past as an example of a more enchanted life. There’s a book in my library I treasure above the majority, called The Book of Beasts: Being a Translation from a Latin Bestiary of the Twelfth Century. Every single animal in the book, both real and mythical (though they held most of them real at the time), is given an artistic depiction, a natural history, and a religious interpretation of its existence. My favorite animal in the book is the Phoenix, both for how awesome a creature it is and because of what the scholar’s interpretation of the creature’s intention is. One of the finest paragraphs from the explanation reads thus:

“This bird, without anybody to explain things to it, without even the power of reason, goes through the very facts of the resurrection – and that, in spite of the fact that birds exist for the good of men, not men for birds. Let it be an example to us, therefore, that the author and creator of mere birds did not arrange for his holy ones to be destroyed for ever, but wishes the seed to be renewed by rising again.”

- The Book of Beasts: Being a Translation from a Latin Bestiary of the Twelfth Century, made and edited by T.H. White

In time you will begin to realize that things, in all their uniqueness, were structured in a way that tells us more about ourselves, the world, and our God. You don’t need to consciously moralize or metaphorize everything around you, but mere faith in the Logos and its connection to everything is enough to be bewildered by it all.

Pay Attention to the Beacon

The key to reinvigorating the world with meaning and enchantment isn’t merely to believe in the Logos, but to pay attention to it. Attention is one of the strongest currencies we have in a relationship, whether it be with a loved one, yourself, the world around you, or God.

Throughout the Bible, the followers of God were called to fix their attention on bronze serpents, tabernacles, and stars in the east – all of which were symbolic precursors to Christ. To make sense of the world, to evade harm, humans must fix their eyes on the Lord.

In order to dwell within the Garden, we must be attached to the vine – no utopia will come about through human effort. In anticipation of Paradise before actually entering it, we must connect ourselves to the root of all creation. We must pay attention to the landmark we’ve been given.

In our materialistic world, we must cease looking only towards reduction as the path to truth. Instead, recognize that nature falls under an intelligible higher order, and that meaning and purpose can be recognized at the pinnacle of this hierarchy. This is Jacob’s ladder, the summum bonum, the cross; this is Christianity – the pursuit of God.

In other words, to arrive at meaning once again, we need not focus on what objects are made of, but who they are made by. Where they point to, we point to, and there is where purpose is found.

Have a blessed Good Friday.

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This is Part Two of a multi-part series I’m doing on the concept of meaning in our modern world. It’s a transition poem between one thought on why it’s so difficult to ascertain meaning in our current culture (Part One above) and what we can do to rekindle our inherent recognition of meaning, purpose, and value (Part Three in the future).

In the Time of Matter

All is the same but also different,

For us now as it was back then.

We match in look, nature, and element,

Yet hearken nearer sounds from the den.

We were not so wild as we are now,

But surely, we were less tame.

The charm snake said “forget the Tao”

And then the method came.

Our eyes see the same ol’ things:

Silver, seas, and stars.

But now those same ol’ things

Are only silver, seas, and stars.

People and objects are just things,

That slither, seize, and scar.

That is the story now that stories are not told…

Meaning, worth, and purpose in these things?

No, those are silly values of old!

Surely, we can reason out of our sorely situation –

After all, that’s what they say to do.

The stormy sense of our worldly frustration

May help us make it through:

Empty but the basket is full?

Tis’ not the bread you seek.

Numb with surplus stimuli?

Your adventures are too weak.

Purposeless yet have utility?

Function alone is too bleak.

Are these the answers they want us to find

On this misty, foggy peak?

Admittedly, before the change,

Humans still were longing.

But longing means there was an aim –

An aim of which we don’t have now.

We ask why we don’t feel at home at our

houses on the peak,

But then roll our eyes when someone says –

Home is from which He speaks.

Wanton, wool-clad wolves,

With wayward ideas

Forgot for us the little we hadn’t lost

When we first ran from His meadow.

Now we wait and waste

In our forlorn thoughts of future grandeur;

Scale-sheathed stomachs growling for sustenance

Atop our mountains of fool’s gold.

Awake O Sleeper!

Behold the Eastern Star alight the sky.

See for the first time the darkness with your

Speech-given eye.

As the rising of the sun gives bearing in the morn,

So the risen Son gives direction to the forlorn.

“How is it that the more able a man becomes to manipulate the world to his advantage, the less he can perceive any meaning in it.”

- Owen Barfield, “The Rediscovery of Meaning”

Meaningless. A word that resonates with far too many people in today’s world. In spite of the swaths of therapists, self-help books, and Lexapro, there is still a persistent sense of emptiness that casts its shadow across great sweeps of the population. Perhaps now more than ever, the foggy dread of meaninglessness is at its most dense, and we are feeling the effects.

It’s easy to point out the current factors in our environment that may be reasons for the crisis we find ourselves in: Social media addiction, income inequality, disunity, cultural homogenization, reduction of literacy rates, aversion to ancient wisdom, increased atheism, etc. The siren-like allure of the all-encompassing digital media landscape and the growing confusion as to what constitutes reality has, without a doubt, contributed to the increasing levels of loneliness, depression, and nihilism in our society. But all these factors don’t tell the whole story.

Though they may be compelling ingredients to our despondency, they are truly only surface level symptoms to an obviously deeper problem – looking for fulfillment outside of God. Though it’s been around forever, this problem achieved a critical win 370 years ago, at the hands of the Scientific Revolution.

Out of the Scientific Revolution came positivist philosophy, better known today as materialism. It’s a manner of thinking characterized by validating facts through the sole use of sensory experience, direct observation, and scientific methods. At the behest of the pervasive Evil that drives a wedge between us and our Creator, materialism has gone a long way towards creating a modern society that rejects inherent meaning in everything.

Owen Barfield strongly believed that it is this philosophical development that has made it so difficult for the modern man to find purpose in physical things, including the self. But how can the arrival of the Scientific Revolution account for such a large, negative change?

What went wrong?

Owen Barfield dissected this phenomenon in immense detail in his 1961 essay “The Rediscovery of Meaning” published in The Saturday Evening Post. The crux of his views, are boiled down in this quote:

Put simply, materialism is concerned with tangible stuff, and the stuff that makes up other stuff. It reduces each thing to its finest parts for observation and manipulation.

Man is made of cells, cells are made of atoms, atoms are made of electrons, neutrons, and protons. Thus, man is a collection of electrons, neutrons, and protons. Materialism is reductionist – with it we break objects down into smaller and smaller observable parts until you can’t realistically observe the parts or the whole anymore.

Hence, statements like this from Jim Carrey at New York Fashion Week in 2017:

“I did not get dressed up. There is no me. There’s just things happening. There are clusters of tetrahedrons moving around together… We don’t matter, that is the good news!”

I don’t share this quote because Jim Carrey is some bastion of public intellectualism, but because the repercussions of materialist philosophy have wormed their way into the cultural zeitgeist in concerning ways. Like it or not, this philosophy has changed the way we see and interact with the world.

Now don’t label me a science hater. Without a doubt, the employment of the scientific method has had amazing effects on our world: curing diseases, exploring space, lifting billions out of poverty, increasing agricultural output, cleaning water, providing the technology for me to share my writing with you in this very manner… one could go on and on.

But we can acknowledge these goods while also acknowledging that we’ve lost a lot too. And what we lost was very good, and very true.

Barfield noted that at the outset of positivist philosophy, the concept of “truth” was split into two. One truth could be observed, tested, and validated into fact, and the other truth was something subjective and unobservable, characterized by metaphysical experience, transcendence, religion, etc. At first, the desire seemed to be a separation of fact and faith. Fact represented the truth that could be seen and proven objective via the scientific method. Faith represented the truth that might hold value to the individual but couldn’t be proven objective or useful to everyone. This marked a major rejection of something that characterizes human experience, something that makes life livable in the first place.

But eventually, another recategorization took place, which turned the division of truth from “fact and faith” into “fact and folly.” Spiritual experience became something foolish, illogical, and even harmful to practice. From the scientific community, a distaste for a metaphysical vision of the world not only fell out of fashion but became laughable, reprehensible even.

As a result of this transition, our blindness to the connection of the physical world to the spiritual one has atrophied. Strict materialism overcame society and stripped intangible qualities from tangible things, rendering them meaningless – no matter how real and important the intangible quality of the thing was. Truth, Virtue, Art… they don’t fit perfectly in the dogmatic world of tangibility, so they didn’t have value in the world anymore.

Fact, in the materialistic sense, has to do with observable, physical reality, which paints, at best, an imperfect picture of an object’s meaning. Are our bodies a mass of atoms? Yes. Does this tell us the meaning of our bodies? No.

According to Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, meaning is “the thing that is conveyed especially by language.” But we’ve forgotten that we are intended for something by language! Creation in itself is something intended by language. The foundation of creation itself is the Logos, and as we know from John 1, it was there in the beginning. The concept of the world being spoken into existence by God isn’t only a Judeo-Christian belief. The same ideas can be found in the ancient mythologies of the Egyptians, Hindus, and various African tribes.

But in a worldview where language is a secondary, subjective representation of material observance, language doesn’t count for anything. Language is merely a use of individual imagination to make sense of what can only be rationalized through testing, says the materialist. Language is nothing more than ink.

Language alone can’t be tested, so anything that is the subject of language – value statements, moral judgements, uniting narratives, and Truth – does not exist. So it doesn’t matter whatever you say or believe about the value of a thing, because at the rational conclusion of the materialistic view, they aren’t worth anything.

Because we’ve denied the attribute of meaning to every other physical object that we observe, it is no surprise that this same denial of meaning has latched onto us. All man is, according to the positivists, is a “physical object among physical objects” says Barfield.

It has been said that a primary distinguisher of man from animals is his capacity to worship. Through materialism, we threw that distinguishing factor away. We share 99% of our DNA with apes do we not? The inevitable conclusion of this line of thinking is just that – we are smart animals driven by nothing more than food, power, and sex just like the apes.

In a world where this is the truth, why not hedonism? Why not despotism? Why not pursue maximum pleasure at the expense of those around you? Why not strive for power? Why not turn to a delightful, escapist hell provided by a little pill, like that of Soma in Huxley’s Brave New World? Why not liquify your brain in the mind-dulling vacuum of doomscrolling? Why shouldn’t you deny the value of a family and live your own life? Why shouldn’t you put off being married and having kids? Why shouldn’t you abort your children if they’ve come into your life at an inconvenient time for your career trajectory? After all, you’re not hurting something with innate value because it’s a human being, made in the image of God with a soul, it’s merely a ball of flesh. The world is your oyster, nothing matters, so live for yourself!

Given all this, how couldn’t we be in a meaningless crisis? We are terribly lost.

Why does this development matter?

Of course, all of this is preposterous. Almost no one posits strong held, external beliefs in the lack of value in human lives (besides maybe Peter Thiel), so why am I talking about it?

Because most of the time evil things are done by people who believe they are doing good. Because most people don’t know how good some of us have it. Because some people are really hurting. Because some people think myth is nothing but folly. Because the ideas on the extremes worm their way into our everyday lives, and before we know it, we are more worm than man.

Or, as Barfield and Emerson have said, more dwarf than man:

We are no longer agents that act and rule within and over the physical world, but merely spectators that only define, measure, and ignore anything higher. Ultimately, our fall from participation in nature turned us into spectators. This has been true since our departure from Paradise, but it has reached new heights in modernity.

There are still the vestigial remains of instinctive meaning from our unified beginning in Eden, that subsist even after the Scientific Revolution. This is most apparent in morality, the law written on our hearts, but also in things like our drive. We continue to preside over the earth, categorizing and exploring in the same way Adam, our first father, did. Unlike Adam though, we don’t recognize why this is something of value to do. Take the hundreds of thousands of man hours, trillions of dollars, and our greatest minds that have been thrown at Moon landings, rover missions, and Mars colonization. Science has given us this ability to do things like this, but are any of those tech-billionaires or scientists seriously searching their souls to see why this is a valuable thing to do? Or are they just covering up their created intention with competition, vanity, and some hollow utilitarian claims about usefulness?

370 years have passed since the critical separation of the material and immaterial planes of reality in the Scientific Revolution. What was intended to be a break from supernatural dogma became a religiously dogmatic worldview through materialism. As a result of the world’s demystification, man has been left blind to the meaning of the things around him, as well as the meaning of his own life. It’s no surprise then that we are lost, drifting, and increasingly full of despair.

We can’t go back in time and reverse what transpired, and who knows if that would even be in our best interest, but there is still a path to regeneration. One who’s become a dwarf can climb the ladder to humanity again. Out of the shadows rises a beacon of light, the summum bonum, that reconnects man’s inner and outer world. This is the Logos; it is The Way; it is Christ.

More on that path forward in Part 2…

Note – if you still think the Scientific Revolution brought about what it intended, that there was an inflection point in the non-distant past where we all became enlightened and were freed from the bondage of our superstitious beliefs, you may want to stop at Part 1. The next section involves looking into the past, following Christ, and finding value in myth. Frankly, you’ll just hate it.

Note 2 - If you’re not familiar with Barfield or his work, you can get a taste of it by knowing the famous group he ran around with, The Inklings. Barfield is actually referred to as the “first and last Inkling” and was a philosopher of the evolution of consciousness, and founder of anthroposophy in the English-speaking world.

In the second half of the nineteenth century, Russian authors were predicting what the future of their precious nation would hold. Looking back, it’s easy to see why there was unease. Western philosophy had infiltrated the thinking of much of the youth and intelligentsia, and radical thinking carved sharp divides between classes, generations, and ideological groups. Serfdom was abolished in 1861 without great plans for a path forward and the industrial revolution ran rampant, sprinkling modernity amongst communities still rooted in the Medieval times, creating irreconcilable differences in ways of life and vast income inequality. Under these conditions, and others, distaste grew for the structure of imperial Russia, the Czar, and traditional faiths like the Orthodox church. No wonder there was speculation about an inflection point in the short time ahead.

Amidst this swirling storm two authors of legendary status made very specific predictions about Russia’s future, resembling prophecies more so than predictions. Those two greats were Fyodor Dostoevsky and Anton Chekhov, and one of their predictions was eerily accurate, and the other, devastatingly off target. In the previous article, I explained the details of their foresight, but now I want to dive into why the outcomes were so different.

Summary of Predictions

If you didn’t read the first part, I suggest you check it out above, but to quickly summarize… Dostoevsky wrote the novel Demons in 1871, which displays the spread of radicalism throughout Russia via a provincial town acting as a microcosm for the entire nation. He hits the nail right on the head, but in true prophet-like fashion, he even depicts a mysterious, revolutionary leader that bears an uncanny resemblance to Vladimir Lenin, the head of the Bolsheviks and eventual leader of the Soviet Union.

Chekhov’s prophecy was quite a different tale. Throughout many of his stories, he points to some far off, utopian future for Russia which will come to fruition after the growing pains of industrialization. He makes the prophecy most explicitly within the story, “A Medical Case” (1898). After dissecting and ruminating on the antagonism that existed between classes under capitalism, a semi-optimistic future is predicted – “Life will be good in fifty years or so, it’s only a pity we won’t make it that far. It would be interesting to have a look.” If you know anything about the Soviet Union in 1948, you’ll recognize that Chekhov’s prediction was off by a mile.

The question is, why did one prophecy get it so right and the other get it so wrong? And why was the correctly predicted future a tragic one?

Why the Disparity in Outcome?

It boils down to what each man looked to as the method for the upward transformation of society. Both recognized that society was vastly imperfect, and that change at some level was required to reconcile that imperfection. Russia was sick, and things were only growing worse under industrialization, so to them, the conditions seemed ripe for either renewal or revolution. The question of which would emerge, and how it would do so, is where the two authors differed.

Chekhov believed that a secular means of societal reorganization would bring the required change. He looked towards the suffering brought about by industrial growth as a short-term necessary evil, that would one day bring about a powerful revolutionary impulse that would break out and something approximating a utopia built by reason would emerge.

Chekhov was a masterful fiction writer, unfortunately great fiction normally doesn’t come out and say the straightforward answer. But after parsing through a wide swathe of Chekhov’s writing, I found that his vision for the future had to resemble that of the artist’s from his tale “The House with the Mezzanine: An Artist’s Story” (1898). In this narrative of competing philosophies for progress, the main character (the artist) introduces his own vision for the future in a long dialogue:

“Free them from labor!” Lida grinned. “Is that really possible?”

“Yes. Take a share of their work on yourself. If all of us, city and country dwellers, all of us without exception, agreed to divide up the work expended by mankind in general to satisfy its physical needs, the portion for each of us might be no more than two or three hours a day, and the rest of our time is left free. Imagine, too, that in order to depend still less on our bodies and to work less, we invent machines to work for us, and try to reduce the number of our needs to the minimum. We train ourselves and our children not to fear hunger and cold, so that we don’t constantly tremble for their health as Anna, Mavra, and Pelageya do. Imagine that we don’t get treated, don’t keep pharmacies, tobacco factories, distilleries – what a lot of free time we’d have in the end! All of us together would devote this leisure to the arts and sciences. As peasants sometimes get together to mend a road, so all of us together would seek truth and the meaning of life, and – I’m certain of it – the truth would be discovered very soon, man would be delivered from this constant, tormenting, oppressive fear, and even from death itself.”

- Stories by Anton Chekhov, p. 292, “The House with the Mezzanine: An Artist’s Story”

To his credit, prior to this monologue, the artist includes religion as one of the few practices that can fully satisfy man, along with science and art. But its apparent that Chekhov looks at religion as a purely reason-based means to an end. For him, the entirety of truth could be grasped by man himself, it wasn’t reserved for a deity higher than man. There was no acceptance of a man’s finite mind under an infinite God. Through reason, he speculated above, man could even deliver himself from fear and death – no need for Christ in that worldview.

His actual vision where everyone helps each other do the mandatory work, so they’d all have more time for thinking about the true and beautiful, wasn’t necessarily a novel one. Labor organizations and communes had been in operation in western Europe and Russia long before his writing, but with relatively minimal success. Still, he envisioned something approximating these features to come about post-revolution. After revolution and the refinement of pure reason, they would be made good and useful. We don’t get many details from Chekhov on how this will look at completion, but if I had to guess, it would resemble the relatively modern utopia built by B.F. Skinner in his 1948 novel, Walden Two. Funnily enough, written about fifty years after Chekhov’s own story.

Not too long after Chekhov’s death in 1904, the revolutionary impulse did break out, but it didn’t lead to the rationally constructed humanitarian society he had dreamed of. In its secular nature, the value of man’s life fell away, and Russia was destroyed from within. To steal a quote from the famous Oxford mathematician, John Lennox,

“We thought that we could get rid of God and maintain a value for human beings, and we found out too late that we could not.”

- “Can Science Explain Everything”, John Lennox and James Tour Transcript

Under the Bolsheviks, any single life was worth taking for protecting the utopian vision for society. It turns out that in reality, millions were worth that sacrifice. Dostoevsky knew that truth about rational utilitarianism:

“Get to the consequences of what you’ve just been preaching, and it will turn out that one can go around putting a knife in people.”

- Crime and Punishment, (Part 2, Chapter 2), Fyodor Dostoevsky

Putting a knife in people they did, but often times people found a fate even worse – a slow dehumanizing death within the Gulag. In short, Chekhov’s optimistic vision for the future fell short due to its foundation in a secular path forward. He envisioned mankind building a political tower of Babel that would put man on the same level as God, going so far as to overthrow death. Just as it has many times throughout history, that tower came tumbling down, burying the builders beneath it.

Seeing the rationale behind Chekhov’s prophecy puts Dostoevsky’s in perspective quite easily. Whereas Chekhov believed that secular reorganization was necessary, Dostoevsky knew that transformation would only come as the result of a spiritual change. And this wasn’t a spiritual change that dwelt solely in the contemplation of beauty or the pursuit of worldly truth, but in the pursuit of Christ. He too, believed that art and science were noble pursuits, but more specifically, he knew that Russia needed to be elevated in all ideals to the model put forth by Christ.

Unfortunately, he saw that society was moving away from these spiritual ideals and towards idols of their own making. In a sense, he was witnessing the possession of Russian society by the spirits of pride, envy, greed, and wrath. He knew that the powers infested with these parasites would flock to those great masses in pain and offer secular humanism and redemption through violent revolution. To him, it was all a wolf in sheep’s clothing. It seems to me that Dostoevsky made the correct assumption – in a world moving away from the image of Christ, leeches would latch onto the great Russian nation and drink its blood until it perished.

Lest you think Dostoevsky was just being lazy and pessimistic in his predictions, I invite you to consider his prediction less as a set-in-stone foretelling and more of a warning. If we do not stray from this path, catastrophe will come. The path was not strayed from, and catastrophe did come. Is this not the same message as the Old Testament prophets?

Thankfully for us, prophecies tell us more than just about the time period in which they were posited and fulfilled. We read the likes of Daniel, Jonah, and Ezekiel to see the characteristics of a heart and nation that stray from God, the results of that straying, and the promise of deliverance. If you truly believe that the Word of God is living and breathing, that it’s the map to reality, these prophecies are explicitly important to us right now. None of it happened within a bubble. Although Dostoevsky’s work may be extra-biblical, its prognostications are severely important, useful, and rooted in Christ.

Both authors are considered relevant today because of the sheer greatness of their contributions to literature. With this relevance comes the opportunity for readers to continually learn from their wisdom, or lack thereof (sorry Chekhov, I promise I’ve learned much from you on other fronts).

Among the many things we might take from this comparison of predictions, Dostoevsky’s Demons most importantly tells us this in the context of now:

When all are struggling and lost, it’s not a coward’s move to look to Christ and not to politics as the answer. Don’t make the mistake of adding bricks to a tower of Babel when there is a ladder to the Divine already welcome to us. Oh, and beware of leeches.

God Bless You.

Lead modernity, into the future, with knowledge of the past.

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I have a deep affection for Russian literature. I’m by no means a distinguished scholar of the subject – there are at least a dozen books any self-respecting fan of Russian literature needs to read, that I have not. Heck, I haven’t even read War and Peace or Anna Karenina. Despite these qualifiers on my expertise, I can’t stop saying I love Russian literature and, as you all know, I can’t stop referring to it in my articles.

There are so many reasons to adore the work of literary masters like Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Turgenev, and Pushkin. They built a literary tradition of immense philosophical and psychological depth, rooted in the mystical nature of the freezing north and the ascetic, eastern church. What’s not to love about the exploration of the supernatural within the striking realism of Russian prose? I could go on and on, but the purpose of this article, and not least among my reasons for loving Russian literature is this - the greatest works of the Russian canon are exceptionally prophetic.

The finest authors of the 19th century accurately diagnosed the unraveling hierarchy of the ideals, like Beauty and Truth, at the expense of Western ideology, and predicted the resulting catastrophic impact on Russian society. Few analyzed the patterns of human nature and the consequences of fanatical thinking better than Fyodor Dostoevsky. His book Demons (or The Possessed or The Devils) was one of the most impressive observations of the radical, nihilistic uprisings of the 20^th century. Leveraging a provincial town as a microcosm of the Russian nation, Dostoevsky accurately predicted the rise of Marxist thinking and the impending destruction of everything Russian. He knew that once the cancerous cells of radicals began to multiply, the nation would go up in flames, and a new era would take its place. Demons is prophetic in its very nature, but some details are so oracular that it gets scary. For instance, the most mysterious character in Demons, a nameless radical academic, bears a remarkable resemblance to the leader of the Bolsheviks, and the foundational head of the October Revolution of 1917, Vladimir Lenin.

The description of this nameless academic is as follows:

“…short, bald front and back, had a grayish little beard, and dressed decently. But most interesting was that at each turn he raised his right fist high, shook it in the air above his head, and suddenly brought it down as if crushing some adversary to dust. He repeated this trick every moment. It gave me an eerie feeling.” [i]

- Demons, p. 475

And here is Lenin:

A video of him speaking can be found here.

Demons was published in 1872, forty-five years before Lenin would take power. The crazy thing, beyond the uncanny visual resemblance, is the character plays a very little part in the story. He’s a mysterious, academic leader of revolutionary idealists who drives a crowd into madness and then is gone. The book is about the radical sleeper cells awakening, not a future leader of the whole enterprise, and yet, such a potential figure makes an appearance. It surely feels like a supernatural touch amidst a book of already extra-worldly predictions. Dostoevsky nailed it.

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Although this prophecy of Russian literature could be considered nearly perfect, most of the predictions of its masters were not.

This past weekend I read the short story “A Medical Case” (1898) by Anton Chekhov. Chekhov wasn’t renowned for his optimism, but in a rare dose of it in this story, he prophesied about a precious future life for the children and grandchildren of the age – one that unfortunately never came to fruition.

The short plot of “A Medical Case” culminates in a conversation between a doctor and a rich heiress to a successful factory. Despite the heiress’s profitable position, she is depressed. Chekhov was exploring the disconnect between the fundamental goals of an industrial system and the disappointing realities of that system, saying that both the strong and weak were slave to an unknown, evil power – the Devil. But the doctor predicted this struggle wouldn’t last. His prophecy was thus:

“But for our children or grandchildren this question – whether they’re right or not – will be decided. They’ll see better than we do. Life will be good in fifty years or so, it’s only a pity we won’t make it that far. It would be interesting to have a look.”[ii]

- “A Medical Case”, p. 330

In the brief words of my contemporaries… “oof.” It’s hard to imagine that if the doctor (or Chekhov) was given that interesting look into his country five decades later he would find life, in the sense he is speaking about it, to be “good.” Fifty years after this story was published, the year was 1948, and things were different. Russia was called the Soviet Union, it was now an authoritarian regime on its second revolutionary leader, north of 25 million Soviet soldiers and civilians had just died in World War II, the country had barely survived a civil war two decades earlier, the Red Terror had claimed tens of thousands, millions of political prisoners rotted away in the gulag, and the Soviet economy was propped up by slave labor. That’s just to name a few of the atrocities. I imagine this was quite a poignant contrast to what Chekhov was hoping for. So yes, oof is right.

Ironically, if you give the revolutionaries a favorable judgement (I struggle to), the problem that Chekhov is alluding to is what they were attempting to solve, although they reduced everything to relations between classes, not the mere presence of an evil force that impacted all.

I don’t mean to be critical of Chekhov. As humans, we predict to mitigate risk. Basically, we think before we act, so that we don’t do something stupid and die. Writing is merely thinking on a page, so authors have the unfortunate burden of their projections being out there for everyone to see. This is even more so unfortunate for Chekhov, given he was so good at writing that we are still reading about his “failures” over one hundred years later. If only I could have the same fate.

The reason I wanted to bring it up at all is because Chekhov’s prophecy concerned the same future as Dostoevsky’s, although with different results, and it was this future that Lenin played a major role in. What a captivating intersection in literary history. Of course, it hurts to witness someone making an unlikely, optimistic prediction that doesn’t come to fruition, especially when the person who made the prediction is almost never optimistic. What’s more powerful than optimism, though, is Truth. We’re better off knowing the reality of what occurred in Soviet Russia, however devastating, because we have to know that ideas are powerful and actions have consequences. The Truth tell us a lot, not least of which being how not to act.

It tells us too, that “Our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms” (Ephesians 6:12, NIV). This means that, according to Truth, one of Chekhov’s predictions about reality was true – that the actual battle wasn’t against each other. He said the true conflict wasn’t between the strong and the weak, it was between Good and Evil. The antagonist was the Devil, not the opposite economic class. Well, there you go Chekhov, I suppose you redeemed yourself. If only the Bolsheviks would’ve listened to you.

Thankfully for all of us, Truth is an optimist too. It promises that one day everyone will know that life is Good, because the true battle will be won and the antagonist will be no more.

God Bless You.

Lead modernity, into the future, with knowledge of the past.

[i] Dostoevsky, Fyodor. Demons. Translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, Vintage Books, 1994. pp. 475-476.

[ii] Chekhov, Anton. Stories. Translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, Bantam Books, 2000. p. 330.

More often than not, people rationalize their way into attributing the complicated narrative of life to false idols: sex, money, and power. In our postmodern world, this designation of meaning leads to a false understanding that the overall structure of society and reality is one of victims and victimizers: governments victimize individuals, rich victimize poor, boss victimize workers, attractive victimize unattractive, powerful victimize weak, etc. This feeble and fracturing foundation for society ultimately leaves everyone with a finger to point at others and back at themselves. We’re left with a worldview of imbalance and inequality.

There is another map to the world though, which many claim accurately describes reality and provides a more than adequate path forward – the Biblical texts. Christians claim that the stories dwelling within the Bible are the blueprint to not only the meaning of life, but also the complete narrative of creation. And this narrative is quite different than that of the postmodernists.

While the problem of inequality is the focus of the postmodern worldview, it is reconciled within the Biblical one. In the Gospels, the inflection point of the Bible, Christ says this in his Sermon on the Mount:

“Blessed are the poor in spirit,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are those who mourn,
for they will be comforted.
Blessed are the meek,
for they will inherit the earth.”

- Matthew 5:3-5

Christ’s promise is that ultimate justice will prevail and the lesser will become the greater, flipping our worldly logic on its head. You may think the fulfillment of these promises are only destined for the future when Christ returns, but in actuality it says something about us right now, both about how God views us and how we were created.

A few months ago, I wrote an article about humanity’s shared fascination with precious stones (you can read it here). The gist of it was that the divinely created objects of this earth beckon to our spiritual desire for our heavenly home and communion with the Father. But beauty doesn’t just beckon our soul to that place, it also beckons our soul to a way of being right here on earth. When we observe and interact with something beautiful, we assume a posture of that which we were intended for at creation. Who among us are closest to that which we were intended for, you ask? Let’s look to the Gospel:

And he said: “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” - Matthew 18:3

When Jesus saw this, he was indignant. He said to them, “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. - Mark 10:14

This is where equality comes to play within the context of beauty and the Gospel. Beauty is an equalizer, because when confronted with it we all become like children. But why and how does this happen?

Great art and beauty, meaning the sort of sub-creation that points to the divine, raises the soul upward. Like the cross at Cavalry or the star in the East, there is an insistence in the Bible that when one’s eyes are focused on the Lord, they are protected from evil and led to a place of salvation. Those who had their eyes on the bronze serpent in Numbers 21 weren’t affected by the bites of the venomous snakes, for example. These symbols profess a mission for man to lean on God, not themselves. In a way, it’s a denial of reason and a declaration of faith

In the same manner, beauty surpasses reason. Try as you might, most of the time you can’t explain why you find something beautiful. Even when we can rationalize beauty, it’s only in reference to its lowest, most tangible parts. You can’t replicate the overwhelming physical and spiritual reaction of an amazing song you just heard for the first time, or the view from that mountain you just hiked up, despite their being things present in those scenes that are relatable and familiar to all. Beauty transcends the traditional concepts of explanation and reason. This is how observing beauty is like becoming a child. When we recognize something as beautiful, we see and appreciate it in a manner that beckons back to our reliance on something greater than ourselves, something we don’t understand.

When we become like children when encountering beauty, we humble ourselves below reason, but through doing so transcend above it. It allows us to grow closer to the summum bonum through denying ourselves and we are forced to recognize our own inability to understand the nature of the world. This is the idea of “finite mind, infinite God” at work. We also recognize the ridiculousness of having dominion over our fellow men. If we are all reduced to children in the presence of these things, who am I to lord myself over you? This is where class, race, economic, and political differences are reconciled, and where the promises of the biblical narrative come to fruition.

The two greatest authors of Russian Literature also understood this very well, often glorifying the uncorrupted and simple nature of children in their writing. Leo Tolstoy and Fyodor Dostoevsky both hinted at children as the model for ideal living but focused on different adult forms who embody this childlike perspective in the “real world”. For Tolstoy this form was the peasant, and for Dostoevsky, the holy fool. I’ll elaborate on this further in a later article, but I’ll just allude to some of the great “heroes” these authors have created for now. Tolstoy’s novella, The Death of Ivan Ilyich, features the peasant Gerasim. He’s the only one to overcome selfishness and lovingly serve his worldly master on his deathbed, because he is the only one that can humbly accept death as a personal inevitability. In Master and Man, the peasant Nikita very similarly acts as a mirror for his greedy master, Vasili, to examine the conduct of his life. Vasili then reconciles his misdoings through sacrifice for Nikita, making himself the equal or even the lesser of his servant. These are both examples of that great “peasant faith” that Tolstoy so frequently lauded in his stories, and the equalizing nature of childlike characters.

Dostoevsky on the other hand, looked to holy fools as the vessel for childlike faith in the real world. In The Brothers Karamazov there are a series of chapters that contain some of the most difficult challenges to Christianity you’ll ever hear. The rationalist of the Karamazov clan, Ivan, levees unrelenting attacks on Christianity at his faith-filled brother, Alyosha. If the characters’ philosophies were judged solely on their reasoning in conversation, Ivan would be the favorite over Alyosha. But in a very Dostoevskian manner, the philosophies are embedded in the characters’ actions and Alyosha becomes the far-and-away hero. Dostoevsky shows the holy fool as a character who through faith, operates on a plane above reason. A plane that manifests itself through love, sacrifice, and devotion to everyone, regardless of status. Again, we see the equalizing nature of childlike characters.

This is not an argument for ignorance or against reason - if it was, my whole Substack would be a hypocritical joke. What this argument is, however, is a recognition that human wisdom is not the pinnacle of truth, nor human existence. The summum bonum is found above our reasoning capabilities. In relying wholly on reason to explain the phenomena of creation, we wind up with a reductionist mode of thinking. We are forced to do what the postmodernists do and construct narratives of reality that boil down to inequalities between people and groups. But beauty is too big for reduction - you can’t explain it by “its simple or fundamental constituents”. So, we are left with beauty we can’t explain except through the concept of the true map of life – the Bible. It is interaction with this unexplainable beauty that proves us all humble children of the all-knowing God.

Everyone can see and love the true and the beautiful on the same plane, which is a simultaneously low level, in recognition of our position compared to God, and a high level, in reference to the shedding off of worldly reasoning. The Bible reminds us that the least among us will be the greatest, and that when gazing upon the beautiful we see the divine. How’s that for equality? So next time someone tries to tell you what makes the world go round, and mentions something about inequality you should ask them, “Have you tried to be a child, peasant, or holy fool lately?”

God bless you.

Lead modernity, into the future, with knowledge of the past.

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In their simplest form, characters are ideas in action. Great authors take philosophies, virtues, and archetypes and mold them into a being that acts on the world and is acted upon by the world. As a reader, you are doing yourself a disservice if you aren’t taking the great characters of classic literature and imagining how they would act when confronting the problems of today. In a way, this is why we read! It’s what allows us to create our own maps of meaning and an ever-improving character in a world that repeats itself.

The author of Ecclesiastes said there was nothing new under the sun. You might be baffled by the concept that the ideas and problems of today are in any way related to the ideas and problems of years past, let alone centuries past. I understand the doubt, but I don’t think it could be further from the truth. Sure, artificial intelligence wasn’t top of mind for anyone twenty years ago, but the pattern of creating something with the intention to solidify man’s rule over nature… that’s been around forever. It is merely another innovation that marks a somewhat nasty routine us humans have been partaking in since time immemorial, but more on that later. In the meantime, if we can declare that there are patterns to the ideas and actions that humans take, and there are characters that represent these actions (or responses to them), shouldn’t we attempt to heed their representations? What happens if we fail to utilize these time-tested novels as litmus tests for the so-called “new ideas” of modernity? Well, Ray Bradbury famously said:

“You don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.”

With this in mind, I jumped into the original prompt with religious fervor.

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After much deliberation for such a small assignment, I chose to write about the Underground Man (UM) from Dostoevsky’s famous novella, Notes from Underground . I selected the UM for two reasons. One, because I’ve read the book three times and felt the UM’s sickly, bile-ridden psychology had wormed itself into my analysis overtime, and two, because the God-like, creator perspective around AI was exactly the type of thing Dostoevsky was speaking out against.

If you don’t know the book, Notes from Underground is Dostoevsky’s response to the philosophy of rational egoism and a socialist utopia, put forth largely by Nikolay Chernyshevsky. Rational Egoism claims that the promotion of one’s own interests is always in accordance with reason (Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy). Chernyshevsky’s views on rational egoism, socialist utopias, and utilitarianism led him and others to an ultimate opinion that through the prioritization of interests, and the hedonistic pull of pleasure and push of pain, a perfect society could be made. This society would be propped up by a rejection of self-sacrifice, and an endorsement of materialism and science in a war over irrationality.

There’s one major hang up in this philosophy though: what if humans aren’t rational? The great psychological writer, Dostoevsky, knew humans weren’t, and that’s the premise of the book. The UM is a representation of man’s irrationality. The first section of the book, titled “Underground”, is a manifesto of sorts. In it the UM describes his thinking, and dissects the arguments of the “gentlemen”, likely referring to Chernyshevsky and company. In his painful, spiteful, and often-humorous way, the UM points out all the nasty ways humans act contrary to those popular ideas. Great sections like this abound:

“Yes, sirs, but for me that’s just where the hitch comes! You will forgive me, gentlemen, for philosophizing away; it’s a matter of forty years underground! Allow me to indulge my fancy a bit. You see: reason, gentlemen, is a fine thing, that is unquestionable, but reason is only reason and satisfies only man’s reasoning capacity, while wanting is a manifestation of the whole of life – that is, the whole of human life, including reason and various little itches. And though our life in this manifestation often turns out to be a bit of trash, still it is life and not just the extraction of a square root. I, for example, quite naturally want to live so as to satisfy my whole capacity for living, and not so as to satisfy just my reasoning capacity alone, which is some twentieth part of my whole capacity for living. What does reason know? Reason knows only what it has managed to learn (some things, perhaps, it will never learn; this is no consolation, but why not say it anyway?), while human nature acts as an entire whole, with everything that is in it, consciously and unconsciously, and though it lies, still it lives.” – Dostoevsky, 1864, Underground, Notes from Underground, pg. 28, translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky

The second section of the book, “Apropos of the Wet Snow”, features the UM’s recollections of scenes in his life where his manner of thinking comes to act upon the world. It’s destructive, embarrassing, and insightful. The UM is a sick, twisted man, but that doesn’t mean his disposition doesn’t have something to say about the human condition. I don’t mean one that is depressive, meaningless, and existential like the “philosophy bros” who are drunk on AI book summaries would have you think. I mean a proclamation that points to our irrationality and drive for adventure, opposed to manufactured homeostasis.

The UM continually argues that no matter how hard man tries to build up structures in life that signify his dominion over nature, life, and himself, he will not only fail to build it, but if he somehow did, he would immediately destroy it for adventure. In the book, this role of the structure is filled by the Crystal Palace, and also the “mathematical equation” by which the Crystal Palace should come about. Dostoevsky is poking fun at the Great Exhibition of 1851 in London, which housed the various industrial machines and ideas on exhibit and was representative of the utopian societies of the future where safety, comfort, and determinism would abound. This drive in humanity can be likened to that of the Tower of Babel, where humans seek to build up structures and knowledge in order to “make their names known”, deny God’s command to cover the earth, and to become their own gods. In Genesis 11, God scatters them out of love, because He knows the result of man living for himself alone, and how catastrophic it is when man raises himself up to the position of deity and searches for knowledge he is not equipped to handle. That was the cosmic breakdown of Eden after all – a lack of trust in God’s promises. The Tower of Babel story became a sort of framework that repeats itself over and over again throughout history. In Dostoevsky’s time it was the Crystal Palace, but today’s god-like, suffering-ending, adventure-killing structure is artificial intelligence.

Life with God at the head is a life of adventure and pursuing wisdom. He intends for us to learn in ways that point to the value of the knowledge we are learning. In other words, you come to wisdom through wrestling with it. One of the many destructive applications of AI is when people attempt to replace the need for reading books, with AI summaries. They attempt to cut out the “suffering” of books, which is reading and wrestling with them, in favor of having their compiled information handed to them on a silver platter, not understanding that the adventure and the worth is found in wrestling with the information the entire time. The UM wrote a whole notebook full of his ideas and actions on behalf of those ideas, not because he thought readers would find joy in his tale of bumping into an officer, but because those tales were necessary to explain everything, to remember everything, and for everything to mean something at all. In the age of AI, the UM might as well have just jotted down a list of bullet points so the “gentlemen” could understand him more quickly:

· Man is irrational

· Adventure over dominion

· We are not an object reacting to our environment

· Free Will exists

· Life is good, even in sorrow

· Seek out suffering

How ridiculous would that be? I already forgot what was in the bullet points (and I wrote them), but the struggle between worldviews I encountered alongside the UM will stick with me forever. If the UM was here today, which is what we should be imagining if we think Dostoevsky’s ideas here are important at all, I think he’d point out the many ways AI sucks at interpreting and replicating human experience. Then, he’d dropkick a computer, spit on the rubble, and write his notes anyway. That would be an adventure after all.

At the end of the book the UM asks “…which is better- cheap happiness, or lofty suffering?” Not an easy question, but I think I know the answer Dostoevsky was advocating for. Whatever you decide, the UM gives us a declaration for adventure at the cost of comfort and efficiency, something extremely timely to our life today. I hope this opinion on a minor application of AI will cause you to reflect on other ideas and innovations of our modern day, and when doing so, imagine how other characters of classic literature would react.

God bless you.

Lead modernity, into the future, with knowledge of the past.

Every year, for the past three, I’ve read A Christmas Carol the week leading up to Christmas Day. I use the same volume each year but annotate in a different pen color, which has turned into more than just a fun tradition. Not only do I get to return to a story that reorients me within the Christmas spirit, but I get to build on my thinking and analysis of years past. This year, a note I had subtly scribbled in the margins and on my bookmark two years ago leapt glaringly off the page – Is this the Lazarus story? Back then, I took it as an obvious given - of course Scrooge is Lazarus, that’s nothing groundbreaking. A Christmas Carol is a death-to-life renewal story and so is the story of Lazarus (and all of us), they will obviously mirror each other. But this year I realized there was more to it.

Maybe it was at the hands of my recent re-reading of Crime and Punishment, a masterful meditation on suffering and redemption, but I couldn’t stop thinking about Lazarus this time around. If you’re like me, when you hear that name your mind instantly goes to the story in John 11 where Jesus, in His miraculous mercy, calls the man from Bethany, the brother of Mary and Martha, out from his tomb where he lay dead. In a glorious microcosm of the entire gospel story, Lazarus is pulled from the realm of the dead by Christ. Christmas is the celebration of the beginning of this great story, so it’s only natural that Dickens would use the Christian theme of redemption within his main character Scrooge. But there is another, lesser talked about, Lazarus story in Luke 16:19-31. And this is where Marley comes in.

If the first story is about redemption the second Lazarus story is one of warning. There are two characters, a rich man and Lazarus (a different Lazarus). In this story Lazarus is a poor, sickly beggar who longs to eat the scraps off of the rich man’s table. Lazarus eventually dies and is carried to heaven, while the rich man dies and is sent to torment in Hades. The rich man is given a glimpse into heaven and begs first for a drop of water from the finger of Lazarus (which he didn’t so much as give to Lazarus while they were both alive), and secondly for Lazarus to go warn the rest of his family so that they will turn from their evil ways and not end up in the same position. Starting to sound familiar? Marley is the rich man, and his treatment greediness and lack of generosity towards the poor mirror that of his counterpart’s treatment of Lazarus. Marley is given the chance to rise out of hell, or out of the wine cellar underneath Scrooge’s home, and warn his fellow sinner of the eternal results of his actions on earth. In the Gospel of Luke, the rich man is denied the assistance of Lazarus in warning his family, with Christ stating:

31- “He said to him, ‘If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.’”

Dickens gives credence to this statement. In the beginning interaction with Marley, Scrooge proves Christ’s pronouncement at first by attributing the apparition of Marley to undigested food. He chooses the materialistic rationale for the supernatural instead of belief and the subsequent changing of character. To understand the glory of Christ, it’s a necessity for one to believe in the unmaterial, spiritual world. Andrew Klavan dissected this well in his latest article on A Christmas Carol, titled “Seeing the Supernatural.”

“At the beginning of the story, Scrooge can explain away the sight of a ghost. At the end, he looks around at the ordinary objects of his home and sees the spiritual everywhere.” - Klavan

Dickens bends the story in the gospel a little bit though and imagines what it would be like if the rich man could have come and warned his family of John 11 Lazaruses. Although more blatantly in your face than what we’re used to, God blesses us with similar reminders and warnings “of the rich man” that pertain to our character all the time. Of course, for Scrooge, the warning from Marley doesn’t work immediately, but following it is the ghostly redemption story we all know and love. The true impact comes after his acceptance of the invitation to be warned , when he is changed by the workings of the ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Future who play the role of the Holy Spirit.

The additional lens of the Luke 16 Lazarus story into A Christmas Carol makes sense for another reason too, beyond an invitation to new life and a warning for all readers to consider their character during Christmas. In nearly all of Dickens’ works he includes social commentary on the treatment of the poor and destitute. One of Dickens’ biographers, Michael Slater, said that the famous author viewed the book as a way to “help open the hearts of the prosperous and powerful towards the poor and powerless….”

The story of Lazarus in Luke 16 is one of a rich man who does the exact opposite, making it hell for those around him on earth, and building up his home in torment for eternity. Just as that gospel story is supposed to inflict a desire within us to serve and love our neighbors (and through doing so love Christ), Dickens was trying to illicit the same response. Through Scrooge he shows a man renewed, and its multiplicative impact on all of those around him. Through the Lazarus stories, Dickens was reminding his readers of our invitation to the same renewal and impact on our neighbors. Perhaps it’s just a drop in the bucket of impact when compared to a developing character, a savior’s love, and a season’s meaning, but after I read this book each year, Dickens’ reminder hits me strongly and the desire to reconcile, do good, and give graciously abounds.

God bless you, and may you lead modernity, into the future, with knowledge of the past.

The world of form and mission in writing often becomes blurred, especially in our modern world that has become overfocused on niches and tropes. Just because one piece of writing may be poetry and another prose does not mean they can’t have the same mission. With this in mind, in 2026 you’ll continue to see literary analysis, psychological essays, historical articles, poems, and more coming from the same channel, all serving the same mission. That mission being to examine how our world points to the Divine, to appreciate the wonders of classic literature, to prosper off the wisdom of the past, and to encourage more people to read and interact with these mysteries on their own. In short, the mission is to pursue truth so that we may avoid disaster and live the fullest of lives.

This new world of content creation and independent publishing is one driven by quality and consistency. My productivity on Substack has increased this year, but I haven’t yet unlocked the routine, distinctive writing that sets mature publications apart from amateur ones. In 2026, Mason’s Narrations will be focused on habitually delivering superb articles to the beloved readers who cherish the true and the beautiful. In addition to writing like a madman and sharing all the content across my social-media platforms, the long-form content will also find its way onto my YouTube channel, so be on the lookout there.

Success won’t be judged purely by views, followers, or dollars earned. At the end of the day, I want this to be an outlet, an experiment… an extension of my brain and the tangible longing of my soul. If through these efforts, a small community is formed of people passionate about the topics above, I’ll be thankful. If what you’ve read within the publication so far resonates with your interests or the interests of your friends, I welcome you to share Mason’s Narrations ! Now, I wish you joy in your New Year’s celebrations this week and pray you have a blessed and fruitful 2026. God Bless You.

Two pieces of parting wisdom for the year:

- Read more books

- Walk with modernity, into the future, with knowledge of the past

Dostoevsky basically argued, in a worldview backed by the philosophy and ethics of utilitarianism, it wouldn’t be long before people up and decided that their life benefits others so much that it’s worth saving at the expense of others. In other words, my life is more valuable than yours because my life is more valuable to other people. Or better yet (and more malicious), your life is worth taking because I could do better for others with what you have, than what you currently do for others with what you have. It’s the philosophy of Robinhood taken to its inevitable, murderous extreme.

This argument comes to life in the discussion Raskolnikov overhears at the pothouse between two officers. Through their conversation about the “old crone” and her evil ways despite her tremendous wealth, Raskolnikov imagines all the good one can do with her money and how this good could possibly be achieved through the old woman’s death.

In a moment of dramatic irony, the ramifications of this idea are brought to the light of day through Razumikhin when he says to Raskolnikov:

Fyodor Dostoevsky, you cheeky fellow. Knives and axes, knives and axes, it’s tomato tomato, really (I’m realizing this phrase doesn’t really work written out).

Of course, Raskolnikov didn’t murder Alyona for utilitarian reasons. Utilitarianism merely served as a fleeting rationalization for Raskolnikov’s actions at one point in the novel, but he eventually admits to himself and to others, that the action was a test. A test to see if he could “step over” the law and morality on his way to proving that he was a so-called Great-Man (a 19^th century Thomas Carlyle term), or Übermensch (although it wouldn’t be called that until Nietzsche coined the term nearly two decades later), like Napolean or Alexander the Great. This, and the need for redemption, was Dostoevsky’s main mission in the novel.

But in making the argument against utilitarianism, Dostoevsky poked obvious jabs at popular Russian thinkers of the time, namely Nikolay Chernyshevsky, a utopian socialist. For a more obvious, and spiteful, affront between the two, I recommend reading Notes from Underground, which is a direct argument against Chernyshevsky’s arguments for rational egoism.

Although it wasn’t a utilitarian mission that drove Raskolnikov to murder, it is still important to note that given the opportunity to take on the old woman’s wealth and do good with it, Raskolnikov failed. In our world of growing animosity between class groups, maybe we can look at Dostoevsky’s argument for guidance. Instead of merely imagining that we could all magically be moral if we had the resources of those above us (a prideful pipe dream), may we all focus on doing good with the resources we have been given, and do so according to the moral law God created and displayed to us through Jesus Christ.

Good Day and Read More Books

Even now, with our seemingly magical access to jewelry, women adore the newest trends in engagement rings and men love to flaunt a gold, Cuban chain. Despite being in the technological age with less attention paid to physical objects, priceless gems still manage to capture the attention of the entire world. The recent heist at the Louvre is still being talked about in international news, after all.

In terms of conventional reasons for the perceived value of precious stones, I think they are as follows: agreed upon monetary value (a worth in terms of opportunity cost, what other goods you could have for the same value of the stone), rarity, the difficulty of extracting or procuring these stones, their beauty, the fact that they are created, not made (although that doesn’t apply so much anymore with lab-grown diamonds), historical significance, and plain old societal trends. However convincing these reasons may be, they fail to capture everything and fail to warrant the fascination mankind has with rocks. There is a higher, not-often-discussed reason that accounts for the craze.

This unconventional reason is that it reminds us of home. It beckons to our knowledge of a different, final home, a home we are called to live within eternally. Aldous Huxley researched visual stimuli extensively, and he famously conjectured that these precious stones we speak of are indigenous to heaven. On diamonds, gems, rubies, and the like, he said:

“To acquire such a stone is to acquire something whose preciousness is guaranteed by the fact that it exists in the Other World.” – Aldous Huxley, Heaven and Hell

Huxley believed that somewhere within the cavernous human mind lived some knowledge, awareness, or a connection to heaven. Deep within the recesses of the mind, past the personal conscious, subconscious, and unconscious was a place where things just were. He called this place the mind’s antipodes, and here was where visionary experience pointed to things previously, or inherently, known.

In this far-off and mysterious place, the structures of meaning and reality were not built by our own lived experience, or the slow conglomeration of centuries of evolution. Rather, what dwelled in this preternatural land were instruments of design. They were created by God, and they point to another world, of which, we see glimpses in our current home.

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This idea of a longing and connection for heaven, is in keeping with what C.S. Lewis stated in in his book Mere Christianity, “If I find in myself a desire which nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.” In precious stones, thought Huxley, mankind finds glimpses of the divine here on earth. Our longing for them may just be evidence of our connection and longing for that other world. Surprisingly, not much is said about the actual characteristics of heaven in the Bible, at least, not as much as you’d be led to believe there is in Sunday School. But, where there are mentions of heaven in God’s Word, you’ll find descriptions of preternatural light, colors, meaning, and objects. Interestingly, in many cross-cultural traditions dating back thousands of years, the afterlife is always described as containing vibrant gardens, rushing streams, and riverbeds or roads of precious stones and gems.

So, across time, cultures, and society, not only the fascination with precious stones persists, but also the connection of precious stones to the heavenly realms. Huxley believed one could access this area of the mind that contains knowledge of the divine and thus see much of the visual stimuli of heaven, through hallucinogenic drugs and hypnosis. But there were some examples of stimuli being so powerful, so visually attached to the nature of the other world, and so intrinsically related through the divine imagination, that one could recognize their inherent value and sacredness free from the assistance of hallucinogenic methods. Precious stones are one of these stimuli; flowers are another.

Huxley thought part of this effect came from the luminating, sun-like appearance of gemstones and flowers. These creations have an ability to display the tantalizing, magical qualities of light. They also have a unique similarity to religious architecture, with its stained glass of vibrant colors, geometrical patterns, and symmetry. Obviously, one of the main purposes of this classic religious architecture, in Christianity especially, is to raise one’s mind up to the divine. Great religious architecture makes man think about God. Mere contemplation of these beautiful things reminds one of a complete life, a righteous life, the life we were supposed to live before The Fall.

Dr. Jordan B. Peterson once wrote, “There are cathedrals everywhere for those with the eyes to see.” This quote was ironically uttered in reference to a water bottle, something that is not traditionally considered beautiful. But for precious stones and flowers, a perception of “cathedrals” is understandable, the beauty even self-evident. The thought of a water bottle as a cathedral may only be possible to the visionary, or at least one who desires to see the cathedral in the first place, but for the non-visionaries, there is physical stimuli everywhere that provides a glimpse into that home beyond, the one we belong to. And, better yet, whether you’re a so-called visionary or not, all of us can learn to widen the lens of our perception (without the use of drugs) and contemplate the divine in physical realities.

Today, may we all practice contemplating the divine mystery. May we confront creation with a heart posture that desires to see the beauty and goodness of the unmolested world God intended for mankind, and the one he invites us now to live in.

Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name; thy kingdom come; thy will be done; on earth as it is in Heaven.

I tip my cap to you, in admiration, and to indicate my own alliance in this erudite, human revolution against hollow substitutes for work, thought, and purpose. Maybe that’s a tad dramatic, but during periods like these, it’s easy to feel like the world is falling apart. It’s a peculiar time to be a reader, with outsiders believing the habit has never been more useless, as those within scream the opposite. Each new day feels like a scene out of Brave New World, and although I’m no alpha-double-plus, I’ll add my voice to the masses yelling into the storm. Through documenting my own battles with wielders of the pen, I hope to encourage readers to keep up the good fight in a world of busyness, illiteracy, and willful blindness fueled by that tricky tool, Artificial Intelligence.

J.M.W Turner: Alnwick Castle, c. 1829

A Famous Battle Known to Me Alone

About 21 months ago, on the night of December 29^th, 2023 (and early morning of December 30^th), I stood in the basement of my childhood home, pacing back and forth with a copy of Beyond Good and Evil in my hands and a pencil in my mouth. If you were there, you would’ve found me looking rather rough. The concrete floor was cold, so I was outfitted in woolen socks, Christmas pajama pants, and a sweatshirt. Beneath the hoodie, the bags under my eyes were prominent. I stood, hungrily ripping through pages then staring, absent-mindedly into space, before scribbling in a note card and going back to the book. If one was there, they might’ve thought, “what the hell is wrong with this kid?” Today, social media might have called what I was doing performative.

At that point, I had done little but read and write for the last five days. A year prior, I created a goal to read one hundred books in a year and write an essay about each one (find them on my Instagram @mrp_reads_books) and I was nearly there. The end of the challenge was coming fast, so I read and wrote for hours each day that December. This is a seemingly torturous and monotonous way to spend time for some, but deep down I knew my actions were significant.

In the deep recesses of my mind, I wasn’t in that basement finishing a reading challenge, and I wasn’t wearing Christmas-themed pajama pants. Rather, I was in the shadowy ruins of a medieval castle. My body was decorated in chain mail and armor, and I held a short Roman sword in my hand, encrusted with jewels at the bevel. I crept along the stone floor, moving through silent corridors, until CLANG! The sound of metal on metal reverberated off the gothic arches.

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I was in a duel… with Friedrich Nietzsche! The 19^th century philosopher stood before me, a massive great sword in his hands. Unswaying and resolute, he performed no theatrics with his blade, only stood there, ready to parry or swing madly for my head. His attacks were fits of ruthless bludgeoning and maniacal yells, and the battle quickly became disorienting. One on one, I was dead and knew it, but as I moved through the text, other authors began to materialize in the corridor. Some on my side, some on Nietzsche’s. Dostoevsky, Tolkien, Lewis, Orwell, Camus, Plato, Dumas, Huxley, Socrates; all came whirling swords, sabers, daggers, and rapiers. The yells and clangs of metal filled the air.

The tides of war would change, and my allies became enemies, and my enemies allies. For brief moments, Nietzsche’s face would morph into a smile, and we would shuffle down corridors back-to-back, beating down the onslaughts of authors, philosophers, and politicians until again we’d turn on each other and clash.

In complete honesty, my swordplay was lacking. Nearly every page I turned, Nietzsche would strike me down with clever blade work or brute force (he even used a hammer at one point, ifykyk). Cut and bleeding, I would drop to the floor, gasping for air. At these times, when my worldview was most shaken, I’d cry out to God in helplessness.

Every time, a great light shone behind me, and the roar of a ferocious beast rang out down the hall. Through my armor I could feel the heat of its breath at my back. My cuts healed, strength returned to my legs, and I would stand up just in time to see Nietzsche flying away in fearful madness. When this happened, I leapt after him in the dark, the light still at my back, and my blade would hit home as my competitors scurried away. Once, I stood by idly when this happened, as Peter, Paul, and John grappled with the philosopher; I noticed Peter was only too keen on wielding the sword while Nietzsche screamed incessantly about slave morality.

The battle carried on like this all night and into the morning as I wrote my review of Beyond Good and Evil. Even now, I think of that book and skirmishes break out in my head. At the very least this was an interesting anecdote, but why did I choose to share this peculiar view into my imagination? Why do I speak as if this story has value? It has something to do with the idea of willful suffering…

Gustave Doré: Jacob Wrestles with the Angel (Gen. 32:24-32)

Wrestling with God

You see, reading a book means to shut up, sit still, and confront the views of someone else. When done right, this activity frequently places you before opinions contrary to your own, or ones you never considered at all. This confrontation, this challenge of walking alongside someone else through the valleys they choose to take you through, is a difficult endeavor. Thinking deeply can feel like suffering; to have your worldview stripped bare can be torturous. But isn’t it through suffering that we are made worthy? In the book of Genesis, Jacob is given the name Israel, meaning “one who struggles with God,” after an all-night wrestling match with God in the desert. The Lord blesses him for his labor. And when we struggle with the deep mysteries of life, are we too not wrestling with God, and does He not bless us for it?

Throughout the biblical narrative, and all literary traditions since, there’s an insistence that truth and worthiness are achieved through suffering, through the fight. On the other side of a voluntary encounter with evil, always comes transcendence.

This is seen in how Christ confronts death, descends into Hell, and breaks the bondage of evil in the chasms of the earth. Death and evil are defeated, and Christ is displayed to be the Son of God. Christ being the greatest hero of all, saves all through His suffering. But on a smaller scale, it’s why Beowulf must descend into the underwater lair of Grendel’s mother. He went down into the house of darkness and killed her there with a sword of evil. He came out of the water a solidified hero, basking in light and the bright aura of a developed character. This pattern again is shown in The Lord of the Rings: Aragorn enters the Paths of the Dead, reigns in the Army of the Dead, and commands them to fight for him in the War of the Ring. There is a recurring pattern of seeking evil, clashing with it, and once overcoming it, being worthy.

One can see we are called to confront evil where evil dwells. Refusing to confront darkness and challenges gives them power and foothold in our lives, allowing them to grow. Willful blindness leads to unbeatable dragons, while willful suffering leads to divine sight.

Now, this is not to say that Nietzsche is completely evil (although I’m opposed to much of his philosophy) or that reading challenging ideas is the only virtue in reading. What I’m saying is that reading in itself is a declaration that you are willing to observe the struggle between ideologies, and struggle with your own thoughts. Through the sentence-by-sentence battle of reading a book, opinions are formed, nuance is sensed, logic is observed, and foundations are built. Whether you’re reading fiction or non-fiction, someone you agree with or someone you don’t, these virtues hold true.

Raphael: Saint George and the Dragon c. 1506

AI Bastardizes Reading (and Writing)

Today, some declare that reading is a lost art, made even more unvaluable by the recent developments in AI technology. But my friends, have we not seen that the easy way out isn’t the best way out? The activity of reading is bastardized by the employment of AI summaries. For efficiency’s sake, we throw the value of the whole engagement into the fire. To get to the ideas without tracing the path by which they are gotten to, is to admit that we are unworthy of knowing and understanding the material at hand. To cut out all plot, character development, setting, nuance, symbolism, etc. in order to get to the “facts” quicker, misses the whole point. Surely, no one would think I’d get the same effect out of reading a concise summary of Nietzsche’s points from Beyond Good and Evil, that I did from that toilsome night in December. As humans we don’t learn that way, and we surely don’t grow that way.

I am not completely anti-AI, but I am wary of it. AI holds the potential for catastrophic destruction at many levels, both material and spiritual, and I refuse to walk into that cave blind and submissive. The problem is exacerbated by the few books that are actually read by the people developing these technologies and those ignorant agents advocating for pawning off reading to AI. The popular books in those circles are often self-help, career-oriented, hack-your-life, pseudoscientific scum. Sure, an AI summary might be feasible for some of these books, those readers probably prefer bullet points. After all, it’s one thing to summarize and hack books that teach you how to succeed, it’s another thing entirely to summarize those that teach you why it’s valuable to succeed in the first place.

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At times, AI can feel like we are on the cusp of a technological inflection point we read about in books like Fahrenheit 451, The Martian Chronicles, 1984, and Brave New World. And though this may feel extreme, one can’t dismiss the thought, rather, we should try to make them useful. During times of uncertainty, we should examine the morality of heroes from great works. Wouldn’t that show us that the way out is through; that we should lean into love, into humanity, and into willful suffering? After all, who are we working for, the Lord or for Man?

So then, go off and read books aplenty and battle authors with swords in the medieval castles of your mind, so that you may fight with words and ideas in real life. Good day, and good suffering.

In my contemplation, my mind rested on a few paragraphs from Alexander Pushkin’s “novel in verse” Eugene Onegin. Poetry has a knack for ascribing feelings to situations that the majority of us will never be in. Sometimes, these carefully crafted words allow us to feel deeper, to have empathy, and recognize tragedy. In the poem, a young man named Luskin loses his life in a duel to his friend. His death, and the assassination of Charlie Kirk are very different, but at the core of Pushkin’s lines is the great misery involved with young, senseless death. It speaks of the wrongfulness of killing a young person with so much potential, and the promise of love. The desire for hate and murder is hollow, and in the end, it is all found to be a lie.

The words from this poem won’t make you feel good, nor will they drag you out of your solemn pit, but sometimes the only way out is through. Read these words and meditate on the wrongness of death and feel the pain. Through the pain, we find reason to love one another, and mission to end this malice. I have faith that one day, through Jesus Christ, we will all be unified under Him, and all will see that the curse of death is no more. I look forward to that day. Right now, face the death, and recognize its curse. Only then may we be set free.

With epigrams of spite and daring

It’s pleasant to provoke a foe;

It’s unpleasant when you see him staring –

His stubborn, thrusting horns held low –

Unwillingly within the mirror

Ashamed to see himself the clearer;

More pleasant yet, my friends, if he

Shrieks out in stupid shock: that’s me!

Still pleasanter is mute insistence

On granting him his resting place

By shooting at his pallid face

From some quite gentlemanly distance.

But once you’ve had your fatal fun,

You won’t be pleased to see it done.

And what would be your own reaction

If with your pistol you’d struck down

A youthful friend for some infraction:

A bold reply, too blunt a frown,

Some bagatelle when you’d been drinking;

Or what if he himself, not thinking,

Had called you out in fiery pride?

Well, tell me: what would you… inside

Be thinking of… or merely feeling,

Were your good friend before you now,

Stretched out with death upon his brow,

His blood by slow degrees congealing,

Too deaf and still to make reply,

To your repeated, desperate cry?

In anguish, with his heart forsaken,

The pistol in his hand like lead,

Eugene stared down at Lensky, shaken.

His neighbour spoke: ‘Well then, he’s dead.’

The awful word, so lightly uttered,

Was like a blow. Onegin shuddered,

Then called his men and walked away.

Zaretsky, carefully, then lay

The frozen corpse on sleigh, preparing

To drive the body home once more.

Sensing the dreadful load they bore,

The horses neighed, their nostrils flaring,

And wet the metal bit with foam,

Then swift as arrows raced for home.

You mourn the poet, friends… and rightly;

Scarce out of infant clothes and killed!

Those joyous hopes that bloomed so brightly

Now doomed to wither unfulfilled!

Where now the ardent agitation,

The fine and noble aspiration

Of youthful feeling, youthful thought,

Exalted, tender, boldly wrought?

And where are stormy love’s desires,

The thirst for knowledge, work, and fame,

The dread of vice, the fear of shame?

And where are you, poetic fires,

You cherished dreams of sacred worth

And pledge of life beyond the earth!

It may be he was born to fire

The world with good, or earn at least

A gloried name, his silence lyre

Might well have raised, before it ceased,

A call to ring throughout the ages.

Perhaps, upon the world’s great stages,

He might have scaled a lofty height.

His martyred shade, condemned to night,

Perhaps has carried off forever

Some sacred truth, a living word,

Now doomed by death to pass unheard;

And in the tomb his shade shall never

Receive our race’s hymns of praise,

Nor hear the ages bless his days.

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Happy Labor Day and first day of September! If you count seasons using the meteorological calendar, today also marks the first day of autumn. But, if you swear by the astrological calendar (is this something people feel strongly about?), or you’re wanting to hold onto summer for a few more weeks, autumn doesn’t officially start until the autumnal equinox on September 22nd. Regardless of which calendar you use, or if you care about calendars at all, the beginning of September ushers in a feeling of transition. Whether it is indicated by natural factors like changing weather, falling leaves, and shorter days, or human factors like the introduction of fall-flavors at the coffee shop, clips from cozy movies, and Halloween decorations, September brings in an air of change. For me, fall always comes as a surprise. Summer and winter are long seasons, and towards their end, it feels hard to even imagine the weather or the aesthetic being any different. Then, slowly, but so quick you can hardly notice, fall and spring get their turn to rule, and the monotony is upset. I think this is why those two “minor” seasons feel so miraculous and phenomenal to me. Even though they come every year, they bring about an end to environments that felt never ending. But what if those minor seasons weren’t really seasons at all, but just the cyclical battleground of the major ones?

Last year, I penned this poem, “Summer’s Death”, after a slow, fall walk through my university’s campus. It was long past summertime then, but it feels right to be sharing it here now, with summer still on our heels. On the walk, the very life of everything around me seemed to be in a tumultuous state, it wasn’t just transition, it was tension. As if there was a literal fight over the temperature, the color of the leaves, and even the outfits my classmates wore. I was willfully inspired, and these words came forth, followed by one of the most productive few months of writing I’ve had since beginning my writing journey. I hope that with the coming months, I will reenter that state of passion, and much work will be done. After all, I am trying to make a career out of this writing business. But for now, my wish is that you enjoy this short, timely, anthropomorphized poem with a cup of coffee (pumpkin spice optional) or tea in your hand, with the sun in your face, and joyful expectation towards the coming fall, even if you’re not ready to let go of summer like myself.

Summer’s Death

Wielding the cold Northeaster between

Its teeth like a dagger forged for murder,

The winter slowly climbs from the pit it

Was banished to in April.

September is here, and war has begun.

To the spirit of Summer, the chilling

Breeze comes like the whisper of death:

Slow and sure, yet swift and sudden.

Gradually the conflict between the superior

Seasons turns the world into its battleground.

This is Autumn,

Conveniently painted with the colors of violence,

For it, is the fall of Summer.

As the August heat subsides,

The colors of warmth come forth,

A cruel trick,

The dying light of the Sun.

For eventually the heat is no more,

And neither is the color.

Will and fate,

Design and prophecy,

Ensure the right victor stands proud.

The Autumn bloodbath gives way.

It’s now Winter.

And Summer is banished to hell.

Low in heaven sat the Strawberry Moon,

Making pink the night in Northwest Arkansas.

A sign beacon in the eastern sky,

The lesser light of the vault above.

Eyes were raised for his brilliance,

Held steady by his gentle light.

There, frozen in the warm air,

I surveyed his humble gleam.

But contemplation became conversation;

Pursuant, I began to speak,

A message for the occasion,

From my lover, soft and meek:

“My darling said to go and find you

And to look at you awhile.

Here I am, and that I have done.

By your virtue, I stand and smile.

For my dearest so far away does the same,

Although between us, five hundred miles.”

How small this big world can feel

When the spectacular makes us stop.

Forgotten is the distance

When we pause and attend to the UP.

The Strawberry Moon, bronze serpents, altars, and mountain tops.

On that night two were together

And met way up high.

Can we all meet up there,

Triangles in the sky?

Dear Raskolnikov

The murderer of the pawnbroker,

Oh, my poor Russian friend.

I must tell you, Rodya, your nature lives

Within all us men.

The downward stroke of the axe and the bite of the apple

Are both just prideful sins.

All have listened to the lies of the serpent

That are hissed from within his den.

But true love portrays the truth,

And leads us to salvation.

Thank God for the love that tells me:

I am greater than my sin.

And for the love that shouts:

I’m saved by the blood of Him.

God gave men angels to remind us of these truths

Yours is called Sonechka, and mine is Jadie Lynn.

As my first post on this Substack, I have very little figured out, but in the following days and weeks I will be sharing many of the poems and essays I’ve written in the past, as well as snapshots of my current works in progress.