Pints With Aquinas - BONUS | Loving the beautiful this Black Friday, with Jimmy Mitchell

Episode Date: November 23, 2018

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Yo, what's up? Welcome to this bonus episode of Pints with Aquinas. It's Blurk Friday, which I didn't know what that was in Australia until we started watching segments on the news of Americans trampling over other Americans to buy some piece of plastic crap that they no longer care about five months later. And I thought, wow, that's America. One day I want to live there. But then I met my wife and I'm like, wow, you made up for days of our lives, Kmart and Black Friday. Anyway, so look, we can love bad things. We can love ugly things. We can pursue things that don't matter. But really, as Christians, we want to love what is beautiful and pursue what is beautiful. And that's exactly what Jimmy and I speak about today. Before we jump into

today's episode, I want to say two things that are really cool. Number one, I've edited a book called Advent with Aquinas. Now, this is a book where I've basically mined into the works of Thomas Aquinas and have taken out little reflections on the incarnation and birth of Jesus Christ. How do you get this book? Well, you can't buy it, but you can both read it, download the e-book. It's a really cool e-book, not just a PDF, an e-book with a clickable table of contents, and also an audio book, which I've recorded for you, if you're a Patreon member. So if you want a bite-sized morsel of Aquinas every day this Advent, Advent's coming up, if you're a Patreon member, so if you want a bite-sized morsel of Aquinas every day this Advent, Advent's coming up. If you're a patron, there you go. It's free. You're welcome. If you're not,

feel free to go to, what is it? Patreon.com slash Matt Fradd. Patreon.com slash Matt Fradd. And then every morning throughout Advent, you'll get an email at like seven in the morning. You click through to it. You can listen to the reflection and read it at the same time. So a cool way to prepare for Christmas. Secondly, do you know that someone's, um, have you heard of this, uh, Fisher's net awards thing? There is a vote right now for the best Catholic podcast in the world. Now, listen, guys, I need you here. Okay. I was always picked last for soccer as a kid, okay? It's been really difficult. What I need is for you to vote for me, okay? Especially, at least help me beat Patrick Coffin. So, if you go to bestcatholicwebsites.com, you can

find your way to the podcast section and vote for Pints with Aquinas. Now, I know what you're thinking, you know, like, oh, what about like Catholic stuff you should know? Listen, no man can serve two masters and I am your master. So go and vote for Pints with Aquinas and that would be terrific. And then I'll have Patrick Coffin on and I'll bring it up casually. All right. Here's my episode with Jimmy Mitchell. Enjoy. And that would be terrific. And then I'll have Patrick Coffin on and I'll bring it up casually. All right. Here's my episode with Jimmy Mitchell. Enjoy.

Oh, man. Ever since Microsoft took over Skype, man, it's never been easy. It's true. I was wondering what the heck happened because I noticed that Skype was notoriously difficult to navigate. Is that Microsoft's fault? Yeah. You know, they were this cool startup and, you know, kind of had the millennial thing going, all that intuitive power, and then Microsoft just squelched it. Yeah, no, I've noticed that. Oh, it's so frustrating. And what stinks is

all of my interviews are recorded this way. So it's great to have to begin all of my interviews with 10 minutes of anxiety. Should we like count down from three, two, one or something? Jimmy Mitchell. How you doing, Matt Fradd? Good to hear from you, man. I'm doing well. This is my second cup of coffee and I am very caffeinated. Yeah, no, I feel that. I've had one very large cup, which is probably the equivalent of three years. I make it way too strong. Welcome to Points of the Quietest, dude. It's so good to have you on. So I know we want to look at the transcendentals. Before we jump into specific things, why don't we do an overview? What are the transcendentals anyway? Yeah, it's just funny because I went to seminary,

it's been about 10 years now. So this is stuff that I've been thinking about, probably intuitively for even longer than that. And then it was somewhere between studying Chesterton and coming across a lot of language with Lewis and Bennett the 16th that I finally got to the source when I was at seminary of just understanding truth and beauty, goodness, even this often forgotten fourth transcendental of unity. So it's these, you know, kind of overarching principles of the human experience, these ways of understanding what it means to be human. And actually for Thomas, they're obviously ways of encountering God. And I think we're all kind of hardwired differently. I've always been one who sees God in beauty, those moments where I stand in awe and wonder

of who he is. But, you know, honestly, without doctrine, without a love for really the robustness of our faith, our theology as Catholics, then I think I would have abandoned it long ago. So there's always this rootedness in truth. And then honestly, it's the lives of the saints, the goodness that radiates from them that inspires me to holiness. So for me, the transcendentals are always at work and really very connected to each other. Right. And they're ontologically identical. That's right. And they're objective, which is so much of the conversation we're going to have today. It completely debunks any notion we've ever had of beauty being in the eye of the beholder,

of truth being relative, you know? Yeah, that is funny because I think a lot of people, though they might want to say no truth is objective, maybe they're still holding on to beauty as in the eye of the holder, not realizing that they're saying essentially the same thing. So just to be clear, I know I used a big term there, ontologically, that just comes from the Greek word ontos. So when we talk about the transcendentals referring to different properties of being, but ontologically one, I guess what we mean is when we talk of goodness or beauty, we're meaning the same thing as being.

So to the degree something is, it is good, it is desirable, it is beautiful, and so forth. Yeah, and that's exactly how Thomas puts it, that for something to be good is to essentially say that it exists. For something to exist is to say that it is good, that it participates in this ultimate being who's, of course, God himself. So that's right. So they're completely unified. And that's often why we don't hear much talk of that fourth transcendental of unity. And I think as my life goes on, you grow a little bit in age and experience, I can only hope wisdom, you kind of begin to see the interconnectedness of things. You can see the

way that the, not only the transcendentals, but maybe specifically the hand of God is creating this thread, is orchestrating this masterpiece, even over the course of your life, but you can see it in salvation history. You can see it just in the order of the universe, that there's a unity to things. And of course, we can't even talk about God

without understanding who he is as one God in three persons as well. So it's just fascinating to talk about, to think about. Yeah, indeed. Is there a place you want to dive into? Yeah. Yeah. So pretty early on where he starts talking about goodness and being the same, the essence of goodness consisting that, in fact, it's in some way desirable.

Yeah. I'm just looking at this one line here. I mean, the first article is whether goodness differs really from being. And he just says, goodness and being are really the same and differ only in idea, which is clear from the following argument. And then he gives an argument. The second one has to do with whether goodness is prior in idea to being. Right. Yeah, honestly, my favorite starting point is that article three, where he gets into goodness, but then specifically where he says perfection implies desirability and goodness. Because in some ways, that's where we're already beginning the conversation about

beauty. When we talk about desirability, that it presents the aspect of desirability, of desirableness, he says in other parts. Let's read that. I answer that then. Every being as being is good for all being as being has actuality and is in some way perfect since every act implies some sort of perfection and perfection implies desirability and goodness. Hence, it follows that every being as such is good. This is so foundational to Aquinas' ethics, you know, that if something's evil, it's because there is a lack of a good that ought to be there. And not just in beings, but also in morality. So if somebody does something evil, you know, even somebody who's not versed in philosophical

language is likely to say, it shouldn't be that way. And what they're saying is there's a lack of some good that ought to have been there. I love that. And, you know, in the same way that darkness is a privation of light, evil is a privation of goodness. And in some ways, this should give us a lot of hope, right? That in fact, even in our kind of failed attempts of pursuing the good in our lives, really specifically in our sin, you know, we so often are settling for less. We're chasing after a perceived good, but that ultimately if it's sin, it's because we haven't moved from the appetitive to that more mature, that full understanding

of goodness. So I suppose where this really begins to hit the road for me is when we're consuming media, when we're out there trying to live captivating lives, when in any way we're messing about with these transcendentals, that in fact, there's an innate desire for beauty. There's an innate desirability, right? An attractiveness towards the good. But in fact, our capacity for that goodness has to be built and stretched over time. Otherwise, we'll just keep settling and we'll never actually move beyond, you know, these lesser goods

that ultimately won't satisfy. Talk a little bit more about beauty as a transcendental, how we experience God through beauty. This is something Bishop Barron speaks a lot about. Yeah, it is. I've got this Byzantine theologian. I have no idea how to pronounce his name. Nicholas Cabasulus, 14th century. You've probably heard this before. He said that when men have a longing

so great that it surpasses human nature and they eagerly desire and are able to accomplish things beyond human thought, it's the bridegroom who has smitten them with this longing. It is he who has sent a ray of his beauty into their eyes. This is where Benedict XVI constantly was talking about this arrow of beauty that wounds the soul. You even see it in his first encyclical, Deus Caritas Est. And I think this is where Bishop Barron is picking up where Benedict left off,

which is to say that we've got to lead with beauty, that we've got to first captivate people, wound their souls, leave them smitten with a longing. And then and only then can we bring them into the fullness of truth. Yeah, that's great. I'm not sure if you saw that dialogue between Bishop Barron and William Lane Craig. No, I'm familiar with it. I haven't seen it yet. Yeah, one of the things Bishop Barron keeps going on about is beauty and Craig's like, I just don't really get it. And I kind of agreed with both of them because if it were just enough

to have beautiful architecture in our churches, then everyone in Europe would be a Christian, I suppose. But I guess you could say the same thing. It was just, if it were just enough to speak the truth, then everyone who had any familiarity with Craig's work ought to be a Christian. But I do think you're right. Like as far as evangelization leading with beauty, because I mean, if truth and beauty are one, why do we have to emphasize beauty? Can't we just speak truth at people? What's the difference? Does that make sense? Yeah, it's really the right question. So I'm calling to mind pretty quickly here,

my experience at college. I went to Vanderbilt University here in Nashville, Tennessee, and most of my friends, freshman year, sophomore year, they were either evangelical Christians or atheists and agnostics. And honestly, both sides of the coin kind of thought I was crazy for being Catholic if I wasn't in fact condemned to hell, you know? And so I kind of thought I was crazy for being Catholic if I wasn't, in fact, condemned to hell.

And so I kind of had this constant wrestling match with really wanting to proclaim the gospel, wanting people to know the fullness of truth as I had come to know it and love it in the Catholic church. But my sophomore year, I just started pinning up my best friends in corners and slapping them around with dogma. And I don't think I got a single convert out of that, not a single one of them. So much of what I was beginning to study, it's like Cardinal Newman, to study history is to cease to be Protestant, right? The more you dig in, the more you see this robust splendor of truth that is our Catholic faith. But that's not a great starting point in an era of relativism and especially moral relativism. You've got to begin with, I think,

beauty where we captivate people first. But if it's hollow, which is so much of what we see in the mainstream, if it's just trying to mindlessly amuse people, then actually that's not helpful either. So it's about leading with beauty and rooting ourselves in the truth deeply, deeply. I mean, for me, I guess the thing

that attracted me to Christianity was the beauty of Christians I met at World Youth Day. And they lived differently to the people I hung out with, and they lived differently to me. They had caught a glimpse of something better than that and were better for it, happier for it. And that was desirable. That was attractive. That is, I guess what I would say was beautiful. I love that. Yeah. Benedict XVI, you know, he's probably the greatest theologian on planet earth. I'm a huge fan, you know, but even he, as brilliant as he was, he said that for him, the greatest two apologetics of the faith from the time he was a kid all the way, you know, now into his nineties, this is the two great apologetics, the two great defenses of the faith have always been the beauty of art

and the beauty of the saints. I didn't really know Benedict when he was Cardinal Ratzinger, but when I first started to understand things like encyclicals, I was just eating up everything he was putting out. And, you know, in Deus Cartas S, I love to hear what you think about this, Matt,

and how this could connect specifically, you know, to Thomas's ideas about the objectivity of truth and of beauty. You know, Benedict, he says that in fact, when we experience the love of God, which is the greatest of all truths, at a certain point, our will becomes united with our intellect and those two become united with our sentiments. And ultimately there's this embrace of love where our will and God's will increasingly coincide. I think he's talking about falling in love with the truth that is God himself.

And that ultimately there's this reintegration of the soul, this reclaiming of the harmony that we once had in the garden. And I think that's where the objectivity here is so important that we're not chasing after some perception that we might have, some sense that we might have, but it's a deeply rooted reality that ultimately finds its fullest expression in God himself, the one who is true, good, and beautiful. I guess holiness is sort of the integration of the human person bolstered by grace and infused by grace. But then I suppose there are some of us and certainly ourselves who aren't integrated and we do put more emphasis on

the intellect, but our sentiments haven't yet followed. When I really think about the connection that the transcendentals have with the powers of the soul, you know, I pretty quickly connect the intellect with truth, the will with goodness and the passions with beauty. And that's part of why a truly integrated soul, obviously, you know, is a reclaiming of the clarity of intellect we once had, the strength of will and the, you know, the elevation and ordering of passion. So in my own, like suffering of redemption here, my own hope for integration, like suffering that integration, to be honest, there's a constant interplay of those three transcendentals in my encounters with God in prayer and my studying of him. There's a almost rewiring of my brain and this

transformation of my heart that's happening all at the same time. You know, it's huge. It's so important. I want to talk about how we can perhaps accustom ourselves to things that aren't beautiful. And then when it comes to goodness, you know, it's like we see the beauty of the saints, but we can sort of accustom ourselves to sin. We can almost become content with this stuff. And I think so too, it's got to be the same thing with beauty. That's exactly right. And, you know, von Balthasar, he was always talking about aesthetic arrest, this actual desperate need that we have in today's world to be arrested by beauty, to be in a sense, like completely caught by surprise because otherwise you're right. We just have trained our hearts. We've trained our minds to settle for so much less or to justify our lifestyle by some kind of BS philosophy that isn't actually rooted

in anything reasonable. I mean, I think that is sort of like the case of most mainstream media, and especially the news. It becomes almost suffocating the suspension of reason that you often see on the news, that we aren't anymore together in this pursuit of truth. It's just, it all just feels like a game and everybody's got their agenda. And at the end of the day, I think something deep down in me wants the freedom that comes with conforming my life to a truth that is infinitely bigger than me. And that's what I think is really at stake here is our freedom. Are we willing to suffer that integration again

so that we can taste that fullness of freedom? And again, if it wasn't for beauty, if it wasn't for these moments where I've stood on top of a volcano in Guatemala or looked at the very bones of St. Peter on the Scavi tour in Rome, if it wasn't for those key moments along the way, I wouldn't have been shaken out of my stupor, shaken out of my indifference or just my lack of thoughtfulness long enough to have considered a higher good

and a deeper truth. How does this apply to our kids? I mean, when I was a kid, we had Coca-Cola in the fridge. We had chocolate and chips and biscuits and things. My parents kept wondering why we weren't eating bananas or drinking enough water. And it's like, why would we? It's almost like Coke and Doritos, you know, is to appetite perhaps what ugly music. Okay, I'm being a little hyperbolic, but pornography and these things are to our desire for beauty. What I find with my kids is they don't have the option to drink Coca-Cola. Like I'm not trying to make anyone feel bad if they drink Coke or their kids drink Coke. It's fine. And I'm obviously not equating the morality of drinking Coke to doing other

things. But the point is when that's not an option, it turns out my kids love fruit. Like they eat bananas and they eat apples, you know? And likewise, we've chosen to watch television once a week. We call it frad family movie night, you know? But they know that that's not an option throughout the week. And so they have to read books and things like that. Do you know what I mean? Like how important is it that we form our children to love what's true, good, and beautiful as opposed to, I think, honestly, what the majority of parents are doing today, which is just sticking tablets in front of them. I think the easiest thing is what you're saying, Matt, just create the structures and create the environment where it's, you know, like Don Bosco used to say, create a culture where it's

impossible to sin, where in this case, it's impossible to settle for so much less that we've got to simply expose not only our kids, but ourselves to these higher goods, to these deeper truths, to these more even captivating expressions of beauty that help us ultimately long for heaven and to stop settling for everything short of it, you know? And I think that is where I come down to every day when I'm in the face of temptation. I wish every time, you know, there was a temptation against purity and chastity, for example, that I could say with St. Philip Neri time, you know, there was a temptation against purity and chastity, for example, that I could say with St. Philip Neri, I prefer heaven. I prefer heaven. This is a settling in the deepest way of settling for so much less, but the desire is intimacy. The desire is beauty. The desire is love. Well, it's the same thing when I hop on an overseas plane and I just

Netflix for five hours rather than read a book or frankly, take a nap. You know, sometimes you just need to rest and enter into true leisure. And this would be an interesting place to take the conversation, Matt, is what does it look like to build a culture of leisure in the home rather than this mindless amusement, you know, where we're just sort of distracting ourself or escaping from the banality or even the struggles of life rather than entering into them, suffering the integration of them, allowing ourselves in a sense to be transformed by beauty, even in the most ordinary of circumstances. How do you do this? Like in your life, how do you seek or try or succeed in creating a culture of leisure as opposed to consumption? Yeah, well, you've just kind of gotten to the heart of my life's work right now.

And to be honest, I'm not at 100% compliance here. There's plenty of days where I'm still kind of wrestling with these lesser desires or these lower appetites, as Thomas would call them. realizing that there's not that sense of peace or that sense of restoration at the end of the song or at the end of the book or at the end of the show or the film. And I think that's where I'm learning even myself every day. What does it look like to curate music, books, films? I mean, I'd go so far as to say

even the artwork that you put in your home, how is that training our hearts to love what is good so that we can become what we love? Well, what does it look like to kind of enter into that suffering of the integration, that day-to-day transformation? Because actually like we're not living in a culture where it's easy to become a saint. There's got to be intentionality. And that is all the way down to the kind of things we allow our hearts affections to settle on day in and day out, even in between holy hours and mass and confession, all the beautiful things that we might do

in our life of prayer. There's a lot of other hours in the day where our hearts are being predisposed to virtue or to vice and the media that we intake has a lot to do with it. So I kind of look at those three transcendentals every time I'm listening to a song, not every time, to be honest, that'd be exhausting, but it's sort of this thing happening in the back of my mind. Is this really

telling me something true about what it means to be human? Is this song, for example, helping me better enter into the human experience with courage, with clarity, right? And then, you know, beauty, is this actually in a way captivating me? Is this making me want the good? Is this actually making me want to choose the highest good? Or is it actually in some way predisposing my soul towards evil and towards vice? And when we want something evil, we're not seeking evil because, of course, evil is a privation. It's like we're seeking often pleasure isolated from the true good and beautiful. like we're seeking often pleasure isolated from the true good and beautiful yeah i think that's what's so important too in understanding what aquinas has to say about ethics and beauty is

like for example if you're somebody's listening right now and they're struggling with porn one of the first questions they should answer is why do i love going to porn and it's so it's almost like for some people to say well porn feels great like actually masturbating to porn feels really good it's it's strange that that's a scandalous thing to say, even for the person who does it regularly. They do it because it feels good, but it's killing them. That's the second half. But it's almost like we're afraid to even admit

that we're getting something from it. But I mean, yeah, it's like we're accusting ourselves to pleasure, almost like isolating that from the true good and the beautiful. What do you think? That's right. And I think the discernment comes in really the conclusion of things. So in other words, at the end of this act, okay, let's even just pretend it's a morally neutral act for a second, not looking at pornography or masturbating, right? So that's clear. But even on the simpler day-to-day things is at the end of this, am I turned in on myself or am I more open to others and especially the encounter with God and others? So if I can, I'll quote Benedict again, because he harps on this beautifully. He says that falsehood or this

counterfeit truth has another stratagem. He says that a beauty that is deceptive and false. So now we're really talking about something like pornography and masturbation, a beauty that is deceptive and false, a dazzling beauty that does not bring human beings out of themselves to open them to the ecstasy of rising to the heights, but indeed locks them entirely into themselves. That this beauty, it doesn't reawaken a longing for the ineffable, a readiness for sacrifice, an abandonment of self, but instead stirs up the desire, the will for power, possession, and pleasure. How do we begin to love what's beautiful? So if you liked my analogy before about growing up on junk food and then learning to love what's actually beautiful, because we've all perhaps

had this experience where if we've gone on a sugar detox, all of a sudden fruit begins tasting sweeter. But it didn't before when we were eating chocolate and ice cream and things like that. How do we begin to love what's beautiful? That's a great question. I know that right now, Matt, you're in the midst of Exodus 90, and I did it this past spring in the same way that we would detox from sugar or detox from alcohol. we would detox from sugar or detox from alcohol? What does it actually look like to just step away from media for 90 days as you're doing, or even just social media for 40 days, whether it's Lent or not, to essentially allow ourselves to begin desiring more. It's like Lewis always talks about, you know, it's not that we've desired too much in this life. We haven't desired enough. We're settling for

mud pies in a slum and God's holding out a holiday at the sea. In my mind, that's exactly what I'm doing every time I'm passively consuming media rather than intentionally curating it. But I don't know how to intentionally curate it. What do you mean by curate it? You've said that before. I'm not sure what that means. Yeah. Well, I think about like a curator of a museum, they're the ones really selecting and designing each of the exhibits over the course of your walk through a museum. And of course, the idea there is to be exposed to the masterpieces or the brilliance of these artists. So in my life, in a world where Netflix and Spotify and Kindle give me immediate, endless options, I've got to learn how to be intentional and I've got to learn how to curate so that what I'm allowing into my soul is in fact pointing me

to the great master himself. If you were to go on a 90-day detox and then just stumble your way over to lovegoodculture.com, you've got a great thing going. And that's our whole gig here in Nashville. We're trying to bring together, and we are increasingly doing this pretty naturally because of friendship, you know, but this community of artists and patrons who believe in the power of beauty to change the world. At a certain point, it's not even enough to just intentionally consume or curate your media. a point where you actually want to invest in a generation of artists who are bringing the true and the good and the beautiful back to the forefront, who are really proposing to the world a new mainstream, you know, and a new culture that ultimately going to point people to God. It's again, Don Bosco creating a culture where it's nearly impossible to send because the true and the good are so beautiful and attractive. You can't resist them,

you know? And I think we're so far from that, that to just try to replace all of our mainstream media with Christian media is not very realistic and it's not actually always very helpful. So what does it look like to find and ultimately invest in artists who are riding that line in the same way that Tolkien did in the writing of Lord of the Rings, you know, riding this line down the middle, which is to say it's an overflow of this kind of sacramental imagination, right? And I think the subtlety is really, really important in today's world. So what Love Good is all about is helping people encounter the true, the good, and the beautiful, specifically through music books and art, and then ultimately to give them an opportunity to invest in a generation of artists

by becoming one of those patrons. And then again, not only becoming this sort of curator of their own media, but ultimately a pioneer of a better culture. Well, as we wrap up, tell us more about this Lovegood. Is that the name of your company or your apostle? What is it? Yeah, yeah.

It's simply called Lovegood. And our website, our social media, our YouTube Yeah, it's simply called Lovegood. And our website, our social media, our YouTube channel, it's all Lovegood culture and our hope and wanting to steer away from even the music industry in Nashville, where we're constantly turning art into commerce. We want to allow beauty to speak for itself and ultimately create a space for artists to be free in their craft. And again, to have this sort of growing community of patrons alongside that. So we have a podcast, it's called the Love Good Podcast. You were on it about a year ago and we had a conversation not dissimilar to this one.

And we also interview a lot of amazing artists. So Drew and Ellie Holcomb, this married couple here in Nashville that are just taking the indie music world by storm right now. We've had just some amazing people like Matt Moore and Audrey Asad as well. And the hope is even in those conversations to pierce people in the same way that Byzantine theologian reminded us at the beginning of this episode, to be wounded by beauty so that we can step into the human experience more fully. This sounds just different. Going back to what we spoke about a moment ago, perhaps isolating truth from beauty. Maybe we've done that. Maybe that's what I'm doing in Pints with Aquinas. And it's like, we're just focusing on some

apologetics and like church doctrine, but it sounds like what you're doing is really different and lovely and human. That's exactly right. And we want to be a bridge between the church and culture. In that sense, we're not an apostolate. And on the flip. And we want to be a bridge between the church and culture. You know, in that sense, we're not an apostolate. And on the flip side, we're not just some sort of division of the music industry or, you know, some kind of part of a label or publisher here in Nashville. What we want to be is a new mainstream where truth, beauty, and goodness are in fact the norm. This is what Love Good is about. In the perfecting of culture, we've got to not only appeal to the innate desire for beauty. This is right out of Thomas. We've also got to, in fact, cultivate that full desire for the beauty that is God himself. And that's why we don't make a lot of

sense to most people, Matt, is we're doing something that we almost got to create the desire and the demand as we meet it along the way. How are non-Christians taking to what you're doing? I'm sure you encounter them since you're engaging them. What's that been like? Yeah, it's really cool. It's often through our patrons that we hear these stories. We've also got this apprenticeship program, which is a nine-month gap year

where you're stepping into a pretty intense rhythm of prayer, work, community. But one of our apprentices, who this conversation with his sister, who at this point doesn't believe anything, but fell in love with one of our apprentices who this conversation with his sister, who at this point doesn't believe anything, but fell in love with one of the artists that we were promoting about a year ago. And it sparked this conversation, which is exactly what we want our content to do for people.

We want to be a conversation starter between the church and culture in a way that, you know, ultimately engages and transforms people right there at that moment of encounter. So that's what we're seeing is in fact, because we're not in a very explicit way ever proclaiming the gospel, because you go on our website and there's nothing, there's a lot of hope, there's a lot of beauty, there's a lot of like, you can see it. If you're a Christian, you can see what we're about. If you're not, you're just captivated. Do you find some people just sort of get hooked on the beautiful music,

beautiful culture, but don't go all the way to Christ? It's a good question, actually. And we're not old enough to really have the answer. So our hope, especially with our apprenticeship program, for example, is to captivate young people, kind of provide the place for initial encounter, but then to really enter into accompaniment, you know, this kind of journeying with people over a long period of time with Christ to the Father on pilgrimage towards heaven. And I think that's where we're going to have to kind of wait and see if the long-term fruits of this project are what we hope them to be, because I think that demands time and it demands friendship and it demands continue to encounter and accompaniment.

And I've certainly seen it in my own life, but as Lovegood, we're only a couple of years old. Time will tell. I really hope and believe that it's possible. You know, reading the church fathers, you often see them kind of criticizing people who spend all their time reading plays and poetry. You know, it's almost like now we're kind

of doing the opposite where we're begging people to read good plays and good poetry. Do you ever feel threatened or challenged by these church fathers? They talk about like, you know, wasting your days reading novels and things like that. Or maybe not the fathers, but others, you know. And you think, gosh, am I doing something wrong here in like reading Tolstoy and others? Yeah, that's a really good point. I've actually not come across many of those writings yet. But, you know, I think that if we want everything to have utility, like if everything in every single moment has to have productivity, we actually compromise a lot of our humanity. You know, I think there is something restorative about leisure, whether that's reading a play out loud with your friends over a glass of wine, or, you know,

going to a great concert. And I'm not talking about Beyonce at your local arena. I'm talking about the kind of concert where you walk away and you're just more human, whether you've entered into someone else's suffering or someone else's joy, whatever it might be. If the artist is truly an artist, they're not just creating entertainment or this moment of pleasing your sensitive appetite. They're actually going to help you walk out of there more fully human and more fully alive. You were mentioning something to me a moment ago

about something you're doing with Matt Ma. That's right. We've got a really special package coming out this Christmas. It's actually going to start being released exclusively to all of our patrons on December 1st. And it's an opportunity as a patron to start subscribing and investing to a movement and a community of artists you can believe in. And so Matt Marr, his brand new Christmas CD, as well as his children's Christmas book are featured in this particular package. And he's a true artist. And I think everybody who ever works with him would say that.

So we've also got another album from the Grey Havens. This is a direct reference to Lord of the Rings. This is honestly, Matt, my favorite album of 2018. It's called She Waits. And this is this beautiful newly married couple. They call themselves a pop folk duo. And this music, like I've never listened to music that made me long for

heaven more. And there's very few direct references to the gospel. So we put out these packages every season with the hopes of really lifting people and really practically giving them not only media, but tools to build a better culture within their home, within their communities at large, and to really, again, engage and transform their friends and their family right where they are. So that's what being a patron is all about. In fact, we've just got this coupon that will release for a limited time to all your listeners, if that's okay. If they go to lovegoodculture.com slash pints, P-I-N-T-S, it'll be a very easy way and a very free way to become a Love Good patron and to get all this delivered by Christmas.

So pretty cool stuff. Yeah, thanks, man. I'm going there right now and checking it out. It looks awesome. Well, my friend, it's been nice chatting with you. Sorry this was a bit crazy, this episode. I know we kind of jumped all over the place. That was probably my fault, but it's certainly been fascinating.

The problem is we were drinking coffee and not beer. I think that's where we were at. Yeah, we weren't mellow. We were just high strung. Yeah. Thanks, Matt. It were just high strung. Yeah. Thanks, Matt. It's been an absolute pleasure. Thanks.

All right, guys. There you go. Wasn't that fantastic? I hope you have a good Black Friday and that you don't trample anybody. I will throw all the links that we spoke about in today's episode in the show notes. So they'll be right there for you. And as I say, get that book. Write this book. It's called in the show notes. So they'll be right there for you. And as I say, get that book, right? This book, it's called Advent with Aquinas.

Reflections on the Incarnation and Birth of Christ. Again, the only way to get that is by being a patron. And I would really appreciate it. So have a... Oh, and remember what I said earlier.