Entertainment, Leisure, Worship | Fr. Gregory Pine & Fr. Joseph-Anthony Kress
April 5, 2025
This transcription was generated using AI technology. Please note that there may be errors or inconsistencies.
00:00:05:12 – 00:00:39:22
Unknown
This is Father Gregory Pine. Joseph. Anthony. And welcome to God’s planning. Thanks to all those who support us. If you enjoy the show, please consider making a monthly donation on Patreon. Be sure to like and subscribe to Godsplaining. Wherever you listen to your podcasts. Father Joseph Anthony. So in this episode preview of Coming Attractions, we’re going to talk a little bit, a little bit about entertainment and but, but people have different ways of what we want to say entertaining themselves or cultivating healthy entertainment or unhealthy entertainment in certain cases.
00:00:40:00 – 00:01:00:22
Unknown
It’s it’s interesting insofar as what a man does with his free time gives you some indication as this level as to his level of freedom. I was listening, where was I listening to? I wasn’t listening to anything. I was reading something. It was the, the Sisters of Life imprint publication, and they were recounting this conversation between a journalist and Saint John Paul the second, and the journalist just overwhelmed by John Paul.
00:01:00:22 – 00:01:21:13
Unknown
The second social calendar and its many demands was like, what do you do in your free time? And or like, do you get any free time? And Saint John Paul the second is said to have responded, all of my time is free. Oh, I love that man. He just gets me excited about life. So in addition to all of your time being free, what do you do in your free time?
00:01:21:15 – 00:01:32:18
Unknown
So my, yeah, my free time is pretty much filled with. Nice. Okay.
00:01:32:20 – 00:02:00:10
Unknown
Yeah. You know, I I’m horrible. Okay. Okay. Okay. You just need, like, 1 or 2 decent real golf shots in row. Yeah. That’s why I keep playing this game. I’ll keep coming back. Chasing the dream. Pure six. Iron into the green and just holding the green like that’s. Yeah, it’s that’s that’s what I do with my time. So in, in the moments in my life where, let’s say it’s, dark.
00:02:00:12 – 00:02:32:21
Unknown
Okay. It’s for raining. Okay. Yeah. Golf simulator. If only, VR goggles. Yeah. VR golf skills. Yeah. I’ll watch it. Play golf. YouTube. You know. Wow. Work on your swing. I’ll be, you know, in my room doing a whole tour. Yeah. To get that through. So nice. Put all my efforts into that. I remember, like, when I started taking up golf is when I first got to Charlottesville by about 17 years ago, and I.
00:02:32:23 – 00:02:55:20
Unknown
I decided that was going to be my. Okay. Because I wanted something that it was like that or methamphetamines. Yeah. I would say that. That’s right. It’s okay. Don’t be offended. Yeah. West Virginia. But, I got because I said I need something to get me out. Yeah. I could be stuck in my room reading books all day and things I need sunlight.
00:02:55:20 – 00:03:19:06
Unknown
I need to get out. Nice. Yeah. So golf is something that gets me outside. And then I wanted a hobby. That was a skill. Be kind of perfecting and working on it. Never satisfied like. Oh yeah I’ve accomplished that. It’s like no. With golf there’s always you can always be, you know, working on your swing and doing a little better or things like that.
00:03:19:06 – 00:03:44:01
Unknown
So yeah. Nice quote, Mrs. Hamilton. You’ll never be satisfied. So, so the thing with golf is that to an outside observer, it seems like you’re paying to be frustrated. To an inside observer, is it like that or is it different? It’s different. Okay. Yeah. I mean, I remember I watched a video of Samuel Jackson and he said, like, why he loves golf so much.
00:03:44:01 – 00:04:02:13
Unknown
Is that it’s not like he’s ever competing against the other people in his group. Radically different skill level. Yeah. The opponent is the course. So anytime I get to play it’s like I’m, I’m trying to play of course. And of course it’s always different. The winds different the, the, the law is different and things like that.
00:04:02:13 – 00:04:22:07
Unknown
So yeah it’s never ancient. Never. Course again and again. But I never get tired of that. Yeah. There’s always a different challenge there. So it, there’s just a certain competitive spirit that I’m super competitive. In that sense. But I’m able to like kind of direct my competition against other people. I need to beat them and be better than them.
00:04:22:07 – 00:04:43:05
Unknown
It’s like you know my competition is the core. Ever evolving. And so what where am I today. And is it. My hands are freezing cold or what else am I dealing with. Bring it into this. But I’m able to kind of like try to channel my energies into that. See, I’m not a finesse man. I’m more of a brute.
00:04:43:07 – 00:05:09:10
Unknown
So maybe it’s on account of the proximity of my place of birth and up growth, to the city of Philadelphia. But like I would say that I feel most out of my element in country club sports. Like, I think I’d prefer figure skating to, like, tennis or golf on account of the fact that, like, it’s it’s the type of thing where I will always hit the ball over the back line in tennis, and I will always shank and or hook the ball in golf because I’m just trying to motor my way through.
00:05:09:12 – 00:05:33:23
Unknown
And, that’s not a thing that one can do in these. You need to like actually have skill and or technique, both of which I lack. I was good at sport. I mean, I was never good at sports, but comparatively speaking, good at sports, where you could just, like, wiggle your way forward. So, like, cross-country track and field, impose your will in other people, even if it wasn’t by the aforementioned finesse technique and or skill, but just by like terror.
00:05:34:01 – 00:05:53:11
Unknown
Yeah. It was kind of like, I am vengeance, I am the night I have the ball in my hands type thing. So as a kind of Bettman type character on the pitch or court or whatever else, that’s really where I excelled. But we’re going to talk about entertainment only after having made a quick announcement.
00:05:53:11 – 00:06:21:21
Unknown
And so I’m going to consult my phone insofar as this also plays into the theme of today. So we sometimes have sponsors for episodes and we’re grateful for that. And this is sponsored by this episode is sponsored by the Bush School of Business. Which makes available to you the master of science and business, which at the Catholic University of America, that is, is a nine month program rooted in Catholic social teaching and virtue centered education, designed for students with liberal arts, Stem and business backgrounds.
00:06:21:23 – 00:06:51:23
Unknown
I think that might be an exhaustive dialectic. I don’t know if the other bit. Are there other backgrounds? It’s hard to say. Even the background less. This accelerated in-person program gives each student a comprehensive mastery of business disciplines and equips them to pursue business as a force for good. The Master of Science and Business Program located in Washington, DC across from the Dominican House of buddies, but a stone’s throw from this very studio, has a long history of success, with a 99% record of job placements within five months of graduation.
00:06:52:01 – 00:07:15:04
Unknown
To learn more about this program, go to MSNBC’s catholic.edu. That’s incredible. Ciara Bravo, Catholic. Nice. Okay. Yeah, we had Doctor Andrew Abella, Dean Abella of the Bush School of Business on for guest episode not too long ago, and he was speaking of super habits, that is to say, virtues which is, as the announcement said, one of the focuses of the aforementioned Bush school.
00:07:15:04 – 00:07:40:13
Unknown
So kudos, glory and honor. I think kudos means one of those things never mind. It doesn’t matter. Keep going. Gregory. So, you were talking to me recently about not Dana Joya, but Ted Joya and his theory as to the progressive evolution of a culture as to its kind of preoccupation with whether art or entertainment or distraction or, you know, and on down the line.
00:07:40:19 – 00:08:10:14
Unknown
So to set this conversation up, take us there. Where do we find ourselves are at present in the kind of life cycle of a culture? And how can we tell on the basis of the things in which we indulge? I stumbled upon, this article written by Ted Gioia. And he was talking about the state of culture, and he kind of introduces it like, hey, every year there’s the state of the Union address by the president or corporations, their CEO give a state of the culture, and it’s like, nobody’s talk about culture.
00:08:10:16 – 00:08:31:11
Unknown
You know, like so I’m going to propose a state of the culture. And that was enough to grab my attention. And then read this. I want to give a very brief synopsis of that article that he wrote. And what he was saying in there is that every culture properly produces art. Art is the product of a culture in every culture.
00:08:31:13 – 00:08:57:07
Unknown
Yeah. Right. A music you have kind of paintings and visual arts or architecture, opera, all manner of good things besides. And but that’s the that’s what culture does. It expresses itself through art. And so then he starts to look at this and see kind of like he mentioned the devolution of it all and says, well, there is such a thing as art, but the culture can also do something with that art.
00:08:57:07 – 00:09:22:09
Unknown
And, and it’s kind of, I won’t say worse expressions, but it can kind of bastardized that into something else. What we’ve seen is that art kind of devolves into entertainment, and then the culture is just engaging with things that are entertaining in that way. And then there’s a further devolution. It devolves from entertainment into distraction. And then that goes on for a while.
00:09:22:09 – 00:09:52:23
Unknown
And then it continually devolves and it goes into from distraction now into addiction. And here’s one of the claims that he makes in that article is that we are now in a post entertainment era. We’re no longer looking at art. We no longer actually look at entertainment where we’re after that. And that really kind of resonated with me because if you to think about it and look about it in that, like I think, you know, we grew up in an age I was very entertainment.
00:09:53:00 – 00:10:14:04
Unknown
Influence education. You saw it influence, you know, religious worship, you saw it. Entertainment became the major engine behind a lot of things. And he, he mentions how you can look at kind of the celebrities of a culture. And I think we grew up in an age where the entertainer was the celebrity. Justin Timberlake you know could sing, he could act, he could dance.
00:10:14:04 – 00:10:40:03
Unknown
He was an all around entertainer. But we’re past that now. The celebrities of our current culture are influencers. Yeah. Yeah. All they do is produce distractions you know. And so it’s a very interesting kind of thing to think about and to see how all of this plays out. And towards the end of the article, he, he talks about, you know, the effects of dopamine and all that kind of stuff, which is also very, very interesting.
00:10:40:05 – 00:10:59:20
Unknown
But he kind of says, like, there’s, a way for a culture to properly engage in art, and then it goes fast paced and then it’s, it’s like kind of unwieldy inside of it all. And he kind of breaks it down in all these areas with music and, communication and, literature and all that. And the one that always grabbed my attention is sports.
00:10:59:23 – 00:11:21:09
Unknown
But he said, with with sports, you used to engage in that form of art, right? You used to get that by playing the sport. By the sport. And then it moved from that to entertainment, where now the sport is emphasizing as you engage with the sport by being a spectator of it. Not going in the field and playing it yourself.
00:11:21:09 – 00:11:45:20
Unknown
But now just watching that and then move from that to distraction to people don’t even go watch the sport anymore. They just watch the highlights. Right. Condensed versions of the game as quickly as it can be consumed. And then so much so that it goes from that to now we gamified the spectatorship. And you have now sports betting on a radically huge rise right.
00:11:45:22 – 00:12:08:05
Unknown
On a full where addicted to the sport because it’s gamified. And now on the addiction level. And so reading this article is the state of culture 2024. And this was a really eye opening kind of article because it helped to kind of put words to some experiences that we’ve had, but also then to look back on our life of faith and how we approach worship.
00:12:08:07 – 00:12:24:04
Unknown
Do we engage in healthy leisure? Is there a way to reverse this course. Do we put the toothpaste back into the tube. And if so how do we do this. But you know just kind of lead off to say this is the framework that we’re going to have this conversation about. Yeah. The terms that we’ll be discussing.
00:12:24:04 – 00:12:52:05
Unknown
But with that kind of understanding of where we currently are as a culture in 2024, and how are we engaging with what our culture should be producing? Yeah. But is it doing that? And if so, how do we actually maybe slightly course correct. Okay. So I have a kind of thought pursuant to that. And I think that we can just chart our course through addiction, distraction, entertainment and art arriving at the source thereof.
00:12:52:06 – 00:13:21:22
Unknown
So a further introductory or just kind of thought pursuant to what you described is that I think that sometimes folks think about their lives as individuals or maybe as family units, as one primarily of defining against and resisting the tendency of and, you know, we had this conversation ten, 15 years ago with the publication of The Benedict Option and various ways in which as believing persons, families, communities to try to contend with some of the negative aspects of the culture in which we live.
00:13:22:00 – 00:13:40:01
Unknown
But I think that we’re at a point at this stage in the game where we just can’t, not in the sense like we give up and then we just capitulate and then whatever. We let the culture dictate what it is that we’re going to do with our lives. But in the sense that, like, we need to be able to admit at the outset that we are influenced by our culture, that we are the products of our culture.
00:13:40:03 – 00:14:01:13
Unknown
And even if we’re striving manfully in order to address this obstacle or redress this wrong, that we’re going to be influenced by it. So I think the point here isn’t so much to say. I’m going to carve out a life entirely against or entirely other, but just to say I’m going to be aware or, you know, like conscious of the ways in which I benefit from and also suffer from my cultural milieu.
00:14:01:18 – 00:14:21:17
Unknown
And I’m going to take those on board. Yeah. Right. So so that way I am not just kind of storm tossed and shipwrecked in a way that’s utterly unconscious, but so that I can be cognizant of the way in which holiness is meant to unfold in this time and in this place. I think that’s so important, because what you recognize is that, like, yes, we actually don’t live in vacuums like we live in this culture.
00:14:21:19 – 00:14:42:08
Unknown
Yeah. That is a gift to us. You know, the time in history in which we live, the the geography in which we find ourselves. Those are actually gifts given to us. To see it as such. Now, we don’t live in a vacuum, but just as you were describing as like you kind of have to take the pulse and take note of it.
00:14:42:10 – 00:14:58:13
Unknown
Necessarily something that should paralyze us like oh my gosh it’s so bad. There’s nothing this is the worst that’s ever been. And what do I do with it. Like there’s nothing to do. Now I’m just Neilston and paralyzed by it. But at the same time it’s not something where you’re like, okay, I have all the energy in the world.
00:14:58:13 – 00:15:22:11
Unknown
We’re going to. I want to change the world and be a one man show and just take it all on, because then you actually end up over exhausting yourself and destroying your humanity. Trying to change humanity. That’s what I mean. There’s, there’s a whole nother issue like I don’t actually believe in like redeeming culture. Saving culture. Like I, I believe in saving and redeeming in heart.
00:15:22:13 – 00:15:48:02
Unknown
And if we lose our humanity in the project of saving the culture, then have we gained anything. Yeah. It’s like we have to understand that. And so being able to take that step back and say like okay I’m taking note of the cultural milieu that I’m in. I’m taking note of my geography. And the time in history actually gives me the ability to stand on my feet in this place.
00:15:48:05 – 00:16:14:00
Unknown
Yeah. And not to be over exhausted and destroyed by it. Yeah. All right. Let’s listen. Chart a course through addiction, distraction, entertainment and art. When it comes to addiction, like, I’m more and more conscious of the fact, especially as the technological means are refined and as the algorithm is attuned. I’m just, like, not strong enough in the sense, like I’m weak, I’m wounded, and I’m going to doom scroll if given the opportunity.
00:16:14:01 – 00:16:27:12
Unknown
So it’s like at the end of the day, you’re tired. All right. If you’ve worked from, you know, like whatever o’clock to whatever o’clock, it’s like, I wake up at 520, I’m in the chapter for a whole hour at six, and then we have morning prayer and mass, and I’m usually working from eight until about 9 p.m. with the interruptions for prayer.
00:16:27:12 – 00:16:44:14
Unknown
So like an hour at midday, an hour and 15. You know, like at dinnertime. But it’s like it’s like a foolish dish. And at the end, I know that I’m just tired and I just want some something. I don’t know what it is exactly, but it’s probably just I mean, biochemically speaking, it’s dopamine, but, like, I don’t know, environmentally speaking, it’s like relaxation.
00:16:44:14 – 00:16:57:22
Unknown
And I know that if I bring my phone into my cell, I’m going to look at the websites that I always look at. So it’s like I have my blog role, as it were. It’s like I always go to ESPN.com and then I do like political commentary of a certain source, like Daily Signal, Daily Caller. It’s like, now you know what I think.
00:16:58:00 – 00:17:10:08
Unknown
And then like I usually look at new Advents see what sort of stuff is up. I look at the two, I look at the Eagles and the Sixers fan sites. Right. So Bleeding Green Nation and then Liberty Ballers and it’s like, if I do that I know that there’s going to be 25 minutes. I’m going to be backlit.
00:17:10:08 – 00:17:29:21
Unknown
Stimulate. It’s going to take me long to fall asleep. And then 520 comes the next morning and I haven’t slept enough. So like basically my options are when I go down to Compline at 9 p.m., I have to leave my phone in my office and not look back until 8 a.m. when I come up for mass or to sleep less than I want to feel less than I ought.
00:17:29:23 – 00:17:56:14
Unknown
Which is fascinating because it’s just like I can’t interact with the technology in a healthy fashion. There’s like only ever unhealthy interaction or distance, which is wild. But I think that, like a lot of people feel themselves in the grips of a kind of addiction culture. Like maybe, maybe it’s like largely dealing or trafficking in distraction. But I think a lot of us have close encounters with like the addiction power, which is it’s just everywhere at this stage of the game.
00:17:56:15 – 00:18:25:06
Unknown
And I think that’s why I was so helpful to kind of hear this, like actually laid before me in this kind of sequential pattern is like, oh my gosh, yes, I’ve experienced that. That’s getting words to an experience I have is like, yeah, we, you know, and there’s a little bit of kind of, pause in the sense of like, this was manufactured like, you know, am I just a puppet of some big, you know, marketing system or I just a puppet of Silicon Valley that is preying upon my weak humanity.
00:18:25:08 – 00:18:50:23
Unknown
But after recognizing that, then that gives you ability, like I said, to stand on your two feet in this in the time, take something and say, okay, actually, I, I have a certain freedom and I have a little power over top of this addiction. Now, there are certain things that my phone is useful for. It’s a tool among many in my life, but I need to actually step into that and change certain actions behaviors before that or because of that.
00:18:51:01 – 00:19:13:05
Unknown
But it is like a kind of recognition of like, yeah, actually I am in this very addictive world and all things are addictive. And it’s not just substances, but it’s actually my culture. Yeah. Okay. So working our way then from addiction to distraction, I think that’s where we kind of find ourselves in this cultural moment, as you have described it, on the basis of the commentary of to Joy.
00:19:13:07 – 00:19:31:12
Unknown
But this idea, like you made mention of influencers, you made mention of highlights or blah, blah, and thus and such as I think that, like everyone has noticed that our attention spans over the course of the last 25 years have gone from whatever like 40 minutes to 40s. I’m sure there are statistics which actually give us all the data, on the basis of which we can make rational judgments.
00:19:31:13 – 00:19:49:11
Unknown
I don’t know what that data is, but it seems like it’s gone from this to that, and that is much smaller than this. And so on account of the fact that people are trying to make a living on the basis of whatever the entertainment value or distracting value of the content that they curate, the content that they produce, they know that.
00:19:49:11 – 00:20:09:18
Unknown
I mean, it’s like kind of behaviorist in its psychological outlook. They’re just trying to produce behavior. They’re just trying to produce results. And you’re clicking, engaging, sticking with and then recommending, liking, subscribe, whatever it is. And so they’re trying to make it as low demand, high dopamine as they can. Right. And so like the content gets shorter and shorter and shorter.
00:20:09:20 – 00:20:33:01
Unknown
And then like the TikTok trends or whatever they like, these things just tend towards the more sensational, ridiculous and as it were, kind of zany. And whether that’s, I mean, whatever it was. So there are, there are different ways in which to engage with the internet, but it seems like everyone’s out there just dying. Everyone’s just out there, like dealing with sadness, dealing with anger, trying to make way through.
00:20:33:01 – 00:20:55:12
Unknown
And so we’re just indulging in distraction is a way by which to what, to cope, to make it to the next day. What are you saying? Yeah. That, you know, this is where if we’re starting to reverse, of course, I think in this level is where we can actually start to take action. Like once we like kind of coffee addiction or at least recognize that, then for me, that’s the number one question I always ask is, okay, what do you do with your free time?
00:20:55:14 – 00:21:18:18
Unknown
You know, we kind of what we started, conversating about. I hate that word, but it’s what we started speaking about at the beginning of that episode. What do you do with your free time? Because if you don’t have an intentional thing. Yeah, you will just go to your distraction. Yeah, right. And you’ll doom scroll and you’ll be just stuck in bed for hours with a screen three inches off your face.
00:21:18:20 – 00:21:37:00
Unknown
And so, you know, I think that’s where we begin to kind of start to cultivate our hobby. Hobbies is like taking an honest look at our free time and say, okay, you know, I get home, I work at whatever time I’ll cook dinner. And then at that I will, you know, my bed time is, you know, 11:00 or 10:00.
00:21:37:02 – 00:22:00:17
Unknown
I have x number of hours. What do I intend to do with that is I think this is where we can start to recover and reclaim kind of our autonomy and personal realities is to then become intentional with our free time. So that the, the kind of de facto action isn’t just. You know, if I’m going to watch YouTube videos, it’s for a specific purpose.
00:22:00:17 – 00:22:23:09
Unknown
Am I learning something or you know, whatever it may be, am I going to start to cultivate a hobby. Now that’s a different question and we can talk about that. But I think moving from distraction means being intentional with our free time, at least having options to say when I have an afternoon free, when I have an evening free one morning, do I want to call a friend, go to dinner with a buddy?
00:22:23:11 – 00:22:44:19
Unknown
Or am I going to do engage in one of my hobbies at least having a, kind of a, a short list or like a tasting menu of what I’m going to do with my free time. Yeah. Okay. Then turning to obviously, these are not comprehensive takes on any of these issues, but we’re just kind of given some indications as to how one might think about and engage with the things concerned.
00:22:44:21 – 00:23:03:02
Unknown
So turning then to entertainment, I think about this with some frequency. I heard this really cool lecture, but I think his name is Thomas Harman, who teaches at the University of Saint Thomas in Houston. And I also read a book called Entertaining Ourselves to Death, which is somewhat famous, and it’s gone through several publications. And then the author has published other things of a similar sort.
00:23:03:04 – 00:23:29:04
Unknown
But at present we’re in the digital age. It strikes me that the digital age is the digital age is about, storage of data and retrieval of data. So, this is a development, as it were, from the electric age, which is about projection of like basically images and content. We’re still using the digital age after the manner of the electric age, although with AI now we’re really starting to deploy the digital means that lie at our disposal.
00:23:29:07 – 00:23:49:01
Unknown
But this was the governing paradigm, the electric age, like with the with the kind of entertainment which issued from was the governing paradigm for a long time. And this one author that I read, he comments how it shapes all of our communication such that everything that we do is framed by, or is otherwise couched in terms of entertainment.
00:23:49:03 – 00:24:15:00
Unknown
So it’s like you think about, you know, like a kid is on the computer for 1,000,000,000 hours, you know, if he’s just playing whatever flash game, unlike IBM’s Worldcom circa 2003, you’re like, oh my gosh, you know, this is crazy. But if he’s doing something like The Logical Journey of the zombies or like Doctor Quandaries Island, like these educational little games that we had when we were little, then you’re like, oh, it’s okay, he’s learning, but it’s learning couched in terms of entertainment and the medium.
00:24:15:00 – 00:24:39:16
Unknown
You know, says Marshall McLuhan, is the message. And if we learn from what’s communicated to us at practically every turn that we need entertaining, then we become little entertainment beasts, right? And when things come to us in hard terms, stark terms, otherwise bare terms, we’re just not having anything of it. Right. But I think that a lot of people are realizing that they need to opt out of this, or they need to choose something.
00:24:39:16 – 00:24:56:15
Unknown
Otherwise, because it’s starting to undermine their humanity. So like this whole like, raw dog thing, it’s like you get on a plane, you have no headphones, you have no cell phone, you have no book, you have no computer, you have no distraction of any sort, no entertainment of any sort, and you just see it through. Because the point is like, do you have thoughts to think?
00:24:56:15 – 00:25:18:09
Unknown
Do you have an interior world on which to repose? Do you have the kind of fortitude or courage of personhood so as to like, see a difficult thing? So people recognize the need for this, because all of this entertainment has just been dehumanizing us and like rendering us weak and wounded further. So thoughts about entertainment? Yeah, I think, the entertainment paradigm is something I think we definitely have to live through.
00:25:18:09 – 00:25:35:21
Unknown
But we’ve seen this transition and this is very kind of, to be very honest, confusing as all hell to us because we’ve seen one age, we see a new one. We don’t know what to make of really either. Yeah. And I think that you start to, you know, question why the like, do I need a reset in my life?
00:25:36:00 – 00:26:01:15
Unknown
You know, how how do I, I think it proposes certain questions. So it’s how do I communicate with people? What do I value in what I like to take into my life? Like what is the the types of entertainment that I’m willing to let into my life? And if so, how into what means of that? And if it becomes in such a way that I only engage with that which is kind of, sweet to my taste or tickles my ears.
00:26:01:15 – 00:26:25:04
Unknown
You know, I’m looking at the not the value of what is in front of me, but I’m looking at the entertainment value of that. How does that make me feel? You know, and that’s, you know, when you look at it, I love going to concerts and live music because the entire thing is a cultivated experience to make you feel, you know, and I love live events for that because you can do a lot with that.
00:26:25:06 – 00:26:59:20
Unknown
But if the entire thing now is, is such an experience of how does this make me feel, that becomes my judgment, right? In the say, how was that? Oh man, it really I really felt like, you know, how was the concert? Oh my gosh. I felt like it was they were they were really locked into that moment. If that becomes our kind of metric, is my felt experience, because I’m only looking at the entertainment value of this and I discredit anything which is subpar to high entertainment value, then I think those are things that we we actually need to kind of maybe reset on some things.
00:26:59:20 – 00:27:20:21
Unknown
And that’s why I, you know, the experiences of just getting on a flight with no strings attached is kind of attractive. And it actually might be worth it sometimes to just put yourself through a difficult experience to kind of, detox. Yeah. So apropos of hobbies I don’t have many hobbies, I like walking, I like hiking.
00:27:20:21 – 00:27:47:19
Unknown
If there’s snow on the ground, I like snowshoeing. I like putting myself in totally compromised situations of an adventurous sort so I can have to, you know, sort it out. But I really like languages. I like acquiring languages and speaking languages. And I especially love forming connections on the basis of a linguistic kind of friendship. So every day I do 15 minutes of French, Spanish, German and Italian and like I’ve used various different language programs.
00:27:47:19 – 00:28:05:11
Unknown
But it’s interesting, like the ones that are for your entertainment are the ones that I find the least helpful. So I’m not like throwing shade here. If you like Duolingo, God bless. But I hate Duolingo. I hate it, and I retain nothing of it. But whereas there’s this other one that’s just kind of boring, but it appeals to my agency.
00:28:05:11 – 00:28:28:19
Unknown
So whereas Duolingo, I feel like it’s appealing to me quite passively. There’s another one called the Pimsleur method, where somebody says something in English, like there’s a lot of traffic on the, you know, highway, and then you’re responsible for formulating that same sentence in the language that you’re acquiring. Like, I mucho trafico in low to Pisa, and then it repeats it in the language that you’re acquiring twice so that you can correct for formulation and pronunciation.
00:28:28:19 – 00:28:56:22
Unknown
And so you can train your ear and train your mouth, to actually exercise agency. So I think that like that kind of leads us in then to this notion of art or the leisure, which is requisite in a culture for the production of art, which leisure, I think is safeguarded by a worshipful disposition, because when we think culture at the root of it, it’s culture’s so there has to be a higher thing that you acknowledge in some way, shape or form in Christian culture.
00:28:56:22 – 00:29:22:06
Unknown
Obviously, the Most High God, who then imparts an order to our life and sorts for us, as it were, like the things most worthy of pursuit, the things least worthy of pursuit, and the things that fall between or among. So talk to us a little bit about art. You know, when I, when I talk to, you know, students about cultivating hobbies and things like this, I always put them side by side is like, you have to cultivate a hobby and you have to cultivate a prayer life, and they actually go in tandem with each other.
00:29:22:08 – 00:29:50:08
Unknown
Right. And the reason why is that when we start to engage in the art itself, maybe you start writing sonnets, maybe you actually engage in athletic sports or start to sketch or paint or something like that. Right? When you look at leisure, according to our very kind of post entertainment world, or a very different age or a very kind of productive world, art and leisure has no purpose to it.
00:29:50:08 – 00:30:16:03
Unknown
It’s a waste of time. Like, what are you producing? You’re just doing that for your enjoyment. Like, there’s no it’s a waste of time. Well, in many respects. Isn’t that what prayer is it? Prayer is wasting time with God. And so if we learn how to waste time loading this world, it actually fuels how we can sit with God in prayer and learn how to waste time with it.
00:30:16:05 – 00:30:38:15
Unknown
And if we know how to waste time in prayer with God, we tend to be comfortable in engaging leisure. And so they definitely go hand in hand. But I think then moving us back once again, closer and closer to the product of a culture, the art right helps us to also engage with God Himself in the way we engage with God is worship.
00:30:38:17 – 00:31:08:03
Unknown
So there’s one of the things that in the article that was not included, like I said, about their music and communications and thing that wasn’t kind of painted out was religion. Religion actually has followed this pattern as well. Yeah. So I think returning back to the proper art we bring back to worship and true worship in its beauty and in its, you know, grandeur, but also in its simplicity in many respects, all of us to keep all of this back in its proper place.
00:31:08:05 – 00:31:43:00
Unknown
Yeah. And then reorient the human heart, which at the end of the day, is what Christ came to do to take on our humanity, to reorient us and to restore the likeness of which we’ve lost with sin. And so now that we can stand in his image and likeness, so not being afraid to actually look at worship as true art and not on an entertainment basis, and not in my distracted or and I would see over under on what father’s vestments are going to be today at mass, but is this going to be a true engagement with art that is coming from a culture that is a Catholic culture?
00:31:43:02 – 00:32:09:16
Unknown
Yeah, totally unafraid of actually diving into the depths of that with gusto. Yeah, I think like at the end of the day, you got individuals and you’ve got communities. The individuals are for the communities, and the communities are for those transcendent goods which define them, which organize them, which orient them towards a horizon beyond their kind of limited material needs, but towards an immaterial realization of the fullness of their humanity.
00:32:09:18 – 00:32:25:16
Unknown
And in, you know, the Christian setting, we believe that God reveals himself and that he mediates his interior life so that we can partake of it. And that gives us a sense for the whole hierarchy of goods. You know, you got like, keep on existing, procreating and educating family, like knowing the truth about God and living peaceably in society.
00:32:25:16 – 00:32:54:05
Unknown
Like there are a variety of goods and they’re meant to be enshrined in our lives, like individually and communally, in such a way that those who kind of happened upon us from without say, there’s something going on here, and it seems like it should be enunciated in this manner. And so it’s like from the fullness of our individual and communal lives, it’s art comes forth, you know, because like when you have not just like attended to the most basic needs, but when you have organized in such a way as to enshrine within your lives what’s most important, you’re gonna want to testify to that.
00:32:54:11 – 00:33:23:22
Unknown
You’re wanting to sing of what you love, and you might do that with the visual arts. You might do that with, you know, like worship. But I mean, worship ultimately crowns all of our efforts insofar as God’s our creator in our end. And so I think that, like, there always has to be a space in a true society, in a healthy society for worship and often the quality of our worship shows the quality of our humanity, because it’s like, you know, you have various people who say things like, I mean, the hardest thing for us at the end of the day is just to be alone with our thoughts.
00:33:23:22 – 00:33:40:17
Unknown
And if we can’t be alone with our thoughts, that’s a kind of condemnation of our humanity. But if you associate individually and commune communally in such a way that you have kind of certainty and confidence as to the validity and the excellence of your pursuits, then you’re going to want to testify to that. You’re going to be at home in your own self.
00:33:40:17 – 00:34:03:23
Unknown
So I think that like, yeah, in our lives of our contemplative lives of prayer and study, we’re not looking for something that gets a dopamine hit or draws our attention away from the fact that we’re sad and angry or, you know, kind of titillated and excites on the basis of what’s most perceptibly entertaining. But we want the noble, we want the fine, we want the excellent, we want the honest.
00:34:03:23 – 00:34:28:07
Unknown
We want the virtuous, want the good. Because it’s only in contact with the good that we as incomplete beings are made complete. And I think that it’s in giving testimony to that completion, right, that we welcome others into the prayer. The study would welcome others into the worship and leisure. Final thoughts? Okay. Dig. Well, thanks for proposing this topic, I enjoy it.
00:34:28:08 – 00:34:48:13
Unknown
Folks, that’s all we’ve got for you with this here episode of Godsplaining. One one kind of cool announcement. You’ve heard it now once or twice, but, we’ve got our all comers retreat in Providence, Rhode Island, and it’s going to be June 20th through 22nd. So all comers retreat means all God’s children 21 and older.
00:34:48:15 – 00:35:08:19
Unknown
And it’s going to be at Providence College, a ministry of the Dominican Friars of the Province of Saint Joseph to which we pertain. And so you can find information about that as to how to sign up, on our website. And again, we’re super grateful for all those who contributed to our retreat fundraiser back in the fall, which is able to make it yet more affordable for all those who would like to join.
00:35:08:19 – 00:35:22:05
Unknown
So you may be surprised, shocked even, at how affordable it is. Apart from that, you know the dates at the end of the episode, but, yeah, no. Of our prayers for you. Please pray for us and we’ll look forward to chatting with you next time on Godsplaining.