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Glimmers: Finding the Divine in Everything with Regis Martin
with Regis Martin
If I have a spacious and spritely spirituality, Dr. Regis Martin is partially to thank. He was my first ever theology professor, and he opened my eyes to this magical universe so alight with wonder. I found my 20-year-old notes from his class, and read the first line I wrote: “The first premise of Christianity is an OPENNESS to Reality.”
Today Regis and I will do some of our own wondering and wandering through these sparkling spaces. I’ll ask him about this worldview which Richard Rohr has called Alternative Orthodoxy, or even panentheism–something we called the “sacramental imagination.” What does it look like to believe in the Universal Christ, the Logos that inhabits all things? How did this sacramental imagination inspire writers like JRR Tolkein, Flannery O’Connor, Walker Percy, and CS Lewis? What changes when we know our own fundamental goodness? That we are all “walking around, shining like the sun”?
I’m bringing with me some of the notes I wrote down from Theology 101, which in itself is a delicious primer:
🔸“The only condition for being faithfully religious… is to live always the real intensely.” - Luigi Giussani
🔹“Everything beautiful belongs to us.” - Justin Martyr, 2nd century
🔸“Catholicism is the profound, continuing affirmation of the goodness of God and the world he made.” - Regis Martin
🔹“God was in love but could not keep the secret. The telling of it became creation.” - Archbishop Fulton Sheen
🔸“For Christ plays in ten thousand places / lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not His. / To the Father through the features of men’s faces.” - Gerard Manley Hopkins
🔹“Crisis has the advantage of clearing the air: you can no longer pretend. It forces you to make a choice. Am I going to become a mystic or simply go mad? Will I aspire to become a saint or slug?” - Regis Martin
Regis Martin is a professor of theology at Franciscan University of Steubenville. His books include Garlands of Grace: An Anthology of Great Christian Poetry; The Suffering of Love: Christ’s Descent into the Hell of Human Hopelessness, and many more.
00:00:00:00 - 00:00:32:22
Kelly Deutsch
Hi everyone. Welcome to the Spiritual Wanderlust podcast. I'm your host, Kelly Deutsch, and today I have a very special treat for you. A blast from my past. My very first theology professor from nearly 20 years ago, Doctor Regis Martin is joining us today. Doctor Regis is a professor of theology at Franciscan University of Steubenville, where he's been for over 30 years and is has written and spoken all over the place.
00:00:32:24 - 00:00:59:15
Kelly Deutsch
he has several books out that I encourage you to check out, including garlands of Grace and Anthology of Great Christian Poetry. The Suffering of Love, Price, Descent into Hell, of Human Helplessness, and many more. And I feel like if if I have a very, spacious and sprightly spirituality, I partially have Doctor Regis Martin to thank for that.
00:00:59:18 - 00:01:39:22
Kelly Deutsch
it's this kind of, you know, alternative of orthodoxy as it's been called, or, pantheism or sacramental imagination. This view of reality where everything means something, where everything is awash with wonder. It's something that I sometimes find hard to explain, because it's this whole way of seeing and being. And Regis has a way of helping, you see, not just by speaking about these dense theological concepts, but by quoting transcendentalist poets and, you know, reality.
00:01:39:24 - 00:02:10:05
Kelly Deutsch
I, I appreciated that more than, you know, saints or theologians. In our theology class. I came away with a ton of notes full of, Emily Dickinson and Walker Percy and, William James and everyone and anyone, who has written. So anyway, I'm very thankful and excited to have Doctor Regis Martin joining us today. So thank you so much for joining us.
00:02:10:08 - 00:02:13:28
Regis Martin
You know, you've given me much to atone for.
00:02:14:00 - 00:02:14:13
Kelly Deutsch
In terms.
00:02:14:15 - 00:02:15:29
Regis Martin
Of impact.
00:02:16:01 - 00:02:35:04
Kelly Deutsch
Yes, yes. Well, it's it's a beautiful thing. I, I went and pulled out. I still have my notes from almost 20 years ago, sitting in theology 101 in Ohio. And I was struck that the very first line that I wrote down in your class, whether you opened it this way or, you know, if it was later on in the class.
00:02:35:04 - 00:03:01:18
Kelly Deutsch
But the very first line I have written down is the first premise of Christianity is an openness to reality. And that struck me because that's not the kind of Christianity that a lot of our listeners are used to. many of them have experienced a much more cramped version of Christianity, maybe a more fundamentalist version, you know, where reality in the material world are very suspect.
00:03:01:21 - 00:03:10:25
Kelly Deutsch
So I'm curious how you would describe this openness to reality and like, what does it mean to embrace everything?
00:03:10:28 - 00:03:54:04
Regis Martin
Yeah, I wish I could take credit for it, but it's not my sunburst. I lifted it from, Luigi to Dawson, who wrote to the religious sense, which has shaped me ever since. I think it came out of in 1997. And, I happened to peek into, the pages of that book. And in the preface, he lays out the program, and I think you may, recognize this reason is like an eye staring at reality greedily taking it in penetrating reality, moving from one thing to another, yet conserving them all in memory.
00:03:54:07 - 00:04:30:09
Regis Martin
And he goes on to insist that reason is what makes us human is the defining theme of, of our lives. This capacity we have of this ability, to be open, transparent, receptive, almost in a gentle way, as the Blessed Mother was, to receive whatever reality of his is cooking up, baking this great banquet of of of being, of this avidity for being to be open to everything and to foreclose on nothing.
00:04:30:11 - 00:04:53:07
Regis Martin
In fact, if you read the Lord's Prayer, as I think, well, we don't read it, we recite it up. There is a moment one of the petitions up invites God to give us this day our daily bread. That's the bread of meaning. Give us a huge, rich chunk of reality. And since you are supremely real, we're asking for you.
00:04:53:11 - 00:05:22:21
Regis Martin
Give us yourself. Let me feast upon your being, your life. You are the supreme reality. And elsewhere. in juice on his book. And I think this has always been a source of great comfort to me. he quotes the great Austrian philosopher victim Stein, who says that even when you think about being, about meaning, about truth, you might as well call that trigger.
00:05:22:24 - 00:05:40:05
Regis Martin
You're engaging logos. True, the truth of that which is the ground of being. And my students are reassured by that, because it means when you read, when you study, when you ask questions, you really engaging in a kind of prayer.
00:05:40:09 - 00:05:41:09
Kelly Deutsch
Yes.
00:05:41:11 - 00:05:43:20
Regis Martin
And that's very freeing.
00:05:43:22 - 00:05:44:15
Kelly Deutsch
I love that.
00:05:44:17 - 00:05:59:20
Regis Martin
Because it doesn't dispense them from other kinds of prayer like the prayer of worship, thanksgiving, contrition. But what we petition God for more than anything else is the bread of meaning.
00:05:59:22 - 00:06:27:10
Kelly Deutsch
that's one thing that blew my mind open. I remember as a freshman, is understanding this concept of the logos as this that which makes reality intelligible and even a sense of security, that things are going to make sense somehow, even if my puny brain can't comprehend it all and process it all myself. There's a trust that reality is is reliable in some way, even if it feels uncertain.
00:06:27:12 - 00:06:50:19
Regis Martin
Like. And if God is the author of reality, then he's not going to disappoint. He won't betray us. He's not going to give us a tale told by an idiot full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. He's going to give us meaning. The bread of life. Now, I know in the class that you had with me. you didn't read, Tom Howard's book chance or the dance.
00:06:50:19 - 00:06:53:05
Regis Martin
Or maybe you did, or maybe you.
00:06:53:07 - 00:06:56:18
Kelly Deutsch
It sounds familiar. I can't remember if we just read an excerpt. Maybe.
00:06:56:21 - 00:07:18:15
Regis Martin
Yeah. That was that was. That's the book that I use in the sacraments class, and I know that that's where we're going. To me, that's the golden thread that runs through, this conversation we're having. What does it mean to cultivate a Catholic sacrament to the imagination? But in his book, this is really the front piece of the book.
00:07:18:17 - 00:07:58:14
Regis Martin
He quotes, a poet, whose name I had not known before I came across it, Eugene Warren. And it's just a very short lyric. And this is what it says. Is it chants or dance moves? The world is the world blowing mind and dumb, or bloom fast, or a vain jest, or holy feast. In other words, when you look out the window, I mean, are you seeing just a random, collection, a concatenation of atoms, sort of spinning randomly, arbitrarily out of control?
00:07:58:19 - 00:08:26:11
Regis Martin
Or does the universe have a kind of pattern and order a logos almost a choreography, as if it were a dance, a liturgical dance? you know, the cosmic liturgy? It has a rhythm, it has a pattern. And it is efficient the way things run. But it's also elegant. It's beautiful. It's lovely to look upon, but you have to choose between one or the other.
00:08:26:13 - 00:08:55:28
Regis Martin
Christ or chaos. I mean, Christ is the logos. We either embrace that or we, you know, lie down with with chaos and disorder and, and darkness, you know, kind of infernal isolation that admits no love, light and there's no hope. there's no, salvation. the mystical body or the anthill. Yeah. Those are the two choices.
00:08:56:00 - 00:09:18:14
Kelly Deutsch
And those. It sounds so grandiose, but I think that's really how it is. It's. You choose something either very cramped. again, like this. Christianity that I so frequently hear about, where it's like there's not enough space for science or for your body or for women or for, you know, like, very important. You know, fundamental building blocks of reality.
00:09:18:16 - 00:09:29:22
Kelly Deutsch
Or it's this, like, cosmic, mind blowingly spacious and kind of wild and even a little daunting. infinity.
00:09:29:24 - 00:09:52:24
Regis Martin
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, if if God is the author of being, then it's going to be rich and vibrant and exciting and dangerous and daunting. But, you know, in C.S. Lewis Chronicles of Narnia, we're told repeatedly asked, one is not a team lion. He's ferocious, he's regal, he's a lion. He's not a koala bear.
00:09:52:26 - 00:09:53:13
Kelly Deutsch
Yes.
00:09:53:14 - 00:09:59:19
Regis Martin
It's not an answer. Yeah, he can be pretty fierce, but he loves us.
00:09:59:21 - 00:10:34:23
Kelly Deutsch
Yes, I was going to say I have written down, again from from notes early on. and you tell me if I wrote this correctly, that it was Justin Martyr who said everything beautiful belongs to us. And I love that. And it's such a I mean, he's the same one who talked about that logos spermatozoa, you know, like the seeds of the logos in all things, this, this Christ that existed, you know, the second person of the Trinity, this logos that existed before Jesus, you know, which I think to me, as an 18 year old, I had never really thought much about, you know, I was like, Jesus, Jesus.
00:10:34:25 - 00:10:46:29
Kelly Deutsch
But to have this universal structure, framework of reality became a person. It's just so much bigger and more mind blowing than just, you know.
00:10:47:01 - 00:11:10:26
Regis Martin
I mean, there was there there before there was a there. I mean, on the first page of Genesis, we're told that in the beginning, God made the heavens and the earth, but anti dating that from all eternity in the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God. And then in that climactic moment, the word becomes flesh.
00:11:10:29 - 00:11:19:21
Regis Martin
that is mind blowing that the logos should take on, flesh, blood, bone and become someone like us.
00:11:19:24 - 00:11:32:03
Kelly Deutsch
Yes. Which is why everything beautiful belongs to us. Because that logos, the truth, goodness and beauty that we find in all things already is, contains God's presence.
00:11:32:05 - 00:11:55:12
Regis Martin
Like, yeah, I mean, so God is nothing human is alien to God. everything is hospitable to God. He loves everything because he made everything. The only thing he is opposed to is sin. But when you think about sin, it doesn't really have any weight. It's loves shadow. It has no ontological status. It's the absence of what should be there.
00:11:55:15 - 00:12:29:24
Regis Martin
And I find a stunning confirmation of this, in the final canto of Dante's Divine Comedy, the Paradiso, the very last, section, where Dante, looking upon the face of God, penetrate into the very heart of the Triune God head is startled to see a human face. He sees the incarnate Word. God becomes t every man. I mean that that's that's pretty, comforting to know that God is not distant.
00:12:29:27 - 00:12:53:03
Regis Martin
He's not indifferent, and he's certainly not hostile to the world he made. Why else would he make it? He fell in love with us, you know, God was in love and he couldn't keep the secret. Thought in Cian tells us. And the telling of that secret was creation. So we're very special in the sight of God. So this cramped attitude is so foreign.
00:12:53:05 - 00:13:10:27
Regis Martin
to Christianity. It's also foreign to life. You know, life is, I think, naturally, spontaneously and openness to life. you know, you don't wake up in the morning and ask yourself, now, what are the 800 things I can't do today?
00:13:10:29 - 00:13:20:15
Kelly Deutsch
Yes, yes, I love that, that this, that the cramped feeling that we have is so foreign not only to Christianity, but to reality.
00:13:20:17 - 00:13:52:10
Regis Martin
That's right. Yeah. And yeah. So Christianity doesn't disavow, nature. I mean, this is one of the insights of Professor Howard's book. He begins with what he calls the ancient myth. And that was the myth that everything means something. Everything means everything. The modern myth is that nothing means anything. That's the triumph of the equivocal. Imagine nation. So Christianity did not disavow that ancient pagan myth, but instead deepened it, Christianized, supernatural ized.
00:13:52:10 - 00:14:12:29
Regis Martin
It, you know, on the understanding that grace doesn't abolish nature, grace completes it, perfects it. Which means nature is already good. Now it's fallen, fractured, wounded. But it's not evil. Nature is not evil. It it just needs a little help. You know, a prosthetic device?
00:14:12:29 - 00:14:40:24
Kelly Deutsch
Yes. Yes. And that's something else that struck me as I was reviewing all of this, just how, this understanding of Christianity or Catholicism, if you will. Is this profound affirmation of the goodness of, of reality, of, of humanity, of God. and how distinct that feels from the more popular forms of Christianity that we sometimes hear about today.
00:14:40:27 - 00:15:06:27
Kelly Deutsch
And I'm curious how that split occurred. How did we end up with the very same religion, or at least the same title of the religion, and one that feels very, cramped and almost, defensive in how like it defends its boundaries, you know, against who's in and who's out or, what feels appropriate versus this spacious and wild kind of Christianity that embraces everything.
00:15:06:28 - 00:15:17:02
Kelly Deutsch
And I have in my notes. you said you don't scoop life in with coffee spoons, but gather in greedy heaps. And I love that.
00:15:17:05 - 00:15:55:10
Regis Martin
That was the predicament of J. Alfred Prufrock, who was then throughout his life with coffee spoons. He was neurotic and fearful and ultra fastidious. He didn't experience life. He he shrank from it, recoiled from it. I don't know, I mean, before doing an inventory on what went wrong, you have to begin by acknowledging that this attitude you describe is profoundly anti scriptural because the great truth, the metaphysical truth upon which all of sacred Scripture opens, is the recognition that the world we live in is a created place.
00:15:55:12 - 00:16:20:25
Regis Martin
And if it's been created and God is the creator, then it's good. It has meaning. If it has meaning, then we can commune with that meaning. I mean, that's the whole point of having a mind and intelligence so that you can make contact with reality, you know, think with the eternal ground, thought, noose logos. We're able to do that.
00:16:20:27 - 00:16:26:28
Regis Martin
Hmhm deals were made in his image. And I mean, that's pretty liberating.
00:16:27:00 - 00:16:48:18
Kelly Deutsch
Yes, yes. And that distinction was also really, it the nuance of the and the difference between image and likeness that our image has always remained intact. It's it's our likeness that got a little banged up, you know, like and.
00:16:48:18 - 00:17:13:08
Regis Martin
That's, that's that's an excellent distinction. The, the mango deity is there intact. you may defile the image, but you can't face it. It will always be there. Even if you take yourself to hell, you go there as an image of God. It's the likeness unto Christ that we have to somehow soldier on to acquire. But with grace it can be done.
00:17:13:10 - 00:17:39:26
Kelly Deutsch
Yes. And I like that distinction, because there's such a, I'm almost like a self-hatred, you know, that I find in some, some other strains of, kind of that Lutheran image of like, I'm just a dung hill covered in snow, you know, and that my I am fundamentally broken, evil, wicked, whatever it is. Instead of recognizing like, no, no, we are first and foremost snow.
00:17:39:26 - 00:18:05:15
Kelly Deutsch
We are walking around shining like the sun, as Martin would say, you know? And it's just that we need to, we can see it's pretty clear that everyone is kind of on a spectrum of where we are in human virtue, whether or not we are, displaying that radiance as, as best we can or if, like, well, we got some we got some wounds, we got some brokenness that need to work through.
00:18:05:15 - 00:18:31:13
Regis Martin
But there's some work that has to be done. But you're working on something fundamentally good, essential work. And yeah, and I think that that emancipate the mind and the heart, you don't have to be oppressed or feel oppression. you are beautiful in the sight of God. and, I mean, that's what we carry with us into this world.
00:18:31:15 - 00:18:57:09
Regis Martin
Yeah. I don't really know where this mindset came from, this puritanical aversion of this resistance or repugnance for the body. But wherever it has come from and maybe it has a satanic shape to it, but it's wrong, it's misguided. it's, it's, a mistake. I mean, why would God make human beings if they were already a mess?
00:18:57:09 - 00:19:03:12
Regis Martin
I mean, why would he do that? What was it? Okay. You know, make him. No, I don't think so.
00:19:03:16 - 00:19:04:08
Kelly Deutsch
Yeah. I wanted to.
00:19:04:08 - 00:19:31:08
Regis Martin
Create something beautiful and then enter into that beautiful thing he had made. I mean, that's that's the Supreme moment, the moment of incarnation. He prepared an entire universe for his coming, you know? Okay, there's a beautiful poem. I, I doubt it. I regaled you with it when you were a freshman, but it's by Joseph Mary Plunkett. it's very brief.
00:19:31:11 - 00:19:59:29
Regis Martin
It's only about three stanzas, and every line rhymes. So it has a lot to commend. It's called I See His Blood upon the Rose and in the stars. The glory of his eyes. His body gleams amid eternal snows. His tears fall from the skies. I see his face in every flower. The thunder and the singing of the birds.
00:20:00:05 - 00:20:35:03
Regis Martin
Or but his voice and Carmen by his power rocks. Or his written words. All pathways by his feet are worn. His strong heart stirs up the ever beating sea. His crown of thorns is twined with every thought. His cross is every tree. You know, when I think about that poem, it strikes me as if, almost as if God had orchestrated the whole of creation.
00:20:35:08 - 00:21:01:22
Regis Martin
I mean, from the spheres in the heavens, right down to the acorns and the amoebas, so that he might sort of arrange at this one moment for his entrance. He's coming into the theater of the human condition. There he is on the stage. And all of this is by way of preparation. Everything signifies something else. Everything means everything.
00:21:01:24 - 00:21:32:02
Regis Martin
We don't live in a flat, boring world. Flat as a map maker. World has. Yes. And we need to explore those. I mean, that was the great. That was the great exhortation that I have taken from everything Luigi goes on. He ever wrote that we need to live the real, to plunge deep down into this world that God made, because it will yield its insight, its riches.
00:21:32:07 - 00:21:47:26
Regis Martin
Is joy, its beauty. To the extent we look, you open your eyes up and look. Yes, but a lot of people don't want to look, or they do what they want to see, only their sins. and that's not helpful.
00:21:47:28 - 00:22:02:08
Kelly Deutsch
Yes, yes, I, I love that quote of Du Seine that says the only condition for being truly and faithfully religious is to live always the real, intensely.
00:22:02:11 - 00:22:03:03
Regis Martin
That's right. Yeah.
00:22:03:05 - 00:22:24:17
Kelly Deutsch
That's so fucking good, you know, because that's just so, again, contrary to what I don't know that that almost, what people think of as, like, Irish Catholics, you know, the guilt. I'm, like, constantly living in guilt, Catholic guilt. And I'm like, no, no, I think that was actually Jansen ism or like puritanical ism.
00:22:24:19 - 00:22:46:10
Regis Martin
yes. Yes. Some of it, some of which managed to infect, Irish Catholicism. And then when it got transported to the New World, that virus was carried. and it's really a great pity because that's not that's not the Christianity that Christ, confected fashioned, and suffered and died for. That's not the human condition.
00:22:46:12 - 00:22:52:22
Kelly Deutsch
Right. Why would we want that? Like, why would that even be worth dying for? You know something that's not good?
00:22:52:25 - 00:23:23:17
Regis Martin
Yeah. I mean, you want to die on that hill, that I'm just wrong. I'm wretched. Yeah. You know, I, I once, blew a priest. he's gone home, since then, who would sometimes give me Holy Communion and say, body of Christ, you sinful wretch. Oh, it was a joke. He was trying to be funny, but, I mean, the point is, despite whatever I may think I am Christ condescends to come to me, to fill me with himself.
00:23:23:20 - 00:23:38:17
Regis Martin
I mean, that's what I should focus on. Stop thinking about yourself. You're not all that interesting. Your sins are not that interesting. They're not so novel or original. I mean, ask any priest. He's heard them over and over again. So move on.
00:23:38:19 - 00:24:16:04
Kelly Deutsch
Yes. I like that. as you mentioned earlier, one way to, refer to this worldview is this sacramental imagination. And it's something that I am sometimes at pains to try to describe, because I spent four years in my undergraduate degree, you know, just immersing myself in this from the various aspects of theology and philosophy and literature and politics and history and all the different aspects, which was a wonderful cornucopia of of all of that.
00:24:16:07 - 00:24:27:07
Kelly Deutsch
But I'm curious if you had to describe in a few sentences, how would you how would you define this sacramental imagination, this worldview that we're talking about?
00:24:27:09 - 00:24:56:28
Regis Martin
Well, you know, Hopkins gives us a pretty good clue, when he says Grace rides time like a river, it means it moves through time and it treats time. It doesn't hover above the surface. hover above the flux. It enters deep down into the marrow of and and penetrates it and communicates the grace of God through the grit of this world.
00:24:57:00 - 00:25:25:11
Regis Martin
God is not indifferent or hostile to nature. He wants to redeem it. He wants to crystallize it. He wants to make it the setting for glory. So many glints of God's glory are right there, strewn about in this world that he made, you know, Eric Gill, he was a wonderful English, a craftsman, a critic. He said, don't speaks to us of God.
00:25:25:14 - 00:25:55:04
Regis Martin
But you know what? So do the daisies, the dew, dewdrops and the dung. Everything conspires to speak to us of God. And that's really of like you might say, that's the definition of a sacrament. The Penny Catechism tells us a sacrament is an outward sign. It's got to be something you can see or touch or taste or smell or hear, which communicates an inward reality.
00:25:55:11 - 00:26:23:20
Regis Martin
The outward sign, instituted by Christ like grace to communicate himself, to allow us to share in his own life. You know, the bread we we eat is in fact God's own body, the water that somehow is used to baptize a child. That becomes part of the launching pad for what Pope Benedict has called, the final mutation in the evolution of the human species.
00:26:23:22 - 00:26:52:15
Regis Martin
And you become a Christian when you are somehow immersed in Christ, you are inserted into the death and the resurrection. Resurrection of Christ. You are no longer your own. You belong to him. So what can be wrong with that? Why would that why would that produce a crabbed, narrow, negative, fixation upon yourself? Who sees you need to see everything from the vantage point of Christ.
00:26:52:17 - 00:27:23:29
Regis Martin
That was Paul's vision is no longer I, the Christ who lives and moves in me. That's the sacramental imagination. If you make sacraments, are these wonderful things, these efficacious sacred signs which somehow bring about the very reality they signify what, like, you know, making love with your wife that is somehow a nuptial, experience. That's the nuptial meaning of the body.
00:27:23:29 - 00:27:46:08
Regis Martin
It signifies so much more than simply copulation. Or, as Eliot puts it, birth, copulation, death. That's all the brass tacks when you come to the last. That's not it. That's a lie that's really of, deceit. You have to overcome that.
00:27:46:10 - 00:28:08:26
Kelly Deutsch
So how would you apply that vision of of sacraments? Because I'm sure there are plenty of listeners who are familiar with, you know, the seven sacraments of, you know, you got Communion or Eucharist and you got baptism or marriage. How does that apply to like, like you mentioned, like to to a dog or dung or this lamp or my microphone or just human interactions?
00:28:08:26 - 00:28:10:00
Kelly Deutsch
Like what?
00:28:10:02 - 00:28:18:29
Regis Martin
Like, I mean, you know, you have you have to be careful because you could slip into pantheism in which God collapses into the cosmos. And that's silly.
00:28:19:06 - 00:28:22:15
Kelly Deutsch
Yes, yes. So to God, the difference there.
00:28:22:17 - 00:28:55:05
Regis Martin
Okay, well, well, the two extremes which Catholic Christianity avoids are pantheism, in which everything is God or God is everything that's the end is, or the opposite mistake, which is a kind of dialectic of refusal and rejection and denunciation. That was the position that Carl Bart took, representing classical Protestant theology when he said God's very first word to the world is a word of judgment, condemnation.
00:28:55:07 - 00:29:18:24
Regis Martin
That's not a Catholic word for Catholics. His first word is approval, approbation, happiness. He takes delight in the world. He made. This is good, and I'm going to send you grace so that you can make it even better. But it's not a mistake. I don't make mistakes. I'm not like Detroit. I don't turn out bad cars. Everything is cool.
00:29:18:27 - 00:29:57:04
Regis Martin
I'm. I think it was a calvary. And this is sort of the great shibboleth, the Protestant to the ology, that it's impossible for the finite to mediate the infinite, and that is simply false. In Catholic Christianity, in the economy of grace, God gave us, Christ created finite things, in fact mediate the infinite. You know, bread, water, wine, you know, sex, ash, oil, words, gestures, color.
00:29:57:07 - 00:30:18:27
Regis Martin
All of these things can mediate of the infinite. I mean, where else is God going to show himself? If God wants to have a relationship with you, he's got to do it in the finite world. He's not going to take you out of the world and say, okay, now you can be religious. Now that you're living like an angel, we can have some intimacy.
00:30:19:00 - 00:30:39:08
Regis Martin
He wants you to have this intimacy with him in the body, because in a sense, you are the body you have. It's not something separate or detachable. And I think, you know, when we die, there is a certain loss. We want the body back, but we'd like to see it transfigured. You get.
00:30:39:08 - 00:30:40:10
Kelly Deutsch
Other words.
00:30:40:12 - 00:30:40:26
Regis Martin
That.
00:30:40:29 - 00:30:45:02
Kelly Deutsch
We need to be better materialists, like.
00:30:45:04 - 00:31:09:04
Regis Martin
Yeah, yeah. The real sin is, is, is spiritualism. It's not materialism. Yeah. When you when everything gets spiritualized. In fact, can I give you an example. This one of my favorite writers is Walker Percy, please. And he has a character by the name of Ellen in one of his novels, The Santa Toes Syndrome. And she's got some real hangups.
00:31:09:06 - 00:31:43:14
Regis Martin
and here is his description of the Prince of England. Ellen had been an Episcopalian, he tells us, but suddenly she has joined a Pentecostal sect and is now speaking constantly in tongues. Her poor husband doesn't know what to make of it. She is herself a little Holy Spirit, hooked up to a lusty body. But in her case, spirit has nothing to do with body.
00:31:43:17 - 00:32:16:05
Regis Martin
Each goes its own way. Even when she was a Presbyterian and I was a Catholic, this is the protagonist speaking. He's a lapsed Catholic, but even when I was Catholic and she was Presbyterian, I remember she was horrified by the Eucharist eating the body of Christ. That's pagan and barbaric. She said what she meant and what horrified her was the mixing up of body and spirit.
00:32:16:08 - 00:32:54:01
Regis Martin
This Catholic trafficking in bread, wine, oil, salt water, body, blood, spirit, things. What does the Holy Spirit lead with? Things. Body goes. Body does body things. Spirit does spirit things. I mean, that's it's a frantic that's a split, a sundering of mind from body, head from heart, sense from sensibility. That's inhuman. That's unhealthy. You know, people who fixate on one or the other.
00:32:54:03 - 00:33:12:21
Regis Martin
I mean, that's not who we are. We are a psycho. Somatic unity, you know, a unity of mind and body, flesh and spirit. And the two are supposed to coexist, you know, in a series of splendid tensions, I think, which make up the human condition.
00:33:12:23 - 00:33:35:09
Kelly Deutsch
Yes, I like that. And that's a nice way to think of it. That's beautiful middle ground between collapsing everything and saying either everything is material or everything is God. And on the other hand, saying like, well, both exist, but they're totally opposed and can't touch, you know, in that kind of it's like frantic. But to have some sort of like the living in the tensions.
00:33:35:09 - 00:33:50:11
Kelly Deutsch
I love how, Rainer Maria Rilke says, you know, like living the questions like, that's that's what I think this worldview for me, has really invited me into is like, yes, there's mystery. Yes, there are tensions. That's that's the game.
00:33:50:12 - 00:34:13:08
Regis Martin
That's where your power is. Yeah. I mean, if you think of religion as, as some sort of problem you have to solve, then you're going to be frustrated forever. It's a mystery that you have to live. In fact, you're invited to live it, to rejoice in the midst of it. It's not something you can solve. You know God isn't a problem waiting for your clever mind to solve.
00:34:13:10 - 00:34:39:10
Regis Martin
Yeah, and you're right. When you touch on that, that that business about avoiding the two extremes, the two polarities, like some people want to identify everything with God, the universal imagination. God is everything or everything is God. But then other people at the other extreme insist on stark opposition. God has nothing to do with the world he stands in.
00:34:39:15 - 00:35:11:21
Regis Martin
In rejection of it. There's only enmity between the two. But in the middle there is the Catholic and a logical view both. And it's not either or. It's sort of like Mary. She's not either a virgin or a mother. She's both. You know, Jesus is not either God or man. He's both. Yeah. I'm not either a sinner, you know, sunk in this sink or of corruption or this angel like Ellen floating about.
00:35:11:24 - 00:35:12:24
Regis Martin
No, both.
00:35:12:24 - 00:35:41:04
Kelly Deutsch
And yes, it's that infuriating paradox trying to hold the both and together, even when it doesn't entirely like our logical brains or, you know, kind of short circuit, like, how does this even work? But like you said, it's not a problem to be solved. And I think that's where so many of us go wrong is, in, in the existential insecurities that we have of just living in liminal spaces, living in these tensions.
00:35:41:04 - 00:35:58:17
Kelly Deutsch
How does this work? We we grasp for security, you know, what do we want? Something that and there are plenty of, you know, forms of religion that provide that kind of security, like, yep, we have nicely packaged, neat pat answers for all you know, quandaries of the mind and soul.
00:35:58:19 - 00:36:16:15
Regis Martin
Like an electric blanket that you just throw over yourself so that you never feel the cold. Yeah, yeah, that that's not human. but imagine if you had your life together, you would be impossible to live with. You'd be insupportable. I'm a saint, you know? Everybody recognize that now. Okay.
00:36:16:18 - 00:36:16:27
Kelly Deutsch
Yeah.
00:36:17:05 - 00:36:40:13
Regis Martin
I mean, people would despise you, and I would hope you despise yourself. I'm not the saint. Yeah, I think, you know, sanctity is not something you achieve in the space of a weekend after a life in the spirit seminar. Yeah. Sanctity is a process. And it may take a very long time to that. That's why God allows us, purgatory.
00:36:40:13 - 00:36:56:16
Regis Martin
Because that extends time into eternity for most of us who haven't yet become space. you know, Eliot says you are only undefeated because we have gone on trying. We don't give up.
00:36:56:19 - 00:37:02:14
Kelly Deutsch
I like that you are only, you know, because you've gone on trying hmhm.
00:37:02:17 - 00:37:22:14
Regis Martin
You know, somebody once asked Jesus. Ani. This was in the middle of a crowd of young people. What do you call someone who every day gets up resolving to be a better man, but by the end of the day is broken and defeated, and he's not a better man. But the next day he makes the same resolution. He really means it.
00:37:22:15 - 00:37:52:08
Regis Martin
He really intends to be a better man, the best version of himself. Yet. Day after day, he confessed his failure. What do you call that person? Father juice? Only just one, he said you call him a saint. He doesn't give up. He doesn't give up. And God doesn't give up on us. I mean, that's comforting. That's inspiring. If he's not going to give up on his creature, how dare the creature give up on itself.
00:37:53:04 - 00:38:29:09
Kelly Deutsch
Yes. Yes, I, I think it's. To think and live and see in this way takes sometimes an entire retooling of, of what we were raised with and I, I'm wondering what, what suggestions you would have to live in a way that sees through to the depths of things, you know, there are so many, like you keep saying, like everything means everything or everything means something.
00:38:29:09 - 00:39:00:21
Kelly Deutsch
And I think that's, you know, when I can look around and see, like a tree waving in the wind and recognizing like, this is an expression of, of God's love in some way, this tree doing this lovely dance or, you know, my cat coming to snuggle on my lap or even some of the things that don't make sense, you know, in the world there's some sort of deeper significance beneath it all, as if the world is transparent, but it's very easy to, think that the world is opaque.
00:39:00:24 - 00:39:26:23
Regis Martin
Is oh, yeah, I know it is. And I think the culture of of enables us to do so. I think maybe the beginning of is to unplug the smartphone, turn the TV off and live reality. Live the real of the world. The reality that God made not the one we have somehow fabricated. There's no life in cyberspace.
00:39:26:25 - 00:39:45:22
Regis Martin
I mean, one of the reasons, I mean, this is a zoom call. I mean, this is sort of cybernetic, but it's a it's an amazing substitute facsimile. But I don't know that I could teach a class that really all the time. I need real presence. I mean, the church in her wisdom says, look, you can't go to confession over the phone.
00:39:45:29 - 00:40:08:18
Regis Martin
You can't receive the Eucharist on television. I mean, that's why the lockdowns, the pandemic were so awful because we were deprived of real presence. That's because we're in the body. We need the presence of another body. And to make that easier for us, God himself took on.
00:40:08:20 - 00:40:33:16
Kelly Deutsch
Yes. And I think that is, difficult sometimes to do in our, our working day lives. How many of us do work, you know, in front of screens all day long? but there is something so fiercely alive about living in reality and not spending our entire lives on screens. You know, if we can help it to the extent that we can help it, I suppose.
00:40:33:18 - 00:41:00:17
Regis Martin
yeah. I mean, I've known a lot of people who, not just for lent but forever, have gotten off Facebook, because it doesn't go anywhere. It's depressing. You know, you're made to compare yourself with all of these other people and how, at the end of the day, does that help you grow in wisdom or holiness? Or to know as much as we do know about what's happening, you know, with the celebrities, the politicians, I don't know.
00:41:00:17 - 00:41:07:02
Regis Martin
I mean, yeah, maybe Will Smith should have slapped that guy, but I don't need to know that. That's not important to me.
00:41:07:08 - 00:41:08:16
Kelly Deutsch
Sure. Yes.
00:41:08:16 - 00:41:13:01
Regis Martin
What's important to me are my children, my students, my wife.
00:41:13:03 - 00:41:43:11
Kelly Deutsch
Yes. And I think that that idea of figuring out, like, what is it that leads me to live the real intensely because I also know people who, you know, through social media. This is how they've found connection with other people. And, you know, it can be a positive thing. But yeah, when you start going down, these like kind of black holes of like celebrity gossip or, you know, just all the news that can be so depressing and finding out, like, what is it that's going to serve me and becoming more fully human?
00:41:43:13 - 00:42:08:19
Regis Martin
I'll meet you, son, he says. You have to develop a passion for reasonableness, because that's what defines us. This capacity to think, to know, you know, to pursue, to plunge into being and try and, you know, trace the connections, track down, the links, the causal links from here all the way back to the beginning and stretching on into infinity.
00:42:08:20 - 00:42:38:11
Regis Martin
I mean, that's why we were made. That's why God gave us life so that we might somehow explore the resources of life. Plunge right down to the very bottom. You know, a wonderful theologian, Father William Lynch, in his book, Christ and Apollo, says the one creation that never needed redeeming was time. The only thing we did was someone to plunge into it, to explore all the hidden resources of time.
00:42:38:16 - 00:43:13:07
Regis Martin
And that's exactly what Christ did. He entered into every phase of the human condition. I mean, God became, an embryo, a zygote, a fetus, a child, a teenager, an adult, and finally he becomes a corpse and he falls into, into hell. I mean, every every step, every aspect, every phase. He marches right to the limit of everything finite and invests each finite moment with an infinite energy and passion.
00:43:13:10 - 00:43:24:17
Regis Martin
He's living the real. Yeah. We do engage yourself with reality. Whatever it is you're doing, do it with passion. You know, even if it's throwing a Frisbee.
00:43:24:19 - 00:43:25:25
Kelly Deutsch
Oh yes.
00:43:25:25 - 00:43:27:27
Regis Martin
We're having fun with.
00:43:27:29 - 00:43:51:04
Kelly Deutsch
Yeah. Yes, yes. Because that that to me is a perhaps modern way of saying like living in God's will, you know, is being able to respond to reality and what it's giving you. You know, for example, I last weekend so I live in Oregon and I went for a hike last weekend. We were in southern Oregon, and we had this day on this hike of I mean, we were hiking along this ridge.
00:43:51:04 - 00:44:13:06
Kelly Deutsch
Spring is in full bloom. There are flowers everywhere, bees buzzing around the blossoms on this ridge. You could see like snow capped mountains in the distance. We saw a little fun, you know, along the trail. And then the next day I felt like awful. And like I have some chronic health things. As I was in bed all day long and I was like, well, you know, but both of those things are reality.
00:44:13:09 - 00:44:23:09
Kelly Deutsch
You know, both of those things like both the fun, you know, traipsing across our trail and me having to be like, held up in bed all day long.
00:44:23:12 - 00:44:45:08
Regis Martin
And yeah, the temptation that you want to resist is to say, this was the punishment. You know, God really stuck it to me because I had so much fun on day one. So day two has to be a washout. Sure. Well, actually, the washout has redemptive possibilities. The promise of of that day you spent in bed. That's real.
00:44:45:13 - 00:44:58:15
Regis Martin
It's not less real than the scene at the mountaintop. And by the way, Steubenville has never been like that one. What you're describing is just unreal to me.
00:44:58:15 - 00:45:40:00
Kelly Deutsch
It is, it is I'm fairly new to Oregon, so it's I get to delight in it all the time. It has yet to become calloused over which I hope it never does. It's, it's it makes it so much easier to to just, enjoy this kind of world view. I mean, I like to think of, like the J.R.R. Tolkien's or the KSS Lewis's or the G.K. Chesterton or some of those writers who it's like, you can see this, like spritely, I don't know, immersion in reality that they have where it's like behind every wardrobe door there might be a Narnia, or you probably just missed seeing a fairy behind that tree stump.
00:45:40:02 - 00:45:54:04
Kelly Deutsch
You know, there's just such an aliveness. And I think that's what is so attractive about this world view, is that it's not flat or depressing or hopeless, but it's sparkling with life.
00:45:54:07 - 00:46:20:14
Regis Martin
There's a wonderful American poet who died just a few years ago, Richard Wilbur, who says, I opened the window, and all at once the world was awash with angels. I mean, you have that vision. I think is pretty, pretty enriching. yeah. I mean, what you really need is, like, George Burns knows, describes it when he calls Mary younger than sin.
00:46:20:16 - 00:46:43:21
Regis Martin
That's the kind of vision we need to have. I mean, look at little children. They're filled with wonderment when they look out the window, when they open their eyes. It's a wonderful world. They never will come to an end of it. They take innocent life in being, And that's something. That's the habit of mind. We need to acquire it may take longer, but that's the child like.
00:46:43:21 - 00:46:50:25
Regis Martin
Added to that, Jesus urges us to to adopt. Yes. Seeing things as they are.
00:46:50:27 - 00:47:05:12
Kelly Deutsch
Yes. And that's what I, I was just thinking of the quote, and I can't remember if it was Hopkins or Wordsworth or which poet it was who was walking in the forest with a friend, and they came across some flowers, and he was like, on your knees, man, those are daffodils. You know.
00:47:05:19 - 00:47:09:08
Regis Martin
Oh, oh, that might have been Wordsworth.
00:47:09:08 - 00:47:11:05
Kelly Deutsch
Yes. Just so.
00:47:11:07 - 00:47:13:28
Regis Martin
Did you. Did you want me to read the Hopkins form?
00:47:13:28 - 00:47:15:13
Kelly Deutsch
Please do. Yes.
00:47:15:17 - 00:47:18:20
Regis Martin
I think you might. We might almost be out of time.
00:47:18:20 - 00:47:40:03
Kelly Deutsch
We are almost out of time. We've been talking about so many things. I for those of you listening, I asked Regis to share, if you'd be willing to read this, Hopkins poem, which I'm pretty sure I discovered for the first time, or heard for the first time in his class. And I anytime I hear this poem quoted, I hear this wonderful voice in my head.
00:47:40:03 - 00:47:51:19
Kelly Deutsch
And so it's such a lovely, poetic expression of all this that we've been talking about the sacramental imagination, the spacious, sprightly way of of living the real one.
00:47:51:20 - 00:48:22:10
Regis Martin
I'm happy to do so. God's grand. Your. The world is charged with the grand. You're of God. It will flame out like shining from sugar foil. It gathers to a greatness like the ooze of oil crushed. Why do men then now not wreck his rod. Generations have trod, have trod, have trod. And all is seared with trade.
00:48:22:12 - 00:49:03:00
Regis Martin
Leered, smeared with toil. And where is man's smudge. And share is man's smell. The soil is bare now. Nor can foot feel being shod. And for all this nature is never spent. Their lives the dearest freshness. Deep down things. And though the last lights of the black west went all morning at the brown brink eastward springs. Because the Holy Ghost over the bent world broods with warm breast.
00:49:03:02 - 00:49:08:29
Regis Martin
And with all bright wings. That's gorgeous poetry.
00:49:09:06 - 00:49:14:16
Kelly Deutsch
It is beautiful. The dearest freshness deep down things.
00:49:14:18 - 00:49:19:13
Regis Martin
Yeah, that's what we're after. Yeah, that's what holds the universe together.
00:49:19:16 - 00:49:37:04
Kelly Deutsch
Yes, absolutely. Regis, this has been such a joy being able to, just take a little frolic about in this spacious wilderness, this wild, but beautiful and alive world.
00:49:37:06 - 00:49:43:05
Regis Martin
Well, it's been my pleasure and a great honor. And I'm so happy that we reconnected after 20 years.
00:49:43:05 - 00:49:52:14
Kelly Deutsch
Indeed. I know it's amazing how time flies. So thank you for sharing with me this this worldview, and also with all of our listeners who are joining us today.
00:49:52:14 - 00:49:57:24
Regis Martin
Happy to do so. God bless you, Kelly. Take care. Thanks again.
00:49:57:27 - 00:49:59:05
Kelly Deutsch
Bye bye.