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Marriage, Mission, Myth, and Meaning in The Death of Ivan Ilyich by Leo Tolstoy | Book Discussion!
A man climbs a ladder to hang drapes and slips into a lifetime’s truth: he’s been decorating emptiness. We sat with Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Ilyich and asked hard questions about status, ritual, and the kind of love that only shows up when it costs.
Quick story snapshot (Tolstoy): Ivan Ilyich, a successful judge with a “proper” life, suffers a fatal illness after a trivial accident. As pain strips away his self-deception, society’s politeness rings hollow—only the servant Gerasim meets him with honest compassion. In his final hours Ivan sees that a life ordered around comfort and appearances cannot save; repentance and self-giving love can.
What we explore (through an Orthodox lens):
- Marriage as sanctification, not transaction—a place where pride dies and love learns to serve.
- Rituals with a why—why liturgy and household habits either form us or numb us.
- Seeing with others’ eyes—how wives, husbands, converts, and cradle faithful re-read the same text and grow empathy.
- The bruise as a parable of sin—ignored at first, spreading quietly, distorting how we see those closest to us.
- Gerasim’s ordinary holiness—humility, patience, and joy as the persuasive answer to “main-character energy.”
- Recovering a shared moral language—how myth and realism help us talk about death, judgment, and mercy in an age of “my truth.”
Takeaway: Don’t wait for a deathbed to choose communion over isolation. Read bravely, examine your ladders, and practice the love that moves first—especially when it costs.
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You did the whole thing. Oh you did?
SPEAKER_04:I didn't even notice. I did, don't worry. It's fine. You bleaked it, right? Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:It's fine. The death of Ivan Ilyich shows that emptiness in that he damages his side hanging some drapes. Drapes that you know no one's gonna care about when he's dead. Meaningless. Right? Yep. But he's climbing this ladder leading to nowhere. It's unstable. He falls, he bruises his side. That bruise, as an illustration for sin, spreads throughout his body.
SPEAKER_01:But then we also see that the shift in their marriage happened once she had a baby, right? And I think she began to grow because women can't escape giving our lives for our children. It happens in pregnancy, it happens when they're newborns. We give up our sleep, we give up of our own body to feed this baby.
SPEAKER_05:Definitely in the military. I feel like like this is the big thing of why people get out of the military is like everyone just always says, you're just a number. Because if you do die in a position, right, or you are in some, you know, you you get out, they're just gonna fill your spot.
SPEAKER_02:Tying this to Ivan Hillick, I'm thinking, here's this guy who I I had the sense while reading it. She was like an afterthought. She was just there. I use the word too often. She was like furniture, right? Just there. And yet she still was there with the kids. She's still, think about how sad and hurtful that must have been for her for years. Welcome to Cloud of Witnesses. My name is Jeremy Jeremiah. We got a really special episode for you tonight. We are going to be discussing a brilliant novella short story. We can talk about that maybe a little bit as to how those are defined and what that means. But is the death of Ivan Ilich, Ilich, depending on how you pronounce it. I've got some wonderful uh people joining us tonight. We'll go around and introduce ourselves really quick.
SPEAKER_03:Oh, hi. Yes. Sorry. Um my name is James, and um I'm here to talk about our book club and why we decided to do this and also the death of Ivan Ilyich.
SPEAKER_01:Hungry Priscilla, James's wife.
SPEAKER_02:We we dragged her here.
SPEAKER_01:I'm just here to watch.
SPEAKER_05:That's not true. And I'm Mario uh caught up against his team.
SPEAKER_02:Awesome. So, James, you mentioned the book club. Um, this this was was birthed uh from from your your mind, and I'm so glad that we're doing this really, really great. Uh, we had our first meeting the other night um and discussed this book. Can you start us off maybe what was the impetus behind the book club? And do tell us because you have a you're not just doing this for fun, you do this as a profession. Right. Um, and can we talk a little bit about novella versus short story?
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, absolutely. That that's there's a lot to address there. So I am a writing and and um literature professor, and so one of the things that's really important to me is literacy. Um seeing how literacy has gone down in America, but just in the world, people's interests in these stories, um, they're not just stories. These stories built the civilization that we are a part of now, and and all of the nations that and forms of government and and laws that have developed over time, these revolutions and movements, we're all inspired by literature. And if we lose that art, um we're gonna lose a bit of our humanity. And the way that that's the stories are going nowadays, especially with postmodernism and and this kind of nihilistic consumerist, you know, pointless um narrative that's being pulled out that everything is meaningless, is very dangerous and harmful to society. Um I've been thinking a lot about how we have lost um the ability to mythologize, but it was mythology that gave us virtues, it gave us um the cautionary tales, the things to be um to be aware of, the pitfalls, all the lessons that we've learned were passed on through stories. And we need to have some kind of direction, some kind of purpose. We need to figure out what truth is, and oftentimes these stories, though they're fiction, they're truer to uh a reality that is outside of all of our perceptions. We are all blind, we're blinded by our own perceptions that keep us from recognizing truth. Literature, it it kind of pulls the curtain down the facade that you've kind of built around yourself as a shell so that you can see the painful truth, the ugly truth that will reveal something that is lacking in you or something that is lacking in society, but can be fixed if we all kind of come together. And so my goal in that is to kind of get everybody to recognize that these aren't just books, they're not just um uh pages and you know uh words. Yeah, there's something deeper underneath. But it for you to be able to uh extract what is good and what is meaningful, you need to first go to the sources of meaning and truth and um something that's rich, right? You don't you don't go digging um just out anywhere. You go to archaeological sites where there is history, right? Where you know that buried underneath all this dirt, there was once a civilization, there was once a temple, there was once, and you don't just go and bulldoze into the dirt, right? You go tactfully with experts who know what they're doing, and they excavate with the proper tools. And critical reading is that way as well. You come to it with the respect, you come to it with uh an understanding that there's a lot here that we need to be careful about not missing it, not bulldozing through it, but using the proper tools to extract what is meaningful, truthful, valuable, hidden under the dirt that you can't see. And so our goal with Prospero's Library, as we called it, is to take bite-sized versions or bite-sized works of um, you know, profound authors. We started with Leo Tolstoy, who's known for writing these ginormous books, right? Right, Warren Peace, yeah, yeah, Anna Karinina, and everyone's like, I don't want to read anything that's over 200 pages. So we started with the death of Ivan Ilich, which is only 70 pages or so. Right. Um, and that was the beginning. And now we're reading a Henry James book, which is about a hundred pages or so, and we're gonna do Charles Dickens, we're gonna do uh Edith Wharton, Truman Capote. We got we have plans for Bree and I have been working together on putting a whole year's worth of books that are pint size but profound, and we can have meaningful conversations about how it connects not just to daily living, not how, but society, but also our faith, which is incredibly important to us.
SPEAKER_02:100%. I love this, and I think we'll all agree that this is going to be open to anybody watching this right now. This book club, of course, it is it's part of our community. It's we're down here in San Diego, but we can absolutely invite our listeners to join in. We can make it a point to begin talking about the books that we're reading in this book club to uh encourage others to get involved. We can even publish the notes, the uh questions um for discussion. Um, and we can even, Mario, I know you've wanted to do this for a while, we can jump on some lives, discuss it with people out there around the country. How cool would that be? Um, I love it. Um you mentioned this analogy of tools, right? And coming at the book, uh, the digging with proper tools. So many modern authors in our current milieu and and you know, secular publishing world, they read Tolstoy, but they don't come to the same conclusions we do, right? They read Dostoevsky, they hold Dostoevsky on a high pedestal, but they come to very different conclusions, right? I think at some point we should talk about perspective, faith, worldview, because that's a big part of truly getting to the gold. Because I feel like so many people these days, the books they're writing, certainly what's being published kind of in the mainstream, it's writing, it's a book, it's published, but doesn't have that gold. Not always. I saw this, uh Stat, I want to throw this at you, Brie, just today. They say that women tend to read more statistically than men do. I thought it was really interesting. And they said women tend to read more fiction in general, and one of the reasons was is that fiction helps you feel uh emote with other people because you can see other people's experiences and you can empathize with them because you can experience that emotional connection or hurt or whatever happens in that story. Does that ring a bell at all? What how does that sound do you bring?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I mean, when we were reading Ivan Ilyich, like there was things that I was processing about my own life, my own experience as a mother, as a wife, that I would bring up to Alfonso, and Alfonso's like, What? How did you even get that?
SPEAKER_02:But I think as women Could you have an example that's actually really interesting?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, well, the way that he picked his wife, I didn't see a problem with it. And I brought it to Alfonso, and he's like, What? That's horrible the way he picked his wife. But I think for me, it was processing what does it mean to be a wife? What does it mean to be married? Because through you know, the Christian Orthodox perspective, it's sanctification. So I was sharing with him, like I don't think it mattered who he picked as a wife. I think the problem was his perspective of marriage. For him, marriage was something that was supposed to satisfy him, and the moment it didn't, he kind of discarded her. And I was sharing with Alfonso, like, I don't think there's anything wrong with his wife. The problem was the way that he perceived her, right? Not as someone that was there to sanctify him or someone that was there for him to support, it was someone there to satisfy him. And the moment she didn't fulfill that role, he moved on. He disassociated from the marriage and he just went about his life. So I think for women, we're able to read into fiction and kind of process our own experience.
SPEAKER_02:James, how does Ivan Ilik come to be married? Tell us a little about that.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, well, Ivan Ilyich was somebody who they called him uh the phoenix of the family, right? Um, and he always looked for the best position. He always looked for the best role in society, he always wanted to keep up with um keep up with appearances. He wanted to appear like he had it all together, even though he in law school he had to do some things that he would never do normally because he would find them repulsive, but because he was trying to win the approval of society, and society didn't didn't seem to have any problem with it, even though personally he did have a problem with it, he compromised. But he compromised for the wrong people. And this is a pattern of his life. It was always seeking the approval of society, but it was a certain type of society, a certain group of society that looked for value in status, yeah, um, looked for value in popularity, looked for value in doing things that everyone ought to do without knowing the why.
unknown:Right.
SPEAKER_03:And the why is the most important part of the things that we do. Um, like marriage. Uh marriage was is a religious uh union. It's it's not civil, it's not um, it's not something that you uh that you can just get a certificate for and it has it has meaning now. Marriage is is it's profoundly connected to the divine. Right. It's not transactional. It's not transactional. And what happens in Ivan Ilyich, it shows the spiritual barrenness of almost everyone in this story, except for one person, um uh, which we'll talk about in a sec, but things like the funeral service that ought to be sacred, that ought to be a celebration of life in the Orthodox Ronima, where we see death as a birth into new life. And we we celebrate this. We look at this as a triumph, right? Uh, and that mirrors Christ's triumph over death. Him dying on the cross wasn't a loss, that was a win, right? It was uh Christ in victory. Um, and so when we die, we join him in that victory, and that's what's worth celebrating. Marriage is about sanctification, it's about it's part of theosis, it's part of our union with Christ and it it pushes us towards that ascetic life. Um, but if you don't have that understanding, then uh, like my wife said, it's as soon as it gets hard, you run. Um, as soon as people got uncomfortable at the funeral because they didn't know what to do, they were just doing the sign of the cross because that's what you do, but they didn't understand why they would do the sign of the cross. They didn't know what the icons were doing there, right? They didn't know uh the why behind the ritual, and it becomes uh empty and hollow, and that was his life until he came to that understanding that there is something deeper, but it need to be it, it had to be seen in somebody who embodied the character of Christ and the virtues of Christ, which was Yerasim, right? Um He was the the Christ figure in that story that showed humility, whereas Um Ivan represents um arrogance, he represents materialism, he represents wealth and even authority and power as a magistrate, as a judge. Uh Yerasim was a servant. He had really no value to society. He was the yeah, the bottom of the pole, and and um but he brought him the most comfort, more so than his wife, more so than his children. And he was joyful, he was clean, he was um kind and self-sacrificing. Yeah, he put every need that Ivan had above his own, didn't consider his own comfort, he considered Ivan's comfort. And his experience of Yerasim's um his virtue, yeah, the way that he his humility, his humility, the way that he embodied the characteristics of Christ. His salvation was producing and manifesting salvation inside of Ivan, which led to the sacraments, and the sacraments leading to enlightenment and transformation, and then leads us to the end of the story. Right. And I wanted to touch on something that my wife pointed out is which, by the way, she's my favorite literary critic of all of all time. Her high school paper on Frankenstein was some of the best critical analysis I have ever read. Wow. Um, and we've been together since high school, right? So we've we've known we know each other that long, right? Um, but so I love going through literature with her because she has a unique perspective that I will never have. When I read, I read as a man. Um I have my history, but I also am limited to I only know what it's like to be a man. And to be a man that who's that has gone through what I have gone through. Right. Um, and that's the beauty of going through literature with a group. Right. Because I can we can have the same book and she gets a completely different perspective. And you and I have something that's different. You live your life, I live my life. Right. And same with Mario, right? Everyone has gone through something different so that when they um the way they respond to the literature will be totally different. And I appreciated that so much, as many of us are Protestant converts, and then we had one guy in the group who it was, you know, cradle Orthodox, he brought something else to the table, right? You know, and some newer Orthodox, some Orthodox longer, some um uh inquiring still. So it's important that we engage with literature not just as receivers, but participants. It's meant to be you read this, now respond. Yeah, and that's what I love about it. That's what Aristotle was trying to talk about with um catharsis, and that was the what Bree was talking about. The the way that literature, plays, movies, any any media that tells a meaningful story, it it should have a cathartic effect on you, it should help you process, and that's kind of how you know whether it has any gold or not. Right. Did it move you? Absolutely. Was there uh a pathos? Exactly. Yeah, and if there isn't, then it's there's not a lot of gold there. There's nothing much, yeah, nothing much to uh to move you, to force you to think, to challenge you. It's supposed to make you grow.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. You're better off reading something else if it doesn't do those things. The power of literature, which you're speaking on so well, James. I love this so much. You've got a bookcase behind you there that I think the camera can pick up a little bit of. That's why I picked the seat. I know, it's it's it's beautiful, it's wonderful. The um Death of Ivan Ilich was written in 1886. I love the concept of this in the sense that we're still reading it today in 2025, right? It's still a book that's maybe just as relevant as we discovered in our discussion the other night as ever. That's because, as you were saying, gold, whether it's found in the dirt in 1886 or in 2025, it's still gold, right? And that's a beauty of of literature and of good art. Uh Tolkien, who there's some books of his behind you, uh was born six years later, which I think is very interesting to think about. Because I think some people come to uh literature like Tolstoy and they think of it, oh, it's so long ago, right? And it is in one sense. 1886 was a long time ago. But six years later, the man who eventually wrote Lord of the Rings that we all still love and enjoy, uh was born. So it really isn't that far off. Because one thing that I hope comes about from this book club, and we've seen this with some of our members who are wanting to be part of this, they're afraid, right? They're hey, we have to read what we're reading a Russian author, you know, there's a lot of intimidation. And I hope that what we can help show through this process is it doesn't have to be, right? It it can be if if I can read it and get something out of it, anybody can, right? And I think that's a really beautiful thing. We talked about the end, right? You've kind of summarized the story for us. This story starts with the death of Ivan Illich, which is it's there's no spoiler in a sense, right? Because the opening page is actually I think the first page we find out that Ivan Illich has died. His friends, or his friends, I should say, his co-workers. What were they concerned with when they find out of the death of their co-worker? What are some of the first things that they're thinking of that they're talking about? And what is that what does that bring up to you?
SPEAKER_01:I think the most striking thing was their gladness that it wasn't them. Like they're like, I didn't die. You know, it happened to him, but it could never happen to me. Which I think speaks to our fear of death, our fear of feeling uncomfortable even with the idea of death. And we see that they begin to distract themselves, right? Where they're like making plans to okay, let's do cards, let's let's escape that thought of death. And then also trying to fill his position of like, okay, let's move on. Ivan's gone, let's move on, let's fill his position.
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:So I think those two things of like life goes on, and I don't want to be uncomfortable, I don't want to think about it, which I'm guilty of sometimes too.
SPEAKER_02:Sure. It points to a very real part of human, right? Human responses, human nature when when left to our own devices sometimes.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, which a death should be a moment to stop and really reflect. But for them, I think they were in a place that they just couldn't even bring themselves to do that. So they just wanted to move on quickly and distract themselves.
SPEAKER_02:Which makes me think about our modern world that emphasizes so much, especially for women these days. Go do a career. Don't worry about family, your community. Do what's best for you, right? You go and just go to college, get your degree, become a professional. That's the professional world, right? They were attorneys, they were lawyers, right? Yeah, they're in that professional world. I've seen it. I don't know if you guys have seen the movie Um Uh Jerry Maguire. I think we have. When Jerry Maguire leaves, or that famous scene, he gets fired, he leaves, and two seconds later, the office just goes right back to work, right? And that's really kind of what happened, right? Right back to work, they're thinking about their promotions and they're thinking about, you know, what's coming. Mario Andrew, you you understand the importance of community, right? And how important our community has been. Compare that to work, to military. Have you do you see a drastic difference?
SPEAKER_03:But first, can we acknowledge that Tom Cruise somehow managed to make his way into this meeting?
SPEAKER_02:And it wasn't Brie that brought him up. Yeah. Thank you. I'm sorry. I apologize.
SPEAKER_01:I was gonna say, he's always relevant.
SPEAKER_02:That was for my wife, because we, you know, just that's that was for you, dear.
SPEAKER_05:We have somebody on the on that on our team, Alfonso. Somebody else is, you know. He's infiltrated, he's infiltrated.
SPEAKER_02:It is one of my favorite movies, I will admit every time.
SPEAKER_05:I knew it. I knew it. I knew it for some reason. You look like this kind of guy. I'm dead. Well, uh you you were asking about community, um, and um do I see do I see the same thing within community? Well, you know, definitely in the military, I feel like like this is the big thing of why people get out of the military, is like everyone just always says, you're just a number. Because if you do die in a position, right, or you are in some, you know, you you get out, they're just gonna fill your spot. And everything is just so regimented, there's no way you can make it your own, you know. And so there there is that like like there's a community, but lack of personality or lack of meaning, I should say. And so, I mean, that's why I got out. You know, I felt like I was missing meaning. Yeah, you know?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, and certainly Ivan Ellick didn't have it. He might have thought he had it, but he didn't.
SPEAKER_03:Well, and I want to kind of put this back on on Brie. Um, because her experience of two contrasting funerals was actually quite influential to her conversion and coming to faith. So maybe you can kind of touch on that.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. I mean, I came to really own my faith when I was 17. So that was my senior year of high school. And I we experienced I want to say three or four deaths in the span of a few months. Um, one of which was not a believer, the the rest were believers. And um I think seeing that stark contrast between almost like a graduation of yes, they're gone from this world, but they're united with Christ, versus the other funeral that was just complete and utter despair and fear um really brought that to life of like what like I said, a funeral, a death of someone is supposed to make you stop and reflect and what is the truth? What are lies in our lives? And I think that experience really, really made me stop and ask myself that question as a 17-year-old. Yeah, and it was something that was just so profound. I remember one of the women one of the women that passed was my great aunt, and I went to visit her, and on her deathbed, that was the only thing she told me was seek God, seek God with all your heart, don't stop. And she told me that three or four times, and I reassured her that I would, and it was incredible because I was going to church by myself. I'm Orthodox now, but at the time I grew up Catholic, so in the morning I'd go to Catholic Mass, and then in the afternoon I'd go to my dad's family's church. They were Pentecostal, so like two very opposite things. Yeah, but it was interesting because we would sing the same hymns at both, and that was really I mean, it it meant different things to both, but at the same time, I just wanted to see God, whoever he was. Thank God now we're in the Orthodox faith. But even that, you know, my grandma's Catholic and she has a deep, profound faith. Um, and when I shared with her that I was Orthodox, she was so excited, and which I think was endearing to me because I was like, how's my grandma gonna take it? She's Catholic.
SPEAKER_09:Right, right.
SPEAKER_01:I'm Orthodox. But when as soon as she saw our prayer corner, she was so excited and she was pointing out every single saint. So I think that that brought great comfort to me. But yeah, definitely funerals was a big part of why I came to seek the truth. And I think that was really sad in the book that they just wanted to get out of there as soon as they could because it was so uncomfortable. Like you said, it it truth, I think, is very provocative and it make it should make you stop and think. And that's little those little nuggets that you're talking about, the gold nuggets in literature are pieces of the truth. Whether or not the author is a believer or knows the truth, there's little bits of that in every person, you know.
SPEAKER_03:And that's what mythology is trying to do. Mythology is all about discovering a truth that has not been revealed explicitly, but we have all come to somewhat of a conclusion or an understanding of certain things, and that's most of the time it was through experiences. We've all experienced this thing as commonly enough to where we can say this might be true. Again, because there's no truth that's absolutely certain. Um the world is so confusing and things can seem so stable at one point and then destabilize, and then you're left to kind of pick up the pieces, and and that disillusionment is very dangerous. And that's kind of what we've come to. Um because the the myths have been destabilized. The myths were meant to be understood communally. Every civilization on earth had religion and they all had mythology, they all had gods, they all had cosmologies, uh, their explanation of how the universe began. What how things were created, how things developed over time. It's no surprise that all of our mythologies are somewhat similar in that we all have kind of like an elder god, uh, and then we kind of have some some other celestial beings that are underneath that elder god, Zeus, Odin, God the Father, um Ra. And you know, there's there's always some that are above, even in the Indian, you know, Hindu religions. And then there are uh other beings, and then there's creation, and then there's humans, and and we all have our ceremonies. We have ceremonies around the dead that's um go back 30,000 years, even to some say even the Neanderthals had um had um burial rituals, right? Um, but we've always had this this connection to the dead in our stories. We've always had this um this essence that we share with our our creator somehow in that uh in the the process of being created, we have this connection. Um and we're all trying to understand what it means, what our purpose is in light of that relationship. And all of these stories were around how do we function as a community in relation to how God made us and how do we respond to that God? And so we build rules around how we interact and what our roles are based on those stories and what we learn from those stories. Right. The leaders of each of those villages was usually the storyteller, the wise man, the chief, the medicine man. Why? Because they were entrusted with the truth, and the truth was mythology at that time. What is what is worth living? Well, to what's worth living is living a life that is pleasing to the gods. But what is that? Well, we know, let me tell you, gather around, there is a story about a man who lived righteously. How did he live righteously? And then there was a flood, and he on his boat was saved. This story is is told in in the Native American, the Aborigines who were oceans apart, right? It's told in the Middle East in the Epic of Gilgamesh with Utnapishtem, told in the Noah story. It's told in every single civilization has a global flood story. Every civilization also has um has has stories of Pandora's box, right? Um the the Garden of Eden, a Tower of Babel, a serpent and a woman and the fall of man. They all have these stories. Everyone has a Lucifer of some sort, everyone has a an afterlife. So, but this is a way to keep everyone unified, to maintain harmony, because we need to share the story. We need to share the same story. When our stories are different, that's when we we clash, right? And that's ultimately what we're trying to defend when we go to war. It's like, no, we're trying to preserve our stories because our stories is what maintains unity. And your stories contradict our stories, and we find your stories harmful and whatnot. And and we've been trying to preserve it for the sake of how do we live together in harmony. Now, if you track how these stories have changed, and Death and Ivan, the death of Ivan Ilyich is written in a time of realism, but it's in a weird time of realism because realism was a response to romanticism and enlightenment, and we went from extreme experiences and the sublime and emotion and experience is everything, to no, only the material and the natural is reality. So then, realism is a response to these are stories of real life. However, Tolstoy is in Russia, Russia is Eastern Orthodox, right? Eastern Orthodox held to a bit of mysticism that the West had lost because of the Enlightenment. And when we lost our sense of mystery in the West, the West started to tell less communal stories that was essential to mythology, and they focused on individual stories because of Freud and because of Jung, we started to become very individualistic and starting about started thinking about how we are isolated, we are individuals, we are our products of trauma, and our trauma shapes us, and our identity is wrapped up in ourselves, our trauma, our pain. And now you have these things in our you know postmodern contemporary period where people say things like main character vibes, right? Or this is part of your story arc, or your I'm not saying it right, right? Someone's gonna call me unk in the comment section, but you know, um, it's that's the thing. Everyone wants to be the main character, right? But that's not how mythologies work. The mythology works as you are part of a community, and your virtue is tied to how you participate and benefit society, benefit your community, not in a utilitarian sense, but more in uh the rules are already established, and the one who lives by the rules in and and displays virtue is the hero. But we've gotten to a weird point where our heroes are are almost villains, sure. Anti-heroes, they subvert everything. And in in the East, what we're we're seeing is that in the death of Ivan Ilyich, he could have been an anti-hero. In a way, he kind of was because he was um he was stubborn to the very end.
SPEAKER_02:It's hard to like him for a lot of the story. It's hard to like him.
SPEAKER_03:He's self-pitying, uh, he's um crying, he's complaining, he's pushing everyone away. Exactly. Not great with his kids. Not many things are redeemable about him. But Yerasim is the one who he's not a superhero, he is a lowly servant who is able to transform someone's life and ultimately comes to know self-realization, his life and his purpose of seeking Theosis for himself, and that bleeding into somebody else's life, that's that's what's that's what's heroic about anyone's life. That in you seeking out your salvation, you bring others unto salvation. And Yurasim, that was his that was all his participation in the story. This is Ivan's story, but even so, the hero of it was just uh passing along and they had this point of of convergence, and then he went on and did his thing, and it changed somebody's life. Yeah. And I think Alex, who shout out to Alex, who said, What a missed opportunity! And this is where Tolstoy's lack of orthodoxy really missed uh the the opportunity to show how how Ivan Ilich's enlightenment in the end, where he has um, he partakes of communion, he confesses, he asks for forgiveness to his family, and then gives in to death. He welcomes now death. Right. And um he starts to think about others, it doesn't have any effect on anybody else. And that was a really missed opportunity because that is the point of our salvation. The greatest thing for us is in that being saved, we save others because that's ultimately what Christ did. Yeah, Christ's coming down wasn't for himself, it was for his church. And we get to participate in that, we get to share in that, but it it comes at your expense. Right, you have to sacrifice, you have to show up, and you have to give up the idea of being the main character. Right. You're part of the communal story, like all mythologies were. Why? For the sake of the church, your neighbor, for the sake of the world. Yeah, that's what's missing.
SPEAKER_02:Amen. Aristotle famously said that the unexamined life is not worth living. And I think Ivan Illich was a perfect example, example of someone who did not examine his life. Right. We think about in the story what he spent his time doing, playing cards, which you can imagine it's fun. It's just kind of this, it's a game, right? It's a game that you play, maybe make some money, right? What else did he enjoy? Well, he enjoyed getting his home in a fancy condition, the drapes, yeah, right, the the way things looked. He failed to examine his life in the way that we're talking about right now. And I think so much of what what I was hearing and what you were saying there, James, and thank you for that. It was a really beautiful presentation there, is you said that we we get to, right? We get to partake in the church, right, in the kingdom of God. I would want to phrase that a little differently. There's a sense in which yes, we get to, thanks be to God, but we have to, right? We're not called to be bystanders, we're not called to be passive, right? We do have to pick up our cross every day, right? We have to participate in the things of the church, the sacraments of the church. Why? Because if we don't, then we're really living like Ivan Illich. Even if we call ourselves an Orthodox Christian, even if we say, Oh, I believe in Christ, you know, Christ is my savior, if you're not participating, what are you doing? You're like one of his co-workers who awkwardly does the sign of the cross because he doesn't know what else to do when he walks into the funeral, right? And so I I want to stress, which Alex made such a great point, is is that there is something lacking in this story. As beautiful as a story as it is, as powerful as a story as it is, it doesn't have that richer kernel that you might find in Dostoyevsky, where you do find real redemption, perhaps. Now I think Ivan Ileko, I think we uh agreed that there's a certainly a hint that he found redemption, right? It's not overt, it's not explicit. But if he did, it's like thief on the cross, in a sense. And what a shame that is. Now, obviously, that's an a beautiful presentation of the grace of God, you know, and and we all pray that we would have that opportunity on our deathbed as well. But we don't know, right? What do we know? We know we have today. And so I guess what I'm trying to say is participate even in things like what we're doing right now, examine your life, read good literature, and don't just read it. Challenge yourself, talk to your friends about it, join a book club, are you engaged with your church community? Right? These are the types of things that ultimately bring transformation. So I to me that was something that was coming out of what you were saying, James. I just kind of want to share that.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, and the the fact that this story comes at I it focuses on an aspect of life that puts um puts that really in the front and center of the whether or not I mean, because anybody you don't necessarily have to do anything, right? Uh I I love what um what my father-in-law always says. I don't have to do anything but be Mexican and die, right? And um, and you're right.
SPEAKER_05:Not even pay taxes, huh?
SPEAKER_03:You don't have to do it technically, you don't have to do anything that you don't want to do. But what gives your life value, what gives your life meaning? Where is virtue found? Those those things have stipulations on there's haves and haves not, right? You have to do this, you must not do that, right? And that's where virtue is found. That's where meaning is. So the rules are already there. You don't get to decide the rules. The rules are there for virtuous life or meaningless life, right? But what's at the center of this story that shows us that lack of virtue, that lack of meaning, the the spiritual barrenness comes in an institution that requires sacrifice. And I think my wife can speak to this more than anything that that's the family. God has instituted something that requires a person to be absolutely selfless, and you sacrifice so much of yourself, especially as a wife and mother, and maybe you can kind of speak to how that leads us into union with Christ.
SPEAKER_01:Oh man, yeah, I think so. Well that going back to um Ivan's marriage is like he was unwilling to sacrifice his own happiness, and I think it was Alex who said he's an unreliable narrator, and I'm like, that is so true, because like you said, the wife was so unlikable, right?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, it seemed like it.
SPEAKER_01:It seemed like it, but but I think we were seeing her through Ivan's eyes, which she was the cause for his unhappiness. So of course she would seem as if she were just unpleasant to be around. But then we also see that this shift in their marriage happened once she had a baby, right? And I think she began to grow because women can't escape giving our lives for our children. It happens in pregnancy, it happens when they're newborns, we give up our sleep, we give up of our own body to feed this baby. And I think it's a little bit easier for men to kind of run from that. I mean, while men still do sacrifice for their family with work and um protecting their family, but I think for women we're kind of confronted with that in a way that we can't run from it.
SPEAKER_08:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:So I think for Ivan, he did run from it. And I feel like maybe, and we don't know because again, it's unreliable, but I feel like maybe his wife pressed into that and maybe grew into that, giving of herself or her family because she was in charge of caring for the children. She would really give Ivan good advice that he did not take, and he would just do his own thing. Um I think maybe she did grow and he just didn't grow with her. So of course their marriage began to fracture.
SPEAKER_02:Right. We saw some hints that she did grow indeed, right? What happens at the end or towards the end from what does she do? Yeah. That kind of gives us that sense of hope that maybe, as I loved how Alex put that, that maybe Ivan is not being totally honest, or whether he's honest, or but or his perception was so warped by his own self-interest and his own pity delusion and self-pity that he didn't see maybe this wife who was maybe there for him all along. Um, what did we see?
SPEAKER_01:We saw that at the end when he was really close to death, she brought the priest and she really encouraged him to take communion. Um, and maybe she didn't have a full understanding of what it was, but I love that she put that effort to like she saw that her husband was dying, she understood what communion meant, right, at the end of his life, and she begged him, right, with sweet terms of endearment.
SPEAKER_08:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:And that's when I we I think we began to see, like, okay, maybe she's not that bad.
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:So she brought the priest in, she begged him to take communion, and he was really refusing at first. And then once he did, I feel like Ivan got that little glimmer of hope and a little bit of healing, maybe not physically, but spiritually. Um, and I think as a loving wife, we push our husbands towards sanctification, towards theosis. Um and I thought that was beautiful that she was like, that maybe there's nothing I can do for him, but I I know someone who might be able to, a priest, bring the priest in.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. What would I hear there, Bray, but at least part of that, which I think is so beautiful, and maybe also hints at the fact that she wasn't as bad as we first thought, based on the narration, is that she was faithful to him. Right. In today's world, especially, a wife of Ivan Illich, she's she's met somebody else, right? Or she's spending time with somebody else, or she's, you know what I mean? She's in some way emotionally getting that attention that Ivan's not giving her somewhere else, right? We don't see any hint of that. She raises the kids, like you said, almost like with an absentee you know, husband, right?
SPEAKER_03:And goes to the movie with the kids. She's still very much involved in their life as they continue to grow, right, as Ivan is increasingly more absent.
SPEAKER_02:Amen. Can I say this? And I would love to hear you guys' thoughts on this. I've often said or heard it said that marriages are 50-50. And I think there's a lot of truth to that. How about now?
SPEAKER_05:No.
SPEAKER_02:How about now?
SPEAKER_05:Yeah, a little bit. Okay. Perfect. Right there. That should help, hopefully.
SPEAKER_02:I think that's gonna help a lot. Okay.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah. Testing, testing.
SPEAKER_01:Test, test, test.
SPEAKER_05:Say uh one, two, three.
SPEAKER_01:One, two, three.
SPEAKER_05:All eyes on me.
SPEAKER_01:All eyes on me.
SPEAKER_05:Perfect, perfect. Okay. Yeah. Sorry, just before you were gonna ask both of them another question, I was like, yeah, I want to change the mic.
SPEAKER_02:Mari, would you mark just time? We're on 47. We need to cut it. Um that's all right. Give your phone, text it to you, just text it to me real quick. Appreciate that. Are we still rolling? We're still rolling. Okay. Um people often talk about marriage as being 50-50. As a Christian, I've come to be convinced that it's not 50-50. But that and I I'm not trying to take credit for any of this, be this is talked about by white, much wiser men than me and people. What a man gives, a woman's gonna respond. If a man is loving and devoted and invested in his wife, his wife is going to respond to that. She's gonna be even more devoted, even more invested. And what I'm trying to say is I feel like more responsibility falls on the man to be a good husband, to be loving, to be kind, to be all these things. And I truly believe that when a man is those things, when a man has Christ as his head and he's genuinely loving his wife as Christ loved the church, she's gonna be most the most amazing wife ever. Because she's responding to his. That's that feminine energy, right? It's the responsive energy. So tying this to Ivan Illick, I'm thinking, here's this guy who I I had the sense while reading it. She was like an afterthought. She was just there. I use the word too often. She was like furniture, right? Just there. And yet she still was there with the kids. She still think about how sad and hurtful that must have been for her for years to not have that loving husband. We didn't think about that.
SPEAKER_01:We well, we even see it when Ivan gets a promotion, right, and moves the whole family to a new city.
unknown:Right.
SPEAKER_01:And he had discussed it with her, and she said, No, I don't want to move. And he's like, Well, we're moving. And they moved everyone, and that was the beginning of the end for Ivan, right? In in moving and redecorating the house. But I was smiling while you were saying that because we had an interaction with our daughter, who's four, and Alfonso is trying to get her to come to the dinner table.
SPEAKER_03:I do, I do.
SPEAKER_01:And Alfonso's like, You're gonna come sit down. Well, we have three boys and a baby girl. So with the boys, we can be very militant and they will listen. And with her, the more Alfonso pressed her, come sit down, wash your hands. She just dug in her little heels and she actually went up. Upstairs.
SPEAKER_03:Not only did she not wash her hands, and not only did she not get any closer to the table, as her body moved further and further from the table. And I was like, You're gonna come and you're gonna sit down. I will never sit down. She marched upstairs and just put on her meet her girl pop through the Alexa and just tuned us out. Wow. Yep.
SPEAKER_01:So we're sitting there, and the boys are like shocked. Because when dad says something, they listen. And she was like, Nope, I'm not gonna do it. So I kind of counseled my husband and I was like, You know how you're gonna get her to come? I said, You're gonna be sweet with her, and you're gonna tell her, I would just love for you to sit at my table. You'd be so beautiful. And he challenged me. He's like, I don't think that's gonna work. So he did, and then what I took that bed and I lost.
SPEAKER_03:Um, I I changed my tone. I I put my voice in the most gentle voice where I was like, baby girl. And she's like, Yes, dad. I'm like, can you come downstairs for me? I want to give you a big hug, right? She comes downstairs, she kind of waits for me at the top of the stairs and gives me a look like, what is this? I'm like, can you cut just snuggle with me for a minute? She goes, sure. So she comes downstairs, she gets into my arms, and I'm like, it would make me so happy if you came and sat at the table with us. I'd love to be able to eat and look at your beautiful face. And she goes, Okay. I mean, can you go wash your hands, please? And then sure enough, yeah, I'll go wash my hands. She goes washes their hands, and my wife is just looking at me.
SPEAKER_02:What a story. That's fantastic.
SPEAKER_03:Totally different. And the boys, their jaws were on the table as well. Like, wow, that works. And um, and I told him, Well, kiddos, you just learn how to win yourself a woman.
SPEAKER_01:And she happily sat and ate. But I was, it's exactly what you said, right? The responsibility is on the man to be soft, to be considerate of his wife, just the way that Christ is with us, right? Um, what is it? It's the goodness of the Lord, the kindness of the Lord. The kindness of the Lord that brings us to repentance. And you know, he compares the husband to being Christ to the church, which is his bride.
unknown:Right.
SPEAKER_01:Um, and I think that oftentimes men are a little bit confused by that. And the the story of Beauty and the Beast is like a perfect example, right? When he was like, Come to dinner, and she's like, I will not come. He's like, Then go ahead and start. That did not help the situation. But once she saw his kindness, his sweetness, feeding the birds with his hands.
SPEAKER_03:You mean once she saw his library, and the library, exactly.
SPEAKER_01:That was a big step.
SPEAKER_02:I'm not too sure Melan was that that impressed with the library.
SPEAKER_03:My daughter's a bookworm. She would be very impressed with the library.
SPEAKER_01:But I think it it's the challenge of men to be soft and to be kind, yeah, and to win their wives over that way.
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:And that's not to say that there aren't women out there who are also difficult in their own way as we can be. But I do feel, and I feel bad for you men, because you guys do have the bigger responsibility in that sense.
SPEAKER_03:Well, and kind of to to not challenge what you said, but to it really takes a hundred a hundred, you know? Um, because if if you're in if you're both not fully invested, there's no chance. There's a hundred percent chance of failure of the marriage. Because what we see in the death of Ivan Ilyich is uh two ladders, right? And one's in in contrast, um the the ladder of divine ascent, which is not a part of the story, but we get to see the opposite ladder, which is a ladder leading to destruction, a ladder of emptiness, a ladder pursuing success and vanity. And when you pursue marriage as part of vanity, as part of um maintaining appearances, I got married because that's the thing that people do when they're trying to be successful. They have a family. But you're not willing to now do what is necessary to maintain a family, it's it's going to fall apart. It's going to lead to destruction. And it'll be either destroy you or it'll destroy your family. And the same thing with a wife, right? If she's going to be a part of a family in order to love a husband and to love your children, it takes a lot of sacrifice. You have to sacrifice your body first and foremost to have a child, right? Which is incredibly dangerous. And then when you have the child, now you need to sacrifice your body again to feed the child. Meanwhile, the dad has to go and sacrifice his body out on the field, on the plow, to collect, to hunt, to gather. And everyone is sacrificing, even the child who's sacrificing. Um, they didn't really choose to live this life, and they have to live with these parents that are, you know, putting demands on their life and making their life either difficult or however it may be. Sacrificing independence. Sacrificing independence. Because now none of them are living for themselves. They're all living for each other, kind of reinforcing what I'm saying about communal living. It's embedded into us, it's embedded into most of the animal kingdom. If you just only need to look at monkeys and elephants and and wolves and many others, that they all form, they all for the most part um kind of serve a community, if not an ecosystem that depends on everyone doing their part. And if somebody doesn't do their part, they usually get eaten, right? Um, and that's how it is in today's world. The reason why the family is so unsuccessful, divorce rates have skyrocketed, the birth rate has gone down, is because of the main main character syndrome story arc. Yeah, right. Yep. I'm not gonna have a family. Why? Because this is my story, this is my life. I'm not gonna sacrifice my life for no man, for no woman, for no kids, right? I'm gonna have, I'm gonna get mine. I'm gonna look out for myself and I'm gonna get mine, right? Right. Um, and that's that's an anti-hero, right? It's a villain, that's a villain, right? Exactly. That's Lex Luthor, right? He doesn't have a wife and kids, right? That's Wolverine, right? Who seems like a hero on the outside, but who's he living for? He lives for himself, right? And the fact that any good happens, it kind of convenience, right? Well, it's a world I gotta live in, so I'll do it. But even then, it's empty, right? And the death of Ivan Ilyich shows that emptiness in that he damages his side, hanging some drapes. Drapes that you know no one's gonna care about when he's dead. Meaningless, right? Yep, but he's climbing this ladder leading to nowhere, it's unstable. He falls, he bruises his side. That bruise, as an illustration for sin, spreads throughout his body, so much so that he he can taste it in his mouth and it leaves him with a bitter taste. And that bitter taste turns him bitter towards everybody else, so that he can't even recognize any good that his wife does anymore. He only sees everyone through bitterness because he's so self-absorbed, he's so self-consumed, he doesn't know how to love other people that he can't even recognize love that is being passed on to him through his wife, right, and his kids, through his kids, through his priest. And that's the danger. When you are living your life as the main character, everyone becomes an obstacle rather than everyone being an opportunity to love. And we uh I somebody said it once, the pastor had said it once, that the inability to see what is lovely in other people is not a fault in the people, it's a fault in you.
SPEAKER_02:Amen.
SPEAKER_03:And if we believe that we are the image bearers of Christ, then that doesn't only apply to you, that applies to others around you. And we need to, Jesus said, Whatever you do unto others, you have done unto me. And whatever you do not do unto others, you have also neglected in. In me. And that's where we get into the have to and must. You are neglecting a virtue that is supposed to be part of who you are if you are uniting yourself with Christ in serving other people who are in need, in you know, visiting the widows and the orphans in their time of need, as James says, right? As caring for your wife as Christ loves the church. And we as husbands and fathers, we are the priests of our home, as St. John Chrysostom says, our home is a little church. And we are to love and serve our home with the same humility and and um servant-like heart that Christ had and laying his his life down for the church. So we lay we should lay our life down and show the gentleness of Christ, the goodness of Christ. Um exactly um to put the towel around our waist and wash our wives' feet and our children's feet um to correct them. And here's where it gets ri really connects to everything we've been talking about is the way that Jesus taught was in parables. And parables are fiction that are truer than reality itself.
SPEAKER_02:Amen. Yep.
SPEAKER_03:Whether or not the Good Samaritan was an actual person who actually existed doesn't change the fact that it is truer than any reality that we can perceive, because the Good Samaritan showed Christ's nature more than anybody, anybody else that could imagine at that point.
SPEAKER_02:100%, James. I love that. I love that. There's a book right behind you, Being as Communion. It is why the greatest stories ever told all share that kernel of truth, whether they're written by a Christian or an atheist, or it doesn't matter because if they're seeking the truth, as you've you've often said, James, they're what? They're in some small way reflecting the image of God. And we know from books like Being As Communion, this is getting back to, we are not on an island. It is not about you as the main character. We are all here together in this time. And our salvation is not just me in my closet with my Bible, right? Or my prayer life with Christ. Because what does Christ say? If you love me, keep my commandments, right? I can't keep his commandments in my closet. You can't. The stories like the death of Ivan Hill, they're reminding us, they're taking us back to the true reality that we are communal people. Why? Because even God himself in the Trinity is communal. God communes with himself. And what a beautiful thing. And so his creation mirrors and reflects that so that even when he created Adam wasn't enough. He also, for it to be good, created Eve for commune, for communion, right? And what a beautiful thing that is. So I would just I know we've talked uh on this for a bit, we should probably wrap this episode up. Um but I do want to well, we can quickly give some last thoughts. Um Brie, I'll give you the last word will go this way. Sound good?
SPEAKER_03:I just want to touch on that. Please the importance of Eve. How could Adam have experienced love and participated in love and given love without Eve? Because even love itself requires two it can't just be a singular thing. It has to be exchanged, it has to be given and receive. It's it's reciprocal. Yes, right? So even for love to exist, there has to be someone else to love and to be loved in return.
SPEAKER_02:Amen. And that is the general thesis of being as communion. Shout out to that book. I've mentioned that book all the time. I apologize. Um wonderful. Mario Andrew, closing thoughts.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah, I read the book first, actually, for everybody. I'm just kidding. I I didn't finish the book, but you do reference being as communion like twice a week. Because I guess every time I'm talking to you, you talk about it.
SPEAKER_02:It's one of the I think it's genuinely, I think it's one of the most important books ever written. Um certainly uh from an orthodox perspective.
SPEAKER_05:No, I mean I read the first like 10 pages. It was great. It was great. The number keeps going down. I know.
SPEAKER_02:I said 30, 30, was a night out of 30. Look.
SPEAKER_05:I'll I'll I'll read it eventually. Moving on to James.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. Um like I said, the it's a story about every person. And that's something that Bree and I kind of talked about as we went through it. Like he has a life that is so ordinary that it seems like what what's wrong with his life? It he has everything, right? But it shows how you can miss everything that you have when you're you're living out of focus and out of purpose. Once you have purpose to your life, and he realized it too late, that he had a family, he had everything, everything that he actually could have wanted that would have given his life meaning and fulfillment, he had neglected and he realized it too late. That's why he needed forgiveness, and that's why he asked him for forgiveness. So the sooner we can confront ourselves with a story like this, the death of Ivan Ilyich, you realize we're all dying. And we're we're just one ladderfall away from death being closer to us. And do you want to be running away from your family? Do you want to be running away from purpose? Do you want to be out of communion? Or do you want to participate and and and lead your family into communion with Christ? Um and also connect with the body, connect with your family, connect with the body. And the the beauty of Yerasim is that the church gets to be Christ's love to us. And not enough people, including myself, this is something that I've been meditating on lately, is more people are interested in receiving love from Christ than giving the love of Christ. And if you become a Yerasim, I will be the love of Christ to people. Rather than expecting the love of Christ, you cherish any love someone gives you because you know it's not obligation and you treasure it and you feel love because you give so much, you get to experience love. Giving love is just as wonderful to experience than receiving love. Jesus even says it's better to give than to receive. We often think it's about money, it's about presence, it's about love. It's better to give love than to receive love. But then when you do receive love, you cherish it and you find this is wonderful. You didn't have to give this to me, but I'm gonna hold on to it because it's just wonderful, and I will love you in return, right? Because that's just my disposition. That's something that this book has challenged me to do, to be Christ's love to people who are suffering, to people who are close to death because they're closer to Christ than I will ever be until I'm there myself. So I challenge everybody, I'm looking at you, read this book, The Death of Ivan Ilyich. You won't regret it.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I I like what you said about like the universal stories. When Fonzo was like, we're gonna read Tolstoy, I was like, Oh, okay. But I think the beauty in it was that it's speaking to the human experience. So it's gonna be relevant, like you said, when it was written a hundred years later, you know, or even now, like 2025. There are things that are true now. Ivan, you know, running away from the things that were painful, like his marriage, or even towards the end of his life, reflecting on his happy childhood, it was too painful to remember. Um, and when we think about our childhood, like there were things that were painful, but there were things that were beautiful too. So I think even relating to Ivan in that, because he's just a person, and he may have lived in that time, but we're experiencing the same thing, maybe a little different in modern times, but same things. We're running away from pain, we're running away from childhood, and we're just trying to distract ourselves and numb ourselves. And I think what you said was beautiful is he had everything he wanted right there. He was just not pressing into the hard things of being a father, being a husband, and like through that hard work, he was gonna get a great reward. And I think at the end, the saddest thing was the words of like it's not right, it's not right, but it was too late. You know, and I think this book really challenged me to press into motherhood, to press into my marriage. And yeah, I'm excited for the next book. Wow, I can't wait.
SPEAKER_02:That's really that's really beautiful. Yeah, that's really awesome. I'll leave us with it's called The Death of Ivan Illich. And I think that's interesting, right? Because the book is really the story of his life. So he might have thinked that the story should be called the life of Ivan. I think Tolstoy had there was some brilliance even there, right? It's really the death because he lived in death, right? Moral, social, spiritual blindness, spiritual death. And I think that maybe is why the title is what it is, even though it tells the story of his life. Um, I want to thank you uh for listening this long to this episode. It's been an awesome conversation. Um, thank you, Brie. Thank you, James, thank you, Mario, for being part of this conversation. If you're interested in being part of this book club, um, message us down below. We'd be more than happy to get you involved. I really do look forward to doing this again, and we can maybe even talk about how we can get others involved in the conversation. Um, certainly down in the comments below. Let us know what you think, and we look forward to seeing you on the next one.
SPEAKER_03:Can I plug the next book? Please, please. So the next book we're going to be doing is our book club is The Turn of the Screw by Henry James, another uh old book, over a hundred years old, but it's a book that is perfect for the Halloween season or October season of spooks and whatnot. But it's really about how someone's perception of what's going on can lead them to see things that might not be there. And maybe what's going on in their mind can be feeding some of their paranoia and whatnot, and how that can be a circular thing. So we're going to talk about the orthodox perspective of spiritual warfare and psychological warfare through the book The Turn of a Screw by Henry James, who again is a profound American English writer. Um, I'm excited for us to talk about this like this in this group and also to get unique perspectives from everyone else.
SPEAKER_02:Amen. Awesome. Sounds great. God bless you guys. Bye-bye. We'll see you in the next one. Cool. Nice, guys. Yeah. Great.
SPEAKER_03:That was really, really great. That was a lot of fun. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:I called you Alfonso. Sorry, James.
SPEAKER_04:You did the whole thing. Oh, you did? I didn't even notice. I did, don't worry. It's coming. You bleed, you bleed it, right? Yeah.