Inklings Festival Presentations: Oikophilia in David Jones, Visions of Paradise, and Saving the Shire

by Erin Doom

Feast of the Holy Wonderworkers and Unmercenaries Cosmas & Damian of Asia, and Their Mother Theodota

Anno Domini 2020, November 1

Homestead in Buckinghamshire by David Jones (1931)

Two opening comments...

First, I'm still working on the digital content from the Inklings Festival. You'll receive those videos soon, along with Vigen Guroian's Inklings Lecture from last year on George Macdonald (and a bonus review on Macdonald's works Lilith and Phantastes by W. H. Auden).

Second, next weekend I’ll begin including a new piece at least twice a month in the premium blogs (Florovsky Archive and The Moot) for Patrons and Pillars. The next issue will include a short piece by Florovsky for which I’ve been searching for several years. Last week, while visiting the Monastery of the Holy Archangel Michael in Cañones, NM, abbot Fr. Silouan took me right to it in the monastery library. I snapped a picture of the two pages and will have it transcribed for you next weekend. The end is so great, part of it will be the quote on the next Hall of Men bookmark (2021). Stay tuned.

Meanwhile, this issue of Synaxis does include the texts of all the presentations from the recent sixth annual 2020 Inklings Festival. Dig in and offer a toast to the Inklings!

1. Bible

Monday: Col. 2:13-20. Lk. 11:29-33. Online here.

Tuesday: Col. 2:20-23; 3:1-3. Lk. 11:34-41. Online here.

Wednesday: Col. 3:17-25; 4:1. Lk. 11:42-46. Online here.

2. Liturgy: Feast of Cosmas & Damian the Holy Unmercenaries of Asia, and their Mother Theodota

One of three sets of Holy Unmercenaries commemorated by the names Cosmas and Damian (of Rome on July 1 and of Arabia on October 17), their mother St. Theodota, by example and by reading holy books to them, raised them to be virtuous men. Trained as physicians, they received the gift of healing people’s illnesses of body and soul by the power of prayer through the Holy Spirit. Learn more about their lives and some of the miraculous healings they performed here.

Troparion — Tone 8: Holy unmercenaries and wonderworkers, Cosmas and Damian, heal our infirmities. Freely you have received; freely you give to us.

Kontakion — Tone 2: Having received the grace of healing, you grant healing to those in need. Glorious wonder workers and healers, Cosmas and Damian, visit us and put down the insolence of our enemies, and bring healing to the world through your miracles.

3. Fathers: “Three Foes of the Family” by G. K. Chesterton

This is a stretch again, but since we’re wrapping up the 2020 Inklings Festival, I’m including a “father” of the Inklings today. This one might be a bit controversial but it’s worth reading and considering, especially in light of our theme of “oikophilia.” To spill the controversial beans, here’s one sentence from the full chapter in Chesterton’s The Well and the Shallows (available for purchase at Eighth Day Books):

It cannot be too often repeated that what destroyed Family in the modern world was Capitalism.

Read the whole chapter here.

4. Poetry: “The Tutelar of the Place” by David Jones and “The Country of the Blind” by C. S. Lewis

In a review of Thomas Dilworth’s The Shape of Meaning in the Poetry of David Jones, Kathleen Henderson Staudt correctly asserts that “Jones has long needed a painstaking reader who could interpret and explain the difficulties of allusion and language that many new readers find daunting, and who could also offer a coherent and sympathetic analysis of form, meaning, and literary significance.” According to Staudt, Dilworth “meets this need admirably.” I don’t yet have a copy of that expensive book but, based on Staudt’s review, Dilworth’s reading of Jones’s poem “The Tutelar of the Place” is the “least convincing.” Apart from the second part of Fr. Gabriel’s Inklings Lecture below, I don’t know of any other reading. And Lord knows I need help reading it. You’ll see why if you read the poem here.

For those who want an easier poem to read, here are the opening lines to a timely poem by Inkling C. S. Lewis:

Hard light bathed them—a whole nation of eyeless men,

Dark bipeds now aware how they were maimed. A long

Process, clearly, a slow curse,

Drained through centuries, left them thus

Read the whole Lewis poem here.

5. Books & Culture: “The Hero Is a Hobbit: A Review of The Fellowship of the Ring” by W. H. Auden

Since Christmas is on the horizon and W. H. Auden “cannot imagine a more wonderful Christmas present,” this week’s review comes from Auden himself. Here is the opening paragraph:

Seventeen years ago there appeared, without any fanfare, a book called The Hobbit which, in my opinion, is one of the best children’s stories of this century. In The Fellowship of the Ring, which is the first volume of a trilogy, J. R. R. Tolkien continues the imaginative history of the imaginary world to which he introduced us in his earlier book but in a manner suited to adults, to those, that is, between the ages of twelve and seventy. For anyone who likes the genre to which it belongs, the Heroic Quest, I cannot imagine a more wonderful Christmas present. All Quests are concerned with some numinous Object, the Waters of Life, the Grail, buried treasure etc.; normally this is a good Object which it is the Hero’s task to find or to rescue from the Enemy, but the Ring of Mr. Tolkien’s story was made by the Enemy and is so dangerous that even the good cannot use it without being corrupted.

Read Auden’s entire review here.

6. Essays et al: “Oikophilia: An Invitation to Join David Jones in His Home of Sacrament & History” by Fr. Gabriel Rochelle

The second part of Fr. Gabriel’s Inklings Lecture was presented as a seminar. If you missed the first part (“David Jones: History & Sacrament As Home”) in the last issue of Synaxis, you can read it here. The second part, “Oikophilia: An Invitation to Join David Jones in His Home of Sacrament and History,” can be read here.

7. Essays et al: “Saving the Shire: Ascetic Renunciation and Love of Home in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings” by Richard Rohlin

Click here to read the other 2020 Inklings Lecture, presented by Richard Rohlin.

8. Essays et al: “Visions of Paradise: Three Toasts to the Inklings” by Richard Rohlin

And click here to read the three toasts presented by Richard Rohlin on our 2020 Microbrewery Walking Tour.

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A New Universe, a New System of Stars: Why Babies are Necessary Icons for Us

By Mark C. Watney • August 25, 2026

Inside the head of my three-month-old granddaughter, Lucy, said G.K. Chesterton is, "a new universe, as new as it was on the seventh day of creation...a new system of stars, new grass, new cities...and new seas." And this is because, he adds: The gravity of astonishment at the universe...dwells in the eyes of a baby three-months-old [and] the universe is put upon its trial and forces us actually to remodel our conduct...we seem to be dealing with a new race, only to be seen through a microscope...[with] delightful bulbous heads, three times too big for the body. But Chesterton's central thesis in this essay is not that babies are so marvelous, but that our treatment of each other as adults, in contrast, is so broken. "It is our attitude towards grown-up people that is wrong," he writes, because we no longer see each other with astonishment and wonder (unless, that is, we are falling in love). But babies remind us that humans really are astonishing, and this "revolutionary theory of the marvelousness of all things" should force us to "remodel our conduct" toward everyone we meet. A baby seems to be a necessary icon for us, correcting our eyesight which grows old and struggles to see "the weight of glory" in each other as teenagers, adults, and perhaps especially, as old people. Even though he did not reference icons in his essay, we seem to drift very easily into what could be called a type of iconoclasm, an inability to see each other as image bearers of God Himself. William Wordsworth describes us as "trailing clouds of glory" when we first arrive here "from God, who is our home." But soon, he says, "shades of the prison-house" begin to smother us, and we forget. "We bow to grown people," says Chesterton in this same essay, "take off our hats to them, refrain from contradicting them flatly, but we do not appreciate them properly." God speaks to us, like we are working through in St. John of Damascus , through the "cataphatic or apophatic spectrum of theology," or literally from the spoken word (cataphatic) or unspeakable word (apophatic). Apophatic I noticed has the same root in Greek as Infant does in Latin. Both mean "unspoken." God has given us both bibles and babies, speechless wonders through which He means to unglaze our eyes and fill us with astonishment. MARK C. WATNEY is professor emeritus at Sterling College, assisting in its newly established C. S. Lewis Center. He has given papers at Harvard's Center for Hellenic Studies and Dordt College

Church Against the Machine: A Review of Paul Kingsnorth's Latest Book

By Michael Simmon • August 25, 2026

"God became man, so that man might become God." St. Athanasius the Great, On the Incarnation (54:3) These words from St. Athanasius may sound, at first blush, provocative. However, St. Athanasius is restating, perhaps more simply, what St. Peter says in his second epistle: the promise of being united to Christ is that men and women made in His image will partake in His divine nature (2 Peter 1:4). Paul Kingsnorth's latest book, Against the Machine, inverts this idea and opens our eyes to the world emerging at a rapid rate, the world dominated by what he calls The Machine. The new mantra of The Machine age is, instead, this: Man will become God by Man's own self-creation. Reading Kingsnorth is not for the faint of heart. It's easy to be overcome by despair. The goal of the Machine age is "transhumanism", to be liberated from the constraints of the body. For the transhumanist (self-described), the future is disembodied. The future is limitless. But this is not liberation. Because the Machine is not limited to the physical world, it follows naturally there is a spiritual nature to this lifestyle, what he ultimately identifies as a manisfestation and/or manipulation of the demonic. Whether or not you agree with his ultimate conclusion, we can see its effects. An entire generation, and many across generations, addicted to screens. Disintegration of communal life, most disastrously in the breakdown of the family. Increasing rates of loneliness, depression, and suicide, especially among children. It's clear we need a Savior, and the Machine isn't it. Instead, Kingsnorth encourages us toward a revival of community, men, women, and children living embodied lives in the same space and time: working together, eating together, worshipping together, loving each other, carrying each other's burdens. If this sounds like Eighth Day Institute...if this sounds like what the Church is meant to be, it is because this is exactly what the Church is. We are saved together in Christ. MICHAEL SIMMON currently serves as the Secretary of Eighth Day Institute Board of Directors and Coordinator for Hall of Men. He resides in Wichita, Kansas with his wife and four children.

What Else is This, if it is Not God? Stumbling Through St. John of Damascus, Part 2

By Luke Taylor Gilstrap • July 31, 2026

"What is it that has ordered the things of heaven and those of earth, the things which move through the air and those which move in the water; nay, rather the things which proceeded them: heaven and earth and the natures of fire and water? What is it that combined and arranged them...set them into motion and put them on their unceasing and unhindered course?..But who is the architect of these things? Or did not he who made them also bring them into being? We shall certainly not attribute such power to spontaneity." On the Orthodox Faith, Chapter 3 This comes after St. John of Damascus sets out to delineate between the created and the uncreated, a fact which, while at the core of existence, seems for him to be, for this very reason, the simplest to believe. Everything but God is created and, thus, susceptible to change. This means people, but this also means demons, angels, the rest of the created order across the entire cosmos. Everything is vulnerable to unrest. Except for God. If you have ever tried to explain the Holy Trinity to a child for the first time, maybe you have felt as I have the weightier, inexpressible side of God's unchangeability: how do I possibly communicate this essential fact to the person in front of me? (This is usually when my faint stutter starts to pop up again.) I like that here, like St. Patrick reaching for a three-leaf clover, St. John brings us back to earth to better understand the cosmos. Fire and water are no less mysteries than heaven and earth. And yet here we are, cooking and washing, eating and drinking, filled and sustained on what we can neither fully explain nor claim to have created. Only God is unchanging. Vice versa, God is the only constant we need. Maybe the rest is better left unsaid. LUKE TAYLOR GILSTRAP is Vice President of the Board of Directors for Eighth Day Institute. His poems have appeared in Spiritus, Ekstasis (Christianity Today), and Relief Journal, among others. He lives happily in Wichita, Kansas with his wife and three sons.

One Thing to Speak, Another to Know : Stumbling Through St. John of Damascus, Part 1

By Luke Taylor Gilstrap • July 24, 2026

"Now, one who would speak or hear about God should know beyond any doubt that in what concerns theology and the Incarnation not all things are inexpressible and not all are capable of expression, and neither are all things unknowable nor are they all knowable. That which can be known is one thing, whereas that which can be said is another, just as it is one thing to speak and another to know. Furthermore, many of those things about God which are not clearly perceived cannot be fittingly described, so that we are obliged to express in human terms things which transcend the human order. Thus, for example, in speaking about God we attribute to Him sleep, anger, indifference, hands and feet, and the like." On the Orthodox Faith, Chapter 2 When I was studying Fiction in graduate school, one of the first methods I learned to really situate the reader in the story you were about to tell them was disorientation; if you wanted to ground them in one story, first you had pull the rug out from under their feet. So it's fitting that in the beginning of St. John Damascene's On the Orthodox Faith, before rebuilding our foundation, he first puts us squarely in limbo, seesawing back and forth between certainty and uncertainty. To paraphrase, there is no doubt (certainty) that about God some things can be expressed...but not all things (uncertainty). Some things about God are truly knowable (certainty), but some are unknowable (uncertainty). Oh, and while we're speaking about God (certainty), let's admit there's a gap, too, between what we say and what we know (uncertainty). My favorite line in this spiraling excerpt, "...it is one thing to speak, and another to know," takes me back to the final lines in Wendell Berry's poem, "How to Be a Poet," which he wrote primarily as a reminder to himself: Accept what comes from silence. Make the best you can of it. Of the little words that come out of the silence, like prayers prayed back to the one who prays, make a poem that does not disturb the silence from which it came. Wherever your preferences fall on the cataphatic or apophatic spectrum of theology (whether you lean more toward what we can say about God or what we cannot), Berry's poem, I think, would nod along with St. John: before we say too much, let our words be preserved by the silence from which they came. I'm thinking of the silence, that filling, restorative quiet I feel when I step into a cathedral or in some of my favorite moments with my kids in the early hours. Even before praying, can we hear the One already praying in us? Let's start there. LUKE TAYLOR GILSTRAP is Vice President of the Board of Directors for Eighth Day Institute. His poems have appeared in Spiritus, Ekstasis (Christianity Today), and Relief Journal, among others. He lives happily in Wichita, Kansas with his wife and three sons.

Inklings Festival Presentations: Oikophilia in David Jones, Visions of Paradise, and Saving the Shire

by Erin Doom

Feast of the Holy Wonderworkers and Unmercenaries Cosmas & Damian of Asia, and Their Mother Theodota

Anno Domini 2020, November 1

A New Universe, a New System of Stars: Why Babies are Necessary Icons for Us

Church Against the Machine: A Review of Paul Kingsnorth's Latest Book

What Else is This, if it is Not God? Stumbling Through St. John of Damascus, Part 2

One Thing to Speak, Another to Know : Stumbling Through St. John of Damascus, Part 1

"And Please, Stay as Long as You Like"

What is Given and Given Up

Let the Church Rebuild You

The Rhythm of the Coop

Exult in Monotony

A Toast to St. Cyril of Alexandria

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