The Ferment

Neither Wolf Nor Underdog: Ch. 5 of Life at the End of Us Vs. Them

Some would question the wisdom, or the right, of someone like me--White, Mennonite, Christian--writing about the historic practices of torture among Indigenous cultures on Turtle Island. Hopefully, the work I have been doing on this podcast and in my book so far has helped me pull enough of the log out of my own eye that I can at least look at the speck in my brother's eye, from a place of connection that says, we've all got some dirt that clouds our vision. "For all have fallen short of the glory of God," as Saint Paul says. Repentance is for every human culture, as is the wideness of God's mercy.

 

Sex Fiends: Jian Ghomeshi, My Rooster and Me--Ch 4 of Life at the End of Us Versus Them

A golden-voiced radio host falls from glory. A rooster crows and struts and demands rough sex. A husband catches some reflections of himself.

Spare the Rod and Take the Child: Ch. 3 of Life at the End of Us vs. Them

A horse-and-buggy Mennonite community has all of its children apprehended by agents of the state because of the use of corporal punishment in the community. What does this story expose about how we think about the legitimate use of force in our modern world? Girard and Illich offer some insight on the odd role of the Gospel in reshaping everything from parenting to policing.

A recommended related story that I covered on another podcast: Diandra Rose Powderhorn on the Return of the Buffalo Podcast: I am the best person for my children

Ave Maria/Sophia/Gaia: Katherine Bubel and Michelle Berry Lane on Illich and the Sacred Feminine

For our fourth and final conversation, around and beyond the legacy of Ivan Illich, we hear reflections and discussion from Katherine Bubel and Michelle Berry Lane before moving into an extended open discussion.

Katherine discusses Illich's mythopoetics of Prometheus, Epimetheus, and Pandora, the latter a patriarchally diminished version of the Earth Goddess Gaia, who Katherine connects to the biblical divine wisdom figure of Sophia, and Mary, Mother of God. Where Prometheus pursues mastery and technology, "Epimethean man stays and listens to the dream of Gaia/the Earth."

Michelle talks about about the conviviality with and of bees, and connects Illich with Suzanne Simard’s work on tree talk, and Lynn Margulis' work on symbiogenesis. She makes the case that the lost sense of contingency--life hanging moment by moment on God's grace--can be recaptured in the modern awareness of the complete contingence of our life on the health of our relationships.

Katharine Bubel is assistant professor of English at Trinity Western University.

Michelle Berry Lane is a poet, a teacher of environmental science and a student of theopoetics, and part of Rochester Pollinators, a pollinator advocacy organization in southeast Michigan.

Sources mentioned in this conversation:

• "Un Certain Regard," in which gives his take on the myth of Pandora, Prometheus & Epimetheus.
• Illich's essay, "The Dawn of Epimethean Man"
• Illich's Tools for Conviviality
• Ilich's Gender: https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/ivan-illich-gender

Thanks to David Benjamin Blower for the transition music. Check out more of his offerings at the Messianic Folklore Podcast.

”One No, Many Yeses” Sam Ewell & Dougald Hine in Illich Conversation #3

Gustavo Esteva coined the slogan "One No, Many Yeses" to communicate the way Illich's sense of "the vernacular" offers many small and winding exits off of the one big road of industrial "progress" that tries to gather up the whole globe into one great machine, one overriding system. In this conversation, Dougald Hine, Sam Ewell and friends colour in some of the small, convivial possibilities that lie on the other side of a no to the promises of modernity, the kinds of gardens that can grow up in the cracks of big systems.

Walking the Razor’s Edge: Illich Conversation #2 with David Cayley and Sam Ewell

Christian mission has gotten a bad name in our time, for good reason. Illich talked about the razor's edge walked by the missionary, between violating the world into which one has been sent (he used the word raping, actually) and betraying one's spiritual inheritance. Some have read Illich as anti-mission. In this conversation, both David Cayley and Sam Ewell argue that Illich is decidedly not anti-mission, any more than he is anti-technology, but that he makes us sensitive to the imperialism of either one when they tilt us out of the convivial relationship of friends and the action of citizens into the docility of clients who believe that only armies, machines and experts can save them.

Pregnant with an Evil - Chapter 2 of Marcus’ Audiobook

Welcome to chapter 2 of Life at the End of Us Versus Them. This is where I give an introduction to the thought of Ivan Illich's sense of the way Christianity was perverted when it sought to impose the Gospel of Christ through state power and institutional administration. I could think of no clearer case example than the Indian Residential Schools project.

Four Illich Conversations, Part 1: Cayley & Hine

Two Illichian thinkers dialogue on the legacy of Illich, in the light of our present times and predicaments. This is the first of four fortnightly conversations. 

David Cayley: friend and associate of Illich and the author of Ivan Illich, An Intellectual Journey. 

Dougald Hine: co-founder of The Dark Mountain Project, A School Called Home and the author of At Work in the Ruins: Finding Our Place in the Time of Science, Climate Change, Pandemics, and All the Other Emergencies.

To join in the upcoming Zoom meetings, reach out to either Dougald Hine or David Benjamin Blower on Substack to become a paid subscriber for this and other excellent offerings by these two.

The Religion of the End of Religion - Part 1 of Marcus’ audiobook

Firing up the old podcast again! This is the first in a series of audiobook chapter releases. I never did figure out how to package and sell my book as an audiobook per se, but it feels like the right time to put this out into the world. The "expectant - and apocalyptic time" that was named on the back cover seems more vividly at hand now than in 2017 when I first published the thing. Illich and Girard helped me find my bearings in this strange time that is the end of something big--Dougald Hine names it modernity, Paul Kingsnorth calls it The Machine, Joe Biden calls it "the rules-based international order"--that last name loaded with what Girard would call a "misrecognition" of the sacred violence that we have called "good" and tried so desperately to distinguish from the violence of others we have called "bad." Will we renounce our violent passions in time to avert an apocalyptic escalation? There are many ways to pray. Perhaps relaunching a podcast is one of them.

15 - Lydia Wylie-Kellerman

Lydia Wylie-Kellerman is co-editor of the blog, radicaldiscipleship.net, coordinator of Word and World: A People’s School bridging the gap between seminary, sanctuary and the street, and the newly minted editor of geez magazine, recently flown the coop of Winnipeg to be nested in Detroit.